Raving Dave

Why Writing Specific ‘Character Moments’ Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Fri, 29 May 2015 11:03:00 +0000

Like all first impressions, when you introduce an important character for the first time in a screenplay, what they say and do immediately sets up expectations about who they are and what’s troubling them. Which is why it's so important to be specific.

Lana later said:"The fact that she smoked
immediately told me she was a strange one."

I’m currently working on a rewrite and part of the rewrite process involves writing a new synopsis. This forces me to check whether the way I present characters in the synopsis is actually how they appear on the page in the screenplay. Which is a humbling exercise, to say the least. One of the key ways to establish a character as quickly as possible in the mind of the reader, is to make sure that whatever the character does and says when they first appear, illustrates what makes them specific or intriguing and what might be troubling them. This first impression sets up expectations in the reader’s mind, and raises questions about how the story is going to proceed. It evokes curiosity. Put differently: If the introduction of a character doesn’t raise any questions or suggest any kind of drama, there might be something missing.

Unexceptional Action: The specific behaviour is descriptive

The action itself might be a generic action, such as putting on a shoe or sending an email, in which case the specific way the character performs the action is what illustrates who they are. Take for example the opening of Philomena (screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope), where Philomena (played by Judi Dench) sits in an almost empty church looking at the Madonna and Child. Not particularly exceptional or telling as an action, although the image is a symbolic foreshadowing of the story of Philomena the mother, and her lost child. However, when the priest approaches and addresses Philomena, we instantly know from his words that they know each other and that the priest is concerned about her. We also learn from her evasive answers to his questions that she has a secret. Now the moment has become specific to her. We intuit that this is going to be a story about Philomena’s secret, and it clearly has some connection to the Catholic church.

Exceptional Action: The activity itself is descriptive

Alternatively, the action might be something extraordinary, such as someone catching a fish with their feet or stitching up a gaping wound on an injured lioness. In that case, the action itself tells us something about the character. An example of this might be the character of Eric Lomax (played by Colin Firth) in The Railway Man (screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson), who is introduced during the opening credits as very ordinary looking man lying on his back on the floor of a study reciting a children’s rhyme to himself as a kind of mantra. Not something we all do every day, and suggesting that this ordinary man has something very extraordinary on his mind. When we next meet him he is hurriedly changing trains and telling us in a voice-over about minute details of a railway timetable. Another clue that we are about to embark on a journey with a man with a strange obsession.

Generic vs specific in the rewrite

...and then I realised 'holding a roller skate'
didn't describe what was troubling her.

I used to try as hard as possible to avoid rewriting. I just liked the feeling of finishing a first draft and then starting on my next masterpiece. Big mistake. In fact I’ve come to enjoy rewriting just as much as writing the first draft, because it’s in the rewrite that I really get to know the characters properly. The rewrite feels a lot more like craft, which I guess is an acquired taste (at least it was for me). In the rewrite I have more room to analyse and approach details from a more rational point of view. Whereas an initial draft is more of an intuitive attempt to express the general shape of a story. Once it’s out there on the page, though, I can begin to hone it.

Going back to page one and looking—with the benefit of hindsight—at how I initially introduced my characters might reveal that I’ve gotten to know a character better during the course of writing the screenplay, or that I got them right the first time round. Or that I actually still don’t know the character well enough. Maybe I thought I knew what the main dramatic conflict was for a particular character, but it turns out I need to articulate it more precisely.

So, simply asking myself whether I’ve opened with enough specific ‘character moments’ for a reader to get an adequate first impression of the character, reveals whether I know the character well enough myself.

Why You Can’t Force Yourself To Be Spontaneous But Should Anyway

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:11:00 +0000

As a screenwriter, knowing how to allow yourself to be genuinely spontaneous in your writing is an important skill, but it’s easier said than done in a culture that glorifies deadlines and a 24-7 work ethic.

As Edward Slingerland writes in his intriguing tome Trying Not To Try, the Chinese have been wrestling for thousands of years with concept of spontaneity. Moral behaviour has to be spontaneous to be genuine and authentic, and yet you have to learn good manners. As Slingerland explains, Chinese schools of thought varied from the Confucian ideal of training yourself endlessly in etiquette and virtuous behaviour until these become second nature, to the Daoist ideal of not trying at all to master anything and living entirely spontaneously.

The jury is still out on which approach is most desirable, but the question still remains: Why is increased mental effort not a guarantee for better results? Indeed, why is the opposite often true: great athletes and performers are famous for ‘choking’ and being unable to perform at crucial moments because they are thinking too consciously about what they are doing. And trying too hard to impress a potential date just makes you seem desperate. On the other hand, making no effort at all is not particularly productive either. Why do people get in their own way so much?

Is Your Nose Ironic?

Psychologist Daniel Wegner has done some fascinating research about what is known as Ironic Process Theory. This basically refers to the paradoxical effect of trying to control your own thoughts. If you try not to think of a purple car, that’s what you will think of, and if you to try to focus solely on a purple car, that will be the only thing you can’t think of. Here’s an example from my own personal experience: I have a large nose. I love my nose, but I live in a country (the Netherlands) where most people don’t have large noses, and I regularly encounter people who struggle unsuccessfully not to glance at my nose, and whose efforts to avoid any olfactory references in their speech lead to precisely the opposite effect. They use phrases that contain nasal metaphors and then squirm in embarrassment as they hear themselves saying what they had resolved not to. I’m sure you have your own examples of unsuccessful thought repression.

Look at my nose,
my nose is amazing...

The point of mentioning this is: Making an effort to be spontaneous is a self-defeating paradox. However, creating circumstances in which you are most likely to be spontaneous is an achievable, practical task. It requires you to become aware of what type of circumstances or tasks trigger your own spontaneity. What type of writing (outlining, writing dialogue, writing prose, longhand, etc.), at what time of the day, in which locations, with or without music, standing on your head, and so on. It also requires you to acknowledge that this is not a set of ‘rules’ you need to make, but rather an ongoing awareness of how you function. Armed with this knowledge you can adjust your writing process to minimize situations in which you have to make that (counterproductive) effort to be spontaneous.

Of course, not all stages of the writing process require the same degree of spontaneity. For example, when you’re editing or rewriting your own work, you need to look more critically and analytically at what you’ve written. In these circumstances, spontaneity is less of a priority. Which, ironically, can sometimes lead to very spontaneous creativity, so keep your notebook handy. As can going for a walk or doing the ironing. If you have any experience at all as a writer, you will know that great ideas often ‘come to you’ while you are doing something completely different. It can sometimes be very inconvenient, too. Have you ever stood up from the table in the middle of a conversation, to surprised looks from everyone, and quickly scribbled down a thought on the back of the first scrap of paper you could find?

Pull Over, Will You?

What I’ve learned from reading about trying not to try and the ironic process effect, is that there comes a point in every writing session when I need to stop, even though I could carry on. Like when you’ve been driving a long distance and you know you need to pull over and stop to stretch your legs, even though the road ahead is straight and empty. I know I can push on, and in the past I’ve done that too often. But I’m more aware now that stopping at the right moment is paradoxically more productive than continuing. At that moment I’ve done all the good writing I can do for a while—maybe I just need a break, maybe that’s all there is for that particular day—and stopping means I avoid regressing into a kind of self-recriminatory slave-driver mode, which is antithetical to spontaneity and creativity.

This still leaves the issue of how and when to make the effort to start writing in the first place. Isn’t that in itself counterproductive? Well, no it isn’t. There are lots of different ways to start a writing session. I don’t think it matters one bit how you do it, as long as you start putting one word after another at some point. I sometimes like to formulate a very specific task: Today I’m going to describe character A’s emotional reaction to character B’s revelation in the sauna scene, or: This morning I’m going to imagine five ways for character X to further endanger his marriage. It doesn’t matter what it is, and nine times out of ten I’ll end up writing something very different and completely unexpected anyway. As long as I give myself something to start on, and as long as I’ve stopped my previous writing session on time (see above), my brain will be eager to get stuck back into the story.

As for deadlines, the main point is to achieve productivity rather than to be busy all the time, and paradoxically, trying hard to be productive often has the opposite effect.

Mindset: Five Misconceptions That Can Hamper A Screenwriter

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 12:25:00 +0000

The belief that people have fixed, inherent abilities rather than being capable of learning from experience, is responsible for much misery among screenwriters. So it’s worth debunking.

We screenwriters face specific challenges at various stages of our work, both in the creative and business realms. But often the biggest challenge we face are our own debilitating assumptions about talent or potential. I recently came across a book called Mindset by psychologist Dr. Carol S. Dweck which threw some very welcome light on this problem.

Do I really have to?

In my own case, for example, rewriting is a problem. I hate diving back into a feature screenplay once I’ve ‘finished’ it. I want to leave it the way it is and move swiftly on to the next project. The result is a growing pile of well-written but unmarketable first drafts.

Mindset has helped me understand the reasons for my reluctance to embrace the rewriting process, and the insights are shockingly simple. Dweck distinguishes what she calls a fixed mindset, ie the conviction that things like intelligence and artistic ability are fixed quotas you get at birth, and a growth mindset, which says you can develop abilities by learning from experience. Her book covers many different areas of activity, but I find it resonates powerfully with some significant and limiting misconceptions I often wrestle with as a screenwriter. Here are five of them:

Misconception #1: Effort Equals Failure

The thing I hate hearing most in interviews with successful screenwriters is that they wrote their first draft in one marathon writing session. The thing just rolled out onto the page in five days, seemingly effortlessly. The reason that's annoying is because it reinforces the idea that speed and lack of exertion are evidence of great ability. After all, if you’re really good at something you obviously don’t need to make an effort to produce great work. Conversely, the blood, sweat and tears (not to mention time) needed by mere mortals like me just to come up with a good idea or two, is proof of our inferior abilities. But as author Malcolm Gladwell has explained in his best-seller Outliers, successful people in all kinds of fields invest huge amounts of time and energy in perfecting their skills.

Just press for finished screenplay.

I love the example of Thomas Edison in this context. There’s a popular mythology surrounding the inventor of the light bulb that he was a natural genius who suddenly came up with this brilliant idea and it worked. But in reality his invention was anything but effortless. He worked tirelessly for years, employed a team of scientists to assist him, tried and failed many times before finally hitting on the right technology. He worked systematically and learned from his mistakes.

Misconception #2: Talent. You Either Got It Or You Don’t

This is an insipid and highly demotivating trope that you find in all areas of human endeavour, from the creative professions to business and academic work, but also in sports and entertainment. The plethora of talent shows on TV bears witness to this idea that talent is a trait you either have or don’t. But the reality of so many great athletes, artists, musicians, business people, etc., is that they spent many long years developing and honing their skills before they became successful, and continued to do so afterwards too.

Look, I can even play the guitar.

There’s a famous anecdote about legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, who was once confronted by someone who said something like: “Yes, but you’re black, it’s in your genes.” To which Davis replied that he had studied hard every day since he was a young boy, made a superhuman effort to get into Julliard School of Music, and spent four years there learning from the best possible teachers, while gigging in clubs at night. In other words: He developed and nurtured his talent. It wasn’t a god-given, pre-fabricated gift.

In fact, the metaphor inherent in the use of the word ‘gifted’ in this context is telling: Being gifted suggests you have been given something, an ability that has little to do with you. It’s just something you have.

Misconception #3: Failure Proves You’re Worthless

What is failure? For example, a script you’ve written is rejected by agents and production companies. Or: You get stuck on a script and abandon it. Or: Your screenplay doesn’t place in a competition you’ve entered. Or perhaps your script is produced and the resulting film is a flop and you’re blamed. Unfortunately, this kind of failure is par for the screenwriting course. It’s unpleasant to experience rejection, or be judged unfairly, but it only becomes a debilitating problem if you believe rejection is evidence that you suck. A sure sign of this is when you start apportioning blame and fantasizing about violent retribution (hey, write a story about it instead). Whereas, if you believe that people can learn and improve from experience, then every failure can be an important lesson too. It can point to specific aspects of your writing or pitching skills that need improvement, enabling you to focus your efforts more effectively next time.

You talkin' to me?

I have to admit it’s quite unnerving to realize this about myself, because I like to think of myself as a reasonable, fairly rational individual. Whereas this kind of thinking is just so unhelpful, especially in a profession like screenwriting where you are constantly confronted with rejection. It’s all very well learning to “manage” rejection, but if deep-down you actually believe every rejection proves your lack of ability, or conversely, that it demonstrates the subnormal cognitive capacities of the rejecter, then you will never learn or improve.

Misconception #4: You Consist Of A Fixed Set Of Traits

We’ve all heard people say things like: Even as a toddler she was very musical. I’m just not a maths person. He’s a born leader. I’m just not the creative type. And so on. It’s a very common way of thinking about other people and about yourself, but in reality people learn new skills, change jobs, emigrate, and learn from their mistakes all the time. In her book, Dr. Dweck quotes numerous examples of educational initiatives, projects with convicted criminals, different styles of sports training, and much more, to demonstrate that often all it takes is a shift in attitude away from this idea of fixed traits, to achieve significant progress.

I sometimes wonder if the phrase “I am a screenwriter” itself expresses this kind of belief. Most people who are paid to write screenplays, do various other things too. Especially considering that only a tiny minority of people who write screenplays can live on doing only that. Most of us also have day jobs, earning money with other forms writing such as copywriting, writing prose, playwriting, journalism, and so on. I recently heard a published poet say she only considers herself “a poet” while she’s writing a poem. I like that attitude.

