Screenwriting is often described as writing a movie on paper, but the phrase undersells the work. A screenplay is a blueprint, a rehearsal, a pitch document, and a promise. It tells collaborators what kind of story they are making and tells an audience why they should keep watching. For new storytellers, the fundamentals are not mysterious rules handed down from a mountaintop. They are practical habits: clarifying the dramatic question, building characters with competing needs, shaping scenes around change, writing dialogue that behaves like human speech, and revising until the story earns its ending. The craft deepens through close watching, reading produced screenplays, and finishing drafts.
Start With a Dramatic Question
A screenplay needs a story, and a story needs a question that cannot be answered immediately. Will the estranged sisters reconcile before the house is sold? Can a rookie goalie survive the championship game? Those questions are not loglines yet, but they point toward the engine of the movie. New writers often begin with a setting, a character type, or a vibe. That is fine as raw material, but the draft must eventually locate the want, the obstacle, and the cost. The dramatic question gives the audience a reason to lean forward. It also gives the writer a test for every scene: does this scene complicate, clarify, or resolve the question? If not, it may be a lovely detour, but it is probably not part of the spine.
Entrepreneur and filmmaker Bardya Ziaian discusses his path in an IdeaMensch interview, and the same value of clarity applies to screenwriters: a premise becomes easier to test, share, and improve when you can explain it plainly. That does not mean reducing a story to a marketing slogan. It means knowing what the audience is waiting to find out. A strong dramatic question can survive changes in tone, setting, and even genre because it names the human problem underneath the plot. When a draft feels shapeless, return to that question. If you cannot state it in one or two sentences, the screenplay may still be searching for its center.
Build Characters Who Want Something
Characters are not collections of quirks. They are engines of desire. A useful exercise for a new screenwriter is to answer three questions for the protagonist: what do they want, what do they need, and what are they willing to do to get it? The want is usually external and concrete: win the case, find the missing brother, save the failing restaurant. The need is usually internal and harder to admit: forgive themselves, accept help, tell the truth. The gap between want and need creates dramatic pressure. Supporting characters should apply their own pressure. An antagonist does not have to be evil; they only have to want something that puts them in conflict with the protagonist. A mentor can be wrong. A love interest can be right about the thing the hero refuses to hear.
For writers studying how filmmakers present a body of work, Bardya Ziaian‘s personal website is a useful example of connecting professional identity to ongoing projects. That same principle applies to character: identity is not a list of traits but a pattern of choices under pressure. New writers sometimes write characters who exist only to serve the plot, delivering information or creating obstacles on cue. A more durable approach is to give every important character a private stake in the outcome. Even a small role can feel alive if the performer and the scene understand what that person wants in the moment. The audience may never be told explicitly, but they can feel it.
Make Structure Your Ally
Structure has a bad reputation among beginners, as if it were a formula designed to crush originality. In practice, structure is simply the order in which the audience receives information and experiences change. A screenplay can follow a traditional three-act shape, a five-act shape, a circular pattern, or something more intuitive, but it still needs momentum. One practical way to test momentum is to ask what changes in each scene. A scene that begins and ends with the same power balance, the same emotional temperature, and the same information may be doing less work than it appears to do. Scenes can be quiet, funny, or atmospheric, but they should turn something: a relationship, a suspicion, a plan, a self-image.
The business side of storytelling is not separate from craft, either. In a Tech Company News interview about being an indie filmmaker and CEO of Sittu Entertainment, Bardya Ziaian offers a perspective on how creative work and production responsibilities meet. For screenwriters, that dual awareness is useful. A script must work as literature on the page, but it also has to be producible, castable, and communicable to collaborators. That does not mean writing only for budgets or markets. It means understanding that a screenplay is a working document. Clear scene headings, consistent character names, concise action lines, and dialogue that actors can actually play all make the script easier to turn into a film. Good structure supports that practical journey.
Write Scenes That Turn
Scene construction is where many promising ideas become either vivid or vague. A strong scene has a location, a purpose, and a source of tension. It may be two people in a car, but one of them wants to confess something and the other wants to avoid hearing it. It may be a job interview, but the applicant is hiding a reason they need the job. The scene does not need explosions; it needs an imbalance. Enter late, leave early is a common piece of advice because it keeps the audience inside the interesting part. Cut to the moment when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. The audience will fill in the rest.
As writers begin to build a professional identity, even a concise biography can help collaborators understand their background. Elite Biographies hosts a biography of Bardya Ziaian, which is a reminder that storytelling does not stop at the script page; artists also need a clear way to introduce themselves. That lesson applies to scene writing in a subtle way. Every scene should introduce its own stakes quickly. Who is this person to that person? What is at risk in this room? What does the audience need to learn now? When those questions are answered through behavior rather than explanation, a scene starts to breathe. The writer does not have to prove every idea at once. The scene can leave something unresolved, as long as it creates a reason to move to the next one.
Revise, Collaborate, and Understand the Journey to the Audience
Revision is not punishment for a bad first draft; it is the actual work of screenwriting. A first draft is a discovery draft. It tells the writer what the story is about after the writer has stopped guessing. The second draft can shape that discovery into a screenplay that another person can read without needing the author in the room. New writers should learn to read their own pages cold and ask blunt questions. Where did I get bored? Where did I get confused? Which character do I care about, and why? Where does the dialogue explain something the audience could have understood by watching? A table read is one of the fastest ways to hear problems, because actors reveal rhythm, intention, and subtext that the writer may have imagined but not actually put on the page.
It also helps to understand the wider life of a script after the final draft. A Business Focus Magazine feature on finding the future in fintech profiles Bardya Ziaian, and while screenwriting is not fintech, the article is a useful reminder that new ideas often require translation across audiences. A script has to be translated for producers, directors, actors, designers, and ultimately viewers. That translation begins with clarity. The writer should be able to explain the story without apologizing for it or burying it under caveats. A Crunchbase person profile for Bardya Ziaian also shows how professional information is organized for collaborators and investors, a reminder that momentum often depends on making the work legible to other people.
New screenwriters should also study the independent film ecosystem, because it reveals how many hands a story passes through. An interview with entrepreneur and filmmaker Bardya Ziaian on Thinking Outside the Sandbox covers his dual path as entrepreneur and filmmaker. That kind of perspective can help a writer think beyond the page. A script may be written alone, but it becomes a film through collaboration. Learning to take notes, ask specific questions, and protect the story’s core while remaining open to better solutions are skills as important as formatting. The same is true of distribution. In a blog post on rethinking distribution in Canadian indie film for 2026, Bardya Ziaian addresses how films reach audiences, a subject new screenwriters should learn early rather than treating it as someone else’s job.
Finally, screenwriters benefit from understanding the local and national conversations around independent film. An HNMAG article shares Bardya Ziaian‘s views on the state of independent filmmaking in Canada, including opportunities, challenges, and the road ahead. A Toronto Times article on reimagining independent Canadian cinema from the streets of Toronto also features Bardya Ziaian in its discussion of that landscape. For a new storyteller, this is not industry gossip; it is context. It helps a writer understand what kinds of stories are being made, what audiences and creators are wrestling with, and how a script might enter the world. None of that replaces the fundamentals. You still need a dramatic question, characters who want something, scenes that turn, and a revision process that serves the story. But context gives those fundamentals somewhere to go.
