How I Recovered My Screenwriting Voice and Storytelling Instincts

With three producers asking to read one of my screenplays last week, I've been madly rewriting. And what's amazing is that writing my screenwriting books has had the most extraordinary effect on my own writing.

I went back to this script after quite a while away from it and discovered a miracle had occurred. I was approaching the story with a boldness and adventurousness I hadn't had before. I had made a quantum leap in my cinematic powers, in my dialogue, in pace, tension, subtext, exposition - the lot!

But you know what else I discovered? As well as working on this draft  I went right back to a much earlier draft.  And the most staggering revelation hit me.

Most of the stuff from the very early version which I would later cut out was really good. The recent draft didn't have a distinctive voice, mood and tone had become tamed, the pace was needlessly fast or just not right because I was following the '3-act structure' and so on. In short, everything that had made the very early version alive and interesting had evaporated.

I wrote the much earlier draft before I bought all the screenwriting guru books and attended courses and masterclasses. I've always known that following the so-called rules had damaged my screenwriting, but I simply had no idea how catastrophic that damage was.

So, having been on a mission to help writers break away from the rigid templates and useless guidance from the gurus, I now have an even more passionate desire to do everything I can to make sure screenwriters are given the confidence to trust their own voice, be daring, be bold, and resist all attempts by the 'experts' to turn them into timid, bland writers producing scripts that no one will want to buy.

I'm now hoping that my series of screenwriting books that give real hands-on guidance for creating screenplays of originality and cinematic power will have the same  amazing quantum leap effect for my readers.

So here's to exciting, innovative screenwriting!