Misconception #5: Success Proves You’re Special

Even though it feels a lot better than failure, success is just another great opportunity to learn. Success can mean different things depending on where you are in your screenwriting career (if there even is such a linear thing). It could be something as simple as getting good feedback on a script, placing in a screenwriting competition, or it might be landing a paid assignment, selling a script, obtaining funding for your own production, etc. If you believe that success is a sign of some special innate ability rather than of the effort you put into a project, you make yourself vulnerable to inevitable subsequent disappointments. Because the question then becomes: Where did my 'gift,' my ability go?

It’s like when a child gets a good grade at school. The worst thing you can do as a parent is suggest the success is evidence of some innate gift. You’re so clever. You’re so musical. It’s much better to praise the kid for having worked hard. The same goes for your own screenwriting success: Being aware of what you did to achieve the success, helps you replicate it and improve on it in your next project.

All written with just my thumbs

For example, last year my short script Happy New Year was awarded production funding by the Pears Foundation Short Film Fund and although I’ve written quite a few short scripts, this one has received the best results so far. I’ve already taken away plenty lessons from the experience, but one major one is: My writing is at its best when I feel a strong emotional connection with the characters’ dilemmas, because that’s the fuel that helps me keep going back to script to make it better and better. It moves my attention away from the idea that I have to rewrite because my writing isn’t good, and channels it into the urge to express what I set out to write as clearly as possible because it’s important to me.

I can’t possibly do justice to Carol Dweck’s work here, so I would highly recommend reading her book yourself. I’ve certainly learned a great deal from her, not just as a screenwriter but also as a parent, a husband, a musician, and all the other roles a person has.

Of course, now I have to go and rewrite a feature screenplay or two…

The Paradox Of The Hero’s Journey As A Screenwriting Paradigm

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:37:00 +0000

Has the mythical Hero’s Journey story form run its course, or is it perhaps truly a timeless expression of Human Nature?

So you want to write a screenplay?

Today I saw that Christopher Vogler is coming to Paris with his three-day seminar on The Writer’s Journey His method is based on Joseph Campbell’s seminal book on comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, which in turn is heavily indebted to Jungian analytical psychology. The announcement made me stop and think once again, seriously, about the value for screenwriters of trawling the history of storytelling for recurring story forms, character types, themes, etc.

Because It's Old Doesn't Mean It's True

Many great movies follow the mythical structure, either deliberately or accidentally, but I actually find it a bit worrying how this particular model is venerated, for the following reason:

As an abstract story form, the Hero’s Journey claims validity on the basis of a very specific and flimsy assumption: Because this type of story has been told for thousands of years, there must be some fundamental truth to it. However, I think ideas about what it means to be human (and ultimately, this is what films try to illuminate) are changing dramatically. The advent of neuroscience, quantum physics and other “new” branches of science are radically challenging many longstanding ideas about concepts such as free will, intuition, decision-making, and so on.

The Hero’s Journey celebrates and glorifies the past, rather than questioning the underlying assumptions about human nature and how we give meaning to our lives. It gives the filmmaker a false sense of comfort and reassurance, nurturing the illusion that they are part of a long, noble tradition of truth-tellers, when in fact what they are doing is uncritically confirming age-old biases.

It's All In The Willpower

Yes, but my willpower is huge.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the Hero’s Journey is always ultimately an argument for individual willpower as the final resort. The hero manages to achieve the goal against all odds because of his or her willpower, or the hero fails because of lack of willpower. But this is an outdated, romantic view of human nature that bears little resemblance to the banality of real life.

Since Campbell did his initial studies, a lot has changed. Scientific research has clearly shown that people’s actions are largely determined by situational, genetic and neurological factors. Our decision-making is mostly unconscious. Not in the literary, Freudian sense of an unconscious full of mysteriously repressed forbidden desires, but unconscious in the sense of not being accessible to conscious awareness. You don’t know why you chose the Toyota for the same reason you don’t know how you secrete hormones: It would be completely impractical to be consciously aware of all these processes. The difference is that you think you do know why you chose the Toyota.

Plus, we have far less agency as individual humans than we like to admit. Both in terms of making choices and in terms of acting independently in general. We are much, much less “in charge” of how we behave than we would like to believe. And yet the Hero’s Journey is predicated on this notion that adversity can be overcome by asserting your willpower.

Willpower, if such a things exists, is a very minor factor in real life. Just think about how hard it is to stick to a diet or go to the gym regularly. This is not because of an archetype you are battling with, or because of unconscious desires you’re suppressing. These are just metaphors that psychologists have used in an attempt to describe the very real experience of not being consciously in charge of one’s actions. Sticking to a diet is difficult because of the kind of animal we are, living as we do in extremely new and unfamiliar circumstances on an evolutionary time scale. You’re more likely to stick to a diet by using cognitive tricks and social frameworks to keep you away from temptation, than by telling yourself to man up.

The Screenwriter As Hero

I’m not saying it’s wrong to make movies that reflect and revel in an ancient intuition about individual willpower and agency, but I do think it’s problematic that this model for telling romantic morality tales has become the litmus test for “good screenwriting.”

Lucy, leaving her Ordinary World.

I hear you protesting: You have to know the rules to break them. Or: There simply aren’t any new stories to be told. And so on. But that’s precisely what a paradigm does. It engenders loyalty and the accompanying rationalizations. Once you are committed to a paradigm, it’s almost impossible to get your mind out of it. The problem is, essentially, that familiarity feels like evidence of truth, but it isn’t necessarily.

It’s a peculiar paradox, when you think about it: Designing your screenplay so that it follows the familiar steps of the Hero’s Journey, might actually be a bit cowardly. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe there is such an unchanging thing as Human Nature, which was the same 3.2 million years ago for our ancestor Lucy as it will be for our descendants in 3 million years from now. I’m sceptical, though.

On the other hand, there are very practical reasons for using the Hero’s Journey, like: It will make a screenplay easier to pitch, more accessible to a larger audience, and so on. Which as far as I’m concerned are absolutely legitimate, pragmatic, business reasons. But don’t get carried away and then claim that it’s the only legitimate choice.

So, Christopher Vogler in Paris… I’m still undecided. Maybe I’ll see you there. If I do, I’ll be the one in the cafeteria trying to muster the willpower to resist yet another croissant.

Why Scripts Notes Are Like Fantasies

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Mistaking a fantasy for a goal in life can lead to terrible choices. The same applies for taking script notes literally.

I’ve recently been fortunate enough to have short script of mine read and critiqued by a serious production company who is interested in producing it. As is always the case, the notes I’ve received are accompanied by some very creative suggestions for “fixing” aspects of the script they think need improving. Here’s the thing: since having attended SimonPhillips session at the 2012 London Screenwriters Festival, I feel so much better equipped to deal with these suggestions effectively. But first a digression into fantasy land.

Fantasy As A Signpost

Man fantasizing about cross-dressing

When someone asks you what you would do if you won the lottery, or what you would do differently if you could have the last five years again, your fantasy automatically shifts into gear. You might imagine the most outrageous alternative existence, or you might imagine something minuscule like having accepted rather than rejected that invitation from the guy at work. But whatever the fantasy, the fantasy itself isn’t literally the thing you want, it’s just a pointer in the direction of what you want.

The fantasy of a totally different lifestyle might be an indication that you need to seriously deal with a professional or relationship problem you’ve been avoiding. The fantasy about accepting the invitation might be a prompt to take some steps to improve your social life. The point is, the fantasy itself is not the goal. And often, if you chase a fantasy as if it is literally what you want, you end up disappointed. Unfortunately, this is why a lot of so-called self-help methods end up making you feel worse about yourself.

Follow your dream!

Um… in a sense, perhaps. Taking fantasies and daydreams seriously is a great way of distilling concrete, attainable goals, or for simply articulating more clearly what you’re unsatisfied about and want to change. But taking fantasies and daydreams literally, is a recipe for disappointment or even disaster.

Simon Phillips

A one-hour session with a huge audience during the London Screenwriters Festival can never do justice to the kind of profound techniques Simon Phillips teaches. But as with all great insights, his approach is based on some really very simple principles. They are simple to understand, but take a lot or hard graft to genuinely internalize.

His point about notes, whether from producers, directors or actors, is this: When they offer suggestions for improving the script which seem absurd or inappropriate to you, you need to take the suggestions seriously, but not necessarily literally. A suggested change to the script is a manifestation of that person’s intuition that something isn’t right, and it’s your job to find out what they’re intuiting. So Simon Phillips has a method he calls Creative Reading, which helps you identify contradictory or missing information in your script. Here’s what you do…

Creative Reading

Firstly, take a scene and read it as if it’s a real-life event. Make a note of every concrete thing each character perceives for the first time. This can include things a character sees, hears, smells, and so on, things that happened before the scene started, things that are not included in the scene description, things that are implied in the lay-out of the location, etc. But only list specific, concrete perceptions, what Simon Phillips calls “change points.” Not subsequent actions, dialogue, feelings, or anything of that nature.

Secondly, still assuming this is a real-life situation, make a note of each decision a character takes as a result of the perceptions you’ve listed. Each time they perceive something they decide to act or respond in a certain way. These are what Simon Phillips calls “phenomena” and these are the specific actions a character takes, or the words they speak.

Just doing this is often more than enough to expose things about the characters you may not have considered, or inadvertently left unmentioned. Equally, it can show you where you’re giving away too much information too soon, or repeating yourself, or leaving too much information out, etc. It gives you conscious control over what information to reveal or deliberately hide in a scene.

Script Notes As Fantasies

Does it have to be Nelson?

Armed with this kind of intimate knowledge of your script, you can identify far more directly what the creative suggestions you are receiving are indirectly flagging up. When the producer wonders out loud whether the main character should be a young man instead of an old lady, or whether the story might work better if set on a spaceship, these are their fantasies. And like your own fantasies about starting a new life in

Mozambique

or your fantasy about burying your spouse in your back yard, they are intuitive pointers to a specific but as yet unarticulated problem.

It’s worth practising this technique on a scene you have lying around. Identify all the “change points” and pretty quickly you’ll see how you can make the scene more dramatic or suspenseful, or what you can cut. I’ve actually been quite amazed by how effective and radical this seemingly simple method can be.

If you don’t identify and remedy confusing elements of the script, directors and actors will intuitively look for ways to fill in the gaps themselves, which may not improve the resulting film. And guess who will get the blame if the film isn’t well-received?

Confessions Of A Draft Dodger

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:13:00 +0000

Everyone says it, and everyone knows it’s true: Screenwriting is rewriting. But why is the rewrite such a pain?

A budding screenwriter on hearing
his first draft isn't Oscar material

I recently entered a new script of mine into Phil Gladwin's Screenwriting Goldmine competition and it didn’t get anywhere. I knew this would happen when I submitted it. Not because I have such a low opinion of my own writing. Precisely the opposite, probably. Hubris. It was only a first draft, and I knew as much. Not a totally incoherent vomit draft, but a first draft as in: Meticulous outlining, reams of notes, a wall full of index cards, a detailed treatment, a rough first draft, an edited first draft, an edited-again-after-getting-professional-feedback (from the likes of Danny Stack) first draft. In other words, a first draft as in: This is a good starting point rather than a script that is as good as I can ever get it and ready to show off to industry people.

It’s Not Ready. Get Over Yourself.

The thrill of typing Fade Out after all the hard work that gets you there, can be blinding. I don’t know how it works in terms of neuroscience, but I’m guessing it’s a bit like fashion. You see old pictures of yourself and you wonder how you could ever have seriously liked flared jeans, padded shoulders or spiky hair. I mean, come on, anyone can see how ridiculous that looks… now. In terms of writing, it’s a similar process of mental adjustment, but the process is faster. When you finish writing the draft, everything in it seems cool and just right. Leave it alone for a while, write something else, forget about it and then reread it and then it will hit you… wow, did I seriously think that line was funny, or that scene was full of suspense? That’s a critical moment, when you can go one of two ways: admit the script isn’t ready and get over yourself, or go into denial and pretend/hope/pray no one will notice. Guess which is more sensible.

Listen To The Voice You Most Want Ignore

If you’re seriously mentally ill, skip this bit. If, like me, you’re only moderately insane, then you probably also have this very, very quiet voice in your head that is always annoyingly correct in retrospect. It whispers barely audible script notes which you really do not want to hear (because they demand additional work) and which are remarkably easy to pretend you didn’t hear. Or perhaps you find yourself imagining an encounter with an imaginary movie executive in an imaginary world where you’re invited in to discuss your imaginarily polished script which in reality is still a first draft. And the imaginary executive has a shitload of really tough notes and questions about the script. News flash: The imaginary exec is the part of your mind that knows what’s still wrong with the script. Don’t ignore it, because it has your best interests at heart: Trying to market a half-baked script reflects badly on you the writer. It closes rather than opens doors. Better to spend more time fixing stuff first.

Dogs Don’t Fool Themselves, Humans Do

It’s not a pretty thing to own up to, but if this experience has taught me one thing, it’s that I’m (still) really good at fooling myself. If I were a dog (in the taxonomical sense), I would not try to pretend, say, that I had sniffed a lamppost long enough if I still weren’t genuinely 100% sure the neighbour’s bitch had been there five minutes ago. I might feign hunger if I thought I’d get an extra bowlful of Bonzo, but I wouldn’t try and convince myself I didn’t want to eat if my stomach told me otherwise. I’m guessing a dog wouldn’t know how to do that even if it wanted to. It’s a peculiarly human trait to be able to override one’s instinctive drives or intuitive insights by envisaging the consequences of an action. In many situations this is an excellent thing, and it keeps millions of people out of prison and mental institutions every day. But sometimes an instinct or intuition can be a life-saver too. However, you won’t know which it is if you don’t acknowledge it in the first place.

