"The Evils of the War" Journey.

One of the most memorable achievements I have made in my life so far is finishing my feature screenplay “The Evils of the war”

I wrote the basic storyline for this film way back in 2010, I wrote it in a dialog form and it was a very basic beginner storyline.

However in March 2014 something strange happened, I am a big fan of “The Oscars”, one day when I was on their website I stumbled upon a screenwriting competition they offered called “Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting”. I have never written a screenplay before, and I thought “Hey, let’s just give it a shot”. I started teaching myself how to write a screenplay, then I slowly started turning the chunk of dialog I had written into a screenplay. I have learnt so much about the screenwriting in just three months, the deadline was in May.

I didn’t know much about screenwriting so I made the obvious mistake every beginner screen writer makes “I submitted my first draft”, which I discovered later on that it’s a big NO NO. Before submitting the film, I sent it to Tammy Gross, a proofreader from Los Angeles who is specialized into editing screenplays, she told me that my script needs a lot more editing and that I shouldn’t submit it to the academy just yet, however she said that “The story is very compelling, extremely emotional”. For the sake of the experience, I submitted my screenplay to the competition. As expected, I have received a rejection letter in July 2014, that letter from the academy took me back to the bitter reality that I was just a needle in the haystack of professional filmmakers. The first time to ever get rejected hurts the worse I think, but I wasn’t about to give up.

I knew I had to advance my screenwriting skills, there has to be a way to make my story better. Thus, I emailed the proofreader back again, I explained to her what has happened and asked her about ways I can improve my screenplay. She emailed me back saying that maybe I should talk to a story consultant who will help me develop and structure my story. I looked for story consultant, but it was about to cost me around $1000 to get one that would fix the story. The problem was, I wanted to learn how to fix it, rather than have someone else do it for me. I thought that it would be way too easy, almost like cheating so I halted and decided I wanted to follow the hard way of blood, tears and sweat every professional screenwriter undergoes. The problem? I was no-where being even near to professionalism.

Thus, the research started, the really in depth one. Look at journeys of famous screenwriter, watch screenwriting blogs, learn screenwriting tips, listen to professionals, talk to professionals (If you find one, catch them, and make them talk to you), I became obsessed with the craft, but I started to get confused on what works and what doesn’t. It was a great experience to kind a self teach myself the craft, but that still didn’t mean that I am qualified to write a good screenplay. What’s a good screenplay anyways?

I had a subject in my university called “Video editing and production”. One day, out of the bloom I asked my lecturer “Mr. Martin”, if he knew any screenplay consultants, he replied “What do you need them for?” so I explained to him my screenwriting dilemma and to my utter surprise he replied “Give me the script, I will read it for you”, and that’s how a new chapter of my screenwriting life started.

I gave him my script, bear in mind that when no one has ever asked to read you script, ask to read it. It becomes nerve racking to just press the “send” button on the email containing your screenplay that you are about to send to them.

I anxiously waited for him to reply, to be perfectly honest I was more nervous to give the script to him than previously when I sent it the competition. He asked to meet me in person after a few months, that was in January 2015, he said that I have two options (Either let him read the screenplay and give me feedback about the overall story, or we will meet up few times a week and read the screenplay together page by page) I would’ve been a fool if I didn’t choose the second options. When I asked him later on to why he was helping me, he said “I'm film maker. Anyone who need my support relating to filmmaking is granted my life long commitment. but i've only 1 condition: I don't work with quitter.” I promised that I wouldn’t quit no matter how pain staking the screenwriting becomes. We first started by stating the objectives of each scene in “Act 1”, as how story structure goes I needed to learn how to follow the “three act structure”. I had to watch so many “homework movies” to analysis how they construct their characters, since one of the major themes of my film is “war” I had to watch plenty of war movies. The hurt locker was one of the movies that mostly appealed to me.

I started to meet up with Mr.Martin on weekly basis. I slowly somehow started seeing how bad my first draft and my story was, after completing “act 1” I realized that I kind a have a whole different storyline, so different from the first storyline I had, thus I decided to take the story to a whole different level by changing act two and three entirely, basically I had a whole new screenplay with the same title.

Changing the story, opened up so many doors, possibilities and options. One of the most useful advices that I have received from Mr.Martin was “Don’t be scared if your writing turns out bad, there is no such thing as perfect screenplay, you have to let the bad writing out before you reach the good writing”, So I did.

For about almost a year, I worked daily on my screenplay I would meet up with Mr.Martin every milestone and we would discuss the story and talk about developing it further. He also asked me to write a “dairy” that I imagined my main character “Kate” would write. If I wasn’t working on my screenplay I would be writing diaries which helped tremendously with character development. I finished the second draft in July 2015, and then I decided to rewrite it again. Somewhere in December 2015 I finished my third draft and decided that maybe It was time to submit it to “Screen Craft third annual screenwriting fellowship”, I have consulted with Mr.Martin previously and he advice me to enter.

The fate of my screenplay is still unknown. However I am still trying to develop it and make it reach its full potential. Until then I am so thankful for all the help that I have received.

Here is a teaser scene :)

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