Sunday Picture Post 39 — Pet Peeves
SCREENWRITING TIP OF THE DAY: PET PEEVES
Let your pet peeves (something that annoys you) add humor to your script or inspire an entire movie built around your pet peeve.
One of my biggest pet peeves are mosquitoes. In the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch, there are some aliens who want to save the ‘endangered’ mosquitoes in Hawaii. We humans watching the movie think this is humorous because we all hate mosquitoes. There are probably species we try to save, like sharks or whales, that other sea creatures are probably not too stoked to keep around. The irony of all this makes for a good joke.
Taking something that everyone hates and making it special, lovable, or important, is funny. Or maybe it is something that only you hate, but everyone else loves it, that makes for humor too — being the oddball out.
Part of knowing how to write a script is being honest with yourself, honest with what you like and don’t like, and being able to make light of it and put it to use in your screenplay.
For today’s creative writing practice:
1) Create a story or some comedy based on one of your pet peeves.
2) Using the image of the man above, follow the instructions underneath it to do a writing practice in brevity — keeping it short! Write a Title, a Word, a Sentence, and a 2 sentence Pitch inspired by the image. After you make up your own story (don’t cheat), then click on the image to find out the true story about the man. It is quite fascinating.
If you already know the true story about the man, please try to do this exercise with the idea that you are writing a true story movie: you still need a catchy title and all the rest; you still have to pitch true stories to executives and make it sound intriguing and do it quickly!
Bonus Points: If you can combine your pet peeve with a story about the pictured man, you are really good at this!
For fun: What actor would play this guy?
Good luck!
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SUNDAY PICTURE POST
For The Sunday Picture Post, we flip upside-down the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Thousands of words are great if you are writing a novel, but if you are writing a screenplay, you need to do the opposite and be as concise as possible.
For your screenwriting practice in brevity, in the comments section, using the image above, please post one or all of the following:
- A title for this movie
- 1 word describing the theme, mood, or scene
- 1 sentence to describe the scene
- A pitch to sell the entire movie
The more colorful and creative you are, the better! Use any genre.
A good screenwriter is laconic, using a few words to say a lot.
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i need one short skit of 10 minutes with full comedy