If only I'd listened to my intuition...

In any case, from now on I’ll be paying more attention to my intuition, listening out more often for that little voice (but not in public places, I promise), and in general being less of a dog.

On a final note, my script involved a wedding band, and I was considering registering for the upcoming London Screenwriting Festival's Comedy ScriptLab with this script as a possible starting point for a TV comedy show. So I thought I’d just do a bit of research and discovered to my horror (just in time) that Turner TV is about to launch a new TV sitcom called, wait for it… The Wedding Band, featuring some very similar characters to the ones in my script. Feeling suitably pissed off that someone had stolen my premise (see, still fooling myself), I thought for a while I’d just use the script for toilet paper. Then the answer hit me: Drop the wedding band and rewrite the script from page one. It will make the premise, the lead character and the entire story much leaner and more like the father-and-son adventure I originally intended it to be. Now suddenly I feel all Zen about rewriting.

I swear I will never understand this screenwriting thing.

How Authentic Are You Prepared To Be As A Screenwriter?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:13:00 +0000

Whether you’re writing a superhero blockbuster or a DIY lo-budget indie film, your writing will be best when there’s something uniquely yours on the page. But that’s terrifying.

What everyone in the film business is looking for in a script, is an original voice. Something about the subject matter and the writing style that sets it apart from the mass of generic, derivative scripts trying to jump on the bandwagon of recent box office or cult hits. For the screenwriter this is good and bad news. The good news is: There’s only one of you, so your unique experiences and point of view are inherently original. The bad news is: Writing from your own embarrassing, shameful or even traumatic experience, exposes you to criticism that can be extremely painful and inhibitive.

Embracing Rather Than Overcoming Your Demons

Terrified screenwriter embracing his demon

In his wonderful book Writing From The Inside Out, screenwriter turned psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo talks about how writers often become frustrated because they try to circumvent their embarrassing hang-ups or painful memories rather than embracing them for what they are: their own personal archive of raw material. Plus, what’s unique about a writer’s experience, however disturbing, is part of being human and so something to which other human beings will be able to relate. Which isn’t an encouragement to refuse to write anything other than a verbatim transcription of a highly emotional real life event (‘No, but it really happened that way!’), because that’s always less interesting to others than to you. But it does mean that your awful first kiss, your liberating divorce, your shameful experience as a son or a daughter or as a father or mother—all these unprocessed experiences are chock full of authentic details, characters and emotions just begging to be mined rather than avoided.

Exposing Yourself Emotionally Is Risky

Cut that scene, it turns my stomach.

The truth is, it is a terrifying prospect to let strangers have a peek at your dark side, however authentic it may be. They might laugh, be disgusted or simply disbelieving. Believe me, I’ve received notes from readers disapproving of actions or traits of characters in my writing which were direct representations of my own life. It doesn’t make you feel good when a reader exclaims: “What kind of a shmuck would ever do that?!” But what’s also true, as Dennis Palumbo writes, is that all screenwriting is autobiographical. Not literally, but whatever you write is informed by and infused with the way you experience the world, your past experiences and the values you believe in. Even if you try and hide it (that’s part of you in action, too…). So it hurts when someone dismisses or disapproves of your material, because you’re so invested in it and it feels like they’re rejecting you personally. But it’s par for the course and the risk is worth taking, because at the very least you come out the other end wiser and better equipped for your next writing challenge. And if you don’t stick your neck out, chances are your writing will feel inhibited or generic, which will certainly and justifiably lead to rejection anyway.

Why Authenticity Matters

I'm sorry, this suit just isn't me.

Lying, denying, avoiding, pretending, and so on, are all very stressful occupations. And in terms of writing, they cause you to (unwittingly perhaps) try and spare your characters the confrontations and conflicts you yourself are avoiding in real life. Whereas these are the very conflicts that you know most intimately! Again, being authentic doesn't mean getting rid of these conflicts. On the contrary, it means acknowledging and embracing them as a real part of who you are. Tapping into them for their emotional power. But besides being essential for being able to fully identify with and inhabit your characters, for being able to write honestly and truthfully (and therefore more engagingly), being authentic is basically just a lot better for you than being stuck in denial. Here’s an article from Psychology Today which explains the benefits of authenticity nicely. So, basically: Lie, deny, avoid, pretend and so on, but write truthfully about what that’s like…

Lastly, a huge thank you to the amazing Corey Mandell, who recommended Dennis Palumbo’s book to me. But more about Corey and his mind-boggling screenwriting insights in my next post.

What Is Your Character’s Theory Of Mind?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Getting a handle on how your characters think about how other characters think, can give their decisions and actions more unity and credibility.

I know exactly what you think I'm thinking.
And it's true.

The fact that we can think about how other people think, is known in the world of psychology as having a theory of mind. We formulate expectations based on what we know (consciously or unconsciously) about other people, and so we anticipate their responses to events, including our own decisions and actions. In a recent episode of one of my current favourite podcasts, Arming the Donkeys, behavioural economist Dan Ariely interviews psychologist Laurie Santos about her research into cheating among monkeys. She and her team were surprised to discover how cleverly the monkeys managed to deceive the researchers. Especially because the way they cheat suggests that they must have some theory of mind, informing their expectations of human behaviour. However, one big difference between monkeys and humans, is that we’re much better at letting our desires fool us into misinterpreting other people’s behaviours.

What Do You Think I Think?

Consider for a moment what you think you know about someone close to you. A parent, a partner, a child, a friend, a colleague, etc. Based on your experiences with them, your knowledge of other people’s experience with them, their own reports, and so on, you probably have quite a specific, albeit implicit theory about how they view the world. You have a clear expectation of how they would respond, say, if you told them you’d been fired, won the lottery, been diagnosed with a serious illness, etc. You might be less sure of how they would respond if they found out you’d been gossiping about them, cheated on them, defrauded them, ratted on them, etc. Less certain, but still.. you have some expectation, based on your theory of their mind. But also, of course, based on what you would like to be true, or what you fear might be true. And you become most painfully aware of your theory about someone else, when it turns out to be wrong.

What Do Your Characters Think Other Characters Think?

Similarly, characters in a screenplay have theories about each other’s minds. Of course, these are made up by the screenwriter, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to be coherent. When you put a character in a situation in which, for instance, they have to choose between being truthful or lying, their choice is going to be informed by how they expect other characters to behave. And, just as in real life, a scene in a screenplay becomes dramatic or funny, or both, when one character believes something about another character and this turns out to be wrong.

When One Character’s Theory About Another Is Wrong

I could have sworn he was hot for me.

I recently got around to viewing Mike Leigh’s Another Year which includes a wonderful example of how one character’s theory about another character turns out to be wrong, creating a great tragicomic beat. Mary (played by Lesley Manville) a nervous, lonely woman approaching middle-age, flirts with Joe, the 30-year old son of her friends Tom and Gerri, whom she’s known since he was a boy. She mistakes Joe’s friendliness as a hopeful sign that he’s attracted to her, and so later she’s devastated when he enthusiastically introduces her to his new girlfriend. The scene is filled with such painful embarrassment because Mary’s reaction makes plain to the other characters and to the audience, just how desperate she is, and how misguided her perception of Joe was.

I know I’ve been in situations where my theory about someone else’s mind has been upturned. And I’m not just talking about that girl I was convinced was in love with me when I was thirteen, but who turned out to have a crush on my best friend. I’m talking about any time someone’s reaction doesn’t match your expectations, when you realize you had the wrong idea about them. You thought they were better, worse, more clever, stupid, compassionate or cruel than they really are. These are the kinds of moments that great scenes turn on. In terms of screenwriting, understanding and showing how your characters think about each other helps to set up these moments convincingly and effectively.

How Screenwriting Paradigms Help And Hinder The Screenwriter

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0000

Screenwriting tutors advocate a variety of useful screenwriting methods, but the trick is to know at what stage of the writing process to consult which of them.

In a recent episode of the On The Page screenwriting podcast, screenwriter Irving Belateche related how he changed his attitude to what he calls ‘screenwriting paradigms’ and the dramatic improvement this had on his writing. The essence of his story seems to me to encapsulate everything that’s good and bad about screenwriting templates: He discovered that he could write much more freely and creatively if he only started checking for plot points, sequence breaks, act breaks and the like, after he’d finished writing the story. He found that too much ‘thinking about the writing’ too soon, detracted from his ability to create.

I don’t believe there are any rules about whether it’s better to check for plot points before, during or after writing an outline or even a first draft. But I think it’s wise to be aware of the essential difference between a creative and an analytical mindset.

Creation Versus Analysis
Creative work is putting disparate things together to produce something new, while analytical work is taking something apart to identify it’s components. The two are complimentary aspects of screenwriting, but they’re fundamentally different. I like to move back and forth from creative to analytical modes, but trying to do both at the same time usually spells trouble. In other words, if I’m writing a scene and I’m trying to force it to have a particular function in the story, I remove myself from the flow of imaginative writing. On the other hand, it can be helpful going into a scene knowing in advance that this is where, say, the main character is going to make a really stupid decision that leads to a specific event further on in the story.

The various well-known screenwriting paradigms all defer at some level to the three-act structure paradigm, but they operate at different levels of abstractness or specificity and none of them is The Truth About How To Write A Screenplay. Knowing which model is appropriate to the current stage of a project, can make the difference between finding inspiration and encouragement or feeling discouraged and inadequate.

Here are some of the more famous models, and what I personally find useful (and dangerous) about them:

Three-Act Structure

Beginning - middle - end

Basically, the beginning, middle and end of a story. The simplest form of story structure. The usual division is 1%-25% first act, 26%-75% second act, and 76%-100% third act, but it’s not an exact science. I like to know in general terms how my story is going to end before I start outlining, although not all screenwriters do. But knowing what sets the story in motion and what complicates things in the middle, is also handy… I find the three act notion a helpful way of thinking about the very big, rough idea of the story, as you might describe it in a short synopsis or in a pitch to your auntie, rather than anything more detailed than that. It’s also handy to be able to tell people who want to hear these things, where you are in a story when you’re pitching it.

One disadvantage of this model is that it’s so ubiquitous, that it can prompt you to abandon what might be a really interesting idea because you can’t squeeze it into a three-act jacket from the get-go. Sometimes an idea for a story will start from a point that later turns out to be the ending, or perhaps the original inspirational scene or beat won’t survive into the final draft at all. If you’re too hung up on “it has to have three acts” from the moment you start brainstorming, you might miss out on some great ideas.

Five Major Turning Points
This is the model advocated by people like Syd Field, Michael Hauge and lots of others. It’s essentially the same three acts divided into two parts, with a major plot-changing event at each division. It’s just specific enough to be more than the basic idea, and it gives a little bit more flesh to the central personal conflict and the big dramatic question at the heart of the story. I find it a handy expansion on the basic beginning-middle-end form, and also something that can help put the basic story in place before adding much detail. Alternatively, it’s a way of looking at what you’ve already written to see if the story has a sense of rising stakes and tension as it progresses.

Eight Sequences
Also known as the mini-movie method, this is way of writing a screenplay that goes all the way back to the days when films literally consisted of eight reels of celluloid. The idea is to write towards a big dramatic moment or turning point every 10-15 pages or so, within the overall notion of a three-act structure. Each sequence contains three mini-acts too. Lots of people advocate this method because it allows the writer to focus on one short section of the screenplay at a time, which is easier to manage. It also ensures you have plenty of rising tension and dramatic moments, because each sequence builds towards its own climax, so the story takes at least seven major turns.

Example of a screwed creative mind

In abstract terms, each sequence has its own specific focus, from set-up and theme, through increasingly challenging obstacles and increasingly desperate attempts to solve the problems while avoiding the underlying emotional challenge, all the way to the final climax and resolution. Here’s one simple overview of the eight sequences, which right away demonstrates how going into this kind of detail before you start writing might screw your creative mind… I certainly find it inhibiting. One way of using this method in the outlining process that I do find useful, is just to summarize each sequence in a couple of sentences and then get on with inventing scenes. But equally, it’s a way of analysing something you’ve already written, enabling you to see where perhaps the story needs expanding or trimming.

Fifteen Beats: Save the Cat
Much-used book and accompanying software, STC is yet another expansion on the three act notion, but which pays more attention to visual aspects (opening and closing images, the “save the cat moment”), a B-story (subplot) and the antagonistic force in the story. The software actually helps you expand the basic beats into 40 main scenes, which then becomes a detailed outline from which to write a first draft. Some people criticize this approach as being too “writing by numbers,” but other screenwriters swear by it, and it can certainly help create a very tight outline as a jumping off point. The trick is not to take this approach too literally (e.g., in terms of page numbers), but to let it stimulate your imagination. However, I find this kind of paradigm can tempt you into being too analytical while you’re writing. On the site there are numerous analyses of blockbuster movies, broken down into the fifteen STC beats. It’s tempting to think this is how they were written too, but again, analysis after the fact isn’t the same as the creative work before it.

