One of the worst things that can happen when you’re watching a movie is when you just don’t believe a chance event, and your suspension of disbelief is knocked out of the window. You’re no longer being swept along by the story and you’re suddenly acutely aware that someone wrote that distracting moment you just witnessed.
If you’re a screenwriter, moments like that don’t just spoil the fun of the movie, they also make you wonder if you aren’t guilty of the same sin in your own writing.
It’s not that coincidence doesn’t work in movies, but you need to be aware of when you’re using coincidence as an integral part of the story rather than merely for convenience’s sake. Which is not as straightforward as it sounds. I’ve had discussions with my writing partner about events which to me seem ludicrously coincidental, whereas to him they seem like the kind of thing that “could happen.” And vice versa. To some extent it’s subjective, but there are some objective criteria:
Does the coincidence fit with the story world? It’s one thing for Charles Dickens to have characters bump into each other just in time to move the plot forward, but does it work in your screenplay? Different genres deal differently with coincidence too. In a comedy caper, a chance meeting with someone from a previous scene in a completely different context can be hilarious whereas the same event will feel contrived in a thriller.
Is it something you’ve experienced yourself or has it happened to someone you know? How many times have you bumped into a significant person in the rush hour bustle at a crowded railway station or at a busy airport terminal? How many times have you used your spouse’s/child’s mobile and forgotten to delete a revealing text message? What about going shopping to chase away post-divorce blues and being tapped on the shoulder by a former lover who emigrated to the other side of the world twenty years ago?
Does the coincidence harm your main character or help them? Generally, you have less credibility when it helps them (whatever that says about how our brains work). It feels like a cop-out, like the character is being let off the hook. Whereas if it makes things worse for them… the raised stakes can sometimes distract your attention from the coincidence. Sometimes.
Is the coincidence a pay-off of something that was set up in an earlier scene? If the coincidence is the result of something hinted at or established earlier in the script, it can feel less like a coincidence, even though it still is. If it comes right out of the blue, the same event can feel terribly contrived.
Is coincidence an integral part of your story’s theme? A movie like Magnolia can take liberties with coincidence because it’s part and parcel of what the film is exploring.
Some writers keep coincidence journals, noting down chance events that happen to them which seem somehow significant. Not a bad idea, I guess, even just to sharpen your sense of what you think qualifies as believable. And paying more attention to the phenomenon increases the likelihood of noticing coincidences when they occur.
In any case, I think coincidence as a tool in a screenplay should be handled with great care and integrity. For your own sake, if nothing else. After all, the last thing you want to do is throw a glass of cold water in the reader's/audience’s face and jolt them out of your story.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Feeling Your Character’s Legs… As It Were
In a recent episode of her wonderful podcast All In The Mind, entitled Dream: the body alive! Natasha Mitchell interviews Jungian psychotherapist Robert Bosnak about his way of working with dreams. Bosnak’s basic assumption is that from the point of view of the dreaming state of mind, dreams are real events in real environments. The senses all function as in waking reality, as do the emotions. The elements of a dream have their own independent intelligence and in the therapeutic context they have something to tell the dreamer.
Using this as a point of departure in group therapy, Bosnak encourages his clients to actively re-enter their dream, intensely experiencing the physical sensations of the characters in the dream. In the podcast he relates some intriguing examples, such as the guy who dreams about a man in a green suit who is, “very strong and can take initiative.” The group encourages their fellow dreamer to feel what the green man is like, and before long he begins to feel how strong this green man’s legs are. It’s the direct, physical sensation of these strong legs that connects the dreamer to the emotional significance of his dream and helps him, literally, move forward.
In order to re-enter one’s dream in such a physical way, says Bosnak, you need to deliberately enter the state of consciousness between waking and sleeping called the hypnagogic state. In this state, you’re fully conscious of what you’re doing but at the same time also fully present in the reality of the dream. In other words, a state of dual consciousness.
