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Screenplay Reverse Engineering

Unconventional Writing Exercise #2

Step one: Watch a scene from your favorite movie. It doesn’t matter how long or short the scene is. Just dig through your DVD collection and find a movie you know well. (If you want more of a challenge, try watching a movie you’ve never seen before.)

Step two: Write out the scene you just watched. Write it out as a screenplay, a narrative, whatever. Just translate what you saw on the screen into written words.

The purpose of this exercise is to practice:

  • writing using a pre-existing story
  • seeing images or action with your eyes and translating them into words

Movies are a dramatic medium, which means they rely heavily on action and dialogue to tell a story. If you decide to write out your scene as a fiction narrative, feel free to go nuts with description. Make the reader see the movie in their head.

As usual, post your reverse-engineered screenplays here by leaving a comment. I reverse-engineered a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You can read it here.