The Hero’s Journey
Also known as the mythical form, or the monomyth, this is another much-touted model for writing screenplays. It was originally formulated by Christopher Volger in his famous book The Writers Journey, but since then many people have adopted various form of the same model as their standard. For example, Stanley D. Williams, who uses an incredibly detailed graph called The Story Diamond to map out the steps of the hero’s journey in a screenplay. Personally, I’ve not been able (yet?) to get inspired by this model, as it feels too prescriptive for me. It’s also based on a psychological assumption that I don’t share, which is that individual willpower can overcome any adverse circumstances in life (call me European if you want to…). However, this is certainly a great model to consult if you are writing a story with a single hero setting out on a quest of some sort.

Twenty-Two Steps

Some of the 22 steps

This is the John Truby method, which again goes into far more detail than the previously mentioned models. Truby claims that his method is made for writers whereas other methods aren’t, and he offers different classes for different genres. What I find useful is his book The Anatomy of Story, which I dip into every now and then to remind myself, for example, that besides a behavioural flaw, my main character needs a moral flaw too. The danger of Truby (and this goes for Robert McKee too, I find) is that they use a lot of prescriptive and judgemental language. Phrases like, “…a good story must have…” or, “…a well-written character always has…” I find if I try and follow this kind of thinking while I’m inventing a story, it just makes me feel I’m doing stuff wrong all the time, because I like to explore possibilities and come to story decisions by encountering dead ends. I like my creative work messy. Still, Truby is very good at analysing current films, and I often find his observations inspiring. Again here, the danger is to imagine that whoever wrote the films he’s analysing, wrote them with his terminology in mind. Also, his admonition to acknowledge what kind of film (genre) you want to be writing and to familiarize yourself totally with its particular story beats, is in itself a valuable insight.

Non-linear structure
I’m a great fan of screenwriting teacher Linda Aronson, whose focus is on screenplays that don’t follow the standard chronological, linear model or have multiple main characters and storylines. Lots of big mainstream movies play around with structure, and it’s been a staple of TV scripts for ever. But as Aronson emphasizes, in the end, all the various story strands are themselves emotional stories with a beginning, middle and end. She also stresses that the form has to be appropriate for the type of story you want to tell, rather than a just gimmick. And indeed, the danger of this model is that you are tempted to mould an ordinary story in a fashionable but inappropriate form. Here, again, you might only discover in the course of writing that a traditional linear form isn’t the right one for your story, or you might start out with a non-linear form in mind and realize it’s not appropriate. I personally find it useful to “try” to tell a story in this kind of form at an early stage in the writing. It’s usually pretty clear quite soon whether, say, shifting the chronology around is going to increase the suspense or just create confusion. Still, it could equally be something to consider once a first draft is finished.

In the end, the only thing that counts is what works for each individual screenwriter. But merely knowing there’s an option to analyze later rather than sooner, might be enough to give your creative juices free rein. It’s liberating, but also reassuring: Whether you prefer to start with a shape and gradually fill it in, or start with bits and pieces that gradually become a shape, I think the main thing is to be aware that these are two sides of the same coin. And each new project dictates which method is most appropriate because ultimately, the method serves the screenplay, not the other way around.

Pros And Cons Of Journaling For Screenwriters

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Some screenwriters can’t write unless they keep a journal. For others journaling is a distraction or even a waste of creative energy. Some thoughts.

Opinions seem divided about the benefits or otherwise of screenwriters keeping a journal. In general, those in favour of journaling see it as a means of finding or keeping focus, putting problems and worries into perspective, or even overcoming writer’s block. On the other side, are those who believe journaling is a self-indulgent displacement activity, and even a waste of your creative resources. Here are some of the common claims about journaling for writers, make of them what you will.

Journaling Helps You Keep Focused
Describing what you think and feel about scenes or characters you’re planning to write, evaluating what you’ve already written, identifying specific story problems you’re wrestling with… these are the kinds of journaling activities that help you distinguish between important and marginal issues. Often, when you’re immersed in a project—especially if you work alone—it can be difficult to sense the relative importance of a scene or a beat. Journaling can help you step back, see the bigger picture and choose which battle to fight, as it were. It’s also a great way to explore your own emotional connection to the story, to check that the story is still exploring or portraying what you intend it to. Also, if you’re like me and you work on multiple projects at once, then journaling can help you decide what not to do on any given day, which can be an important part of formulating your writing and career goals.

Journaling Depletes Your Creative Juices
An often heard warning, which frames creative work as being driven by a kind of fuel that gets used up and needs to be replenished. There’s something to be said for this, as the act of sitting and formulating coherent sentences, requires focused attention and energy. I know from experience that if you love writing, then it really doesn’t matter what you’re writing, you just become immersed in the process of translating your thoughts into written text, and before you know it, it’s time to pick the kids up from school. So it can be useful to set yourself a limited time to journal, because once you’re warmed up (see below), you’ll be ready to get back to your story. Whereas, if you carry on too long, you’ll just be spent when you finally stop.

Journaling Helps You Overcome Distracting Thoughts and Fears

Sian Beilock documents this wonderfully in her book Choke, which describes the research she’s done into performance under pressure. One of the numerous conclusions she’s come to, is that people who are prone to freeze up or be distracted by intrusive thoughts during activities where they need to focus intensively, can benefit from writing about these intrusive thoughts before they start the activity in question. Sometimes, the mere act of articulating clearly what’s on your mind, without necessarily going into any deep analysis or speculation about the underlying causes, can reduce its impact on your performance. It’s as if writing about your concerns is a way of shrinking them and putting them to one side for a while.

Journaling Encourages Self-Obsession
Definitely the flipside of the above and a very real danger of journaling, especially if you’re struggling with self-doubt. It’s very easy to get carried away and wallow in self-pity. Much, much easier, in fact, than doing something about whatever’s wrong. At least, that’s how it can feel if you let yourself get carried away, penning reams and reams of reasons to be miserable. One of those famous and by now thoroughly debunked myths of popular psychology, is that punching a boxing ball gets rid of your aggression. On the contrary, it evokes aggression. The same is true for going on and on about how unfortunate you are. Rather than making you feel better, it usually makes you feel worse.

Journaling Gets The Writing Muscles Moving
This idea frames creative writing as a kind of sport, and views journaling as similar to warming up before engaging in sports. Just writing something, anything, even complaining about not knowing what to write, can get you into the zone, and help overcome writer’s block. But if you extend the sports analogy, at some point you do have to finish the warming up and actually get to the sport. Otherwise…

Journaling Wastes Valuable Writing Time
Here’s an obvious disadvantage, especially if you only have limited time to write besides a day job, kids and other time-consuming, non-writing responsibilities. There’s definitely something to be said for using small windows of writing time for short, intensive spurts of writing, whether that be brainstorming, outlining or even writing pages. Several people have written convincingly about this, including Adrian Mead and Pilar Alessandra. The knowledge that you only have, say, half an hour or even ten minutes, can sometimes really get your creative brain in gear, and it would be ironic, to say the least, to spend that time pondering what’s stopping you from writing.

Journaling Helps You Track Your Writing Progress
This can be pretty confronting if you’re not making good progress, but it’s a great confirmation when you are. I recently read back some early entries in a journal about a screenplay I’m writing, and I was horrified to realize I’d been going round in circles, wrestling with ideas I’d played with before and rejected! At the same time, it clarified some story problems and helped me leave certain ideas behind for good and move on. Plus, keeping a record of your progress is also a way of compiling a (digital) paper trail, especially if you regularly back up your files on a distant server. If nothing else, you have a dated record of when you first started working on a project.

So, those are just a few of the arguments for and against journaling that I’m aware of. I come down on the side of journaling as a generally positive thing. I find it helpful to keep different journals for different projects I’m working on. These tend to be mostly notes about issues that relate specifically to the story at hand, but they can also touch on more general methodological or personal issues that come up. I also keep a more general writing journal, which helps me keep an overview of all the projects I have going at any one time. It’s a good place to identify similar problems that crop up in different projects, and it’s a place to reflect on priorities too.

But the main point is to avoid using journaling as an excuse for not working on your project(s). Journaling is best when it helps you keep a healthy balance between reflecting on your writing and… writing.

Why A Great Screenplay Is Like A Beautiful Woman

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:15:00 +0000

All the usual lists of requirements for a great screenplay can help screenwriters up to a point, but like a beautiful woman, a great screenplay is not reducible to a list of its formal characteristics.

I’ve spent a long time trying to understand why I’m grabbed by one film while another doesn’t really affect me. Sometimes it’s the subject matter, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s the dramatic tension or lack of it. But in the end, I always find that no amount of analysis really captures what makes a film work for me. In fact, the more I strive to improve my own writing by reading screenplays, by watching on screen how other people work their magic, by taking advice from people who know how great screenplays "should" be written, the more I realize there’s a limit to how useful all that analysis of existing material is. Even on an internet dating site, where you can describe your ideal partner, the proof of the pudding is in the first face-to-face encounter. The “chemistry”(or lack of it) is determined by a process than analysis and verbalization of past experiences.

What Does A Beautiful Woman Look Like?
There’s plenty of social psychological research into falling in love, into the link between physical appearance and social status, and into the ever-changing norms concerning what counts as beautiful in different eras and cultures. Nowadays, for example, it’s fashionable to point to colour-coded fMRI scans to show where in the brain people decide what’s beautiful. But in the end, if you try and describe what a beautiful woman (or man) looks like, the only truthful answer is: I know one when I see one. It’s not helpful to say she should have straight blond hair, this or that hip-to-breast ratio, a certain type of gait… all these things may be true, but only on average and in retrospect. When you’ve seen the beautiful woman, you can describe certain aspects that you think attracted you to her, but that’s obviously not what attracts you to her in the moment. Your description is just a crude attempt to verbalize an immensely complex process that happens unconsciously, in milliseconds.

What Does An Amazing Movie Look Like?
It’s a familiar exercise that screenwriting teachers and how-to books propagate: Imagine what people coming out of the cinema are saying to each other about your film. Or: Imagine the poster. These are just a couple of ways of trying to distil the essence of a screenplay into a few pithy statements, so that you can keep yourself on track during the writing, and to give yourself a catchy pitch. These, and many other tricks of the trade are absolutely helpful, but they don’t do the creative work for you. Because, think about it, what made the last movie you loved, so great? That question alone activates a plethora of unconscious, pre-existing notions about “aspects of a film.” So you might say something about the acting, the camera work, the dialogue, the emotional dilemmas, and so on. But that, too, is just a crude attempt to verbalize a complex, largely unconscious experience. What you loved about the movie was the experience, not a bullet list of cinematic criteria. And what you loved about it may not be what other people loved about it. They may even not have liked it at all.

Analysis Is Not The Same As Creativity
For me, then, the lesson is that you can’t turn it around and use a crude analysis of a film you loved as the basis for your own screenplay. You can adopt the same structure as an existing movie, you can keep the same actors in mind when writing your own characters, you can imitate pacing and transitions, you can even copy someone’s writing style. And because your screenplay is going to be read by a lot of people who have lists of “good screenwriting criteria” boxes to tick, you have to master all the formal aspects of screenwriting just to get attention. But in the end, what makes a screenplay stand out from the crowd (and hopefully the movie that’s based on it, too) is dependent on so many unpredictable factors, not least of all the personal taste of readers, that the only sensible thing to do is to be true to what you yourself want to write. Find your own personal, emotional connection with your story and follow that.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Just because your best friend’s beloved doesn’t attract you, you’re not going to try and convince them to stop loving that person, are you? But there are people who aren’t embarrassed to explain to you why you’re wrong, say, to enjoy the most popular movie of all time so far: James Cameron’s Avatar. It’s “actually” not a good story, they'll tell you. Go know. So I think that following your own preference is probably wise. Which is not the same as saying that professional craftsmanship is irrelevant, because that’s certainly not true. My philosophy is: Get the craft, then tell your own stories.

It only takes one person in the right place at the right time to find my screenplay beautiful.

The Danger Of Committing Too Soon To An Idea For A Film

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +0000

Sometimes, what initially seems like a great premise for a film, might actually only be part of a great premise for a film, or even not great at all.

Like any self-respecting screenwriter I’m always on the lookout for good ideas for spec screenplays. I love books like Bill Martell’s Your Idea Machine because they remind me how essential it is to always keep your eyes and ears tuned to the ideas ether. That means not just keeping up with the news, both global and local, staying abreast of developments in hard science, social science (and even pseudo-science), skimming magazines, but also eavesdropping on gossip, catching snippets of conversation, etc. Anything that might contain the germ of a film premise when prodded by a “What if…?” or when otherwise treated as a jumping off point for fantasy.

It’s A Premise Captain, But Not As We Know It
However, sometimes I’ll come up with an idea and mistakenly see it as a premise for a story, when actually it might function much better as a section of something larger. In other words, I might have “merely” thought of a scene, a sequence, or a sub-plot, or even a minor character’s story, but I’ve latched onto it too soon and given it the status of story premise. I find a really good way to play with the ideas I come up with, is to ask myself things like:

Imagine this is a sub-plot. What is the main story?
Imagine this is just one sequence. What happened before? What happens afterwards?
Imagine this is only a scene. Where, chronologically, in the story does it take place?
Imagine this character is a minor character. Who is the main character, and what is their story?
Imagine this character is the antagonist. What’s he after?
Imagine this is just the backstory.
What if this were a major turning point somewhere late in the story?

