It Must have an Ending?

As I listened to the commentary track on “True Romance” (written by Quentin Tarantino), I was captivated to hear that, before getting this, his first screenplay made into a movie, that Mr. Tarantino had started to write several screenplays (“about 30“) which were never finished. Being a fan of Quentin, I empathized with him (I must be a good writer, I do exactly what he did; I understood what he was going through). Shoot, as him, I too have several great ideas. I can start with this scene… then the reader will get… and then (as I write each scene), the character will do this. This will not only be cool, but… then I stop. I fight against the sensible voice in my head that tells me to stop, that this will never work. I work on my screenplay until it is finished.

The problem, as Mr. Tarantino would go on to say…

“I had written a bunch of scripts… but I never finished any of them… I always got to about page thirty… it was more of a situation… when I read (especially ) screenplays, the problem is… is, it was more, like, I wanted to write a script more than I necessarily had a burning story to tell.”

HELLO!

Flash forward. It’s over a year later. I had not only finished my very first screenplay, and then, in the middle of my second (I went on to write 2 rewrites of that nonsense) I thought to myself, this is not working. With my head banging against my computer, looking for the scene and/or the dialogue to match my original thought of this character and the first scene I saw in my head, I grew crazier and crazier.

Go backwards. I finished reading the book “Screenplay” by Syd Field. It is, basically, the bible of screenwriting, the first one of it’s kind. The first thing that jumped off the page, as I read it, was that he was adamant that you had to know the ending of your screenplay before you started to write it. Nonsense, I thought. What is “fun” about writing a screenplay if you know what the ending will be? (I ignored his advice)

Go forwards, a little… I’m deep into this (writing screenplays) now. I have finished my first screenplay, and working on my second. I will finish it, and go on to my third.

Then, the next book on writing screenplays that I’ve bought into. Not even thinking about the sound advice Mr. Field had written about, I get hooked on this book. The writer talks about theme and structure. He even goes on to, and get this… that you know the final scene of your screenplay.

FORWARD to TODAY… I am currently working on my forth screenplay (over 75 pages into it), after a few short and long fictional stories, realizing that I really don’t know where I’m going with this screenplay, I’m beginning to believe that I have fallen in love with writing screenplays instead of writing stories that had to be told (that “burning” Tarantino talked about).
………………………… Is there a story out there that I NEED to tell?

Crap, maybe there isn't.