Now then, what does all this have to do with screenwriting, I hear you wonder. Well, it can sometimes be difficult to really, physically, emotionally get into a character. It’s easy enough to compile reams of character biography. This may be what a producer wants to see, but you run the risk of writing from too reasoned a place in your mind, which doesn’t necessarily lead to authentically emotional drama. Phil Gladwin of Screenwriting Goldmine realized this too and writes,
I'd spend days writing up pages about a character, from where they were born to what disasters befell them at school, to how they felt about broccoli. And then, what was annoying was that, the minute the story got going, I would find my characters doing things I just never accounted for when I wrote those 20 pages of backstory, and a lot of it seemed a waste of time.
Whereas what you need to do in order to bring your characters to life, is feel what they feel. It’s not necessarily sufficient to reason what someone would do in a given dilemma, even if you know all about their history. Life is rarely that neat and tidy. What you need most is to get into their gut in the middle of the scene, experience their fear, anger, despair, disgust, arousal, or whatever other emotion that’s driving them.
And one excellent way of doing this is to relax, take a deep breath and become their legs. Or any other relevant part of their body, of course. Not as a sensationalist trip, but as a serious step towards being that character in the scene, towards deliberately constructing your drama from an emotional core.
Talking of which…. last night, I dreamed about this horrible, round-faced interrogator with ogling blue eyes and shiny skin, who was grilling me about something. He was being terribly rational and he was obviously aware I was trying to hide something.
I have the feeling he’s trying to tell me something…
Using this as a point of departure in group therapy, Bosnak encourages his clients to actively re-enter their dream, intensely experiencing the physical sensations of the characters in the dream. In the podcast he relates some intriguing examples, such as the guy who dreams about a man in a green suit who is, “very strong and can take initiative.” The group encourages their fellow dreamer to feel what the green man is like, and before long he begins to feel how strong this green man’s legs are. It’s the direct, physical sensation of these strong legs that connects the dreamer to the emotional significance of his dream and helps him, literally, move forward.
In order to re-enter one’s dream in such a physical way, says Bosnak, you need to deliberately enter the state of consciousness between waking and sleeping called the hypnagogic state. In this state, you’re fully conscious of what you’re doing but at the same time also fully present in the reality of the dream. In other words, a state of dual consciousness.
Now then, what does all this have to do with screenwriting, I hear you wonder. Well, it can sometimes be difficult to really, physically, emotionally get into a character. It’s easy enough to compile reams of character biography. This may be what a producer wants to see, but you run the risk of writing from too reasoned a place in your mind, which doesn’t necessarily lead to authentically emotional drama. Phil Gladwin of Screenwriting Goldmine realized this too and writes,
I'd spend days writing up pages about a character, from where they were born to what disasters befell them at school, to how they felt about broccoli. And then, what was annoying was that, the minute the story got going, I would find my characters doing things I just never accounted for when I wrote those 20 pages of backstory, and a lot of it seemed a waste of time.
Whereas what you need to do in order to bring your characters to life, is feel what they feel. It’s not necessarily sufficient to reason what someone would do in a given dilemma, even if you know all about their history. Life is rarely that neat and tidy. What you need most is to get into their gut in the middle of the scene, experience their fear, anger, despair, disgust, arousal, or whatever other emotion that’s driving them.
And one excellent way of doing this is to relax, take a deep breath and become their legs. Or any other relevant part of their body, of course. Not as a sensationalist trip, but as a serious step towards being that character in the scene, towards deliberately constructing your drama from an emotional core.
Talking of which…. last night, I dreamed about this horrible, round-faced interrogator with ogling blue eyes and shiny skin, who was grilling me about something. He was being terribly rational and he was obviously aware I was trying to hide something.
I have the feeling he’s trying to tell me something…
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Film Is Entertainment… Revisited
One of the many inspirational reminders I have pinned on the wall in my work space, is a simple little sentence: Film Is Entertainment. I originally put it there because I wanted to prevent myself from taking my material too seriously. I might also have pinned up a picture of a bucket of popcorn (in fact I might still do that). However, the sad truth is, that even an index card on the wall becomes invisible after a while.
Fortunately, I was recently prompted to become mindful of this seemingly trivial little aphorism again, by Erik Bork over at Flying Wrestler. Erik has compiled his own set of screenwriting principles, one of which is that a screenplay has to be entertaining. In his words:
… that which makes us feel more alive in some way – fascinated, amused, scared, passionate, moved, inspired, etc.
