Why Writing Specific ‘Character Moments’ Matters

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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.