Writing Teenage Bodyguard - A Screenplay

The Writing Process - Starting the Transliteration - Part 6

FADE IN….

 As I’ve mentioned, I wrote a treatment for the producer.

The treatment was meant to be about a page for each ten of the screenplay. It’s eleven pages long.

I sat downstairs, put a movie on TV for background noise, one that wouldn’t require much attention or that I had really badly wanted to watch, and started writing.

That first line in starting to write this, was horrendous and took a lot out of me. This was a story I had lived, that I spent months over a year ago researching that required me to physically drives to places (libraries, book stores even which may carry more local books than even Amazon) and had given me grief in not being able to find the specifics on things I wanted, even though the story is well documented with much other background information. You never seem to find what you need.

On top of that, considering this is a true event of organized crime in Tacoma in 1974, literally no one I asked will talk to me about it. Two of my bothers did talk to me and gave me their recollections. My sister, three years older than me. Had little or no recollection of this stuff as it was never quite her thing and she had become a flight attendant back then and was in her own awesome universe traveling the world.

So either no one will talk to me because they just don’t know anything, or they seem to be afraid still to this day to speak of it. One friend who does know some stuff, strangely won’t talk to me at all about any of it and wont’ even tell me why. But then he can be a bit odd at times. Artists can have such temperamental attitudes at times.

I read the first paragraph of the treatment, then wrote the first lines in the screenplay.

The treatment starts with a SUPER (words on screen) to set the tone and orientation of the story to be shown. I have notes then about the atmosphere and some info about the location of the muder and the crime family, all in one paragraph.

Then there is a location SUPER and V.O. (voice over) of my character speaking. This is a set up for the ending really, and to set the stage for the story to begin, mostly in relation to my character’s personality.

The treatment then goes into the murder setting the stage for what is to follow. After that the story turns into a nightmare to write but I think I figured out a way to tell the story. Since much of this story really happens after the murder and my experience that is being told, I had to come up with something to show who these guys were and I found what I think is a clever way to do that in using an overall frame to the story and flashforwards.

Flashes, forward or back will require SUPERS indicating to the audience what the date is. This can be a real beast if not handled properly but I think I’ve figured out how to handle it.

Working from (or writing) a treatment can get you into a lot of trouble. In writing the treatment you can say one sentence (where a page should be about ten in the finished screenplay) that instead of being a part of a page can easily at times expand out into ten or twenty, a real killer if you’re not careful. Part of the art of writing a treatment is knowing what will translate in time and pages to the right amount.

I seemed to have done well with this.

Usually when I write an original screenplay it has been up around or over 120 pages. That used to be okay. But over the years that has gone down to 110, 100, and 90 even. At this time from an eleven page treatment I’m at page 57 of the screenplay and halfway through page 9 of the treatment. So that’s pretty damn good. And some of the ending are SUPERs detailing the demise of the crime family.

When I write a screenplay and finish the first draft with 120 page written, I have to go through and you always find places that need to be expanded so you have to cut and it feels impossible. But if you have 90 pages, or 60, you have a lot of room to fill in and coming up with things isn’t very difficult. Much of that will come from proper formatting.