How to write a script for TV?

Writing plays is not a very noble artistic creation. This is just an ordinary job. Everyone can write a script and be a director. Of course, since it is a type of work, it has its own norms. These specifications may not make you an expert soon, but at least they can make you look like an expert. Or, don't let your poor format be the reason for reviewers to shoot your manuscript. Because a reviewer has to read three or four manuscripts every day, if your script format doesn't look very professional, he has every reason to turn over a few pages and put your script in the corner to cool.

How much do you know about the script

Drama is a comprehensive stage art, and script is the foundation and basis of stage performance. If we want to adapt the narrative poems in the text into a textbook drama, we must first understand the characteristics of the script, and then we can compile a textbook drama that meets the requirements according to its characteristics.

Writing a textbook-style drama must highlight three characteristics of the script:

1. Space and time should be highly concentrated.

"Act" and "field" are often used in scripts to represent paragraphs and plots. A scene can be divided into several scenes. Scripts generally require that the length should not be too long, the characters should not be too many, and the scenes should not be changed too much.

2. The contradiction reflecting life should be sharp and prominent.

Contradictions and conflicts in the script can be roughly divided into four parts: occurrence, development, climax and ending. When performing, we should attract the audience from the time when contradictions occur. When the contradiction develops to the most intense, it is called climax. At this time, the plot is also the most attractive and wonderful. The climax part is also the "highlight" of script writing and stage performance, which is the most "important" and requires the most efforts.

3. The language of the script should express the role.

The language of the script includes lines and stage descriptions. The language of the script is mainly lines. Lines are what the characters say in the play, including dialogue, monologue and narration. Stage description, also called stage suggestion, is an indispensable part of the script language and some explanatory words in the script. Stage description includes characters, plot time and place, costumes, props, scenery, expressions, movements, ups and downs of characters, etc.

There are four forms of film and television script structure:

1. Dramatic: Dramatic scripts mainly construct scripts according to conflicts, and generally unfold plots in chronological order, including prologue, beginning, development, climax, ending and epilogue. Drama structure is devoted to expressing the external conflicts of characters. This conflict is mainly manifested in two aspects: language and behavior.

2. Psychological structure: Psychological structure is also called space-time staggered structure. The psychological structure takes the change of the main characters' psychological activities as the structural clue, showing the freedom of time and space interleaving. It often interweaves the past, dreams, the present and even the future freely by means of memory and flashback according to the psychological activities of the characters.

3. Prose style: Prose style structure does not pursue the integrity of the plot and the causal relationship of plot development, and there is no strong dramatic conflict. It often intercepts a life process and records it in a more realistic way.

4. Deconstruction: Deconstruction structure is a representation of postmodern culture in the field of film art, which is incomplete, even deliberately deconstructing and subverting itself.

Basic theory of script: attitude and theme

attitude

The most important thing in writing a story is the attitude towards the story, and different attitudes will produce different effects. To give a simple example, it is also the story of a brothel woman. If the author writes in an obscene and pornographic way, the story naturally focuses on the love part between men and women. On the contrary, if the author writes with sympathy and respect, the story will focus on the description that prostitutes are forced to betray themselves, helpless and helpless. ...

theme

Before writing a story, you must ask yourself: What kind of story do you want to tell? Is it the friendship between friends (such as the movie "Midnight Cowboy-Midnight Cowboy"), the love between men and women (Titanic), the story of aliens invading the earth (Dreadwind Earth strikes back), or the story of accusing the war (killing the battlefield-Plato) and so on?

The theme must be very clear, consistent and unquestionable. You can't write a war fragment, doubt the war for a while and praise it for a while. The theme is like a compass, which will guide you to create a story and run through the details in the story. And most importantly, it can prevent you from deviating from the main road in your writing. For example, Yong Zhengdi in the Qing Dynasty was an animal who killed his brother, killed his father and took power, and raped his brother's wife in unofficial history. However, Yongzheng, written by the author of the TV series Yongzheng Dynasty, is a good emperor. Because the author's theme is to write a good emperor, in the story, he will only see scenes such as Yongzheng criticizing the throne all night, inspecting farmers, reducing taxes, and promoting the rule of virtue, but will not see killing his father and brother.

Therefore, a successful script is to let the audience clearly understand the ideas and themes that the author wants to express after reading it.

Have a role conflict

Role conflict is the only way to attract the audience. This includes the conflict between characters in the story, the conflict between characters and their own values, etc.

Method 1:

The character in the story wants to do something, but there is a force against him. For example, the story of the angry storm, the protagonist has just experienced a painful prison life. After he got out of prison, he wanted to see his wife and live a normal life again. But his wife left him and denied him, and people around him discriminated against him because of his criminal record.

Method 2: An indecomposable relationship.

When there is a conflict between characters, there is an inseparable knot that pulls them together, and drama comes. For a simple example, the protagonist's wife is a gossip girl, while the protagonist's mother is a polite traditional woman.

Because of environmental factors, the protagonist and his wife had to move in with their mother. Imagine, what will happen when two completely conflicting people, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, are pulled together by an inseparable relationship?

Common mistakes in script writing

1. Write a script into a novel

As mentioned above, it is not impossible for a friend to write a script into a novel, but it is a literary script and can't be used to guide shooting and production at all. For example, you can spend a few pages in a novel to write about a person's life experience, background and family composition, or use a few pages to describe the protagonist's psychological struggle process, but these things can't be shown on the movie screen. Your script is a screen, and what you want to show is what the audience can see and feel directly on the movie screen. Things like psychological activities can't be well expressed. Add narration? Of course, unless you can stand the voice-over of the protagonist, read a few pages of novels in a still life camera. Movies express emotions through pictures, and your script is a movie picture. You should write from the camera's point of view, which may cause the second problem.

2. Unnecessary camera tags

If you write a script that focuses from 8.5m to 2m with a PTZ 70 camera and a 60mm lens on the No.5 lifting platform ... If you write it like this, your script will be thrown away by the director even if it has passed the review. You don't need to teach him how to shoot. It's none of your business. You don't have to worry about the camera when writing a script. But if it's not a script, don't consider the camera? No, what you need to consider is the relationship of the camera, not the position.

The script has its own special camera terminology. Using these terms more often can make your scripts professional, or at least look professional.