The Countdown: A Four-Week Scriptwriting Boot Camp for Elementary School Students

Greetings, young writers!

In the next four weeks, this scriptwriting Boot Camp will take you through everything you'll need to know to tackle the great Script Frenzy adventure this April. Over the next month, we'll invent imaginary friends and enemies, hatch plots, create new worlds, practice writing dialogue, and even learn a thing or two about the mysterious art of script formatting.

And we're getting started with it today!

Week One: Choosing the Right Script for You and Inventing Your Characters

In this week's Countdown, we'll help you figure out what kind of script to write for the Frenzy, and see if we can find a script-worthy character or two running around in your head.

There are many different kinds of scripts, more than you might think! There are scripts written for movies (screenplays), scripts written for the theater (stage plays), scripts written for television (teleplays), and there are even scripts written for comic books. Since you will be spending a whole month with your script, you should take the time to read a little bit about each one to make sure you’re choosing the right script for you.

Screenplays

The screenplay is wonderful because you can do all kinds of supercalifragilistic things in movies that are very hard to do on the stage. You can cover great distances in a second. You can jump through time and space. You can create a scene that takes place at a football game with 10,000 roaring fans in the background, or in a cave filled with 1,000 live cobras. The sky's the limit. You can even write an animated film, where the scenes are only limited by the artist's imagination.

However, there are some unique challenges to writing a screenplay. In a movie, there are lots of settings and lots of characters, and you will have to write short, detailed paragraphs describing what's going on with your characters and in the background of each scene. This can be a lot of writing, and means you'll have to keep track of a bunch of people at once.

The biggest challenge for screenplays, though, has nothing to do with the actual writing. The challenge comes later, when you start thinking about bringing your script to life. Making your screenplay into a movie requires you or someone you know track down a camera and editing equipment, and it means you'll have to start thinking about things like lighting and sound recording as well.

If you love movies, don't let this scare you off. Writing a movie, even if it never gets made, is still a great creative adventure. In fact, most people who write movies for a living let a different group of people actually make the films they write.

To read more about writing a screenplay check out Intro to Screenwriting in our Writer’s Resources section.

Stage plays

This brings us to the stage play. The stage play is wonderful because you can write it, grab a few classmates, and perform it in front of friends and family. It doesn't take too much work to share your story with an audience. It can also easily be performed over and over by different groups of actors, and given a whole new life each time.

When writing a stage play, you don't need to give us as much description of the location and scenery. Playwrights typically leave it up to the director and set designers to imagine what the stage should look like.

Stage plays, though, comes with some limits that screenplays and teleplays don't have. Because a play unfolds in front of an audience, it occurs in what we call real time. Real time just means that if a scene takes ten minutes to be performed, then only ten minutes have passed in the lives of the people on stage. In a movie, on the other hand, ten minutes on screen could be anywhere from a few minutes to several decades in the lives of the characters.

When writing a play, you also have to take into consideration who is on the stage at any given time. Only a certain number of characters are going to fit on there, so getting that football game we mentioned earlier into a stage play would be tough to pull off. If your story moves from day to night, you have to give your characters and the set movers time to actually make the stage look like night before the next scene starts. Because it can get expensive to build complicated sets, many stage plays take place with very little background decoration. Sometimes an entire play is set in only a couple rooms, much like a television show. When there are very few visuals and only a handful of characters, the dialogue really has to be strong to carry the story!

To read more about writing a stage play, check out Intro to Playwriting in our Writer’s Resources section.

Teleplays

If you put a stage play and a screenplay in a big pot and stir them all together, you’ll get a teleplay. Some television shows are just like movies in that they jump through space and time, through multiple scene locations, and feature all kinds of super-cool special effects. These are also called one-camera TV shows. Other television shows are more like stage plays in that they are filmed in very few locations, usually in front of a studio audience. These are called three-camera TV shows.

The great thing about writing for television is that there are so many choices. You can write an hour-long drama, sci-fi, or mystery show. You can write a 30-minute sit-com or cartoon. You can even write a script for a new episode of your favorite TV show! And television plots are usually a lot less complicated than those of most movies, plays, and comic books. Though your characters are usually on a quest for something in each episode—whether that is solving a crime or getting a good grade on a math test—it is usually not life-changing! As a matter a fact, you don’t want your characters to change too much. The reason people keep watching a certain show is because they love the characters just the way they are. In many shows, a character will want something really big—like ridding the world from evil vampires—but he or she will only make a certain amount of progress towards the goal in each episode. If the hero got rid of all the vampires in the first episode, he or she would have nothing to do in the next one!

