At 8 years old, I was introduced to my favorite movie, Finding Nemo. I was absolutely mesmerized by the details of the ocean, the way each wave seamlessly moved. I could understand that the film was created all on a computer, but I did not understand how. I was interested in learning more about Pixar and grew a huge fascination to the other films Pixar released in the following years. At 8 years old, I told myself that I wanted to be a part of making a movie, like Finding Nemo, that was so compelling that an 8 year old would have an emotional response.
Fast forward 13 years and I am now a current Webster University student pursuing a degree in scriptwriting. It’s absolutely inspiring to me that I can create stories and build worlds as a major, and advance it into a career. It’s a passion of mine to sit down and create stories and watch the characters in my stories grow. A key strength I have as a writer is my pre-writing skills. I have interesting ideas that I can visually translate from an idea, to an organized beat sheet, then to a detailed outline, fitting the structure for the script and including all the components. However, I definitely struggle with dialogue during the first rough draft. I can not quite get characters to create a realistic feel when writing their speech and the way they interact with each other. Dialogue always sounds forced, or awkward and I struggle finding each character’s specific voice. It’s ironic because character-heavy films are what is most interesting to me. I spend much of my revision time flashing out dialogue-heavy scenes. Often times, I do a character analysis or create a character chart of the typical questions and how the character would respond, just to round out the character more. My goal is to have every character an interesting, rounded character that has a clear purpose to the story line.
In terms of scriptwriting courses, Webster University has definitely prepared me immensely to become a stronger scriptwriter. Intro classes have taught me the fundamentals of scriptwriting in the broader sense and the necessity of scripts for the media and news sources. I've learned how difficult it is to analyze films, but also how important it is to have those skills. With Intro to Mass Communication, I learned the importance of paying attention to current media to notice current trends and what is marketable in the industry. For my major core scriptwriting classes, I learned the importance of the basics and the pre-writing of each script. If there is not a solid structure, there won’t be a solid script. Fleshing out ideas and changing scenes around is less messy in pre-writing stages, than when just writing script pages.
The ultimate dream career would be to work for Pixar. It’s been a childhood dream of mine, and now I have been given the opportunity to pursue it. To even land an internship would be incredible, and I am definitely willing to try and very hopeful. My target audience to write for is definitely young teens/young adult. Realistically, I see myself writing for television (if I become lucky enough) for a younger target audience network like Disney Channel, ABC Family (Freeform), or even MTV. Though I am not limited to any network, stories are what attracts me and I’m excited for my future and the possibilities of becoming a scriptwriter and fulfilling my 8-year old dream.