Duh-uh… you may say. To which I would retort: Easier said than done. Witness the hundreds of thousands of screenplays that end up on the slush pile every year all around the world. And if I’m honest, until Mr. Bork invited me to think again about what “entertaining” really means, I kind of automatically associated it with lo-brow, superficial and essentially not worth the effort. Or, more specifically, not worth the effort of an über-intellectual like me.
Whaddya mean, snobbery?!
But here’s the rub: A movie can be entertaining and meaningful. Or perhaps… should be? If I reflect for a moment on what entertains me, it almost always has to with suspense and tension. Regardless of genre. Anything from Laurel and Hardy to Woody Allen, what draws me into a film is being emotionally invested in what’s going to happen next.
It’s not the philosophical or moral theme running through the story that keeps me watching. That’s what sets me thinking, after I’ve seen the film.
What distracts me most while watching a movie, is boredom. Which is perhaps the opposite of entertainment. I get bored when I’ve seen it all before, or when there’s no real mystery or surprise in what I’m watching, when it’s too predictable. In other words, when my mind is not actively engaged by what’s going on onscreen.
The same goes for screenplays. Perhaps entertaining screenwriting requires a delicate balance between spelling it out and leaving enough up to the audience to fill in by themselves. Because as long as your mind is actively trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, you’re entertained, right?
In fact, until further notice, that’s going to be my working definition of entertaining screenwriting: Writing that creates an emotional investment in what’s going to happen next by suggesting enough but also leaving enough to the audience’s imagination.
Not much operational value there, I admit. But it’s a start.
Anyway, I’m off with the kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks 2. Followed tomorrow evening by Avatar, 3D Imax. See if I can’t glean some important lessons on entertainment while munching some popcorn…
Fortunately, I was recently prompted to become mindful of this seemingly trivial little aphorism again, by Erik Bork over at Flying Wrestler. Erik has compiled his own set of screenwriting principles, one of which is that a screenplay has to be entertaining. In his words:
… that which makes us feel more alive in some way – fascinated, amused, scared, passionate, moved, inspired, etc.
Duh-uh… you may say. To which I would retort: Easier said than done. Witness the hundreds of thousands of screenplays that end up on the slush pile every year all around the world. And if I’m honest, until Mr. Bork invited me to think again about what “entertaining” really means, I kind of automatically associated it with lo-brow, superficial and essentially not worth the effort. Or, more specifically, not worth the effort of an über-intellectual like me.
Whaddya mean, snobbery?!
But here’s the rub: A movie can be entertaining and meaningful. Or perhaps… should be? If I reflect for a moment on what entertains me, it almost always has to with suspense and tension. Regardless of genre. Anything from Laurel and Hardy to Woody Allen, what draws me into a film is being emotionally invested in what’s going to happen next.
It’s not the philosophical or moral theme running through the story that keeps me watching. That’s what sets me thinking, after I’ve seen the film.
What distracts me most while watching a movie, is boredom. Which is perhaps the opposite of entertainment. I get bored when I’ve seen it all before, or when there’s no real mystery or surprise in what I’m watching, when it’s too predictable. In other words, when my mind is not actively engaged by what’s going on onscreen.
The same goes for screenplays. Perhaps entertaining screenwriting requires a delicate balance between spelling it out and leaving enough up to the audience to fill in by themselves. Because as long as your mind is actively trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, you’re entertained, right?
In fact, until further notice, that’s going to be my working definition of entertaining screenwriting: Writing that creates an emotional investment in what’s going to happen next by suggesting enough but also leaving enough to the audience’s imagination.
Not much operational value there, I admit. But it’s a start.
Anyway, I’m off with the kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks 2. Followed tomorrow evening by Avatar, 3D Imax. See if I can’t glean some important lessons on entertainment while munching some popcorn…
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Why The Audience Likes To Know Stuff Characters Don’t
I often dip into a book while my PC boots up. It’s one of those rituals writers have. To this end I always have three or four tomes lying around on my desk. The other day I was browsing through Directing The Story, by Francis Glebas, when I happened on his chapter on Dramatic Irony.