But writing for the small screen has its challenges, too. Television shows have a lot of dialogue, and they are often shot in very few places without a lot of props or special effects. If you don't have a lot of activity and fancy effects, you’ll have to move the story forward and keep your audience’s attention through what your characters say. That means that not only will you have to write a lot of conversations, you’ll have to write a lot of really interesting conversations to keep people watching.

This leads us to the final and biggest challenge of television writing: keeping your audience from changing the channel. When you are watching a play or a movie in a theater and you decide you don't like it, leaving is your only option. Very few people do this. When you are watching television, on the other hand, you have tons of options, especially if you have cable! If a show is even a little ho-hum, all you have to do is push a button, and you’re on to the next show. This means that a TV script has to grab viewers' attention right off the bat and keep them watching throughout the whole show.

But don’t be discouraged. If you are like a lot of people, you already know a lot about television from watching it. And if you choose to write a teleplay, you’ll have the perfect excuse to watch even more television. Your parents can’t argue with you if it's part of your homework!

To read more about writing a teleplay check out Intro to Writing for Television in our Writer’s Resources section.

Scripts for Comic Books

You may or may not know this, but you don’t have to be a talented artist to write comic books! Many comic books begin with a script that looks similar to those written for movies, plays, and TV shows. Just like a screenplay is a map that a director uses to produce a movie, a comic-book script is a map that an artist can use when drawing a comic book. Even if you are a comic-book artist, the first stage to drawing your comic book is often writing out the script.

The cool thing about writing a comic book is that you have a lot of control over the final product. Usually, you will either be drawing the comic yourself or working with one other person (the artist) to create the final look and feel of the book. Not only do you get to decide on the characters, settings, story, and dialogue, you get to decide what goes in each and every panel. That’s like a screenwriter getting to decide what goes in each and every shot of his or her movie, which is hardly ever the case. Another great thing about comic books is that they’re pretty easy to make. If you or someone you know is a good artist, you can draw the comic book you write in April and make copies for all your friends and family. Plus, you get to write fun and expressive dialogue like “Pow!” and “Gasp!” and “Take that, evil squidhead!”

But writing comic books isn’t as easy as it seems. Like all writers, comic-book writers have to think about character, plot, setting, and dialogue. With comic-book writing, though, you also have to think about all the elements of a story visually. You have to be the writer and the director, and you have to know both the story you want to tell and how it is going to look on the page, panel-by-panel. That means that you have to write a “scene” for each panel in the book, which takes a lot of time and patience.

Making Your Decision

Picking from the different kinds of scripts may seem hard now, but don't worry! You'll be great at writing any of these types of scripts. If you're doing this project as part of a group, your teacher may have some thoughts on which script makes the most sense for you to tackle. If you get to make that decision yourself, spend a little bit of time giving it some thought. If you’re still having trouble deciding, make sure you read more about each type of script in our Writer’s Resources section. When you've made your decision, read on!

Creating Characters

Now that you've chosen what kind of script you're going to write, it's time to start thinking about the story you'd like to tell. And the first question we'll need to answer is: Who? As in: Who will be in your story?

Yep—it's time for us to invent some characters. Coming up with the cast for your script is true magic. They can be people, aliens, talking animals, or—if you're feeling really creative!—talking objects, like erasers or pencils or tennis shoes. You're running the show now, and you get to decide who the stars of your script will be.

You want to really get to know your characters—just like you would get to know new friends—before writing your script. This will help you know what they would say or how they will act in the situations you create for them over the next couple of weeks.

Exercise

To help you invent some great main characters, we've created a Main Character Worksheet, which you can download and fill out. Once you've filled out your worksheet for your main character, think about who else might make an appearance. Does your character have a best friend? Or a brother or sister who tags along everywhere? In the script you write in April, you'll need to have some people other than your star to keep the story moving. These other people are called the supporting cast, and they can be just as fascinating and interesting as your main character. To help you come up with some memorable supporting characters, we've created a Supporting Character Worksheet for you to download and fill out as well.

Creating interesting characters is just as fun as watching them in the movies or on TV! So be sure to do just that this week—have fun!

