Getting to the First Draft - The First Step is the Hardest

When you start out writing you have these grand stories in your mind, but no idea as to how to execute them. If there is one piece of advice I can give its this; don't try and write the script without doing the proper preparation. This is a lesson me and my writing partner James leant the hard way.

Without proper planning all of your ideas, no matter how well thought out, will be spent within the first 15-20 pages of your script to demoralising effect.

The following is meant to be used as a guide to prepare for your first draft, based off my own personal experience. There's no point in us both making the same impatient mistakes.

Do Your Research

If you have an idea for a screenplay then you most likely know what genre it sits in, so before you start take the time to watch films/TV shows and read scripts in your genre. Make notes on the pacing, act structure, dialogue and page counts. Figure out what works and what doesn't. 

This will help when you get to the next stage.

Preparation Preparation Preparation

Define your characters - write a brief overview about each of your main characters. This helps ou find each characters voice. One word of advice, don't feel that because you have written a character history that you have to put this into to your script. Some things are just meant for your eyes only.

Outline -write a briefout line of you story in three acts. 

Logline - This is a one sentence pitch of your story, if you can't sell it in this time then you may need to rethink your approach.  Usually writers do this before starting any work; however, I think that coming up with your logline at this stage will help you refine your core idea.  Scriptologist has a great advice about how to construct your logline here.

Beatshet - This is a scene by scene walkthrough which will serve as the blueprint for your script. If this is your first time writing a script then chances are you won't have quite enough scenes to sustain a healthy page count but as long as you have gone through the previous steps then you should be pretty well prepared.

This is how me and James Merigan currently work and I'm sure there are other best practices out there. The most important thing find what works for you.