Glebas starts the chapter by reminding the reader that it makes a big difference whether the audience or the character receives information first, and that it’s up to the filmmaker to determine this. A classic example is the intercut between people in an elevator and a fraying elevator cable. They’re oblivious, but you, the audience are not. It doesn’t much matter what’s going on inside the elevator, the suspense is there because of what these people don’t know.
All of which triggered an instant rewrite in my head of a sequence in a spec script I’m working on.
The situation, in brief: It’s the summer of 1945, we’re in Holland, the second world war has just ended, and a young Jewish boy who has been in hiding on an isolated farm, is about to be reunited with his mother, who has returned from the hell of the concentration camps.
Initially I had the foster parents, the couple who had been hiding the boy, preparing him for the reunion with his mother, to whom we cut away as she makes her way towards the farm. Then, after having my brain jolted by the above-mentioned read, I wondered: Wouldn’t it be more dramatic if the boy doesn’t know his mother is on her way to pick him up, but we, the audience, do?
So I rewrote the sequence in order to explore this possibility, and lo and behold, it now has much more tension and suspense. And the reason is simple, as Glebas puts it:
The audience can be ahead of what the characters know, creating tension from watching characters do something that may not be the right choice for them.
In this case the foster parents, convinced that the boy’s biological parents have both been killed, are about to go ahead with their plan to have him baptized and then formally adopt him. The fact that this isn’t the right choice for the boy is made all the more dramatic by the fact that we intercut with scenes of the mother trying to locate her son’s whereabouts and then physically approaching the farm.
It’s because the human brain is constantly working out what to expect on the basis of previous experience, that dramatic irony works so well. You, the audience, can’t help but feel for the character who is working on the wrong hypothesis, as it were. If only they knew what you know, then they would do the right thing!
If I’d left the sequence as it was, it would have been much flatter and less suspenseful. And if I hadn’t browsed Glebas’s book I wouldn’t have thought to make this change. And if I didn’t have this ritual of dipping into books while my PC boots up, I wouldn’t have browsed Glebas. Which is all rather Zen, actually, when you come to think of it…
So what information can you take away from one of your characters to make a sequence more exciting to watch?
Glebas starts the chapter by reminding the reader that it makes a big difference whether the audience or the character receives information first, and that it’s up to the filmmaker to determine this. A classic example is the intercut between people in an elevator and a fraying elevator cable. They’re oblivious, but you, the audience are not. It doesn’t much matter what’s going on inside the elevator, the suspense is there because of what these people don’t know.
All of which triggered an instant rewrite in my head of a sequence in a spec script I’m working on.
The situation, in brief: It’s the summer of 1945, we’re in Holland, the second world war has just ended, and a young Jewish boy who has been in hiding on an isolated farm, is about to be reunited with his mother, who has returned from the hell of the concentration camps.
Initially I had the foster parents, the couple who had been hiding the boy, preparing him for the reunion with his mother, to whom we cut away as she makes her way towards the farm. Then, after having my brain jolted by the above-mentioned read, I wondered: Wouldn’t it be more dramatic if the boy doesn’t know his mother is on her way to pick him up, but we, the audience, do?
So I rewrote the sequence in order to explore this possibility, and lo and behold, it now has much more tension and suspense. And the reason is simple, as Glebas puts it:
The audience can be ahead of what the characters know, creating tension from watching characters do something that may not be the right choice for them.
In this case the foster parents, convinced that the boy’s biological parents have both been killed, are about to go ahead with their plan to have him baptized and then formally adopt him. The fact that this isn’t the right choice for the boy is made all the more dramatic by the fact that we intercut with scenes of the mother trying to locate her son’s whereabouts and then physically approaching the farm.
It’s because the human brain is constantly working out what to expect on the basis of previous experience, that dramatic irony works so well. You, the audience, can’t help but feel for the character who is working on the wrong hypothesis, as it were. If only they knew what you know, then they would do the right thing!