Week Two: Villains, Stirring up Trouble, and Outlining Your Plot

Last week we asked a lot of questions about your main character. One of them was what he or she wanted more than anything else in the world. It may have been finding buried treasure, bringing about world peace, or just getting a really cool moped. We'll leave those details up to you. The point is, most scripts map out the story of the main character (also called the "protagonist") trying to get what he or she wants.

At the end of the day, most scriptwriters do allow their main character to get the treasured item or have the experience they're after. But writers never, ever make it easy. Why would they? It is much more fun and entertaining for audiences to watch a main character struggle and overcome great odds before his or her quest is over. A story that doesn’t have conflict is pretty drab. Scripts need struggles, obstacles, and setbacks.

Which brings us to villains.

Villains (also known as "antagonists") bring lots of conflict and drama to your story. Some stories, by the way, have lots of conflict and setbacks without having a single villain. For example, a story might have a main character battling against a disease or self-doubt. But for your Script Frenzy script, we recommend you come up with an actual villain to spice things up and give your script lots of energy.

Let’s look at an example of a villain from our friend Karlyn's screenplay about a termite named Terry.

    Main character: Terry the Termite.
    He wants: To see the world beyond the wooden beams of his parents’ house.
    The villain: Eddie the Evil Exterminator, who patrols the house around the clock trying to squish, squash, or otherwise end the already short lives of Terry and his family. He has had it in for Terry since the day he caught Terry’s father in the rafters. He blames Terry and his family for all his own problems, and when he finds Terry with a mouthful of his ham sandwich, he vows to live up to his name and exterminate the lot of them.

To create even more conflict, Karlyn has decided to add the protagonist’s biggest weakness into the mix. What if Terry is actually highly allergic to wood? How will he ever sneak across the house to get outside without touching wood?

In Eddie the Evil Exterminator, you can see all sorts of great villainous characteristics: He's mean, he's powerful, he wants something badly, and that thing puts him on a collision course with our main character Terry.

Exercise

To help you come up a villain of your own, we've created a Villain Worksheet for you to download and fill out. Though you might not want to know all the gory details about someone so evil, you need to know just as much about your villain as you do about your main character!

Conflict and Plot

Now that you have your main character, supporting characters, and villain, you're ready to create a thrilling conflict and a solid plot. The following exercise will help you do just that!

But first, a few words about conflict and plot:

  • Conflict in a script or story is the main character's struggle to get over his or her fears and defeat the villain to get what he or she wants. A script's conflict is what makes it exciting! As we mentioned in the section about villains, it is much more fun for audiences to watch a main character struggle and overcome great odds before his or her journey ends.
  • Plot is how the main character overcomes challenges to reach his or her goal. You may have a great conflict, but if your character never embarks on an adventure, you won't have a plot. Your plot will include all your characters and all the events that happen in your script from the beginning to end.

Exercise

Read through and fill out the following worksheets to get your characters off the page and into action.

Take your time in reading and completing both of these worksheets. And then, in the next week of the Countdown, things will really get rolling. We'll learn about “mood” and setting, and practice writing that amazing dialogue we mentioned earlier!

Week Three: Setting the Scene and Writing Amazing Dialogue

Wow! Two weeks down and only two more to go before the official start to Script Frenzy. You are more than halfway there! Congratulations!

This week, we're going to look at two really important elements of your script: setting and dialogue. Now that you know who the characters in your script will be, it's time to figure out where they will be, and how they will talk once they get there.

Setting

The setting of your script is where the action takes place. Some settings are completely made up, while other settings are based on real places. Think about Harry Potter: its settings include real places, like London, and imaginary ones, like Hogwart's Castle. In choosing your settings, remember that you have complete freedom!

However, there's something important to consider when picking your settings for a script. In a novel, a writer can go on and on for pages describing every last detail of their worlds—from the tall, grimy castle gates creaking like old bones to the skeletal trees growing alongside the castle walls. A novelist has all the room in the world to write about their setting. A scriptwriter doesn't get to do that. In a script, the focus is on the characters, the action, and the dialogue. Imagine watching a movie that was all setting, shot after shot of the castle, the trees, the spooky halls, but without a single person or bit of action! You'd turn that kind of movie off in two seconds flat.

So, lucky you! You don't have to write pages and pages about the setting. You can give just a few descriptive details, and then the stage manager (if you're writing a play), or the locations expert (if you're writing a film or TV show), or the artist (if you're writing a script for a comic book) will figure out all the rest. You just have to decide where the action will take place over the course of your script. Before you begin, though, it might help to think about settings that will create mood.

