Everyone starts with nothing. A blank page. An idea that won't leave you alone. The vague sense that you have a story worth telling. That's enough. That's where every screenwriter begins.
The first draft isn't supposed to be good. It's supposed to exist.
The Idea Phase
It starts with a spark. A character who won't shut up in your head. A "what if" that keeps you awake. A scene you can see so clearly you could walk through it.
Don't judge it yet. Don't ask if it's original or marketable or award-worthy. Those questions kill more screenplays than bad writing ever could. For now, just capture it.
Write it down. A sentence. A paragraph. A rambling voice memo at 2 AM. The goal is to pin the butterfly before it flies away.
Tip
Every idea feels either brilliant or stupid at 2 AM. Write it down anyway. Morning will sort it out.
Learning the Format
Screenplays look different from other writing. Scene headings. Character cues. Parentheticals. The first time you see a properly formatted script, it can feel like learning a new language.
It's not. It's just convention — rules that exist so everyone in production reads the same thing the same way. Learn them once, and they become invisible.
Scene headings tell us where and when: `INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY`. Character names in CAPS introduce who's speaking. Dialogue sits centered. Action describes what we see and hear.
Note
Format is not craft. Knowing where to put a character name doesn't make you a good writer. But it does make your script readable by people who can help your career.
The best way to learn format is to read produced screenplays. Not transcripts — actual scripts written by working writers. Notice how they handle transitions, describe action, break up dialogue. Then imitate.
The Outline Question
Some writers outline obsessively. Index cards on a corkboard. Beat sheets. Detailed scene-by-scene breakdowns. They know exactly what happens before they type FADE IN.
Others discover the story as they write. They start with a character, a situation, a feeling — and follow where it leads. The outline emerges from the draft, not before it.
Neither is wrong. But for your first screenplay, some structure helps.
An outline is a map, not a prison. It shows you where you might go — not where you must.
Tip
Try a simple three-act structure for your first script. Beginning, middle, end. Setup, confrontation, resolution. You can break the rules later. Learn them first.
The Messy Middle
You've started. The first ten pages flew by. Your concept is fresh, your characters are alive, you can see the whole movie.
Then you hit page thirty.
This is where most first screenplays die. The excitement fades. The problems multiply. That brilliant idea now has holes you could drive a truck through. You start wondering if you should scrap it and start something new.
Don't.
Warning
The urge to abandon ship around page 30-40 is universal. It's not a sign your idea is bad. It's a sign you've reached the part where writing gets hard.
The middle is where story happens. Setup is easy — you're introducing. Resolution is easy — you're concluding. The middle requires sustained invention, scene after scene, each one pushing toward a climax that still feels far away.
Push through. Write badly. Write scenes you know you'll cut. Write placeholder dialogue that just says what characters mean. You can fix it later. You can't fix a blank page.
Finding Your Characters' Voices
Early drafts often have a problem: everyone sounds the same. They all sound like you.
That's fine. Keep writing. Voice emerges through repetition. The more you write a character, the more distinct they become. You learn their rhythms, their word choices, their silences.
Note
Don't stop to perfect dialogue in a first draft. Get the scenes down. You'll rewrite dialogue a dozen times before you're done anyway.
Read your dialogue out loud. If you can't tell who's speaking without the character names, the voices need work. Each character should have a pattern — long sentences or short, formal or casual, direct or evasive.
Dialogue isn't about what people say. It's about how they can't help saying it.
The Home Stretch
Somewhere around page 80, something shifts. The end is in sight. The pieces start connecting. Scenes you wrote fifty pages ago suddenly pay off in ways you didn't plan.
This is the reward for pushing through the middle. The story starts writing itself. Characters make choices you didn't expect. Themes emerge that you never consciously planted.
Tip
The ending often reveals what the story was really about. Don't force it. Let the draft show you where it was heading all along.
FADE OUT
You type the words. You stare at the page count. You feel something you didn't expect — not triumph, exactly. More like relief mixed with terror.
It's done. And it's probably not very good.
That's okay. That's perfect, actually. A finished bad draft is infinitely more valuable than an unfinished good idea. You can rewrite pages. You can't rewrite nothing.
You're not a person who wants to write a screenplay anymore. You're a person who wrote one.
The first draft is just permission to rewrite.
What Comes Next
You'll put it in a drawer — metaphorically, at least. Give it a week. A month. Long enough that you can read it with fresh eyes and see what's actually on the page instead of what you meant to write.
Then you'll rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite again. This is where screenwriting actually happens. The first draft was just getting the clay on the table. Now you sculpt.
Note
Professional screenwriters rewrite constantly. Ten drafts. Twenty. The first draft is the beginning of the process, not the end.
But none of that matters yet. Right now, you did something most people never do. You finished.
The Takeaway
The journey from blank page to FADE OUT is simple. Not easy — simple. You have an idea. You learn the format. You write through the doubt and the mess and the pages that make you cringe. You keep going until you're done.
Then you do it again, better.
The words are what matter. And now you have some.