If I’d left the sequence as it was, it would have been much flatter and less suspenseful. And if I hadn’t browsed Glebas’s book I wouldn’t have thought to make this change. And if I didn’t have this ritual of dipping into books while my PC boots up, I wouldn’t have browsed Glebas. Which is all rather Zen, actually, when you come to think of it…
So what information can you take away from one of your characters to make a sequence more exciting to watch?
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Don’t Look Up, Don’t Look Down… WTF?!
Had my nose firmly planted in Your Screenplay Sucks which by now one is of my favourite books to dip into during attacks of FDSD (Final Draft Stress Disorder, as described in DSM-IV).
In tip 67 the Akers guy, as he likes to call himself, warns against rewriting while writing. Sure, he says, start your writing session by going over what you wrote the previous day, but whatever you do, don’t go back any further and start tinkering with earlier scenes or, God forbid, the beginning.
Going back will reveal hitherto unseen problems. Going back will jack up your angst. Because your script will be revealed to be inadequate, imperfect, and not Zaillian-esque, going back tends to be monumentally depressing. So depressing that you may just decide it’s better to — give up and start another script. Do not play into this sucker’s game.
Holy pitchforks… when I read this I felt myself blushing and trying to slide unobtrusively under my desk. I confess: I’ve done this. I have abandoned screenplays after twenty pages and started on new ones precisely because I went back and began to doubt the entire premise of the script. I know what this man is talking about. It’s horrible but true!
Then I realized it’s a bit like mountain climbing. (Hey, I’m a screenwriter, I have imagination, remember?) Like, there you are, halfway up Everest, and even though you know in the back of your head that you’ve come a long way and there’s still a long way to go, these are not helpful thoughts right there on the rock face. You look down, you’re going to feel dizzy. You look up… you might let go. So what you need to do is concentrate on what you’re doing right now. The next step, or in the case of a screenplay: the next beat, the next scene.
It’s a thing you hear big-shot screenwriter’s say a lot: Get the first draft finished without thinking too much. (Check out Andrew Stanton’s quote there in the left margin…) And yet, it often feels counter-intuitive, or risky perhaps. What if something I’m writing here isn’t consistent with something that happened ten pages back? What if this scene throws up an unforeseen new twist? And so on. But the simple fact is, that these are often issues you can only deal with once the first draft is there on your desk, in all its ragged and unproducable glory.
Perhaps this should be my New Year’s resolution for 2010: Don’t look up and don’t look down, just get the fuck on with the writing.
In tip 67 the Akers guy, as he likes to call himself, warns against rewriting while writing. Sure, he says, start your writing session by going over what you wrote the previous day, but whatever you do, don’t go back any further and start tinkering with earlier scenes or, God forbid, the beginning.
Going back will reveal hitherto unseen problems. Going back will jack up your angst. Because your script will be revealed to be inadequate, imperfect, and not Zaillian-esque, going back tends to be monumentally depressing. So depressing that you may just decide it’s better to — give up and start another script. Do not play into this sucker’s game.
Holy pitchforks… when I read this I felt myself blushing and trying to slide unobtrusively under my desk. I confess: I’ve done this. I have abandoned screenplays after twenty pages and started on new ones precisely because I went back and began to doubt the entire premise of the script. I know what this man is talking about. It’s horrible but true!
Then I realized it’s a bit like mountain climbing. (Hey, I’m a screenwriter, I have imagination, remember?) Like, there you are, halfway up Everest, and even though you know in the back of your head that you’ve come a long way and there’s still a long way to go, these are not helpful thoughts right there on the rock face. You look down, you’re going to feel dizzy. You look up… you might let go. So what you need to do is concentrate on what you’re doing right now. The next step, or in the case of a screenplay: the next beat, the next scene.
It’s a thing you hear big-shot screenwriter’s say a lot: Get the first draft finished without thinking too much. (Check out Andrew Stanton’s quote there in the left margin…) And yet, it often feels counter-intuitive, or risky perhaps. What if something I’m writing here isn’t consistent with something that happened ten pages back? What if this scene throws up an unforeseen new twist? And so on. But the simple fact is, that these are often issues you can only deal with once the first draft is there on your desk, in all its ragged and unproducable glory.
