Before I get to today’s blog…

Thinking about doing more with your writing? Why not join me in Paris June 2-7 for my Masterclass in Screenwriting? Come be part of a dynamic community of writers and literary agents to learn, to write, to network, to energize your literary goals—and just to have fun in the City of Light!

The Paris Writers Workshop is the longest running literary program of its kind. This program offers 6 masterclasses by renowned authors, each a specialist in their field—and I’ll be teaching the Screenwriting Masterclass—in English, of course.

The workshop will be held at Columbia University’s beautiful Reid Hall campus in the heart of literary Paris—Montparnasse.

Registration is now open: https://wice-paris.org/paris-writers- workshop

We’ll have a great time getting your story ideas off the ground!!

Back to School 10—School’s Out!

I can hardly believe that it’s been 10 weeks since we started talking about how to write that film set in high school or college. And though that seems like a long time to devote to this genre, there are SO many films we didn’t get a chance to talk about in more detail that are worth a look:

When writing any story, I always thing about how I can push the boundaries, how I can do something that hasn’t been done before. Because if you’re out there trying to get your scripts seen, you can’t just do what everybody else is doing, or what has been done before. You really need to think about doing something fresh.

This is why we study films that came before in a genre we want to write. It’s only when you know your genre that you can hope to do something new. If I had the idea for a cop to have to go into a class as a kindergarten teacher and hadn’t seen Kindergarten Cop, I’d be totally spinning my wheels. Anyone reading my script would read a couple of pages and realize that had already been done and…woosh! My script’s toast.

I also like to think about what a genre hasn’t even tried yet. For example, the back-to-school movie hasn’t been done as a thriller, or if it has, such a film doesn’t come to mind. So there’s an area worth exploring. Could you set a thriller inside a high school, or inside a university? Can you combine genres to tell a fresh, new kind of story.

If looking at films in the genre has inspired you to take a crack at your own back-to-school movie, I’d encourage you to come up with not one, but THREE ideas for such a film—three completely different ideas. Write the premise [a paragraph or so] of each film’s storyline and then go a step further and write a one-page outline of each of the three. Make sure these are three stories you really like, three stories you’d just love to write. And then—and only then—sit down and choose the one you’re most excited about and begin.

FADE IN:

Ext. School – Day ….

Copyright © Diane Lake

11Nov18

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com