An Ongoing Series of Articles on Screenwriting by an Award-Winning Filmmaker By Donald Vasicek Editor’s Note: We are pleased to welcome Don Vasicek as a regular contributor to Digital Cinema Report. Don is an author and is the producer director and writer of the award-winning documentary The Sand Creek Massacre. His current project Ghosts of Sand Creek a two-hour six-episode documentary film about the descendants and ancestors of the Sand Creek Massacre which occurred on November 29 1864 in the southeastern Colorado Territory is in development. A more extensive look at his background appears at the end of this article. Meanwhile we hope you enjoy his insightful thoughts on the creative process of writing for the screen. Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good you'll have to ram them down people's throats. – Howard Aiken What is passion? Merriam Webster in part defines passion as “…the emotions as distinguished from reason…” By tapping into your passion you will be able to write as you’ve never written before. And this in turn will work as a subliminal approach to promoting yourself and your writing. Before you write one word look deeply inside of yourself when an idea comes to mind about which you would like to write. You must use the who what where when and why journalistic approach to identify that which is deep inside of yourself and relate it to the idea that has come to mind you want to write about. By utilizing this approach you can identify your passion and write with ruthless abandon. So ask the questions. What caused the idea to come to mind? Perhaps you saw a child weeping. She was holding her finger. It was bleeding. You wanted to reach out to her but you were a stranger and her parents were there. You still wanted to help her with her fear and pain. Why? You were inspired to write a short story about what you saw. Why? The inspiration came from deep within the wells of your heart and mind as you remembered when you got hurt when you were a kid and no one came to help you. This inspiration is your passion for helping children in need now because no one was there when you were a kid and needed help. Identify when it happened. What were you doing? What caused you to get hurt? Why were you alone? Where were you? Why did you get hurt? You get the picture. This unique approach should also guide you to the use of your five senses. What did you taste at the time you were hurt? What did you see? What kinds of sound or sounds were present? How did you feel (emotionally)? What were you touching? How did it feel? By using the five senses it will help place you back in time so that you are able to more realistically write the story. This approach results in passion and will enable you to write from your heart (emotion) and mind (reason) together. The power of combining your mind (reason) and heart (emotion) instead relying on one or the other will bring out the essence of what you are writing about. This in turn will draw readers to you and your writing. The Author’s Credits Include: Donald L. Vasicek studied producing directing and line producing at the Hollywood Film Institute under the acclaimed Dov Simen’s and at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. He studied screenwriting at The Complete Screenplay with Sally Merlin (White Squall). He has taught mentored and is a script consultant for over 400 writers directors producers actors and production companies and has also acted in 20th Century Fox’s Die Hard With a Vengeance NBC’s Mystery of Flight 1501 ABC’s Father Dowling starring Thomas Bosley and Red-Handed Production’s Summer Reunion. These activities have resulted in Don’s involvement in more than 100 movies during the past 23 years from major studios to independent films including MGM’s $56 million Warriors of Virtue Paramount Classics Racing Lucifer and American Pictures The Lost Heart among others. Vasicek has also has written and published over 500 books short stories and articles. His books include How To Write Sell and Get Your Screenplays Produced and The Write Focus.
