My First Screenplay Project

 

Sometimes I do miss blogging out creative writing projects, and sometimes it would make me paranoid that other writers would "take" my ideas...

So, I came to a compromise. I will blog out a "screenplay" adaptation of my book "Hands." I started "Hands" as a blog-a-day project. I was told by a psychic I would become a famous writer, just like JK Rowling (this was the author mentioned in this particular first psychic reading). 

A lot of events from that reading ended up coming true. The only event left? The "famous author" part. Inspired by this reading, I made a psychic character that tells my main character that he is a "famous artist." At the time I was writing "Hands" I was just finishing an art program at the University of Texas- San Antonio. I felt comfortable writing about a character pursuing an art career. Fresh out of the art program, I used and "referenced" my class notes in the book. While I was writing this blog-book, I would fan out my art history class folders and notebooks around me. 

It was a very challenging and enjoyable experience to put together a book I felt would "capture" my love of art and at the same time "teach" other people about artists.

This book was a "bucket list" idea to write several books, thirteen to be exact. 

I lost my momentum during the editing process. Editing my own work proved to be too challenging. Finding a good editor to help me...even more so. I had my work edited many times before I nervously self-published it. 

As of recently, I accomplished another "bucket list" goal of a "Marylin Monroe" photoshoot. I was very happy with the result! In fact, an idea came to me...

Why not write a first screenplay? Why not attempt to make yourself the "Monroe" character if it gets produced? Why not try to be the director or producer since that is the work I am currently doing for other people? 

Why not? 

                                     (Above-Monroe Inspired Photoshoot at the Hotel Emma in

                                      San Antonio, TX. Crystal Clear Photography Photo/Rach Elle Hair)

I have been experiancing so much good fortune developing my creative projects and this book was entirely "blogged out." Plus, it is now published and I own the rights to it...so...why not just blog out the screenplay? I know lots of writers out there that want to find "the discipline" to adapt their books into screenplays. I know I lack that needed discipline to write...but I also know I have accomplished it once before by blogging-it-out. 

What I read online is that screenplays are normally 90 to 120 pages long.

Each page should represent a minute worth of camera time (to keep the movie at 90 to 120 minutes).

My mind immediately said, "Okay, what if I just commit to a minute a day. I think I can do that!"

So here we go! This is my first screenplay project...hopefully it turns into a movie. If you want to read the book before it becomes a movie you can get it on Amazon by "searching" by author name and title in the search engine: Z.B. Sanders Hands.