Low Budget Screenplay, Characters and Dimensions

Low Budget Screenplay, Characters and Dimensions

The problem with most screenplays begin before we get to whether or not the plot is sound. The problems begin at the level of characterization.

You have heard about three dimensional characters. In an effort to produce such a character you go out and write a character with a series of traits and skills that you hope will add depth to your character. This never works. This is not how a three dimensional character is created.

Look at dimensions as layers. Try to create a character when writing your screenplay that has layers.


Ask yourself a question about the lead character.

Who do they say that they are?

If they say I am a good person who loves my family, my dog, my friends and the whole wide world. Or the reverse I am a good person, but I can not stand my family, my dog, my so called friends or this crazy world I live in.

That is fine to start of with, but if that is your character from page one to page one hundred and one you have created a boring one dimensional character.

Here is a quick glimpse at a villain who is definitely not one dimensional.



Go beyond this to the next layer.

Who is this person underneath?

I love my family, but I need to spend hours away from them one a fishing trip or at work just to get away from them. I love the world, but I do not care about everything that happens to it, on it or inside it. I love my friends, but I am tired of dealing with their problems, their drama or even their upbeat attitude.

Or I hate the world, but there is one person that would make me fight to save it. It could be a child. It could be a love. It could be someone that they know, but has never said anything to. Shyness in a character or self doubt is a great second dimension. There are any number of character traits that can add dimension to a character in your low budget script.

To review. What a character says they are or even what other characters say about the lead character and who or what they actually say or do in reality adds a second dimension.

The third dimension is more tricky.

Here is a character that is fully three dimensional.



It could be something that the character discovers about themselves. Something good or bad that they never knew was there. A hero finds out that he is a coward when the going gets really tough. A person who has never stuck his neck out for anyone finds that he is willing to risk his life for a stranger. It is what the character does not know that adds that extra. It surprises both the character and more importantly the audience.

Writing a low budget screenplay requires that you pay more attention to characterization. Big budget films can and do get away with paper thin characters. They can hide this behind massive special effect and stars. The success of your low budget screenplay will depend on how well it is written. On how strong your characters are. Get to know these characters. You will over time discover things about them as they discover things about themselves. I am not going to lie to you and tell you that it is easier to write fully realized characters. It is harder, but is is also more rewarding.

Good luck with the screenplay. Please take a moment to bookmark this post and to share it.

Is Your No Budget Script Limited?

                The Sky is The Limit on Your No Budget Script

    Just because this is going to be a low to no budget screenplay does not mean that it has to take place in an abandon building or a kitchen. You can include anything that is available in the free world. What I mean by free world is the places all around us that cost nothing to shoot a movie in.

    I understand that you are not shooting the movie, just writing it, but you have to think as if you are. Where can I set my scenes that will cost little to no money while at the same time adding something to my script. Hopefully adding size and or scope to your script. Many free interiors are parking garages, auditoriums, meeting halls. If you include scenes in a school, do not worry about the cost, many schools will allow a film crew to visit just as a teaching exercise. If your story offers positive views of the church, many churches will allow your story to be shot there for free. Many public places will be available for free or a small fee. What I am saying is do not be afraid to add size to your script just because you believe that a location you wish to include will cost too much so why bother. I am telling you to go ahead and included it. If the scene is solid and is necessary for the script it will get shot. If the location you have written about can not be gotten there will be a way to work around it.

    Most out door locations are good. You can always include a athletic fields. Parks, woods, open land. If you are not only the writer, but the film maker as well you will no if there are hills or mountains or water ways near and available. If there are farms or factories or scrap yards that can be used. The size of your free budget is largely up to you.

    Some of you reading this use to live in big towns and near economic centers that have now become much smaller or are past the point of no return. Left behind are factories and shipping centers. Left behind are boat yards, docks and storage areas. They are just waiting there to become a part of your story. These forgotten places can make a no or low budget script seem like a medium to big budget script.

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No Budget Screenplay Structure

            Building a Structure


    Let’s review the basics.

    We are telling a story.

