When I was 11 years old, I wrote two screenplays. No joke.
Not just ten silly pages of drivel. Okay, maybe they were drivel, but they were full-length, 120+ page screenplays. They were hand written on wide-ruled notebook paper, so once you type that out, they would probably end up closer to 80 or 90 pages, which is practically Hollywood standard length.
I had been writing stories since I was 6 years old, but this was my first venture into a different format. I bought the screenplay for The Ghost And The Darkness by William Goldman, long before I was aware that he was one of the most respected writers in Hollywood. Fancy that. I used it as my learning guide to write a screenplay in respect to style, format, and structure.
The first was called Virus, the second was called Riot. I was pretty proud of Riot at the time because I intricately structured it to have a great twist at the end, only to find out years later that I was incredibly unoriginal and that my ending wouldn't even shock an amnesiac. After that, I pretty well put fiction writing of any kind on hold.
Flash forward to a decade later.
I started getting back into learning screenplay structure with writing as a very real possibility for my future. Right now I'm as deep into as I ever was before.
There are a lot of people you can learn from. Screenwriting is an art form that has been around for less than a century, but already there have been (literally) millions of screenplays written in that time, so some standard formulas have been hammered out. Most people know the big ones like Syd Field and Robert McKee. Those guys are immensely popular because they each have a structure that is tried and true. For many, their method works.
HOWEVER...
Don't ever let anyone tell you--not any teachers or friends or anyone--that there is only one way. Or that there are things you can't do. Or that there are a certain number of drafts you have to do to get it right. It all depends on the story you're trying to tell and how best to tell it.
Compare a movie like Syriana to Lars and the Real Girl and you'll get an idea of what I mean. Those are extreme examples of both structure differences and drafts. Lars follows the standard three-act structure and is the result of pretty much the first draft. Syriana, on the other hand, is the result of nearly 100 drafts and no standard structure that I've ever heard of. But both films work in their own unique ways.
Some people outline, some people don't. Little Miss Sunshine was rigidly structured while The Wrestler was not.
The point is to find what works for you in the way you want to tell your story. And if someone tells you that you're doing something wrong, there is no wrong way. If someone tells you that something doesn't work, have them explain why, or get a second opinion. Find what works for you, and hold tight to your inspirations.
