Thread: Script writing help.

So, I'm trying to write a film script, my very first one in fact. I'm at a scene in which the main character is being forced to shoot someone. I want him to break down in the scene. I want it to be really emotional and all that jazz. But, I'm just so unsure on how to approach writing it to convey the proper emotions.

Truthfully, I'm not sure how to say what I want in the scene. I need help!

As George Burns said “Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made.” The same applies to writing. An author can't experience every emotion which goes through the minds of his characters, he would go mad, he has to learn how to fake it. Another problem is that you describe your character; we'll call him Fred; as breaking down in the scene, which in itself presents a problem or two, as an excess of emotion tends to spoil one's aim! If you examine the set-up you have created, is it a situation in which emotion will get in the way of the act. Is the victim going to stand still while your Fred takes a shot at them, or are they going to fight back, in which case, Fred is going to be further hampered by his excessive feelings. I would suggest that you read some books by Graham Greene and see how he would handle it, he was a master of self-reflective angst in some of his protagonists. Writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, whose characters regarded shooting the baddies as an interruption on the way to lighting a cigarette, would be of no help whatsoever.

To put it another way, if you go into the woods hunting deer, don't think Bambi, think casserole...