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Tom Puts on His Writing Shorts (Scrawl S4 E7)

Warning: The audio content below is both entertaining and informative. Listen at your discretion.

Have you ever seen a movie and thought Hey, I can do that! Well according to Tom, you can!  On this episode of Scrawl, Tracey joins the guys in a fabulous discussion about screenwriting.  We talk about what screenwriting is, how it functions, as well as what should and should not be included in a screenplay.  Tom gives his advice on what works and what doesn’t, and Tracey and Robert talk about their recent introduction to the genre.  Toward the end of the program, Tom puts on his writing shorts as the gang does a table read of one of his original screenplays Pinewood.

If you enjoy writing screenplays, have ever thought about writing screenplays, or just plain love movies and television shows and want to know more about how they are written, this is the episode for you!

Click to listen (right-click and “Save Link As” to download)!

Original Air Date: 05-25-12

3 replies on “Tom Puts on His Writing Shorts (Scrawl S4 E7)”

Truly a swell show, guys. I was rather inspired by the idea of having a specific pair of writing shorts, Tom, and is something I am considering trying out myself. I had a question pertaining to the point you made about writing what you know. As a fellow screenwriter, I too have adopted this technique once or twice, but I’ve also heard it said by many writers to stay away from what you know and instead use your imagination to come up with new material. They feel that sometimes writing what you know can lead to falling into a trap and becoming too attached with your work. Have you ever had this happen to you and what advice would you say to those writers who have had that problem?

A Dinosaurs Reboot, ALRIGHT! But in all seriousness, once again, an interesting listen that was not only informative, but entertaining to a point. I thought the tidbit about how Movies are for Directors and Television for Writers rather interesting. Screenplays, or writing for any dialogue-intensive medium is of course always difficult because you want to make it believable AND entertaining. Nothing is worse than having “forced” drama or wooden sounding dialogue. Another big problem that I was hoping you guys would touch more upon was the pretentious trap many screenwriters fall into. They want to be like their “favorite” directors and writers, and sometimes, they simply try to mimic their works to make a more “me too” piece of work.

Lovely podcast, gentlemen (and Tracey). Really nice to see some light shed on this aspect of creative writing. As a screenwriter myself, I love hearing other writers’ tips, tricks, and methods; I’ve never tried Robert’s idea of writing the character before the scenario, but that sounds like something that would be really interesting to experiment with. I myself like to hear a conversation in my head and let it play out before I write it, then write pauses, character’s cutting each other off, and so on. This might be stepping on the actor’s toes a bit, but it helps me get a feel for the characters and give each one their own unique voice. I think this transitioned from the time before I wrote screenplays, when I was mostly writing short stories. That is perhaps the one thing that I miss about prose: the control. Especially because I enjoy writing features, there’s a lot of give and take, compromise, collaboration with multiple people (some who couldn’t care less about the story itself – only how much it’ll cost to tell)… some good experiences, some excruciatingly frustrating. But it’s (almost) always worth it!

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