Write, write, write: August 2011

25 August 2011

Who's Tyrone Power!?

Why do you want to be a screenwriter? Most likely it has to do with the fact that you love movies, you've always loved movies. They're in your blood, in your genes. You know so much about this make-believe world that sometimes you feel like you could burst, right? Unfortunately, all of that is wishful thinking on my part - so many young writers know diddly about film history.

Move over Natalie, this is
The Black Swan - Tyrone Power style

The title's question "Who's Tyrone Power?" was once posed and I still remember it - and it still pisses me off thinking about it. People in this business should know, should want to know, should strive to know. This business is what it is because of everything that's come before. We should know because it gives us:

foundation > There's a wealth of stories out there, from silent films on to this day. The more we watch them, the more we get a sense of story - the more you get to a point where "three act structure" isn't a pain in the ass, but instead something you do naturally - it becomes part of your writer's fiber.
inspiration > Learn, analyze and enjoy everything from "His Girl Friday" to "Nosferatu", Eisenstein to Romero, whatever the time period, whatever the country or origin, whatever the genre - be interested. Everything you take in will give you plentiful inspiration for your own scripts.
jobs > When you sit across a producer, you don't want to come across as somebody who just happened to wander into the film industry by chance. Be a vibrant conversation partner, talk about films, about your inspirations, spitball scenes, actors, directors, camera angles, dialogue, etc. etc. - the producer wants the guy with the knowledge and the passion - show him that you live and breathe film.

Basically, I consider every movie watched time well spent (even crappy ones, I always have useful take-aways). But watching old movies is even better. Soaking in everything from the classics to obscure B-movies does all of the above. Now, you of course know Tyrone Power - you didn't have to IMDB him. You know about "Jesse James", "The Long Gray Line", "The Mark of Zorro" (doesn't your heart just leap at the mere mention?), "Witness for the Prosecution" - or, one of my all-time favorites, "The Black Swan".

Watching movies is never a waste of time - and that goes ten times as much for the classics. Watch any interview with Quentin Tarantino, who references movies with every sentence he motor-mouths. You get a great sense not only of his knowledge - but of his passion for the world of movies. Talking film, he's the kid in the candy store - and boy does he ever know his candy.

We should all aim for at least half of that Tarantino passion.

13 August 2011

One script page = one film minute

When you write for television, there are time frames - scripts are clocked, they need to fit into slots. The better you learn your screenwriting craft, the more the good old "one script page = one film minute" rule will apply to your work.

Script 100p - film 99m - nuff said

While I mention TV in the opener, this concerns features just as well. Let's face it, any reader (wherever in the movie biz hierarchy that reader may sit) prefers crisp over expansive, short over long. We're writers, we love to write ... and that usually means we write too much. Especially newbies have, in addition to the former, a good dose of insecurity going into their scripts. Insecurity makes you want to fill in EVERYTHING, you're writing down way too much just to make sure the reader doesn't miss out on anything you've invested into your story. A beginner cannot have that level of trust and so the "over-writing" is entirely normal.

You have to learn to trust your words.

This trust only comes through years of honing your craft, analyzing great scripts and writing all the time, working your writing muscle as much as you possibly can. Learn to trust that your 5 word sentence can grip the reader's imagination and conveys everything you want him/her to experience. Learn that what you've just written in four action lines can be told through a single glance. If this sounds easy to you - great! You just may be a natural. But for most of us this takes years of training, practice.

I've been at this screenwriting thing for almost 20 years now - and it still happens to a degree. My latest gig is a TV adaptation of the great Craig Russell serial killer novel "Blood Eagle" - and I've delivered a very tight first draft - 94 crisp pages of multi-layered twistedness. A professional timer has clocked the 94 page draft with 104 minutes. Now, even if the timer may have been a bit too generous in clicking that stop watch - there obviously still is some fat in the draft. Aside from some bigger structural adjustments I need to make (you can't shave 10 minutes with just trimming the little stuff), I will look at every sentence, every word, again.

The "one script page = one film minute" rule works - but only if you apply all that hyper-concentrated screenwriter thinking to every single line.

Related reading: "Your script's perfect length"

08 August 2011

WHY is at the core

In an excellent TED Talk, Simon Sinek talks about something he calls "The Golden Circle". The lecture is about companies, products, leaders - why some achieve greatness and stand out where others fail. However, the lessons apply just as well to screenwriting.

May you never get that lost with your WHY.

Simon's "Golden Circle" has the WHY at the center, the HOW in a surrounding circle and finally the WHAT in the outer rim. He shows that, if you go from the inside out and begin with a powerful WHY, everything will click in better, stronger ways. The examples of exemplary companies and leaders he uses are the Apple company, the Wright Brothers and Martin Luther King. Watch it for these examples alone and it'll be well worth your time: Ted Talk and/or transcript.

The WHY isn't intellectual, the WHY is core, it is instinct brain. If you have the right WHY, you end up with people buying your products (whether that product is an iPhone or your script) because they believe what you believe. The WHY is cause, belief, "reason d'être".

WHY: The center circle is the emotional core. The essence of your film, your log line, the one thing that juices you and keeps juicing you. The one thing you can say in one single sentence that makes every listener's ears perk up, eager for more.
HOW: The middle circle is your craft in structuring your story, the arcs - and because you'll have started with the WHY, everything you structure, weave and plot will always have the WHY at its core - everything else will feel alien to your story.
WHAT: The outer circle is your scenes, the action, the "dressing it up". It's clear to all of us that we should never start from the outside in. Never start with a bunch of neat action sequences, then build them into a structure and finally try to somehow magically invent/insert a core into it. Doesn't work ... and yet it's done again and again with the result of countless straight-to-DVD stuff.

Basically, I'm not telling you anything new here - but again, watch the Ted Talk - it'll be 15 minutes well spent, trust me on this. And maybe, just maybe, you'll remember "The Golden Circle" before you dive into your next script.

May the WHY be with you!