    Your screenplay is a story and just about every single story have one thing in common. They all have a set structure. Someone tells you a story and it always boils down to this. The story will have a beginning, middle and an end. In screenwriting we call this Act I, Act II and Act III. If your script is one hundred and twenty pages then Act I will be about 30 pages, Act II will be around 60 to 70 pages and the final act should be 20 to 30 pages.

    I believe that the last act should be the shortest because of intensity if no other reason. The time for talk is all, but over and action on the page and on the screen is what we are looking for at the end on our screenplay. Look at one of my favorite movies, Taken.  Act I is over when the daughter is taken, Act II is over when our hero finds out from his former friend when his daughter will be auctioned. The final act is short and brutally sweet.

    From this point forward in the Blog I am going to try to offer as many video tutorials on the subject as possible. I do this to follow my own favorite rule about movies. Show and do not tell.

    Below is a video about structure.

    Good luck with your script.

Short on Dialogue

                    Your Screenplay, Short on Dialogue

    When writing your low or no budget script you need to consider the actors. I do not mean that you need to consider casting. You need to consider their limitations. Unless you are lucky the majority of your cast will be new to the business. They will not be use to being on screen. They will not be use to hitting their marks and the massive pressure of a low budget film shoot.
    You as the writer need to help them out as much as possible.
    How do you do this?
    Keep dialogue as short as possible.
    No, I do not mean keeping the scenes as short as possible. I mean that you you try to keep their speeches as short as possible. One to five lines at most. Your name is not Tarantino and this is not Kill Bill. If you are going to have stage trained actors who are use to memorizing massive amounts of dialogue then go for it. But most likely you are going to have people who have never done this before. Friends trying to help you out or models who are trying to branch out. It will most likely be their first time so follow the first time rule, be gentle.
    Acting is a funny thing. It is easier for a novice to react than to actually act. Some of the greatest movie stars of all time are not actors, but reactors. Go rent a Kevin Costner movie and watch one of the worlds great reactors.
    Your lead character gets the most dialogue and the biggest blocks of dialogue. Allow those who interact with the lead to have shorter bits of talk that when and where ever possible they are called upon to react to what is said to them.  Bill was killed, react. Did you hear that Mike died, react. There is a monster in the basement, react. Our son is missing, react.
    Make it easy on the actors and they will show their love by giving a quality performance.

Your No Budget Screenplay, Cutting Scenes

            Your No Budget Screenplay, Cutting Scenes

    You have finished your entire no budget screenplay or at least an act of it and you are at a point where you wish to do some editing.  I would like you to review every single scene and list what you believe to be the 5 worst scene.  These scene will feel forced or they just do not seem to connect well with the joining scenes or maybe they are much too long or too short.  For what ever reason they do not seem to work.
    Isolate the absolute worst of them and cut it.
    I said cut it.

    Do not edit it or try to redo it or move it around.  Just take this scene and if you have a paper copy tear it out.  If it is on the computer delete it from the script.  Yes I really know that this scene has its place in your screenplay.  It is really necessary and conveys an important bit of information or character development.
    Here is my response to that heart felt and sincere argument.
    CUT IT.
    It is better to get rid of this really bad scene rather than have it stinking up all the scenes around it.  I do not care if this scene tells who did it or where the body is buried or who stole that piece of cake or if Jessica Alba is nude in it, cut it.
    “Did I really just say that last thing?”
    Okay keep the Jessica Alba scene and cut the rest.
    I am just trying to make your screenplay stronger and after you cut and edited you will find that it is stronger. After you cut that worst scene and cut as much as possible of the second scene, edit down the third worst scene and rewrite the forth and fifth worst scenes.  Make your script better and better.  It will be painful to do this, but you know what the military say about pain.
    Pain is just weakness leaving the body and in this case pain is just the weakest elements leaving your script.
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Your No Budget Screenplay, King Conflict

