Generating Scenes: The Backbone of a Screenplay

Generating Scenes
The Backbone of the Screenplay

Making a movie begins with a concept, then this idea may be captured in a novel, and the third stage is often a screenplay. Sometimes the novel stage is omitted, and the writer/s go directly from concept to screenplay. If you are fortunate enough to have a novel as a starting point there are many advantages. Most significantly the project has grown from someone’s idea to a complete work with all of the characters, the plot, the locations, and often the backstories for the characters are fully developed. This is why movie production companies are willing to purchase film rights from authors. They don’t have to spend the months or years that the author has taken to flesh out the would-be movie in written form.

In my case with Father of the Grooms, the novel had been in mental developed over a period of years, included a trip to Sicily where much of the action takes place, and was written in nine months after I returned. As it now exists as a First Draft version it is 35 chapters and 345 pages long, which is an average length for a modern novel. It could be longer, and I may add an occasional chapter to further develop some of my characters. As it stands it is a complete so far as the plot is concerned. It has also gone through the rigors of four edits so that now it has progressed from what a teacher would award perhaps a C- to about a B+ in that it is far better than it once was, but not as good as it might become. Not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I intend to publish Father of the Groom as an inexpensive e-book to publicize it while I go through the process of writing the first version of the screenplay.

The first thing about doing the screenplay was to decide, “Does the title actually fit the book that was actually written.” My conclusion is that it did not. Father of the Grooms, began in my mind as a dark comedy, something along the lines of the movie Father of the Brides, but as I wrote the novel, the characters took over and the book was transformed from being humorous into an action-adventure piece with love interests which turned out to be something more like Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and movies. I had written something in his style with beautiful women, fast cars, interesting weapons, appealing locations, high art, ethnic foods, and an open-ended finish. A better title was, Murder, Marriage and Mafia: An American Family Meets their Sicilian Cousins. Very often scripts and even entire movies are shot with a working title that might be in its final form until weeks before the work is shown on screen.

My approach as a first step to producing a screenplay was to go through the book and write out and number the scenes. The result was a 17-page document with 240 numbered scenes. This is now the backbone of the future screenplay. This document will be expanded with setting and dialog as the screenplay is completed in coming months.

The scenes are typically described in a single line such as:

SCENE 107. INT. ISOLATED RESTAURANT, COUNTRYSIDE AN HOUR FROM PALERMO - - NIGHT

SCENE 108. INT. RESTAURANT, STAFF DINING ROOM - - NIGHT

SCENE 109. EXT. RESTAURANT, GATE - - NIGHT

Scene 110. INT. RESTAURANT, MAIN DINING ROOM - - NIGHT

Chapter 18. Palermo and Monreale

Scene 111. INT. LIMO, DRIVERS’S GARAGE, PALERMO - - DAY

The structure of the scenes is done the same way that they will appear in the script using common screenplay conventions. When the screenplay is written the scene numbers will be omitted as they will be changed depending on the sequence in which they are shot. There are several restaurants that will be filmed, and some locations where the characters will return to several times. Even though out of order so far as the movie is concerned, all of the filming at each location will be done at the same time, to save relocation costs.

If you have a book from which you wish to write a screenplay, use this technique to screen it out first which can then guide you through the rest of the writing process and allow you a convenient way to move scenes around to better fit the plot and keep track of the elements of the movie. A practical example of this is that you may only have a vehicle for a given number of days. Once you have it, the director will want to film as many segments of the movie as possible, and having the scenes laid out in this way will enable him to better plan the shooting schedule.

Wm. Hovey Smith is the author of 20 books, blogs, over 750 videos. The Father of the Grooms writing project was envisioned as a pathway to a movie that may be filmed in the U.S. and Sicily in 2004. The book is available for review at present and will be published as an e-book later this year.