Obsessive Logline Syndrome (OLS)
I guess the art of generating good film ideas also requires being able to tolerate a degree of uncertainty. Because ideas morph and evolve while you think about them. Some aspect of an idea may seem self-evident one day, only to fall by the wayside the next day as a result of a new twist or insight. This is something that has always bothered me about the notion that you must have a logline first, and only then start brainstorming scenes, sequences, etc. To me this is completely counter-intuitive. Sure, once you start writing a treatment or a first draft, it’s useful to have a good logline to hand in case anyone wants to know what you’re up to. In fact it’s always useful to use the logline format to check if your story still ticks the necessary screenplay boxes. But the logline evolves in tandem with the writing. So if I come up with something during the writing that makes the story better but, say, changes the main character from a man into a woman, then I go with that and adapt the logline accordingly.

Recognizing A Dead Horse
Clearly, you need to know when the idea isn’t big enough to carry an entire screenplay. Sometimes that’s obvious right away when you try and imagine a pitchable storyline with a main character who has a goal, and so on. Other times it might only become obvious after you’ve finished writing a two-page outline. It’s a matter of practice too, I suppose. But I know for sure that my own worst pitfall is committing to an idea too soon. I’m doing it less and less these days, but I’ve done it in the past. I once even found myself half way through a first draft before realizing the idea wasn’t sound as a film premise. I’m never doing that again, I can tell you!

My New Ideas Rule For 2012
I’ve instigated a new rule for myself for 2012: Whenever I think I’ve found a great idea for a screenplay, I have to brainstorm versions of the idea in as many different genres as possible, with different endings and beginnings, and other variations, before I settle on whether it really is worth pursuing to, say, a one-page synopsis. Plus this: If the synopsis doesn’t grab me, I’m allowed to admit the idea wasn’t as good as it first appeared.

Good raving writing to you all in 2012!

Does Your Screenplay Have A Unique Selling Point?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:04:00 +0000

One glance at the most successful films at the box office these days, shows that reality as we know it isn’t a big seller. So what to do if your story is set in the real world?

I’ve never been a big fan of supernatural stories. Despite some great scenes in movies like The Sixth Sense, I usually can’t get beyond the wet blanket of a sceptic in me, who knows the difference between superstition and science. It just spoils the story for me. Or otherwise, it’s just too scary for me, and I don’t like being scared. But the truth of the box office is, that a lot more people will pay to see vampires and werewolves, the tooth fairy, pirates, ghost stories, comic book heroes, outrageous comedy worlds, Father Christmas, sci-fi and animation, than plain old drama. Which means that the chances of finding funding for a spec screenplay based in reality are minimal compared to a story with a supernatural or fantasy element. Unless…

Reality, But Not As We Know It
I love watching trailers. Partly because I’ve got too little time to go and watch all the movies I’d love to see, and partly because they are such a good guide to what’s unique about a film. Two current trailers, Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method made me realize that a screenplay can have a unique selling point without necessarily having to pander to superstition. What these films share, as far as I can see, is a reference to a real-world phenomenon that everyone is familiar with, or at least familiar enough to be able to engage with, without the film having to explain anything. It’s this that elevates the stories beyond their basic plots, and gives them that something extra: a unique selling point.

Example: Habemus Papam – The Pope
Whether you’re a Catholic or not, the figure of The Pope is something that automatically evokes all sorts of associations to do with religion, tradition, history, celibacy, men in dresses, and so on. A bit like Father Christmas, but then… real. As far as I can tell from the trailer, the film does an excellent job of playing with these familiar aspects, while telling a really funny story. Because the starting point is something that most people have some kind of idea about, the film doesn’t have to do any explaining for it to work.

Example: A Dangerous Method - Psychoanalysis
Whether you’ve been in psychoanalysis or not (the vast majority of the world’s population hasn’t), the name Sigmund Freud is likely to ring a bell and evoke some associations with therapy, Freudian slips, the unconscious, a long cylindrical object a hairy orifice (Freud’s cigar), Vienna, etc. A bit like Sherlock Holmes, but then… real. Starting from that more or less familiar arena, David Cronenberg weaves a dramatic tale based on real events, about lust, unconscious desires, challenging authority and so on. Here too, because many people have a pre-existing idea about who Freud was and what psychoanalysis is, the arena is already there in the audience’s mind before the start of the film.

Tapping Into The Collective Unconscious
To me, this is one of the most difficult aspects of screenwriting. But I can see why it makes perfect sense. All the aspects of screenwriting craft, such as conflict, character flaw, character arc, sequences, three act structure, and so on, are all well and good. There’s no doubt that being able to write well and according to industry standards, is necessary. But perhaps not sufficient. What really makes a screenplay stand out from the crowd, is something at the centre of the story world, that goes beyond the familiar world we inhabit, while touching on something that lives in everyone’s mind, in the collective unconscious. Something original that has universal resonance. It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Very few people are intimate with The Pope, but billions of people have an idea of The Pope in their mind. The same is true of fantastic and supernatural concepts such as vampires, angels, werewolves and fairy tale characters. But also of familiar, real-world phenomena, such as historical figures (monarchs, dictators, politicians, artists, biblical characters, etc,) famous sporting events, battles, illnesses (mental or physical), festivals (national, religious, etc.), inventions, and so the list goes on.

Any one of these phenomena integrated into an otherwise "merely" dramatic or funny story, can elevate it to a level that makes it accessible and interesting to a much wider audience. It’s not a guarantee for success, because if the story isn’t emotionally engaging anyway, then nothing will help. But it certainly increases the chances of a screenplay getting attention, which is what a unique selling point is supposed to do.

Cognitive Dissonance As Inner Conflict: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:07:00 +0000

All mainstream movies are about characters struggling with personal transformation. The concept of cognitive dissonance offers insight into why a character might resist change.

A while ago I read a wonderful book called Mistakes Were made, But Not By Me, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It’s full of eye-opening insights about how people go about convincing themselves they are doing the right thing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The human mind has evolved to be able to cope with two contradictory thoughts, by reasoning away the contradiction. Thought A is, say, a positive thought about oneself, and thought B is a negative thought about your choice or your actions. The underlying idea is that once you commit to a position, however seemingly insignificant, your (unconscious) priority becomes to justify that position by selectively noticing things that support it and ignoring things that don’t. The authors call this “self-justification.”

A simple example might be the decision to buy a certain kind of car. Before you decide which make or model, you shop around, weigh up pros and cons of various types of cars, etc. But after you’ve signed the deal, you only pick up new information that confirms your choice of new car and proves that other cars are inferior. Even if this isn’t correct.

Bad Choices Lead To Cognitive Dissonance
However, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the purchase of consumer goods. It applies to any choice a person makes. How you vote, who you marry, where you choose to live, what school you send your kids to, career choices, and so on. And what’s most important in terms of writing a screenplay is, it also applies to decisions you have secret doubts about or even deeply regret… In other words: Inner conflict.

Here’s how a character’s cognitive dissonance could be relevant to the beginning of a screenplay, where the story world is being established, as are the main character’s goal and weakness. Remember, for our purposes, cognitive dissonance means reconciling two contradictory thoughts by (unconsciously) reasoning away the contradiction. This leads to the denial of a problem, rationalizations that cover up the problem, avoidance of the problem altogether, etc. This is precisely the kind of unfulfilled state you want your main character in at the beginning of your story, in order to create both inner and outer conflict and to create the potential for emotional growth—at a price.

Rationalizing Away Cognitive Dissonance
We all know her: The neighbour who’s all smiles and cheerfulness, but who’s married to a scumbag. Everyone knows he treats her like dirt, but the more people urge her to consider a life away from him, in which she’ll find real love and affection, the more she insists that she’s really very happy with the scumbag. The cognitive dissonance here is this: Thought A = I’m an intelligent, loving woman. Thought B = I’m married to an abusive bully. Those two thoughts are dissonant, they contradict each other. The coping strategy here, is self-justification through rationalization: My husband’s under a lot of pressure, he’s not good at expressing his feelings, he’s such a good lover… and so on. What does that set up in terms of story? It promises the audience that a character who rationalizes away a problem like this, is going to be confronted with what they’re denying, later in the story.

A classic movie example is Bruce Willis’s character in Die Hard, who after six months is still angry at his estranged wife for choosing her career above their marriage. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = She makes me feel like a loser; thought B = I’m lonely, I miss her. His rationalization for not praising her achievements and showing her affection: I’m a tough guy, I don’t need her, I can manage fine on my own, she’ll realize she needs me sooner or later, etc.

Another example might be Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in 500 Days of Summer, who hangs on to the delusion that the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, feels the same way about him, despite plenty of clues to contradict this. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = This girl is the best thing that’s ever happened to me; thought B = This girl is totally unwilling to commit to me. His rationalizations for not heeding his 12-year old half-sister’s advice to forget the girl and move on: But we like the same music; this isn’t what women are really like; she just hasn’t realize yet that wants to be more than just friends, etc.

Cognitive Dissonance Questionnaire
Here are a few questions that might help bring this concept into focus for the beginning of your own screenplay, or at any other point where it feels relevant:

What dissonance between contradictory thoughts does your character reason away?
How is this self-justification visible in their actions and choices?
What other character benefits from the contradiction?
What evidence is the character (deliberately) ignoring?
Which of the character’s contradictory thoughts do they really need to reject?
What is the character afraid will happen if they resolve the dissonance?
What does the character stand to gain if they resolve the dissonance?

Theses are just some suggestions. There are inevitably lots of other ways to explore this aspect of a character. But part of the fun of writing, I find, is discovering your own way.

Next time, I’ll have a look at how cognitive dissonance manifests when a character is confronted with their dissonance, but continues to resist change.

Five Ways To Think About Your Screenplay’s Arena

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:46:00 +0000

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of when and where a story is set, but arena is an integral part of every screenplay.

Here’s what set me thinking about this: I wrote a short screenplay, which I hope to get up and running with my director brother Jonathan (check out his impressive showreel here). He read the script, liked it, had a few notes and then said, deadpan, “I’d like to set it in the 1970s, that would be visually really cool!” I swear, the first thing that came to my mind was: how is this relevant to the story? The second thing was, budget. Then all the beats with mobile phones and other 21st century tech stuff flashed in front of my eyes. Then I realized, okay, my brother’s used to directing big commercials, with budgets you could shoot three indie features for. But I’m a struggling screenwriter, happy if something of mine is shot for nothing, so I’m used to weighing every detail very carefully. One such ‘detail’ is arena.

Era As Arena
The time in which a story is set, determines a lot more than just wardrobe and props. Just think of the difference in attitudes to sex, authority, or religion in, say, 1550, 1850 and 1950. It’s not just impossible to ignore these differences in values, it’s a real waste! Using the arena to add a layer of meaning to a story can be really effective. For example, imagine a story about an unintended pregnancy, like Knocked Up or Juno, set in the 1950s. The story would be much more about the taboo and shame of pregnancy out of wedlock, rather than about the difficult personal choices facing the main characters. A story is set in a particular era for a reason, both to comment on that era and as a way of reflecting the personal dilemmas of the main characters in the social events of that time.

Geographical Location As Arena
Similarly, where a story is situated determines a lot more than the palette and soundtrack of a film. The local culture (which can even differ within a single city) is the context within which a story plays out. It has values and social conflicts which offer specific potential for conflict, metaphor, action, etc., which if related to what the story is about, can infuse a screenplay with more meaning. Plus, contrasting locations within a story can emphasize thematic or narrative developments in the story, too. A classical contrast is city-countryside, in which the urban environment represents modern values and the rural setting represents traditional values. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, the emphasis depends on what argument the film is trying to make. Similarly, the nature of the terrain can be very expressive too. There’s a big difference between action set in a isolated, physically demanding location such as a desert or a mountain, and action set in a luxurious tourist resort or a crowded slum.

Fantasy World As Arena

Science fiction and animation (or a combination of both) offer the opportunity to specifically design a story world to explore a particular thematic issue, or philosophical question. By stepping outside normal reality, the film can explore big questions in a very focused way. Questions about ethics, free will, about artificial intelligence, life on other planets, and so on. What would it be like if the police could see a future crime happening and still have time to prevent it (Minority Report)? Or: what would it be like if humans were raised like livestock to harvest their organs (Never Let Me Go)?

Limited Physical Location As Arena
Setting a story in one building, or on a ship, or some other location with clear boundaries and a specific character, is a great way to create a microcosm in which differing world views battle it out. A classic example is Twelve Angry Men, in which almost the entire film plays out in one room, where a jury sweats over a case they’ve heard. But a limited location can also be a source of great suspense, like in films such as Die Hard, Titanic, Alien, and plenty more, where the viewer is constantly aware that “there’s no way out.” But it’s not just a source of cinematic tension, it’s also a metaphor for life’s limitations, for our awareness of our own mortality and how we deal with that.

Organization As Arena

Whether the story is set within an official institute (e.g., a prison, a psychiatric hospital, the army, a school), an informal organization (e.g., the mafia), a small or large business, a sports team, or even a family, all of these groupings represent certain values. All types of organizations suggest some degree of required conformity to the system and its values, so there’s an inherent potential for conflict there. The story might be about a conflict between an individual within the organization trying to get out, an outsider trying to get in, a faction trying to bring about change from the inside, or some other variation. Whatever the specifics of the conflict, the organization itself offers a great opportunity to establish a clear set of values as a backdrop for the narrative. There are countless examples of prison, mafia, army, sports and family drama movies that use this kind of construct.

I’m sure there are plenty of additional ways to think about arena, but what’s clear is that arena is an integral part of what a film is about. It expresses something about the challenges the main characters face, both in terms of the concrete goal they have to achieve and the underlying, internal flaw they have to confront. Sometimes, a thought experiment in which you change the arena of your story, can be a great way to prize out what the story is about. Kind of similar to imagining the story being told from the point of view of a different character. Even if you decide not to change the arena, just imagining the change can reveal aspects of the story or characters you were missing. You quickly see whether the change would add a layer to the story or just distract from what it’s really about.