Your No Budget Screenplay, King Conflict

    Perhaps you have heard the expression that content is king.  I disagree, I believe that conflict is king.  Within those first ten pages you have to establish characters who will be in natural conflict with each other.  Unnatural conflict is this is page 8 and this is where character one argues with character 5 for no reason other than there is suppose to be conflict in the script somewhere.
    Natural conflict comes from character traits.  Their world view as it conflicts with the world view of others.  Their personality is at natural odds with those around them.  I will use 2 characters from a series of films that almost all of you have seen at least one of whether you were willing or not.  We are going to pluck two characters from the Harry Potter universe (I could use the Star Trek Universe) to illustrate how to create conflict naturally.
    Now entering the ring an attractive young mud blood, Hermione.
    Stumbling in, late as usual, is the red headed terror himself, Ron.
    Yes I know that they become a couple.  Hey opposites attract. These two are made to produce conflict.  This conflict does not come from the writer as much as it does from who they are.  Ron is all emotion and feeling.  Hermione is all reason and logic. Early one she looks at him as being a silly unprepared block head.  He looks at her as a bookworm who does not feel much of anything and has no concept of how to have fun.
    When ever they have a problem she tackles it with reason and logic while Ron gets caught up in doubt, fear and a hundred other emotions.  They will forever rub each other the wrong way and not because they do not like each other, (they grow to love each other) but simply because they do not see the world the same way at all.  Without the third character of Harry, who is mostly instinct, to balance them out they would have never been able to progress much past hello.
    Conflict between your heroes will come naturally if you keep this in mind.  Conflict between heroes and villains will be intense if you have a hero who is all emotion and instinct going up against a villain who is as coldly logical and remorseless as a plague.

    Whether it is Bond going up against Doctor No or it is Van Helsing doing battle with a soulless vampire who looks at innocent people in the same way he would look upon chest pieces conflict comes from being opposites.
    Your first and I hope only exercise that I am going to suggest is that you list your top character and in a word describe their primary approach to any situation.  If these characters share a lot of scenes together make them opposites.  If they are best friends or husband and wife or brother and sister or father and son.  These opposing traits can get you through the roughest parts of your scripts.  They will find ways to push the story forward even where you are lost.

Your No Budget Screenplay, Peter Jackson's Bad Taste

               Your No Budget Screenplay, Bad Taste

    Peter Jackson started where you are.  From a no budget little feature to the Lord of the Rings he has come a long way.  Having worked in a video store at one time I became familiar with just about every low budget release during the eighties and nineties. I had bought a copy of Bad Taste from the store I worked in for about two dollars, stuck it on a shelf and revisited it only when I heard that this guy named Peter Jackson was going to do the Lord of the Rings movies and he had started with a movie titled Bad Taste.  I dug the movie up and watched it again.  If you can not find it try to at least watch the movie trailer, it is great fun. Then go and watch clips of his later movies and perhaps the new Hobbit Trailer.

    To me Peter Jackson is not your typical no budget film maker.  He wrote a sci fi movie and if you pay close attention to it this movie what he wrote was a big budget epic that he shot for eight dollars and twenty seven cents.  Bad taste is a gross out take on the genre with a lead that actually gets part of his brain
knocked out and keeps on going.   Why does he keep going? The only answer is “Derricks don’t die.” His name is Derrick and he will not die until his task of saving the world from an alien invasion is complete.

   The lesson from this film is that no budget does not mean that you can not be ambitious. You can write a huge story as long as you remember to write down only the most necessary visual elements.  Steven Spielberg needed to blow up buildings and show gigantic alien machines in his version of War of the Worlds, while the no budget writer/film maker would have to rely on sound and light and shadows to suggest what is going on with the invasion of earth.  Look at one of my favorite film makers M. Night, his movie Signs.  The most frightening and intense part of that film takes place in a basement.  No real special effect needed. Both movies with a adjustments could have been utra low budget and done well. 

    M. Night Shyamalan  and Spielberg started out shooting super 8 or video.  They began as no budget writers and film makers.  Peter Jackson began in the no budget world and now he is one of the top film makers on earth.  With the arrival of part one of The Hobbit this year you will have one more reminder of where you can get to from here.