Perhaps this should be my New Year’s resolution for 2010: Don’t look up and don’t look down, just get the fuck on with the writing.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I Wonder What Would Have Happened If I’d…
In a recent interview on Big Think, writer Paul Auster tells of the inspiration for his novel City of Glass. He was called on the phone by someone who asked, “Is this the Pinkerton Detective Agency?” He answered, “No, wrong number,” and hung up. The same thing happened the next day too, but after he hung up the second time, he immediately regretted it. He began to imagine what might have happened if he had kept that person on the line and pretended to be the Pinkerton Detective Agency. This became the starting point for his novel.
Seems to me we all regularly experience these kinds of moments. Something as simple as thinking in retrospect of a biting retort you could have given an uncooperative salesperson. Or perhaps you only realized when the train pulled out of the station that the person who was sitting next to you was inviting you to flirt.
Here’s an incident I experienced a while ago:
I live in a sleepy suburb and I have a dog (these facts in themselves are a long story, but some other time). I often take the dog out after lunch, you know an old-fashioned constitutional. At that time of day, most normal people are at work. Of course, I’m working too, you just can’t tell by looking at me; I’m a writer.
On this particular day, it was during the summer holidays, I saw someone I didn’t know sitting behind the wheel of my neighbour’s expensive SUV. My neighbour and his family were on holiday in Tunisia.
From a distance it looked like the guy was trying to hot-wire the car, as he was fiddling around below the steering wheel. The man was large, had cropped hair and a scrunched up face that seemed to bear witness to numerous fist fights (that I imagined he had won). So there I stand, a timid, bourgeois man with a little dog and a terrible dilemma. Should I approach the man and ask him straight what he’s doing in my neighbour’s car? Should I pretend I haven’t noticed?
I can’t decide, so I walk around the parking lot, pretending to attend to my dog, while keeping an eye on the suspect in the car. I think things like: Should I call the police? Should I go away? The man starts the car. Shit. Now I really have to decide. Then he spies me watching him. Fuck. He’s going to kill me. Now my heart is pounding. He drives the car slowly across the parking lot. Why slowly? This doesn’t make sense, and worse, he’s coming towards me. I act like one of those animals that feigns death when faced with a predator.
The man stops the car and climbs out (really, like he’s a gorilla). That’s when he smiles at me, and I feel a wave of relief. This is also when I begin pretending to myself that I’m courageous. I ask him who he is, and he tells me he’s my neighbour’s brother-in-law. I suddenly see the resemblance. He says he couldn’t work out how to get the mirrors out… fucking fancy-shmancy cars… He says he saw me watching him, and I tell him something about us neighbours looking out for each other and so on. Turns out he’s going to the airport to pick them up, they’re coming home from Tunisia today.
Now then… in retrospect I feel I should have been braver. I should have gone up to the car right away and asked who he was. But who knows what would have happened then? What if this had been a car thief? Or what if this was some goon sabotaging my neighbour’s car for the local mob? He might have pulled out a gun and shot my dog… or asked me for help with the mirrors, or tried to escape… who knows.
See? A simple, uneventful incident for which your imagination can supply any number of alternative continuations if you let it wander.
One thing’s for sure, next time I think in retrospect of something I could have said or done, I’m going to play it out in my mind and see where it takes me. I’ll keep you posted.
Seems to me we all regularly experience these kinds of moments. Something as simple as thinking in retrospect of a biting retort you could have given an uncooperative salesperson. Or perhaps you only realized when the train pulled out of the station that the person who was sitting next to you was inviting you to flirt.
Here’s an incident I experienced a while ago:
I live in a sleepy suburb and I have a dog (these facts in themselves are a long story, but some other time). I often take the dog out after lunch, you know an old-fashioned constitutional. At that time of day, most normal people are at work. Of course, I’m working too, you just can’t tell by looking at me; I’m a writer.
On this particular day, it was during the summer holidays, I saw someone I didn’t know sitting behind the wheel of my neighbour’s expensive SUV. My neighbour and his family were on holiday in Tunisia.
