I know this may have been addressed in another post, but is FADE IN and FADE OUT necessary to add to a screenplay? I have heard it is similar to using CUT TO:, which is usually implied and only takes up space.

I write out of order, so I believe I had written the last scene in the beginning of the process. When I completely finished writing, the last last thing I wrote was a scene or dialogue supporting another monumental scene in the second act. It seemed anticlimactic.

It was a mess of a screenplay--something like 160 pages--but I finished it. I broke all kinds of rules--(e.g.I had one page that was nothing but descriptions about things occurring offscreen[!]). Of course, I didn't know the rules. You don't learn about speculating or theorizing or reading about screenwriting. You learn by getting in there and getting your hands dirty... making mistakes... fucking things up. And despite all the miscues and blunders, there was an actually good story in that first effort, which I'm in the process of revisiting & revising.

Are we counting shorts too? I finished my first short in 2007 (I think). It was for an assignment. Being the Asian that I am, I didn't celebrate at all. It was just my duty. Knowing me, I probably didn't even take an hour to go straight into rewrites. But my first feature - I remember finishing that. As vividly as if it were yesterday. It was November 2010. I had been working on it for I don't know how long. Following Dov Simens' advice, I set the action all in one place and with as few characters as possible. Little did I know that my story was too big to contain in one location and my characters too small to survive a movie. Unlike churnage, my first script was only 78 pages long. I got up and did a happy dance around the bedroom. I posted a status on Facebook. Bathed in the congratulations of my friends. Probably had a few conversations about the screenplay. People wanting to help out in getting it made - actors, producers, directors. Now that I think of it, I had so many great resources by God's grace - I just didn't have a great story. Yet. I might revisit it. I might not. I still think it was an interesting story, but the ideas I'm getting these days are so much better by the grace of God. I still remember that rush of fulfillment. I wrote. An. Entire. MOVIE! THIS IS HUGE! LOL. Hope to get that rush many more times in my life God willing.

I actually have a blog entry where I discussed this very topic. Warning: I was very emotional when I wrote this entry....some tears were involved:) http://aprilaustinwriting.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/a-long-road-ahead/

I knew I had written a masterpiece. A year later and a couple more screenplays. A re-read of the first one. "Man, that is a piece of shit."

So true, so true...

ah yes and no!! it was an old animated script I literally plowed through when I was fourteen - thought it was a masterpiece and planned to rewrite it. I think in my naiveté, I even wrote a letter to Disney and sent it to them. Never got a response. Wonder why? Note: I actually wrote my first real (decent) script much much later...

I wrote my first screenplay after being fired from a job essentially on "trumped up charges" for whistleblowing. I was rehired and then quit but during that five agonizing months I took my first screenwriting course and finished my first screenplay just to get all that stuff out of me. So writing FADE OUT was very satisfying. Until the first real screenwriter read it. Then, as was said, I realized it sucked. Still rewriting it.

I typed my first FADE OUT in the autumn of 2002, when I took a screenwriting class as part of the curriculum for a Film Studies course in college... and I haven't looked back since. I rediscovered that I loved writing (something I hadn't done since I was 15, churning away several [poorly written] short stories) and that my love of film combined the best of both worlds. I still have that screenplay, TAHITIAN MOON, sitting on my desk, unedited, never rewritten, as a constant reminder of how far I've come, why I do this and to never give up.

February 6, 1996. Jeez. Awhile back, I guess. First script. First 'feature' we made, though its run-time wasn't quite full-length. Now, dozens of scripts and movies later, a fun thing: I just wrote my first original TV pilot, based on the general idea from that script. Finished February 28, 2013. Sixteen on the first. Seventeen years later, a new version. Nice full-circle kind of thing.