    Good luck guys, next time maybe we will talk about the basics of writing your first no budget script this year.  I say first because I expect that you will write at least three of them this year.

Your Screenplay, Taken

        Your Screenplay, Taken




    The thing that can blow up your budget faster than anything is to allow your screenplay to become overly populated by subplots.  Picture yourself as an archer.  The finish of your screenplay is a target off in the distance.  You are free to do what ever it takes to hit this target, but you are free only to take one shot.  Would you pick up a half dozen arrows, awkwardly load them and launch them toward the target or would you select one arrow, carefully aim that arrow and fire it off toward the target?
    One well aimed arrow is better than a half dozen shot off in the general direction of your target.  One plot well aimed that is ruthlessly pursued is ten times better than a half dozen plots that ramble along, half of which ending no where. Decide where it is that you script is going and steer it there without hesitation.  The funny thing about a story that is relentless it is hard to turn away from even if you do not like where it is headed.

    The best example of relentless pursuit is the movie Taken.  It spends about ten minutes allowing you to get to know the lead characters.  The lead is a man who has done a great deal of dirty work for his government all over the world.  He is a well trained killer who only really cares about one thing on earth, his daughter.  Those first ten minutes tell you about the relationship between father and daughter.  People close to him talk about how he would drop everything to be there for his little girl’s birthdays.  He reluctantly agrees to his daughter’s overseas vacation.  Within minutes of her arrival in Europe she is targeted and then taken by sex traffickers.  In a short and bitter conversation with the man who has taken her he explains who he really is and if she is not released unharmed he will come looking, he will find them and he will kill them.  Basically return my daughter or you will die.  You can repeat this phrase after watching ever single scene that follows and ninety percent of them revolve around that simple phrase.  There is no one that he would not torture or kill to complete this mission.  There is nothing on earth that could be said or offered to him that would change his mind and nothing short of death will stop him.
    Some say that the greatest modern script is Witness.  It is a great script, but I would argue that for the sake of sheer momentum I would place Taken ahead of it.  Never looking away from one’s goals as a writer or the characters that we create is a good thing.  Give your characters something that they must do, that they must have and or something that they will die for and you will have created a memorable character if not as well a great script.
    Actors always ask the question “What is my motivation?”  In Taken it is to get your daughter back alive.  In Hamlet it is to revenge a father’s murder.  In the Wizard of Oz it is to go home.  Find that one thing and your screenplay may largely write itself.

Your No Budget Screenplay, Free Software

    Your No Budget Screenplay, Free Software

    There are any number of books that teach the basics of formatting a screenplay.  There are many very good software programs that will aid you.  If you can afford Final Draft then by all means buy it.  If you have absolutely no money to spend then I would like to offer you advice on three software programs that are free and will get the job done.
    The first of these three programs is a very good online service named Scripped.
Sign up for Scripped and you will be able to write, edit and save your script online at the Scripped site.  Later when your script is finished you can even register it there for a small yearly fee.  This site allows you to transfer the finished file to your computer and print it if you wish.  It’s a solid site and the screenwriting program itself is pretty solid.  Try Scripped especially if you are one of those people who are worried about losing your work.  It is saved online and I personally have partial scripts saved there for over a year. It does not work well with every browser, but I use Firefox and it has never crashed.
    The second program is called Celtx.  It has a full version that can be used for full film production.  The free version of Celtx has a great little screen writing program.  There is nothing fancy about it, but it will get you from beginning to end.  For about twenty dollars more you can upgrade the program.  (Note: At the moment there is a holiday sale on this program, you can get the full version for 9.99)
    The third program is named Roughdraft, if you have trouble finding it just google Roughdraft software.  It is a bare bones basic program.  Once I got the hang of it I have to admit that it is my favorite of the programs largely due to the fact that it is so basic.  This program never gets in the way of itself.
    There are many other free programs and templates available for word perfect.  You can get basic instructions on how to create a screenplay template at any number of sites if you do not wish to download a template or free software.  Your options are many and when it comes to creating your no budget screenplay I believe that the best place to start is with free software.

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