From a distance it looked like the guy was trying to hot-wire the car, as he was fiddling around below the steering wheel. The man was large, had cropped hair and a scrunched up face that seemed to bear witness to numerous fist fights (that I imagined he had won). So there I stand, a timid, bourgeois man with a little dog and a terrible dilemma. Should I approach the man and ask him straight what he’s doing in my neighbour’s car? Should I pretend I haven’t noticed?
I can’t decide, so I walk around the parking lot, pretending to attend to my dog, while keeping an eye on the suspect in the car. I think things like: Should I call the police? Should I go away? The man starts the car. Shit. Now I really have to decide. Then he spies me watching him. Fuck. He’s going to kill me. Now my heart is pounding. He drives the car slowly across the parking lot. Why slowly? This doesn’t make sense, and worse, he’s coming towards me. I act like one of those animals that feigns death when faced with a predator.
The man stops the car and climbs out (really, like he’s a gorilla). That’s when he smiles at me, and I feel a wave of relief. This is also when I begin pretending to myself that I’m courageous. I ask him who he is, and he tells me he’s my neighbour’s brother-in-law. I suddenly see the resemblance. He says he couldn’t work out how to get the mirrors out… fucking fancy-shmancy cars… He says he saw me watching him, and I tell him something about us neighbours looking out for each other and so on. Turns out he’s going to the airport to pick them up, they’re coming home from Tunisia today.
Now then… in retrospect I feel I should have been braver. I should have gone up to the car right away and asked who he was. But who knows what would have happened then? What if this had been a car thief? Or what if this was some goon sabotaging my neighbour’s car for the local mob? He might have pulled out a gun and shot my dog… or asked me for help with the mirrors, or tried to escape… who knows.
See? A simple, uneventful incident for which your imagination can supply any number of alternative continuations if you let it wander.
One thing’s for sure, next time I think in retrospect of something I could have said or done, I’m going to play it out in my mind and see where it takes me. I’ll keep you posted.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Follow Your Gut, But Train It First
I’m a great fan of Jeff Goldsmith’s blog and podcast, which features Q+A sessions with screenwriters of movies currently in theatres. Sometimes it’s just reassuring to hear people describe familiar writing dilemma’s and creative issues; it helps to know it’s not just me. Other times it’s useful to hear how other writers find inspiration or deal with specific dramatic writing issues; a great tip can save much unnecessary sweat.
However, what I’ve always found most intriguing are the interviews with writers who don’t exhaustively prepare and outline their screenplays before they start writing a first draft. They write intuitively. Just a few of these writers I can think of off-hand: Guillermo Arriaga (Babel), Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), David Benioff (The Kite Runner).
What strikes me about these people, is that they all have a background in writing novels or stage plays, or both. They come from a world in which the writer is a far more highly respected and autonomous player. They appear to write from a very different starting point than screenwriters whose thinking is steeped Hollywood jargon that seems to serve more to reassure studio executives than to advance the creative process. You know, plot points, character arcs and all that stuff.
But there’s more to it than that, I fear.
I recently started work on a screenplay without doing the usual text book preparation, and it made me extremely nervous. Being the introspective type, I wanted to know what was going on, so I looked inside and realized: I feel like I’m losing my religion. Shame, guilt, accusatory voices in my head (don’t worry, only I can hear them), and all because I’m violating the edicts of all the how-to books and screenwriting tutors.
Or am I?
In fact, my conclusion is different. Learning to write good screenplays is like learning to paint or play a musical instrument, or any other creative endeavour. You first have to spend a long, long time imitating the people who’ve done it all before you. Learning their tricks, distilling principles, practising an array of techniques, and so on. Only once you’ve mastered the technique can you transcend it. That’s how you develop intuition, or gut feeling, and that’s when you discover if you have anything interesting and original to add.
Which is why learning to outline, knowing what an act break is, understanding what’s meant by a character arc, familiarizing yourself with genre conventions and so on, is essential. Only then can you go beyond the generic and create something truly original.