And my short? All the 1970s historical circumstances that I came up with were interesting, but essentially distracting. So for the time being, anyway, the short is still set in the present.

Three Great Ways To Find Your Main Character’s Flaw

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:28:00 +0000

In mainstream cinema, the main character’s flaw is the key to their transformation, or arc. So a well-defined flaw is an invaluable guide during the writing process.

I’ve recently been inspired and helped by Pilar Alessandra’s wonderful book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter. Written for screenwriters juggling day jobs, kids and other time-consuming distractions, the book consists of a series of brief questionnaires, each designed to focus your mind on one aspect of your screenplay for ten minutes. I find it a great way to make optimal use of a limited amount of time. However, the main character’s flaw as a basic story element isn’t really treated separately in the book, so I’ve come up with my own coffee break questionnaire…

The main character’s flaw is an essential ingredient in a screenplay, because it’s what stops the them from achieving their goal. It’s the thing they’re most reluctant to face up to, because of the pain or loss involved in really acknowledging the flaw and then changing. It’s also what the antagonist latches onto and uses to make things increasingly difficult for the main character. But the flaw isn’t just important for writing the story, it’s also an essential ingredient in a good logline. It’s the essence of the description of the main character, and as such it indicates what kind of arc the main character will have to go through for there to be a satisfactory resolution to the story, regardless of genre.

So, without further ado, here are three questions which can easily be brainstormed during a ten minute window in between the ironing and the washing-up, or while waiting for an appointment or a meeting, or while your daughter has her ballet lesson… Oh, and here’s my disclaimer: I’m only saying this kind of brainstorming is useful, because I’ve found it useful. As always, my motto is: whatever works for you. Feel free to vary or ignore these questions at will.

How Does The Story End?
If you know how you want your story to end, where does that leave the main character? What are they capable of (physically, emotionally, spiritually, morally, etc.) at the end of the story, that they weren’t capable of at the beginning? Here are some examples. Not from Jaws, Tootsie, The Wizard of Oz, or even Casablanca, though...

By the end of Hallum Foe Jamie Bell’s character is capable of real intimacy. That’s a satisfying ending, because his flaw to begin with is his inability to grieve his mother’s suicide, a psychological obstacle which manifests in his bizarre and anti-social behaviour, and results in his alienation and loneliness.

Here’s another: By the end of Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg’s character is vindicated in his ruthless commitment to justice, which is precisely the ‘flaw’ that gets him demoted to a seemingly uneventful village in the first place. In this story, the main character’s unwillingness to ‘play the game’ (i.e., he works too diligently, making his police colleagues look bad) remains steadfast, but turns from a flaw into a strength.

So, knowing how your story ends allows you to ‘reverse engineer’ the main character’s arc, and determine what the most appropriate flaw is to start with.

What Is The Antagonist’s Goal?
Every great antagonist has their own story, something they are trying to achieve which is being obstructed by the main character. So the main character is going to battle it out with a force that knows them well and is hell-bent on stopping them, particularly by hitting them where it hurts most. Often, the antagonist essentially wants the same thing as the main character, but has a diametrically opposed moral worldview.

In John Patrick Stanley´s Doubt both Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have the best interests of the pupils at their Catholic school at heart. However, they differ in their ideas about how to achieve this. Meryl Streep’s character is an old-fashioned disciplinarian, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is an open-minded liberal. She will do anything to prevent him from introducing a more tolerant, lenient culture into her Catholic school, including fabricating an ‘incident’ to justify firing him. Hoffman’s flaw is his belief that being open about his doubts will bring about positive change. By the end of the story, however, Hoffman is able to accept that there are some things he can’t change. This insight is the direct result of the intense and ultimately successful attack on him by Meryl Streep.

So, if it’s clear what the antagonist wants, then the main character’s flaw is going to be just what they need to get the job done.

What makes the main character’s goal so hard to achieve?
What specific thing does the main character have to achieve for us to know the story is over? What do they have to win, conquer, escape from, retrieve, deliver, refrain from… etc.? And what makes it so much harder for them to achieve this than for anyone else? Why is this the worst possible situation for this character to have to deal with? I mean, none of us wants to be buried alive or stuck on a hijacked plane, so that level of generic, primal emotion works on a plot level. But what specific difficulty does this particular goal raise for the main character in this particular story?

In Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan Nathalie Portman’s character finally achieves the lead role in a major ballet production, after years of hard graft and numerous disappointments. However, this achievement turns out to be the beginning, not the end of her story, because in order to dance the part to the director’s satisfaction, she must unleash the dark side of her psyche, which she has kept hermetically sealed away. What makes this task so hard for her to fulfil, is her extreme emotional and sexual repression and its manifestation in her ruthless perfectionism. Her flaw is her inability to let go without losing control, which ultimately proves fatal.

Here’s another example: In Tangled the main character Rapunzel wants to go to the beguiling lanterns that float in the distant sky once every year, but she’s locked in a tower by her wicked stepmother, Gothel. In order to achieve her goal she must escape, but in order escape she needs to lose her innocence, her naivety, and to rebel against her stepmother. This is particularly hard for Rapunzel, because she has been kept completely ignorant of the outside world. She wouldn’t know where to start. Rapunzel’s flaw is her innocence and ignorance, which is precisely why her goal seems so impossible to achieve.

So, the specific reason why achieving the goal is difficult for the main character, is intimately linked with their flaw.

These are three questions I’ve found useful, but I’m sure there are others. In any case, being as clear as possible about the main character’s flaw is a powerful way to focus on what obstacles to put in their way, it helps to crystallize thematic issues and it’s a hugely important component for a good logline… in short, well worth spending ten minutes on!

Are You Writing A Film Or A Screenplay?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Here’s a question script readers, producers and directors all have in mind when they finally read your material: Is this a film?

We writers love to write. Words are our raw material, just like sounds and rhythms are to composers. But there’s a big difference between being able to write well and being able to write a great film. Sure, it’s essential to know how to construct a coherent, engaging narrative, populated by intriguing characters for whom something important is at stake. You also need to be able to express characters’ emotional struggles through visual action, locations, props and so on, as well as through dialogue. But a screenplay that reads like a film, makes effective use of cinematic language too, such as image systems, scene transitions, pacing, and so on. So that while you read, you’re seeing the film in your mind.

Cinematic Conventions
There are only so many stories or plots the human mind has come up with so far. We’ve all seen them countless times in different guises. So when a screenwriter sits down to write, say, a coming of age film, or an impossible romance, or a revenge-driven thriller, there are certain storytelling and genre conventions which need to be respected. Even to cleverly subvert these conventions you need to be aware of them first. Check out Jennifer van Sijll’s article for some specific examples. But besides knowing story per se, a screenwriter has to be well-versed in cinematic conventions too, for a screenplay to really read like a film.

Think Like a Director

When a director reads a script, they’re not interested in a writer’s flair with words. They’re focused on what’s going to happen on the screen. It’s all about images, and what story the images are telling, rather than what the characters are saying. It’s the screenwriter’s responsibility to tell a visual story, using only words. Which is far more involved than it sounds. One book I’ve recently found inspiring in this respect, is Gustavo Mercado’s beautiful tome, The Filmmaker’s Eye. This kind of material really helps me understand more profoundly what it means to write a film rather than a screenplay. It’s not achieved by cramming a script full of camera angles and technical terms, but rather by familiarizing yourself with and understanding how different shots and images affect the audience, mostly at an unconscious level. For example, repeating a similar visual composition at different points in the story, can suggest different characters experiencing the same emotion. Also interesting, is a recent episode of Pilar Alessandra’s On The Page audio podcast, entitled Production Weighs In On Screenwriting, which addresses some nuts and bolts issues about writing in a way that helps set and costume designers.

Scene Transitions
Another specific aspect of screenwriting that can distinguish a screenplay from a film, is how scenes follow on from other scenes. Here’s a useful article by Janice Hally, which sums up some of the ways scenes can dovetail effectively. But a more practical way to become fluent in this aspect of visual storytelling, is to simply pay more attention to how it’s done in films you really love. Check out how a transition that worked well, was written in the script. Watch and re-watch films by directors who have a very distinct visual style, such as Edgar Wright (e.g., Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim), Darren Aronofsky (e.g., The Fountain, Black Swan) or Quentin Tarantino (e.g., Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction), and check out how they use transitions to tell their stories visually.

So, yes, writing a screenplay is all about breaking the story, getting its structure right, delving into the characters and their emotional dilemmas, and so on. But writing a film means screening the film in your mind’s eye while you write, and writing in such a way that everyone who reads the screenplay will know: This is a film.

Why Real Life Isn’t The Same As Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:13:00 +0000

It’s one thing to experience or read about a dramatic event. It’s quite another thing to construct a screenplay with dramatic tension at its heart.

I just returned from a two-week family camping holiday in France. Along with my suntan, mounds of dirty washing, and a very crumpled tent, I also brought home a notebook bulging with new ideas for stories, inspired by things I witnessed along the way. I’m certain most of these ideas won’t survive closer scrutiny, but then again, one or two might turn out to be worth expanding into a synopsis or an outline. But besides reminding me that the supply of story ideas is more or less infinite, another thing this experience brought home to me again, is that there’s a big difference between ‘dramatic’ in its casual everyday sense, and Dramatic in terms of screenwriting.

Slices Of Life

During the course of the holiday, I drove a couple of thousand miles, stayed at five different locations, and encountered countless different people and situations. Too many experiences to remember. Which is what life is like. We don’t even consciously register most of what we experience, it just goes in one sense and comes out another. It’s events that cause an emotional stir that make an impression. Things that make you laugh, cry, shake with fear or anger. Like my encounter with an initially genial and helpful, ex-pat manager of a depressing camp site who, when I inadvertently disturbed him during his lunch hour to check out, turned out to be a sadistic psychopath, from whom I barely managed to escape with my life. In retrospect an amusing, if unnerving incident. ‘Dramatic’ in the everyday sense of involving fear, and perhaps even material for a scene. But not a screenplay, or even a premise for one, per se.

Real Life As A Starting Point For Drama
Observing the goings-on around me, say, at a swimming pool packed with sunburned tourists or in a huge French hypermarché teeming with gesticulating Gauls, I found myself fantasizing about who various people were, what their relationships were with people they were with, what would happen if… Which is where the writing starts. Simply transcribing reality into script format doesn’t make for a great screenplay. Just try it. At best, what you end up with is an interesting starting point from which to brainstorm a dramatic premise. Even reality–based films like Social Network, or biopics like The King’s Speech, are all carefully crafted dramatic works. Which means they engage the audience’s emotions, by putting characters in situations where they stand to lose something of great value to them personally.

What’s The Risk? What’s At Stake?

Most people’s lives (at least ordinary lives like mine, and most people I know), aren’t particularly dramatic, let alone cinematic. Take my encounter with the obnoxious camp site manager. We had an exchange of words, he pedantically tried to make me wait until his lunch hour was over before opening the gate and letting me drive out. We had something of a stand-off, in which I managed to stay calm because he was behaving like an indignant toddler, and then… yawn. It fizzled out, like most real-life encounters do. The worst that could have happened, was that I would have had to wait. But what if he had had my passport locked in his safe? Or what if he had been brandishing a knife? Or what if we were the only family there and the site were on an island? Or what if he had one of my kids locked in his house? Everyone experiences big emotions at some point in their life, and there’s a well-known list of 20 most stressful life events to prove it. However, for an emotional experience to become an dramatic premise, the character has to be forced to choose between losing something important to them or taking some sort of risk. In real life, most people will avoid taking risks if at all possible. In drama, the audience is engaged by the character’s decision to take the risk that they, the audience, would avoid at all cost, whether it makes them cringe, cry, laugh or shiver.

A Dramatic Event Isn’t A Screenplay
So, my experience reminded me that as a screenwriter, I need to be aware which sense of ‘dramatic’ applies to an idea for a story. When the news media refer to an incident as dramatic, they mean it’s fraught with emotion (usually fear of one sort or another, followed by relief or grief). But when you refer to a story idea as dramatic, you mean it’s constructed deliberately in a way that creates tension, poses a dramatic question, and makes you want to know what happens next. The bad news is that it takes a lot of hard graft to turn a real-life event into a workable premise for a screenplay. Which you then still have to write. The good news, though, is that you are surrounded by a potentially endless supply of events and characters, each of which could be the seed of a wonderful new story idea.

And no, my encounter with the narky proprietor didn’t yield any particularly great story ideas for me, although I can well imagine aficionados of the horror or thriller genres wanting to pick up the ball and run with it…

How To Get Your Short Film Produced

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:55:00 +0000

The Catch-22 of not being able to get your screenplay produced because nothing you’ve written has been produced yet, is immensely frustrating. But there is hope.

In the wake of the recent online release of Second Thoughts, a short film written by me and directed/produced by Trevor Walsh at White Tiger Films, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the insights I’ve gained in the process of getting a short script produced. There’s no magic bullet, and more often than not a breakthrough will come from an unexpected source, but the following are some strategies I’ve found practical and effective. Above all, these strategies have enabled me, as a screenwriter, to keep the initiative and avoid feeling like a victim.

See Second Thoughts on YouTube.

