Steve Coombes - Storywriting

As part of the preparation towards our storytelling project we are having scriptwriter Steve Coombes as a lecturer for a few days over the next couple of weeks.
Steve got into screen writing through acting and it was his wife, who's a producer, that got him to write for television. He is known for "What Rats Won't do", "Sold" and "Frank Stubbs".

Steve's golden rules of story writing:
- Don't bother with adjectives, verbs are what you want. 

- Tell the audience only what they need to know. 

- Show, don't tell. "This is SHOWBIZ, not SAYBIZ."

- Set up -> distraction ->punchline

- Don't start writing a screenplay before you know what the ending is. 

- Count your moments. 

"If you don't have any moments, throw the script in the bin."

From idea to final script:

Loggline/pitch - a one-sentence summary of the story. 

Treatment - Summary of the story where you outline the whole story. (Not more than 10 pages). 

Bible - Where you tell how you want everything in the story to be. 

First draft - Script, 60 pages long, 12 000 words. 

Green light - Start shooting

Writing the script

"Almost anything you write in a screenplay can survive a bad director, it can also survive a bad producer, but it can't survive a bad actor."

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