Like my current favourite Keith Johnstone says in his book Impro:
It’s easy to play the role of “artist,” but to actually create something means going against one’s education.
Which I don’t take to mean mindlessly rebelling against what you’ve learned. The point is to internalize what you’ve learned, so that it becomes a repertoire you have at your disposal, and then follow your instincts.
There’s a famous psychological experiment in which two groups of subjects are given a free poster to take home for keeps. They get to choose between two reproductions of impressionist paintings and some huge photos of cute little kittens. Group A simply chooses a poster and leaves, Group B is asked to first write down the reasons for their choice.
When the subjects are called a few weeks later and asked if they’re still happy with the choice they made, the vast majority of Group A, who mostly chose the impressionist painting, are still very happy with their posters. However, Group B, who mostly chose the kitten, absolutely hate their posters. The explanation, according to psychologists who study decision making, is that this type of aesthetic decision is best made instinctively rather than by means of conscious deliberation.
People in Group B had to write down the motivation for their choice. This conscious thinking removed them from their initial, unconscious preference, and instead prompted them to follow a more “rational” and in this case less authentic approach.
Something similar goes on in a screenwriter’s mind when there’s too much thinking and conscious reasoning, and not enough intuition involved.
Right now my intuition says it’s time for some tea.
However, what I’ve always found most intriguing are the interviews with writers who don’t exhaustively prepare and outline their screenplays before they start writing a first draft. They write intuitively. Just a few of these writers I can think of off-hand: Guillermo Arriaga (Babel), Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), David Benioff (The Kite Runner).
What strikes me about these people, is that they all have a background in writing novels or stage plays, or both. They come from a world in which the writer is a far more highly respected and autonomous player. They appear to write from a very different starting point than screenwriters whose thinking is steeped Hollywood jargon that seems to serve more to reassure studio executives than to advance the creative process. You know, plot points, character arcs and all that stuff.
But there’s more to it than that, I fear.
I recently started work on a screenplay without doing the usual text book preparation, and it made me extremely nervous. Being the introspective type, I wanted to know what was going on, so I looked inside and realized: I feel like I’m losing my religion. Shame, guilt, accusatory voices in my head (don’t worry, only I can hear them), and all because I’m violating the edicts of all the how-to books and screenwriting tutors.
Or am I?
In fact, my conclusion is different. Learning to write good screenplays is like learning to paint or play a musical instrument, or any other creative endeavour. You first have to spend a long, long time imitating the people who’ve done it all before you. Learning their tricks, distilling principles, practising an array of techniques, and so on. Only once you’ve mastered the technique can you transcend it. That’s how you develop intuition, or gut feeling, and that’s when you discover if you have anything interesting and original to add.
Which is why learning to outline, knowing what an act break is, understanding what’s meant by a character arc, familiarizing yourself with genre conventions and so on, is essential. Only then can you go beyond the generic and create something truly original.
Like my current favourite Keith Johnstone says in his book Impro:
It’s easy to play the role of “artist,” but to actually create something means going against one’s education.
Which I don’t take to mean mindlessly rebelling against what you’ve learned. The point is to internalize what you’ve learned, so that it becomes a repertoire you have at your disposal, and then follow your instincts.
There’s a famous psychological experiment in which two groups of subjects are given a free poster to take home for keeps. They get to choose between two reproductions of impressionist paintings and some huge photos of cute little kittens. Group A simply chooses a poster and leaves, Group B is asked to first write down the reasons for their choice.
When the subjects are called a few weeks later and asked if they’re still happy with the choice they made, the vast majority of Group A, who mostly chose the impressionist painting, are still very happy with their posters. However, Group B, who mostly chose the kitten, absolutely hate their posters. The explanation, according to psychologists who study decision making, is that this type of aesthetic decision is best made instinctively rather than by means of conscious deliberation.
People in Group B had to write down the motivation for their choice. This conscious thinking removed them from their initial, unconscious preference, and instead prompted them to follow a more “rational” and in this case less authentic approach.
Something similar goes on in a screenwriter’s mind when there’s too much thinking and conscious reasoning, and not enough intuition involved.
Right now my intuition says it’s time for some tea.
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