Have I mentioned I love the internet?

Last week, one of the other homeschooling moms at my co-op asked if I'd come speak to her writing class (which consists of two teenage girls) about writing a screenplay. This same lady had been a helper in my creative writing class the first time I taught it, and remembered me saying something about studying screenwriting in college. So of course, I agreed.

The day before I was supposed to do this, I got online and started researching. I know I should stop being surprised and thrilled when I find exactly what I'm looking for on the internet. But when I think that during my college years ('88-'92) if I wanted to find information about something I had to go to the library and research it, and now all I have to do is type a few words into a search engine, it just blows my mind.

So now you want to know what I found, right? Okay, check this out - this is so cool! There are places online where you can get complete movie scripts! There's this one, and this one. You can download some of them in PDF format here. I even found transcribed scripts of movies that are still in the theatre or not yet released on DVD (like Pirates 2). Chances are, if there's a movie you like, somewhere online you can find the script. And since the best way to learn screenwriting is to read lots of scripts and see how they did it, this is an amazing resource.

What else did I find? A free, that's F-R-E-E, screenplay writing program. I downloaded and tried it out myself, and it's awesome! What's the worst part of writing a screenplay? The formatting. This program does it for you, so you can concentrate on the writing. It's called Celtx, and you can get it here. I also found free novel-writing software here. No, it doesn't write the novel for you. It gives you tools to help make novel writing easier. I might use it for NaNoWriMo next month.

How did we ever get along without the internet? It's like Harrod's - if you can't find it online, it doesn't exist.