Enter Screenwriting Competitions
There are numerous competitions out there, some are free to enter, others charge a fee. Some give complimentary feedback, even from multiple readers. To find out about competitions and upcoming deadlines, check out Hayley Mackenzie’s calendar over at Script Angel. For a less UK-centric overview, register at Without a Box, to receive very regular updates about upcoming competitions and deadlines. You don’t have to win a competition for it to be helpful in terms of getting your film produced. Any mention in a screenwriting competition, even “quarter finalist” or “third round,” is evidence that your writing has enough quality to be taken seriously. Don’t forget to read each competition’s rules carefully, and make sure your screenplay is properly formatted and proofread before you send it.

Find A Director Or A Producer
There are literally thousands of directors and producers out there, hungry for good scripts. But they won’t find you unless you make your existence known to them. There are various ways to go about this. For example, last year, at the London Screenwriters Festival, I attended a forum in which director Olly Blackburn advised screenwriters with short screenplays to contact commercials directors, something that had helped launch his own career. Often these are directors with a huge amount of professional skill and experience, some of whom are looking to transition into directing shorts and features. It’s easy to find out online who directed a particular commercial, and most directors have their own websites or are on Facebook, etc. Another great way to find directors and producers, is to browse the catalogues of film festivals such as Raindance. Every short film screened will be listed and will include details of who directed and produced the film. Check them out online and get in contact with them. Another tried and trusted method is answering calls for scripts on online bulletins such as Shooting People. Which brings me to:

Have A Good Written Pitch Ready
It’s no good going out into the world with a script under your arm unless you know how to sell it. And we’re talking short screenplays here, so I don’t mean selling it for money. I mean knowing how to describe your script briefly and appetizingly. You basically need a good logline a brief synopsis, and an appealing one-page blurb. The one-pager can include one-sentence statements about things like genre, who the potential audience is, length of the script, production value (how many characters, locations, etc.). Any kind of brief information that will give the reader a quick and clear overview of what the project is likely to entail. Very important: Don’t bluff. If you’re not sure, don’t include it in the document. Here’s an example for a short script of mine entitled We Shall See.

Keep Yourself Motivated By Knowing Your Objective
Why do want to get your short screenplay produced in the first place? That may seem like a trite question, but it isn’t. Most short films, especially involving screenwriters with no produced material to their name, do not generate any income and are made either for very little or no money at all. Are you prepared to work on a short film production for free? That means taking notes from the director and producer, doing multiple rewrites, and so on, all for no pay. For most screenwriters without a credit, the primary reason for doing this kind of work for free, is to get that all-important first credit. Keeping that in mind, as well as the fact that most other people working on short films are in the same boat, can be an extremely good way of keeping your morale up. Lastly, acknowledge and accept beforehand that the majority of the people you contact will not get back to you. Not even a “Thank you for your email.” Don’t take that personally. There could be any number of reasons why a director or producer or anyone else doesn’t respond to your enquiries. It’s usually not because you’re a bad writer… Apart from anything else, it’s important to keep on writing new material. Once a script is ready to pitch, start pitching it and entering it into competitions, but also start writing the next script right away! What you write is your main asset. The more scripts you write, and the more feedback you get on your writing, the better you will write. The more people who read your material, the closer that first credit will come. It’s partly just a numbers game in that respect.

Concluding words
And finally this: Second Thoughts came about through a combination of the above strategies. Another short script of mine had been recommended to Trevor Walsh by script reader Jez Freedman, and when Trevor contacted me about that script, he asked me if I would write something else for him first. Which I did. So you see, you never know when opportunity will knock or how. The trick is to always be prepared for when it does…

That’s it for now, I have to get back to my scripts now…

What Is Your Screenplay’s Master Conflict?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:53:00 +0000

An important aspect of any great screenplay is the idea at its core that informs every scene and unifies all the action. Here’s one way of thinking about this, inspired by Canadian sociologist, Gérard Bouchard.

Commentators on screenwriting use a variety of terms to refer to that core aspect of the screenplay that needs to be present in all the relationships and action in order to give the screenplay a sense of unity. You might call it theme, or premise, or main problem, or controlling idea. I even recently heard it referred to as the “game” at the centre of a story.

Master Myth and Derivative Myth
Canadian professor of sociology, Gérard Bouchard, describes a core aspect of a society’s identity as its Master Myth. This is a set of values, relatively stable over time, that describes the foundation of a particular society’s culture. It lies at the heart of a society’s social, political and cultural life, and provides a sense of unity and continuity. These basic values, which inform a society’s attitude towards big issues such as the economy, immigration, sexuality, religion and so on, remain stable over relatively long periods of time, but every generation or two they manifest in new ways, which Bouchard calls Derivative Myths. So, for example, the American master myth might be expressed in terms of individualism, freedom, enterprise, self-determination, and so on. In the past, the derivative myth was expressed as the need for government to ensure that individual citizens were able to enjoy freedom, whereas nowadays, the same basic values are expressed in a derivative myth of a more laissez-faire nature, in which government intervention is frowned upon. Same values, different expression.

Master Conflict and Derivative Conflict
For a story to work as a screenplay, it has to be seriously compressed. There’s only so much screen time to fill, and only so many scenes in which to do that. As a result, the more each element of the screenplay focuses on the same idea, the more coherent and focused the screenplay becomes. Using Bouchard’s idea as an analogy, I find it helpful to look at my writing with this question in mind: What is the Master Conflict here? What is the problematic issue all the characters must relate to in one way or another? What is the basic conflict that returns in various different guises, or Derivative Conflicts, in every scene? Here’s an example.

Towelhead
Alan Ball’s 2008 drama, Towelhead, is a film about a teenage girl, Jasira (played by Summer Bishil) discovering her burgeoning sexuality and the problems this causes her with the men around her. Early on, after Jasira has allowed her mother’s live-in boyfriend to help her shave off her pubic hair, the mother, Gail, spells out what the film is going to be about:

....................GAIL
...............(stares at her, sharply)
..........The bottom line is this, Jasira:
..........When Barry offered to shave you,
..........you should have said no. There
..........are right ways and wrong ways to
..........act around men, and for you to
..........learn which is which, you should
..........probably go live with one.

Gail's anger almost masks the primal vulnerability she hates that she's feeling right now. Almost.

So here’s my version of the master conflict under scrutiny in this film: Every individual struggles to regulate their instinctual sexual needs according to agreed social norms. These three elements, the individual, their sexual needs and society’s norms, form the ingredients for all the specific (“derivative”) conflicts that play out in this film. The main character, thirteen-year old Jasira, is confused by the conflicting messages she receives about her sexuality. She encounters older predators, in the form of her mother’s boyfriend and her father’s neighbour, who are unwilling or unable to regulate their sexual instincts. Their derivative conflict is that of a sexually active adult confronted with the temptation to abuse a trusting, naive child. Jasira encounters an opposite, severely repressive attitude from her conservative Lebanese father, who viciously condemns her sexual explorations, while giving free rein to his own in a new relationship. His derivative conflict is his struggle with his repressive cultural heritage and his individual need for a fulfilling sexual relationship. Jasira encounters a more progressive, but wary position in her father’s other neighbours, a heavily pregnant woman and her husband, whose derivative conflict is this: they are aware of cultural differences regarding sexual norms, but they refuse to go along with Jasira’s father in his shame-driven blaming of the victim.

Master Conflict: The Thematic Core Of A Screenplay
Articulating the master conflict at the heart of a story, both limits and liberates you as a writer. It literally delimits what the film is about, and creates a kind of early warning system, or a litmus test (pick your metaphor), ensuring that every element of the screenplay is relevant to the story at hand. It’s liberating, in that it sets boundaries, making it much easier to distinguish between essential and superfluous scenes, lines of dialogue, and so on. It keeps you focused, gives you a place from which to start when you need to brainstorm new ideas, and functions like a touchstone throughout the writing and rewriting of the screenplay.

How Well Do You Know Your Screenplay?

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:54:00 +0000

One of the keys to getting a screenplay written, is to discover what the screenplay wants to be, instead of trying to force it to be what you want it to be.

Sounds a bit like being in a relationship, doesn’t it? The more you acknowledge who your partner is, the more authentic and genuine your relationship with them can become. Or the more disastrous, of course, if your expectations or demands turn out to be unrealistic. The same with a screenplay. Is it Movie Of The Week rather than Oscar material? Is it art house rather than high concept? Is your short really a one-hour TV drama? Or is it even a stage play rather than a film? Acknowledging what kind of animal your material is, can be tough. Especially when it’s not what you expected. However, I think it’s essential to the process of getting the script written as well as possible.

Recognizing What You’re Writing
According to a recent episode of WNYC’s RadioLab, called Help!, Tom Waits apparently has very specific relationships with his songs while he’s writing them, as if they are entities outside himself with whom he has to deal. Sometimes the relationships are stormy and argumentative, other times he will negotiate with a song in order to get it down on paper. To me, this makes perfect sense. It’s the same as with children. Despite certain general similarities between all children, each individual child is unique. Even the same child can change dramatically without warning. The same applies to screenplays. Regardless of genre conventions, formatting rules and other limitations, each screenplay is a unique thing. Some stories seem to arrive more or less pre-packaged, complete with great visuals, intriguing character and neat little act breaks. Others need coaxing and kneading, like they’re unwilling to expose themselves to the harsh light of day. It’s only once you recognize with whom (or what) you’re dealing, that the writing really starts flowing.

What Happens When You Push Too Hard?
Unfortunately, it’s often impractical to spend the necessary time wooing a screenplay, letting your relationship with it gestate and mature sufficiently. Especially when you’re writing on assignment, and other people are waiting for your pages. But the alternative, pushing, is not necessarily the best thing for the script. Pushing can take on many forms, depending on the drive to push. You might be so enthusiastic about a draft, or conversely, so fed up with a story, that you send off a draft before it’s really ready to read. You might make do with second best because someone is breathing down your neck, or because a competition deadline is approaching. You might not know your screenplay well enough and be trying to squeeze a comedy out of a not so funny premise. You might not want to go through another round of feedback from script readers because you can’t face even more notes. However the pushing manifests, the end result is always the same: The script isn’t as good as it could have been, and there’s only one person to blame: the screenwriter.

Knowing Which Tactic To Choose
If a screenplay refuses to cooperate, it probably means you’re not listening to it. The screenplay feels offended and sulks. It’s a stalemate. Now you have a choice of tactics: Start shouting and screaming, issuing threats and throwing heavy objects around the room. Alternatively, you could offer the screenplay chocolates, sweet talk it into collaborating like a good screenplay should. Failing that, you can always walk away. Go and do something else, something which will take your mind off the humiliation of being held hostage by your own fantasy. Walk around the block, do the shopping, clean the kitchen… whatever it takes for your emotions to cool down, so you can go back to the screenplay, apologize, and ask in your nicest possible voice what it was trying to tell you when you were so rudely not listening.

When All Else Fails, Use Force Anyway

Another option, perhaps the most dangerous of all, is the Ulysses tactic. Ulysses, hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, had his crew members stuff their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast of his ship and ordered them not to untie him no matter how much he pleaded, so that he would be able to hear the song of the sirens without following them to his death. (BTW, this is portrayed beautifully in Ben Stiller’s Tropic of Thunder, where Jack Black goes cold turkey tied to a tree.) Needless to say, you don’t need to be a Greek king to do this, you could achieve the same effect simply by agreeing a deadline and making sure there a whole lot at stake if you don’t finish by the deadline. The problem with this approach is, of course, that for some writers, this kind of pressure paralyzes the creative mind rather than liberating it.

Just as no two screenplays are the same, every screenwriter has to find the right way to relate to each script they write. The trick is, I think, to recognize and respect each script on its own terms, and allow it to show you how to treat it.

Five Terrible Reasons To Be A Screenwriter

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:58:00 +0000

A frank examination, based on traumatic, first-hand experience, of some potentially disastrous motives for being a screenwriter.

One of the staples of being a screenwriter, especially if you’re not on anyone’s A-list, is that you often work without knowing whether your material will ever be seen on a screen. To persevere under these circumstances, it pays to know why you’re doing it. Perhaps even more importantly, it makes sense to be aware when you’re setting yourself up for disappointments, by motivating yourself with unrealistic expectations. Here are five of my favourite wrong-headed motivations to persevere as a screenwriter. If they make you blush or fume, good. If you’re so past this already—like I clearly am, really I am, honestly—even better. Each terrible reason potentially points to a complementary, uplifting motive (the bright side). The trick is to redirect the emotions which are fuelling your misguided ambitions.

I Can Do Better Than That
This refers to the feeling you get when you’ve sat through, or zapped away from, yet another piece of generic, derivative, overly predictable filmmaking. The notion that you could do better, isn’t necessarily a bad place to start from, but it’s not necessarily true, either. The more I get to know about how films are written and produced, the less it surprises me that quite a lot of what gets made isn’t really that original. It’s not because there aren’t a lot of extremely talented people working in films and TV. Rather it’s because films and TV programmes are products made by commercial enterprises who are averse to taking risks and so prefer to go for the familiar. They are projects managed by people whose first priority is to keep their well-paid jobs. Oh, and I guess there are some talentless nitwits out there too, but they’re not the screenwriters…

The bright side: You don’t really know how your material will look once produced. So don’t moan about films you don’t like, rather, learn from them. It’s often much easier to pinpoint why a bad film doesn’t work than why a brilliant one does. Just articulating in as much detail as possible why a scene or story irks you, can give you some great screenwriting insights. There will always be lots more mediocre productions than amazing ones, so look at it as an abundant and free educational resource!