Mood

When we talk about mood, we mean the emotion of something that you wouldn't normally think of as having emotions. It could be the mood of a song, the mood of a painting, or in this case, the mood of a place. Scriptwriters use all kinds of techniques to create a certain mood. For example, if a scriptwriter wants to create a happy mood for a particular setting, he or she might start a scene with a group of people laughing, or a colorful shot of a circus or county fair. All of these images remind us of happy things.

If, on the other hand, a scriptwriter wants to create a dark or scary mood, he or she might begin a scene in a dark room with the wind howling outside and something scraping at the window. All of these images will have the audience feeling something very different than the scene that opened with people laughing.

The same place can have a happy, sad, or scary mood depending on how a scriptwriter describes it. For example, a playground at school could be described as sunny and filled with laughter or as empty and cold. The mood of the same playground can be very different.

To create a mood, think of the emotions you want your audience to feel in each scene, and then make sure your background is in keeping with that feeling. The worst thing would be to hope that a certain setting or scene would make your audience feel sad or scared, only to find they are laughing their heads off on opening night!

Exercise

In order to help you create settings with moods, we have put together a fun Setting and Mood Worksheet for you to fill out! This will get you thinking about your own settings and what kind of emotions you'd like your audience to be feeling throughout your script.

Writing Dialogue

Whether you've decided to write a stage play, a screenplay, a comic, or a teleplay, dialogue is the most important part of your script. Dialogue is what happens when characters speak to one another, and your script is going to be filled with it. When you write a short story or a novel, you are allowed to just tell the reader things about your characters and plot. In a script, on the other hand, the characters have to reveal their personalities and move the plot along mostly through what they say to other people.

We experience dialogue all the time in our everyday lives. A common conversation in real life might sound something like this:

"Hey, dude. How are you?"

"I'm really good. Thanks. You?"

"Good."

Of course, this kind of dialogue is really important in our lives. If we didn't say "hello" and ask people how they were doing, we might lose a lot of friends, fast. But on the screen or the stage, this kind of real-life dialogue ends up sounding flat and lifeless. The dialogue in your script needs to actually do something. Every time one of your characters says something they should either be moving your story forward or telling the audience a little more about who they are.

Here's an example of dialogue that moves the story forward

FIRST MATE

    Captain, there is an eight-headed Cyclops approaching, and you won't believe this...He's leading an army of robotic unicorns all playing air guitar!

CAPTAIN

    That's impossible! These are supposed to be Cyclops-free waters!

This dialogue has our attention immediately. We're already asking questions: What will an eight-headed Cyclops look like? What's up with the unicorns? Are they dangerous or friendly? What are the people on the ship going to do? What is the Cyclops going to do?. We want to know what happens next! We also want to know more about all the characters involved.

Here is an example of dialogue that helps define characters

FIRST MATE

What’s up, dude?!

CAPTAIN

    I am not a dude, I am the Captain, and if you call me dude one more time, you’re walking the plank!

FIRST MATE

    Whoa, you need to chill out, man. Take a vacation or something.

CAPTAIN

    I’ve had it! It’s the plank for you! You’ve been the worst First Mate ever!!

It's clear from reading these few lines of dialogue that the First Mate and the Captain are very different people. The First Mate is hip and easygoing, and the Captain is strict and easily angered. In just a few seconds of dialogue, the audience learns something about these characters and their relationship to one another without them having to describe themselves directly to the audience, which might sound something like this:

FIRST MATE

I am so easygoing and way hip!

CAPTAIN

    So true. And I get mad really easy, and I take myself too seriously.

That is not the kind of dialogue you want in your script!

As you write your own script, think about the ways in which people talk and the things they say that help you understand more about who they are.

Exercise

Writing good dialogue is like writing a short comic strip. Comic-strip artists only have so many boxes to fill before running out of room. If they spend too much time on "Hey, dude, how are you?" pretty soon, they've run out of panels! To help you understand how humdrum this kind of dialogue can be in script form, we've put together this nifty Boring Dialogue Worksheet.

Once you've read it, print out four of these blank Dialogue Worksheets. For two of them, find your Conflict and Plot Worksheets and try to come up with dialogue that moves your story along. For the other two, find your Main Character and your Villain Worksheets and write two scenes of dialogue that help your audience get to know your characters better—you can also do it with some of your supporting characters! In all four of these Comic Book Worksheets, make sure your dialogue grabs the audience's attention. You've only got six panels in each, so use them well. After you’re done, draw on your characters’ faces and clothes, and add in a background that helps set an appropriate mood.

