If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you’re probably still in learning mode. Most screenwriting bloggers recommend moving to LA if you’re serious about a career so that you can immerse yourself in the industry and make connections. Some will heed that advice and others won’t, but either way it’s a long, hard road to get a feature script that you’ve written filmed and distributed. The odds are pretty much against you. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try. But it does mean that you should be doing everything you can to learn about filmmaking.

Ultimately, the best way for a writer to learn is to simply write and rewrite scripts. Words and story are your tools, and you have to know how to handle them better than anyone else on a project. But another way to to learn is to make a short film. Like writing, it can be done anywhere. If you do it yourself, it’ll cost you a couple thousand bucks, and it might not turn out very well, but it will provide an education.

I’m working on my first short film now, and it’s an education. I’ve got one feature script in development, and I’ve written several full-length scripts that have fared well, but a short film is another matter altogether. Our project is already up to a cast of 15 plus extras, and a crew of at least 10 (if we can find enough volunteers). You look at a script differently when you’re trying to meet a budget. Or when you have to rewrite to adapt to a location that is different from what you originally envisioned. You learn about things like gaff tape (and what it’s for), camera dollies, cranes, and how catering, snacks and coffee are at least as important as what camera you use.

This isn’t something you can do on your own as a screenwriter. But if you’re outside LA, you’d be surprised how easy it is to get the interest of volunteers. You’ll need experienced partners. And it’ll take months of your free time. But you’ll learn a few things about filmmaking and you’ll be able to talk intelligently about the myriad of issues that producers have to deal with, from working with a budget to casting to managing a large crew. And when you’re asked to rewrite to address any of these issues, you’ll do so with complete understanding and empathy.

I’ll blog this summer about the progress of our little project. Of course we’re entering with the typical hubristic notion of showing in film festivals, winning all sorts of awards and sending it off to Sundance. But even if it sucks, I’ve already learned a bunch about filmmaking that I didn’t know after years of writing and revising.

One exercise to develop your sense of place is to sit on a rotting log in the woods for four hours. The Oregon coastal rainforest is a perfect location.

Creating a sense of place is different in all three forms of writing that I do. In film, you’re leaving hints. In a script, you can’t overdo it on the description…a screenplay needs to be spare and have enough room for the director and producers to fill in the details for how they want this film to feel and look. You need to just hint at the sense of place. And you need to do it in one and two word bursts throughout the script. It’s hard to do. I’ve been working with a patient director who has helped me hack away everything extraneous from the screenplay. But through our conversations, I can tell that he is seeing much more than what I’ve put on the page…he’s filling out the vision for the film. That’s his job, not entirely mine, and as a screenwriter I need to remember that fact.

In fiction, the task of creating a sense of place falls entirely to the writer. There won’t be a production designer, a sound designer and a director of photography to help you color in the details. You need to taste the air that your characters breathe. You need to know the names of the flowers and hear the calls of the local birds. You need to know what it smells like after it rains or understand the way a dust storm leaves a dry rattle in the back of your throat (even if you fabricate these details via imagination). The way I try to create a sense of place in prose is through details. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to know the setting well enough and the details are conveniently on hand. I always order a field guide to the local flora and fauna for every place that I write about in ficiton. I’ll read the geological history. You need to know how the crust of the Earth was formed beneath the place that carries your story. All of this is challenging for opposite reasons from screenwriting. In both mediums, it’s difficult.

Now that I’m working on comics, I’m finding a new way to create a sense of place. While fiction is created by an individual and film by a team collaboration, comics seem to be a partnership. And the artist creates the tone and emotion from the sense of place that happens in a story, but it has to also resonate with the narrative. And it keys on the panel descriptions you give to the artist…these are words that will never be read by the audience…they will be interpreted by the artist and presented via his visual style. It’s tricky, and I’m not exactly sure how the process works yet, though I’m pleased with the results we have so far.

A sense of place is a foundation for any narrative. I don’t know how other writers develop their skills for creating a place for a story. For me, I think I cultivate this sensitivity through spending as much time in the natural world as I can. Like Thoreau, you’d do well to sit on an old stump in the woods for four hours and feel how the forest changes around you. Unfortunately, I haven’t been doing this nearly as much as I should lately. Life has a tendency to get in the way. But the sun is finally out in Oregon, and I know I’ll soon be packing a tarp into the woods to spend a night or two curled up next to a rotting log or on the edge of an alpine lake.