This post is for my friend “Big Suz.” She has been writing some Days of our Lives fan fiction and has built up quite a following on one of the major DOOL fansites. I am going to help her to take her writing to the next level; via properly formatted DOOL screenplay format. Here is an example of a Days of our Lives screenplay (format).
Hopefully, with some work, Big Suz will make it to the Big Time.
Screenwriting is one of the most difficult of the “arts.” Sure, it looks easy, but nothing could be farther from the truth. All of the other art forms have some type of payoff. If you write a book, you can simply post it to the internet, or publish it yourself. If you write a song, or music, or poetry, you can post it on youtube or your blog or site. If you paint a painting you can now easily make prints and sell the prints online. Etc. and so forth.
With screenwriting, the writer has no real payoff, and the writer is truly betting on a table where the odds are a million to one. I think this is the one big issue that plagues even the most experienced screenwriters out there: “Will anyone like my screenplay and want to turn it into a movie?”
With books, novelists can literally drone on for a thousand pages about the inner thoughts of the characters and describe in detail every single thing in the novel in great detail. With screenplays there is the simple is fact that movies move, and books read.
Well, I am starting to rant, when I should actually be writing, not complaining….
What I wanted to say is that I have been having a hard time getting in the mood to be creative lately. Slowly I am coming out of this funk. I just got a new job that hopefully won’t be too stressful and I will be able to write.
Things are finally coming together with Vagueland. I know I have said this before, but -all- of the pieces are now 90% in place. My plot is worked out thoroughly, but I am figuring out which of the immense amount of characters I have created that I will use in the movie. The main characters are set, but I am still figuring out the minor players and what role they will play. I am also deciding on whether or not to have a “love interest” for Teddy, or whether I can simply skip that (as possibly cliche).
The opening is going to be pretty badass; a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sort of badass too! 
coming soon, I promise!