I Love Watching Movies
Because you’re a movie buff, doesn’t mean you know how to construct one yourself, even though that’s what it may feel like. Movies are deliberately and methodically constructed so they will appeal to as many people as possible, all over the world. Millions of people enjoy watching movies as much as you do, but only a handful of people can write great screenplays. Just because you feel you intuitively “get” how movies are written, doesn’t mean it’s true. Really well-made movies seem completely effortless and intuitive, precisely because of the talent and craft that has gone into keeping the structure invisible.

The bright side: If you’re serious about screenwriting, not only do you have to read a lot of screenplays, but you have to watch a lot of movies too. The more you learn about how screenplays are written, the deeper your appreciation becomes for great films. You not only get to watch your favourite films over and over (it’s called ‘research’), but you also come to realize what a special and privileged profession screenwriting is.

I Want To Get Rich
It’s amazing how prevalent and enduring the myths are about people selling screenplays to Hollywood for vast sums of money. It does happen, of course, but the majority of screenwriters around the world earn their living from a combination of gigs other than writing feature films, including writing for TV, theatre, corporate films, teaching screenwriting, script editing, and so on. My day job at the moment is translating subtitles… Yes, you can make small fortune in screenwriting, provided you start with a big fortune.

The bright side: Rich people are often miserable. But, joking aside, don’t give up the day job too hastily. If you’re not dependent for your livelihood on convincing someone to pay you for your screenplay, you’re much more at liberty to find and express your voice by writing what really fascinates you. A screenwriter desperate to be paid, is not necessarily a great creative sparring partner.

I Want The World To Know How Clever I Am
When was the last time you saw a film or a TV series and thought, ‘Wow, whoever wrote this, is really clever!’ Audiences are primarily after some kind of emotional experience, something they can consciously or unconsciously relate their own experiences to. No one (except perhaps other screenwriters) is in the least bit interested who wrote the script, much less what erudite or witty individuals they may be. In fact, just as with structure, the more ‘invisible’ the screenwriter is, the better their work.

The bright side: Writing screenplays requires a lot of very disciplined thinking and research. Whether that’s in terms of structure or subject matter. Plus, you’re always delving deeper and deeper into human motivations and weaknesses. And guess what? Wanting the world to know how clever you are is a classical flaw, which you soon learn to overcome (actually, only by about page 75 in your life, to be honest). Screenwriting is an inherently enriching and enlightening activity.

I Want To Be Famous
How many Oscar-winning movie stars can your local greengrocer name? Everyone’s heard of Bruce Willis, Nicole Kidman, and so on. How many directors do they know? They’ve probably heard of Steven Spielberg, or Quentin Tarrantino. Can they name any screenwriters? The typical answer to that one is: “I didn’t know movies were written.” Successful actors and directors can become global celebrities, successful screenwriters can become guests speakers at screenwriting conferences.

The bright side: In many spiritual traditions, the highest form of charity is an anonymous donation. How many people know who wrote Jaws? Or Raiders of the Lost Ark? (I confess, I had to look these up.) Screenwriters are generally spared the hell of celebrity limelight, but a beautifully written film can have a profound impact on viewers. That’s some fulfilment. Plus, even hugely successful screenwriters can visit Paris without being hassled for their autograph.

So, there you are, just a few simple thoughts from someone who has no authority whatsoever on the subject, but doesn’t let that deter him from pontificating from time to time.

Why It’s Good To Read The Screenplay First

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:44:00 +0000

Reading screenplays is essential to every screenwriter’s ongoing development, especially reading unproduced screenplays or screenplays of films you haven’t seen yet.

So many professional, successful screenwriters emphasize the importance of reading screenplays, that it’s a piece of advice worth taking seriously. However, I find that when I read a screenplay of a film I’ve already seen, I have to filter out the contributions of the director, the actors, the music, the set design and all the other elements that combine to create the movie-watching experience, in order to see what the script per se has to offer. Which is why reading screenplays of films you haven't seen yet, or which haven't been produced yet, can be enlightening.

Reading Movies You Love
Reading the screenplay of a movie you’ve enjoyed watching, is a bit like watching the movie again in your head. It’s a great way to identify keys moments and see how the screenwriter described them on the page, but what it doesn’t do is give you insight into the impression the writing would make before the film is made. One of my favourite films of last year, for example, was Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. Although I love how the script is written, there’s no way I can imagine anyone other than Ben Stiller playing the part of Greenberg, with his brilliantly executed body language and inimitable delivery of the dialogue. Although reading screenplays of films you’ve seen can teach you a lot about style, dialogue, pacing, structure and so on, once you already have so many specific images, camera angles and cuts in mind, it’s harder to take the writing on face value.

The Professional Reader’s Experience
When you read a screenplay cold, with no specific actors or set designs, or soundtrack in mind, you experience what a potential director or actor or producer feels when they read a script for the first time. Does it trigger the imagination? Does the scene unfold with tension or humour? Are the twists unexpected or dramatic enough? How much is left to the actor’s discretion? Does the writing evoke distracting questions? It’s useful to take note of what works and what doesn’t in this respect, because your own material will be received precisely on these terms.

Watching the Finished Product
Sometimes a film will exceed the expectations evoked by the screenplay, sometimes it will disappoint, and sometimes the film is just what the script suggested it would be. But whatever your reaction to the finished product, it’s also an important source of information. You can now go back to the script and discover what it was about the writing that did or didn’t survive the production process as far as you’re concerned. Sometimes scenes will have been significantly shortened, sometimes it’s the camerawork that gives the scene added meaning, sometimes the acting doesn’t do justice to what you imagined whilst reading, and so on. What, specifically, was the difference between what was on the page and on the screen? These are all really useful insights to take back to your next rewrite.

Oscar Nominated Screenplays
Every year there’s a flood of great new screenplays on the web in the run-up to the Oscars. They’re all very recent films, some of which you may already have seen, but some of which you probably haven’t. If you want to find a ton of great screenplays to read, head over to chinokino and get reading!

A Screenplay Is Only As Good As The Idea At Its Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:49:00 +0000

As film audiences become increasingly savvy and demanding, it’s more important than ever that screenwriters have something authentic and meaningful to say.

It’s that time of year then, willing or unwilling, you get swept along by the general wave of people evaluating the past year and looking forward to the next one. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from doing this every day of the year, but somehow the symbolic nature of our calendar and the annual cycle of seasons and festivities seems to encourage this annual stock-taking. For me, this past year has been mostly one of writing short screenplays, of which a few have been doing nicely in competitions and receiving encouraging endorsements from script readers and fellow filmmakers alike. And the process of writing shorts has taught me a lot of things, not least of all the paramount importance of good ideas.

Quick and Dirty or Slowly but Surely?
It seems to me there are basically two schools of thought in this respect. On the one hand you have the “quantity first” school and on the other side, the “quality above all” folks. Either you believe that writing a lot of screenplays, regardless of their originality, inevitably leads to you writing your best possible material, or you believe that the only screenplay worth writing is one based on a killer idea. I’m increasingly coming down on the side of the people who advocate brainstorming a lot of ideas and finding the most suitable one before embarking on a first draft. “Suitable” can mean marketable or meaningful or both. And I think this is true for short scripts as well as features. I came across an old post on Christopher Lockhart’s blog, The Inside Pitch, which sums it up nicely. It’s from the beginning of 2010, and it features advice from Hollywood Exec Adam Levenberg. Among the tips Levenberg gives is the following:

Be willing to NOT move ahead to a screenplay after completing your beat sheet.

Some writers need to write 3-5 full beat sheets to find the idea they are excited about and that works. Not all stories are movies. Most aren’t. Yet some writers finish a beat sheet and reflexively jump into a first draft. Don’t. You’re better off writing twenty beat sheet outlines over the next year and waiting until [next year] to pick the best one to take to the next level (a first draft screenplay).

Beware of Your Talent

It’s that last sentence more than anything that caught my attention. Don’t jump into writing a screenplay before working out its essence and judging whether it’s worth the time and effort. This resonates with what I’ve written previously about the ten things to ask yourself before you start writing a screenplay, and with something I’ve heard Linda Aronson say a number of times: Talent can be a disadvantage. Because you love writing and you’re good at it, even a mediocre concept can start looking attractive if you let yourself get carried away. One of the most difficult things for a screenwriter, is recognizing that a particular story or concept isn’t good enough to do your writing talent justice. It goes against all your instincts to say: I’m not going to write this script because I can write a better one. It’s difficult for other reasons too, including the influence of people who insist that not writing a mediocre script is worse than writing it.

The Only Thing that Counts: Believing in Your Material
Of course, nothing is this black and white. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to screenwriting. The point for me is, looking back on 2010, that I’m very happy to have achieved this insight. Regardless of whether any of my shorts and other projects are ever produced (statistically, I know most of them won’t be), it feels good to be completely at ease with the ideas at the heart of my work. Finding outlets for scripts is hard enough as it is, but at least this way I don’t have the added handicap of having to pitch material that I don’t genuinely believe in.

The Most Interesting Questions are the Unanswerable Ones

So that’s my little message of hope for the coming New Year: Take the time to find the really good, authentic ideas before you start writing the scripts, using whatever method works best. For me personally, that means constantly trying to push past questions I’ve seen dealt with far too often already in films, until I encounter awkward, uncomfortable questions to which I don’t know the answer. I know that’s a risky attitude (for one thing, I might turn out to be embarrassingly stupid) but then again, at least I’m constantly learning more about life...

Screenwriting: It’s The Idea That Counts

noreply@blogger.com (Raving Dave Herman) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:00:00 +0000

You often hear it said that screenwriting is 98% craft and 2% talent, but after the recent London Screenwriters’ Festival, I wonder if ideas aren’t more important?

If I took one thing away from the recent London Screenwriters’ Festival, it’s confirmation of my conviction that the most important thing about a screenplay is the idea at its core. Whether you’re talking about writing for TV, short films, features, writing for games, it makes no difference; what separates a generic script from an enthralling one, is the quality of the central idea.

Non-linear Screenwriting
One of my absolute favourite speakers at the festival, was Linda Aronson. She presented her brand new book, The 21st Century Screenplay, which is a paradigm-busting collection of practical guidelines for writing screenplays that don’t follow the conventional three-act model (in which a single protagonist learns some moral lesson by encountering a serious of increasingly challenging obstacles). This is the one-size-fits all, monomyth model which is held up by Hollywood (and now elsewhere too) as the only valid screen story form, despite the success of many movies which don’t adhere to it. Aronson’s basic premise is this: There are many ways to structure a screenplay, and you have to find the form that best expresses the idea you want to write about.

Pitching your Material
Another great aspect of the Festival, was the opportunity to pitch material. Besides the formal “speed pitching” sessions, Raindance organized one of its famous public Live!Ammunition! pitching events, plus there was ample opportunity during informal networking sessions to pitch material to other delegates too. It’s one of the unfortunate essentials of screenwriting, that you have to be able to pitch your stories to complete strangers, in order to convince them to read your script and help you get the film made. Imagine a painter having to describe a painting in order to get someone to come and look at it… But here too: it doesn’t matter how intricate your plot is, how much action, violence, sex, or whatever it contains, it’s the basic idea on which the screenplay is based, that ultimately hooks the potential reader.

Writing Samples
For screenwriters who haven’t had any of their material produced yet, every spec script is a potential calling card. A writing sample for potential collaborators or commissioners. In this respect, it was interesting to hear various TV and film industry professionals at the festival reiterate, that what they’re looking for is an original voice. People like Ollie Madden, VP of Warner Brothers UK, Noelle Morris Head of Development at Kudos, and several other speakers, all emphasized that a calling-card spec script which demonstrates that a new writer has interesting ideas and an original voice, is much more informative to them than, say, a spec episode of an existing TV series.

Write What You’re Good at Writing
Literary agent Julian Friedmann, said something that stuck with me too: Write what you write best, rather than what you like watching most. Because these two things are often confused. It may sound trivial, but it comes down to the same notion: You may love watching action thrillers, but perhaps what you’re best at writing are period dramas, or stage plays or poems. Again, it’s important to make this distinction, because the difference between generic writing and great writing, is finding the right form in which to express the idea you want to write about.

Jumping Through Hoops
Another inspiring figure at the Festival, was Tim Clague, whose entire way of approaching filmmaking and writing is refreshingly independent and unconventional. He thinks it’s a mistake to see yourself as someone trying to “break in.” For example, making a short film as a calling card, in order to get your foot in the door and maybe, just perhaps, inshallah, finding approval in the eyes of a producer who might then be gracious enough to throw you a bone in the shape of a commission… This is what Tim calls jumping through hoops, and it’s not his way of doing things. He writes, produces and distributes his own work, using digital technology to keep costs low. But then again, without any ideas worth pursuing, no amount of independent spirit is going to result in a film anyone else would want to see, right?

A Universal Theory of Screenwriting. Not.
Film is a relatively new medium (just compare it to poetry, painting, theatre, etc.), and it’s evolving all the time. The only thing about it that remains constant, is that it’s made by human beings for human beings. Apart from that, storytelling techniques come and go, as do technologies and cinematic conventions. There’s always some form or technique that is held up as contemporary, which previously seemed unthinkable and tomorrow will feel stale and derivative. It’s easy to become fixated on ephemeral forms and structures, while forgetting that at the heart of a great film is an enduring, engaging idea. It’s also very difficult, but perhaps essential, to maintain enough distance from prevailing “business models” in order to remain focused on what you want to write about, rather than trying to second-guess the industry’s current preferences.

Ironically, though, it’s always rule-breaking, innovative voices with great ideas, that the lumbering media industry craves most.