Film Courage: How long does it take you to write a feature script?
Michael J. Epstein, Filmmaker, Writer, Musician, and Scientist: The process of writing a feature
script is hard to quantify in time because usually if I'm doing something I really care about what
usually happens is I think about it for about six months. I start to write down a few ideas.
I ponder it for about six months then I start to write kind of an outline of it that might take a
few days or a few hours depending on how much I've thought through it in advance. Then once
I sit down to write it if I'm dedicated to it usually a couple of weeks if I'm really really
focused on that now most of the time it takes longer because I'm not I can't dedicate eight
hours a day to doing it so most of the time it'll take two months or something more like that do you
usually end up talking yourself out of an idea not too often I mean I guess I have many many scripts
that are in the in the sort of nugget stage where I have just kind of written a basic idea and
I think about it for a long time and I start to outline it and then I kind of it's not that I talk
myself out of it but I just never kind of find the time to move forward with it it becomes less
important to me than maybe another idea it does is that because that it's got to be something you're
fully committed to or else maybe you might end up not finishing it or yeah I mean I think it's more
like as an artist it's always hard that there are all these jokes that memes and things about like
finishing a project versus starting a new project there's a real kind of excitement and a rush with
starting a new project and once you're in the trenches and like you're working through and
trying to solve problems in a script that's not the exciting part that doesn't feel good so it's
often easier to kind of start something new and to not not finish something but yeah no I don't think
I ever fully feel like I've abandoned those ideas I feel like oh someday I'll get i'll get around to
coming back to this but then maybe I maybe I don't or maybe it hasn't happened yet still thinking
about it once an idea gets past the Nugget stage what's your writing process so again I think
for a while for first thing I do is I ponder it because I think if I sit down if I just have an
idea and then I sit down and try to write it it just comes out badly that's not really the best
scenario for me so I spent some time pondering it usually in the middle of the night I wake up and
I have some thoughts about it I type them into my phone or what I used to be more exercising
in in pre-pandemic days if I was swimming or something like that a time when you're kind of
shutting your mind off when you're not really thinking about anything that's when the ideas
start to start to pop up and those kind of come together and I start to just kind of take notes
it's like a bunch of little like notes about what what I want to do with the story or how I want to
structure it and then I really sit down and get dedicated to kind of outlining it and usually
the outline it may not be complete it may be just like here's you people have different ideas about
what an outline means some people an outline is a 20 Page scene by scene structure of the entire
movie for me it's more like what happens in the beginning what happens in the end what are some
things that kind of fill in the middle and then I typically I'm really interested in in writing I'm
really interested in symmetry that's usually how I how I approach writing so I usually am writing the
the end in the beginning first those are the two pieces that I think are most important and I want
to make sure that there's something meaning some meaningful symmetry between those two so whatever
I'm setting up in the beginning and whatever kind of story I want to tell in the beginning
ends where it needs to end that it drives home the the themes or the thesis of the film
in that ending and then once I feel good about the beginning and the ending then I'll go in
and start filling in that outline sometimes it's just kind of writing summary like a synopsis type
type of thing in kind of prose form sometimes it's actually doing a more seen scene by scene
breakdown like what oh we should have a scene here where this happens and I'll just write the
scene header and and kind of write summary like here's some stuff that happens in the scene and
I'll just work to kind of fill it in fill in the the story from there sometimes I'm more
I'll do a full full outline where I I have every kind of piece put in sometimes I start writing
once I have the beginning and ending and some stuff in the middle sometimes I'll actually just
sit down and start writing from that point and why symmetry why is something being symmetrical very
important to you I think symmetry is really really important in film because I'm a kind of a thesis
driven or a theme driven writer and so the a lot of people I know are focused on kind of plot or
character or those are the most important elements but I feel like it's really important to me if I'm
going to write a film that I have something to say that I have something to that's important to me
about this story that's important to me about the journey that I'm going to take people on
that's going to connect with people in a way that's that that it connects with me and so for
me the best the best way to do that is to look at where is the starting point of the journey
where where do I want people to start from where do I want people to get on board my my train and
then where do I need to take them so that they have the experience that I want them to have or
understand the themes or have the type of my goal is to really get people to have an introspective
experience it's not really about the the the characters in the thing it's more about like
what can I do in this story or with the structure to make people have some kind of internalization
of it or thoughts about their own lives or their own experiences and I think symmetry is really
important for that that kind of structure how do when you have a great idea I don't think I
ever do know I don't think it's important to know if you have a great idea you just kind of I mean
I have a million ideas right I make a list of a million ideas every other day I have a new idea
for for a movie I just look at the one that speaks to me the most I don't know if it's great I don't
know what great great even means but but if I'm going to write something it has to be important
to me so I have to look at it and say this is the concept this is the story that I most want to tell
that I most want to share that I think will convey what I want to convey that will in a way expose
myself in the way that I want to expose myself to to other people so that they can maybe learn
something or think about something but I don't I don't know whether that makes it great or not I
just know that it's something that's important to me do you need others approval before you
give a green light to something to writing something 110 Pages for writing no not really
I think anything that is interesting to me I'll write it I assume most of the time that anything
I'm writing is just going to basically sit in a sit in a drawer it's not going to get made
very few of the things that I write actually end up going into production and I would sort of put
them out in the world for other people to read but usually I'm just I'll finish a draft and then
I'll be like okay I'll sit on this for a while and think about whether I want to do something with it
but it's not polished enough to send around or or something to do anything else with it other than
have it kind of sit and I'm okay with that that's that's okay for me that's part of the process of
kind of finding what it is that is most important to me I feel like if I don't write a number of
different stories I'm not going to find the one that really works in the end for me so that's fine
how do when a screenplay is finished is it screenplay ever finished I don't think so
it's finished when when it has to be finished when we have to start turning it into a production
and even then I don't think it's really finished because if we're if we're making a
movie and I guess I'm talking about this from the perspective of we're actually producing the film
if we're actually producing the film it's finished we can send it out to actors we
can start figuring out how to actually get the production moving but we're often doing rewrites
after the fact we shoot stuff and we realize oh something is not working or we need to adjust
something we need to add something or there's an opportunity here and so we're always willing to
keep keep crafting and keep reshaping it if I'm not producing it it's still never finished it's
something that at some point I say okay well this is in pretty good shape let me send it around and
get some notes on it and see how people respond to it maybe put it in competition somewhere and
and then I get feedback usually from that and either incorporate that or keep it in a notes
file and don't get around to incorporating it depending on how things are going but yeah I
don't think nothing is really ever finished and when you write something let's suppose you commit
to writing a feature screenplay you never imagine this will I'll take this to producers it's always
I'm going to be making this myself I definitely do write some some sort of spec screenplays as well
but it's less frequent for me when I'm writing a spec screenplay it's a whole
different mindset for me because I have to think about things differently I have to
think about the story differently I have to make sure that it's get what's on the
page it's going to connect with people in a way that I don't have to worry quite as
much if it's something we're producing because sometimes we know our stylistic ideas or our
our structural ideas will overcome or are more important than kind of the words on the page.