BPS 236: How to Outline Your Screenplay Like a Pro with Naomi Beaty

Naomi Beaty is a screenwriting teacher, screenplay consultant, and
former development exec with 10+ years in the entertainment
industry.

Naomi is based in Los Angeles, CA. She has worked on American
productions and on projects in Taiwan and Australia, including the
feature film "Ghost Boy", based on the novel by award winning
Australian author Felicity Pulman, produced by Morning Starr
Productions.

Earlier, Naomi worked on the other side of the desk at Madonna and
Guy Oseary's Maverick Films, where she helped develop projects
including "Twilight" and "Percy Jackson".

She just released her new book "The Screenplay Outline
Workbook".

The Screenplay Outline Workbook is designed to give you a
clear and manageable set of tools, steps, and exercises so you can
turn your ideas and inspiration into an outline and write your best
screenplay – whether it’s your first or your tenth.

With this workbook as your guide, you can start with just an
inkling of an idea – or nothing at all, even! – and end up with a
solid story premise, compelling characters, and an outline that
provides a blueprint for writing an emotionally satisfying
screenplay.

Inside you’ll find enough instruction and theory so that you know
what you need to know, but not so much that it overwhelms you
before you even get started. Room to work through your story ideas
and collect your notes and flashes of brilliance. A place to
organize what you discover about your story as you develop it so
that you can easily reference it when needed.

Use the workbook to design a new story from scratch, or jump
straight to the topic you need to get your work-in-progress
unstuck. With 30+ tools, exercises, and prompts honed
through years of teaching workshops and working one-on-one with
writers, this workbook will help you:

Generate new story ideas
Choose a strong idea as the first step in writing a great
screenplay
Build a sturdy foundation for your screenplay by finding the
essential elements of the story
Discover the organic three act structure and major plot points that
create the framework for the story and screenplay
Design compelling characters that help push the protagonist along a
meaningful character arc
Try one or more suggested outlining methods for mapping out your
story

…and so much more!

The workbook lays out a process that’s flexible enough that you can
use it for every screenplay you write, yet designed to specifically
address the issues readers commonly find in aspiring screenwriters’
screenplays.

With each exercise, you’ll explore ideas and make choices to build
your story, piece by piece. You’ll craft an outline that does all
the heavy lifting, and be confident in the story you’re telling –
which frees you to get creative with characters and dialogue, and
discovering the kind of magical, cinematic moments that made us all
fall in love with movies in the first place.

If you’ve tried to write a screenplay before but found yourself
stuck somewhere in Act 2, having an outline that serves as a map of
your screenplay can make all the difference. Consider this workbook
the wise but gentle guide that will meet you where you are and lead
you to your destination so you can finally make real progress
turning the movie in your head into a fully developed story that
you’re ready to set down onto the screenplay page.

When you’re done you’ll have more than an outline — you’ll have a
rock-solid foundation for your screenplay.

Please enjoy my conversation with Naomi Beaty.

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