I want to be a movie writer.

Yep, that is my goal. I want it though as a hobby. See my goal currently is to start making money online so that I have the free time to take up a hobby in writing movies.

Making money online is some hard #, but hopefully it will happen soon. Anyway, I was thinking that I'd probably do well writing some horror movies. I can't really think of a horror movie that really disturbed or scared me unfortunately.

I mean all of them seem to be so formulaic. Make a loud trumpet sound and have the camera cut to something real quick. Yeah might make a few people jump, but I'm not a jumper, and I'm not scared.

I think I could probably come up with a few good ones. Movies that actually chill you to the bone and make you scared to go to bed at night. That would be a success.

Anyway, I just thought I'd bring this up here on ATS because I love the sense of community here, and thought that maybe there's someone here who might know of something that might be interesting to me.

Thanks for reading my life story.

Sounds like you have ambition my friend. I always wanted to be a producer, but of course very few people really get the cool jobs even if you do have experience and knowledge.

I had a link of some questions most asked of screen writers, but seem to have misplaced it. A good site for you would be to go to the WGA and browse some of the topics for a start.

You may want to consider that in the likely event you don't make it big, you can always get into local independent films where many upcoming talent are just waiting to accept your work. The pay probably sucks though, but if your good you can get your foot in the door.

It sounds like, from your post, that you are overlooking some of the best qualities of writing for screen; plot and character dynamics. When you mention horror movies, most of what you said relies on careful editing and visuals to move the audience. As a writer, the story itself is the canvas and not how the editor should cut the scenes. Neither should you be writing a screenplay where you explain how the actors should feel either.

Have you ever read through a screenplay? If not try perusing through some of your favorites to see what the cast and crew had to work with:

Dailyscript

[edit on 18-1-2008 by ben91069]

You might find this of intrest.

www.screenwriter.com...

Cool, thx guys for the links, I'll check them out.

As far as pay is concerned, I'm not really concerned about that. Like I said, it would probably be more of a hobby, and if it sells, great! Of course I would do a bit of promoting for it, but I think I could write something that would be bought by either a small indy company at the very least.

I've seen some courses out there as well that would help with structure, etc. on what these companies are looking for. I'll have to check them out.

Thanks again.