The story is the most important part of any show, no matter how incredible the visuals you are able to create using AI.
What makes a good story? One of the best resources I've encountered on the topic is this classic episode of the podcast Scriptnotes:
It provides timeless advice from Craig Mazin, whose work includes Chernobyl and The Last of Us. Craig describes in detail how successful screenwriters present a central dramatic argument and guide their protagonist through a transformative journey.
Scriptnotes is a fantastic free resource for aspiring screenwriters.
For Distance, I am writing the script using traditional techniques. I use AI to brainstorm and ask for feedback, but the script is my own.
Here is an excerpt of my script for the first scene:
I write my script in a plain text file and I format it using Fountain. If you are familiar with Markdown, Fountain shares many similarities. It's a way to write plain text that is very readable on its own, but that a computer can reliably convert into a traditional screenplay format.
I do my writing in Obsidian. With the Obsidian Fountain Editor plugin, I can see the screenplay formatted as I type. I also use Obsidian Sync, a paid service, to reliably sync my documents between my phone and my laptop.
This is what the script excerpt above looks like in plain text:
EXT. MEADOW - DAY
Macro shot of grass and wildflowers in a meadow, frozen in place as the camera moves. Dew glistens, frozen on motionless petals. Gradually, the grasses start swaying in a new breeze as sound and music (strings, wistful) fades in. A young woman's bare feet dance past. After she passes, the audio fades and the grasses freeze again, resetting to their original positions.
The cycle repeats, this time with a brook. The water is frozen in place, a hyperreal diorama. A frog is frozen mid-leap as it hops from the bank. Once again, audio fades in and the brook starts to gurgle. The frog croaks and finishes its leap. The bare feet splash through the water. We hear tinkling laughter. Then the sound fades and the motion slows, and finally resets. The water snaps back to its original position and the frog reverts to its mid-air leap.
Wide shot of MAYA, early twenties, bright-eyed and carefree, dancing barefoot through the meadow, humming to herself. Her melody is soft at first, but as she twirls, the strings soundtrack emerges from her tune, swelling and harmonizing, as if the world itself is singing along. Birds and butterflies flit around her.
Something is OFF about the meadow. The sky is impossibly blue. A chromatic filter and extra-soft lighting indicate that this is a virtual world.
She pauses, crouching to admire a wildflower.
VOICE FROM THE SKY (V. O.)
(nervous)
Um...hello?
All sound stops except for the reverberating voice from the heavens. The chromatic filter pulses in sync with the sound of the voice.
Maya freezes in astonishment, eyes widening, hardly daring to breathe. She looks up at the sky.
MAYA
Dad?
(bursting into joyful relief)
You're back!!
She leaps to her feet and begins running as fast as she can toward a stone-and-glass portal in the distance.
VOICE FROM THE SKY (V. O.)
Is anyone there?
MAYA
(shouting as she runs)
Dad! I'm here!
VOICE FROM THE SKY (V. O.)
Is this some kind of streaming tech, or...
Hello?...
MAYA
Dad!!
VOICE FROM THE SKY (V. O.)
Huh.
Music swells back in to full volume. Title fades in as Maya runs away from the camera.
TITLE: SKYGLASS.
BURN TO WHITE.I like that I can feel confident that my work will always be accessible to me, without needing a third-party app to view or edit it (since it is just plain text), but that I can reliably convert it to a PDF with industry-standard formatting.
To convert my script to PDF, I use a command-line tool called Wrap. If you're more comfortable with a visual user interface, there are many other apps available on the Fountain website.
The story is the most important part of the show, and the script is how I get the story out of my head into a form that I can start to share. I hope you've found it interesting.