Week Four: Writing Scenes and Formatting your Script

Great! You are almost ready for Script Frenzy. You have characters, conflict, and an outline for an amazing plot. Plus, you have the know-how to write scenes that create mood, have forward plot movement, and character-defining dialogue! In this final week of Boot Camp we'll take everything you’ve learned so far and begin thinking about the actual scenes that will make up your script. Right before we send you head-first into The Frenzy, we'll also show you the ins and outs of script formatting.

Writing Scenes

Just like novels are made up of chapters, scripts are made up of scenes. A scene is a section of a script that is either set in a single location or that follows a particular character, or group of characters, for a set period of time. To help you practice thinking of your stories in terms of scenes, we’ve created a Scene Worksheet for you to download and fill out.

Whether you have five or fifty scenes in your script, you can use this worksheet to answer the following questions about each one:

  • Who is in the scene?
  • When does the scene take place
  • Where does the scene take place?
  • What happens in the scene?

Exercise

To break in these Scene Worksheets, we're going to write a three-scene practice script. The catch: Each scene can only be one minute long (about one page long each, around three pages total). Your whole practice script will be shorter than a song on the radio, but writing it will teach you a ton about how to break your story up into scenes.

For this exercise, we'll supply the structure, and then let you fill in the rest:

  • Scene One: The audience learns of your main character's quest or desire.
  • Scene Two: The audience meets the villain and learns of this villain’s plan to ruin the main character’s plans.
  • Scene Three: The audience will find out what happens when the main character and the villain face off. It can be a happy, sad, or funny outcome.

So go grab your Main Character, Supporting Character, and Villain Worksheets, along with your Conflict and Plot Worksheets. These will help you cook up some ideas for scenes in which your characters might reveal their quests and villainous counter-schemes. This exercise will also be a way to practice creating settings with strong moods. Once you have a rough sense of each scene, fill out three Scene Worksheets, one for each scene.

Awesome!

Now if you really wanted to get a head start on your script (using the Plot Worksheet from Week Three) try breaking down your whole script scene-by-scene. Print out as many Scene Worksheets as you need to get you from the beginning of your story to the end.

Formatting Your Script

Ladies and Gents, the launch of Script Frenzy is just around the corner. The final thing we’re going to do in this Boot Camp is learn how to format your script. You have the content: characters, conflict, and plot. Now it is time to put it together in a pretty package. Scripts are all formatted the same so they are easy to read and understand. Your final formatted script will include your dialogue, and the short descriptions of what's happening in the background. The audience will never see your script, but it's important that you learn to write in the language of professional scriptwriters, so the director, actors, and artists can understand your script when they bring it to life!

Script formatting looks scary at first, but it's actually easy. Just read over the appropriate How-To and you'll be formatting with the pros before you know it:

Exercise

Now that you have read all about formatting, take out the three Scene Worksheets you filled out last week, and on a separate sheet of paper (or using one of the script templates or scriptwriting computer programs below) go ahead and write out each scene including the scene headings, action, and dialogue.

Script Handouts: Print these out and fill in the blanks!

Scriptwriting Software: To make things easy, you can write your script using software that will practically do all the formatting for you! Some of these programs cost money, but others are free. Check out our Scriptwriting Software page to find out more!

Script Templates: If you don't want to learn a whole new program and are planning to write your script using Microsoft Word or Open Office, it may be helpful to use a template. “Template” is just a fancy word to describe a document that is set up with the correct format already built in. In this case the templates are pre-formatted to write scripts! Once you open the template, you can display a template menu by going to the “Format” menu option and selecting “Styles and Formatting.” A menu will then pop up with all the different script elements. For example, if you wanted to write dialogue, first select “Character” from the menu bar and write your character’s name. Hit enter. Then select “Dialogue,” and write what they say.

Just so you know, you can write your script any way you like in April. You can use any or all of these scriptwriting templates or pieces of writing software. Or, if you feel more comfortable, you can write your script by hand, without any of them.

A final note

Through the Script Frenzy Boot Camp, you've learned many important things about scriptwriting. But the only way to really learn something is to practice. That is what April is for. So get out there and practice writing those blockbuster movies, Broadway plays, award-winning TV shows, and collectible comic books! And don’t forget that the most important thing to do this April is have fun!