Tag Archives: screenwriting

Not to be short…

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That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m not going to wait any longer.

After waiting an eternity (okay, two years) for Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard or some lesser known film maker to discover the genius of my several screenplays, I have finally gotten fed up with waiting for one of my stories to become a movie or television show. So, I am left with one option: write a short and make it my bloody self.

All my friends are doing it. (And before you ask, only my fear of heights prevents me from jumping off a bridge if my friends jump off a bridge.) So why can’t I?

Weekend before last, I jumped in front of my laptop and cranked out a screenplay for a 15-minute short film, based on an idea that has been sitting on my computer for about a year.

36 hours. 15 pages. Done!

Is it perfect? No, but that’s what editing and rewrites are for.

Is it funny? Yes. Quirky? Yes. Unlike anything else out there? As far as I can tell.

Can it be filmed? Okay, now I have to get outside advice.

So, last week, I leaned on my friends further down the movie-making-business chain. Friends with expertise in film production (not sure if these are the jump-off-a-bridge type).

This week, I expect conversations to begin in earnest.

Next week, with any luck, will start the conversation of “How in the hell am I going to pay for this?”

I fully expect obstacles and challenges, but I don’t care. I’m not waiting around any longer.

Story before structure

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Over the last couple decades, I have taken classes at a variety of post-secondary centres teaching everything from magazine writing to sketch writing to screenwriting, and one thing has always amazed and frustrated me about the majority of my classmates: They all think they are going to finish the class with a template for success.

For some reason, they believe that there is an inherent structure for a successful story that they can just drape story elements over. If I can just map out the three-act structure, I will win that Academy Award.

When in your lives have you ever walked out of a class with a structure for success? Ever! Ever!

Even the alphabet was merely a building block to communication. Please let me know who has gotten a job and achieved a pinnacle of success through the strict application of the alphabet as taught in pre-K or kindergarten. The alphabet is useless unless you rearrange and duplicate some of the letters, and even then there is more to it.

Don’t ask the instructor on what page the Act I turning point should come because not all screenplays are 110 pages and not all stories have their Act I turning point at the 25% point of the screenplay. (If you want your head to explode, try figuring out the Act I turning point of the movie Memento.)

Write the story that demands to be written, regardless of the canonical film, novel or sketch structure. Let the story and its characters tell you when things should happen. Luckily, because few of us still spit charcoal onto our hands against rock walls, we can easily move the elements of our story around later.

You can have the strongest architecture in the world, but if your story sucks, your screenplay sucks. If your characters aren’t truthful to themselves and your story, no one will believe them. Much as a roadmap doesn’t a vacation make, neither does a story structure a story make.

We learn these elements, the points in our writing, as guiding principles for our own thoughts, not as immovable stone markers for what must be.

When used correctly, this information can enhance a beautiful story, but when used as a crutch, it destroys creativity; we focus too much on the next point and not enough on the journey.

Write your play. Write your novel. Write your screenplay. Write your poem. Write your story.

Once you’ve done that, then check the beams and girders of your construction to make sure everything is exactly where it needs to be for the sake of that story.

Now I’m her-o

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It may sound incredibly self-centred, but I am the hero of my personal journey through life, and by that, I don’t mean a literal Hercules or Aeneas so much as the protagonist. Everything in my life is interpreted through my eyes in how it impacts me.

Sure, if I try, I can step outside of my ego and try to consider life and specific events through others’ eyes, but even here, if I am to be completely honest, I am still tempering those reflections through my own life experiences and biases.

And now to the controversial aspect of this vignette.

When creating characters for a story—a novel, screenplay, poem, excuse for lateness—each character in that story is the hero of the story, if only in their own eyes. The events you record as a writer are witnessed by the characters in your story from their own perspectives and their responses and reactions to events and other characters will be based on their individual experiences and biases.

Sure, the story you are trying to tell may only have a main protagonist, perhaps a secondary protagonist and an antagonist. Everyone else is just there for colour or to help your main characters rationalize their worlds and world views. But you have to be honest to those other characters if we, as readers, listeners and viewers, are to believe them.

When I read screenplays, I often get quite attached to the main characters, whether positively or negatively. More often, unfortunately, I end up watching minor characters for whom I have no opinion if for no other reason than I cannot believe they exist.

They are placeholders to keep me from watching 95 minutes of nothing other than antagonist and protagonist in earnest conflict. To call them two-dimensional would be a slight to some finely crafted animated characters I’ve watched in well written cartoons.

Even if a character has one line or is silent, I want to know in my gut, if not my head, that the character has a reason to exist, not for the sake of your plot, but for the sake of his or her universe.

I’m not asking for 37 stories for 37 characters. I’m asking for one story for 37 characters that matter.

A lot of people tell me that this over-complicates things—you may be thinking this right now. I obviously disagree, believing that a Who is a Who, no matter how small.

That character’s reality doesn’t have to be on the page, but it better be in your head, because the reader will know if it’s not. The character won’t pop, if it isn’t.

If it helps, think of this as another way of telling a story that’s been told a thousand times before. Rather than tell the story from the perspective of the protagonist everyone knows, tell it from the perspective of the character few people ever remember. The 100 bajillion Christmas stories are perfect examples of this.

The Little Drummer Boy was the story of the birth of Christ and yet it wasn’t.

What if you retold the story from Pretty Woman but from the perspective of the hotel manager?

Make every character in your story believe he or she is the hero of his or her universe, and they will live on beyond their few lines of dialogue.

The 12 Steps of Improvisational Screenplay Writing

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Step 1. Write “FADE IN”

Step 2. Write a location, starting with “INT.” or “EXT.”

Step 3. Write a time of day after your location

Step 4. In two lines, write a description of that location as you see it in your mind’s eye

Step 5. Write down the name of a character.

Step 6. In a line, write a description of that character.

Step 7. In a line or two, write a description of what that character is doing at the location.

Step 8. Write the name of something with which that character is interacting, be it a person, object or something more ephemeral.

Step 9. In a line, write a description of that thing with which the character is interacting.

Step 10. In the middle of the page, write the name of your first character.

Step 11. Below that name, write an emotionally charged statement that this character says about the thing with which he or she is interacting, the nature of the interaction, or a total non-sequitur to confuse the hell out of people.

Step 12. In writing, rationalize these choices for the next 95 pages.

(I never said I’d help you make a movie, just a screenplay)

A great writers’ blog (by a great writer)

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For those interested in reading some interesting perspectives on the creative process, I highly recommend a blog by one of my friends, actor and writer Marsha Mason (not the one from The Goodbye Girl).

Briefly known as WTF (which does not stand for what it may ask frequently), the Why The Face blog tackles a lot of the insecurities that most writers face; in Marsha’s case, from the perspective of screenwriting, but writing’s writing. But she also provides insights and answers gleaned both from her own experiences and those of others whom she has met.

Check it out.

Who is this guy?

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Without putting too fine a point on it, I have been trying to discover the answer to this question for almost 50 years and I don’t feel that I’m any closer to an answer.Image

I’m a writer. I’m a photographer. I’m a creator. I’m a distiller.

I write comedy. I write tragedy. I write technical. I write lyrical.

I photograph nature. I photograph society. I photograph the concrete. I photograph the abstract.

I think. I feel. I fulfill. I surprise.

And tomorrow, I will do it all over again.