Sometimes it’s all about how you approach work. The mindset you have when you begin tackling something, especially something new, can make all the difference.

Today I tried to make a couple quick drafts of a screenplay. Nothing long, nothing fancy, just a first attempt to see how it went. I won’t sugarcoat it. It was painful.

I found myself fighting the format. The editor’s voice in the back of my head was shouting so hard I thought he might need a cup of tea by the end of the day. And I just couldn’t get a head of steam going to make the words come out. Things were not looking good.

So I tried a new approach. I decided I’d first draft a quick story. No formatting. No restrictions. Just words. If I couldn’t write a screenplay from scratch, maybe I could adapt one from something else. I took my quick story and then adapted it into a short screenplay.

This, it turns out, is how I work. And now I know how I work.

And I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course it makes more sense to create in the mode you know, and then adjust the outcome to fit the mold required. Once I’d figured this out, everything just clicked for me.

So now I know how I will tackle this screenwriting challenge. I’ll first draft the story. Once I’m happy with it, only then will I adapt it into a screenplay. I think this will work best for me. At least for the purposes of this challenge.

Only thing left now is to wait. In just a few hours, the challenge will commence, and the assignments will be emailed out to the participants. I’ll have eight days to write a short screenplay no longer than 12 pages. Should be fun!

I always knew that the movie was never the same as the book. I don’t think I ever realized, however, that the movie could also differ from the script. But that’s what I learned today.

I spent the day reading. I started with the guidelines posted on the NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge page. This turned out to be an excellent resource. It covered all the big questions I had regarding formatting and restrictions to text. It also turned out to be very helpful with getting into the mindset of a screenwriter specifically.

After getting a decent grip on how a screenplay actually works, I started reading some screenplays I found on IMSDb. And here was where I discovered that what ultimately ends up on the screen can differ from what was written in the script. Of course, this doesn’t have an impact on me as I go into this writing challenge. But as an avid movie watcher, I was honestly surprised at how much a story can change as it moves from script to screen. I think this realization will continue to reside in the back of my mind as I watch any movie from now on.

And that was basically it for today, just a big reading day. Tomorrow I’ll likely read a couple more screenplays, just to expose myself to various styles and such. Then I might take a stab at doing some drafts, just to get a feel for the flow of the format. And then the real fun will begin when I get my assignment at midnight NYC time (hence the name). Until then, fortune favors the prepared mind!

I like starting new things. I like having the opportunity to learn something new. And that’s why I signed up for this screenwriting challenge in the first place. I wanted to take a shot at something I’d never tried before.

Well, I have a lot to learn in the next couple days, that’s what I learned today.

I started by looking at the NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge website, which had a very helpful section covering the basics of how to write a screenplay. It covers exactly what I’ve been most concerned about, which is the formatting rules of screenplays. I will be referencing this page heavily throughout this challenge.

Next I wanted to see if I could find any good examples of screenplays that I could read over. We learn by the examples of others, after all. This is how I came to discover IMSDb, the Internet Movie Script Database. And let me tell you, if you like movies, you could spend weeks combing through this website. All the scripts are there to read. For free. It’s dangerous. Needless to say, I have plenty of reading material here to work with for when I need examples of how things are done.

As I was reading through some scripts, I began to remember having listened to a podcast a while back that had something to do with screenwriting. I dug through my listening history and came across Wondery’s Launch podcast by John August. I realized that it was about August’s journey of launching a novel, but his career has mostly been spent as a screenwriter. So I decided to look him up and see if he had anything else out there that could be helpful. Turns out, he has a website.

Of course I went digging around his site. And it is full of excellent advice on writing screenplays! It also has a link to the script reading app he helped build, called Weekend Read 2. I remembered playing with it a while back, likely when I was listening to his podcast. So I loaded it up on my phone and filled it with a handful of scripts for me to read through over the next couple of days to get a feel for the flow of them.

So now I feel like I have the tools I need to do the work of learning. I have two days to burn through all this material. And hopefully at the end of it, I’ll have a bit more of a clue than I did at the start of the week. Which is my general goal for every week.