Adventures of a Writer

Sometime back I had done a post for Storizen magazine on how screenplay writing differs from novel writing. A script or screenplay is essentially a roadmap that guides a filmmaker towards his/her destination of putting together a film. And for that reason, there are a few rules that the writer needs to follow:  1. Descriptions need to be minimal and offer the filmmaking team with just the precise details about location, ambience, mood and action.  2. Emotions need to be actionable. Or, something that an actor can act out.  3. Scripts change with inputs from other members of the crew. And a writer has to be willing to make changes to her original ideas. You can read the full post here. In that article I had not talked about screenplay formatting - which is a very important aspect of writing screenplays. The screenplay format - which demands that action lines or descriptions be written from one end of the page to another and the dialogues are centered in the middle - has ...

 Jaideep Sen continues his series dedicated to the writing of Salim Khan...     Writing Silence that speaks louder than words takes the skill of a genius. Let's take two such instances that can be found in Salim Saab's body of work -- Shakti for which he collaborated with his writing partner Javed Akhtar Saab and Naam , for which he was the independent writer .  An interesting side-note here: Shakti and Haathi Mere Saathi were both adapted from Tamil films by Salim and Javed Saab. However, the adaptations were so strikingly different from the original films that they were re-made in Tamil again.  Scene from Shakti: Silence that speaks louder than words Coming back to the scene in Shakti, there is a point in the story where Sheetal (Raakhe Gulzar) is shot dead. Her son Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) is at loggerheads with his Father Ashwini Kumar (Dilip Kumar). She has been the lynchpin in their lives, a pillar of strength for both. When Vijay co...

“Writing is a lonely art. You tend to sit on your own in a room without a whole lot of feedback, and frankly, your mother’s feedback, your dad’s feedback is not really what you want because they love and adore you. You actually want to read the tough feedback from professional readers or from the agents or managers that you submit your material to in your great quest to get representation.” – Peter Samuelson, screenwriter. Contests are a great way to get feedback that every writer needs—to understand what is working in the script and what’s not. I chose to enter my drama screenplay, Coaching Class in the Finish Line Competition in 2016 because they promised to give me feedback for my script. What’s more, based on the evaluation, I could re-submit a revised draft. This enabled me to improve my script taking it to the top of the contest table and winning a first runner-up place.  While a contest win can be a great ego boost, it actually is much more than that. It e...