A very quick post, linking to an excellent article by my good friend Chris Jones – indie film-maker and one of the genius’ behind the London Screenwriters’ Festival.
It’s a very practical, not to say crucial, series of pointers on how to get MASSIVE results when you ask for help for your movie.
A must-read for any film-maker, writer or indie producer.
Posted in Pitching
I’ve been preparing for the Selling and Pitching Weekend Masterclass which you’ll see is coming up very soon, on the last weekend of this month, and that’s led me to thinking in depth about why some scripts sell and some just don’t…
Before we get to that, there’s something you need to know. Many people ask me if they should learn about selling and pitching scripts before they start writing, or after they’ve finished a draft.
My answer is: either and both – and while in the middle too!
The thing is this: you should absolutely not write a script for the market. And you absolutely should write it with awareness of the market.
Your market is your audience. All the great artistic screenwriters and film-makers in cinema and TV, from DW Griffith to Godard to Charlie Kaufman to Martin Scorsese have known exactly who their audience is, where they are and how to get to them.
Knowing their audience doesn’t distort their vision – it is a central part of their vision.
And the irony is, when I see scripts that don’t sell (and sadly I see many) very often the difference between reaching the writer’s audience and not reaching it comes down to one or two things that could be changed quite simply – either in the script or in the pitch. If only the writer knew.
So, the tip for today is: know your audience – profoundly and in detail. Do whatever research, watch whatever movies and TV programmes, go to whatever workshops it takes to find where they are, and how to sell to them.
If you want to learn more about this, then it’s going to be at the very heart of the Selling and Pitching Weekend Masterclass, in London, coming up in just two weeks time – Saturday to Sunday, 28th to 29th January. There are still some places available, but they may not be around long.
Excuse me blowing my own trumpet for a moment, but we’ve had many successes from writers who came on these workshops, you can hear about some of them on the website.
I believe firmly that a workshop like this is absolutely essential for any writer who wants to be successful in TV or film.
I hope to see you there.
Cameron wants us to make blockbusters. David Cameron, that is, not James.
Speaking as a film director, and director of Euroscript, I’m sad that nobody I’ve heard or read so far has mentioned script. The British success stories over the years have absolutely nothing in common, except that they all had good scripts to work with.
If we want to spend money wisely, where better than in training writers, especially in working with experienced writers, directors and producers.
Christmas is coming and the writers are getting twitchy. Are you planning to use the glorious break from everyday life to do some serious writing on that long-delayed script or novel?
Give yourself and your future readers the best possible Christmas present.
It’s only too easy to spend all that time hammering away at all the things you feel you ought to be doing – setting up plot, explaining character, making the story happen in the right order – and forget to do the one most important thing that you have to do.
That’s not what we watch movies or read books for. And certainly not what makes writing fun.
This Christmas, focus on giving your readers what they really want: a reason to keep on reading.
As you write each scene, as you finish each page, ask yourself what you are giving your reader that would make them want to read on.
Is it a question you’ve posed? Or an emotion you’ve created? A threat that you’ve made us anxious about? Is the central character deeply conflicted? Or totally misguided yet we care about her? Is her dialogue crackling with (say) wit, insight, malice or self-deception? Are we entering a fascinating new location? Or seeing a familiar place in an unusual way? Have you separated two lovers who belong together? Or united two who don’t?
It is rightly said that it is better to give than to receive.
In the same way, posing questions and creating emotions for your readers will not only be better for them – it will make your script much more enjoyable to write.
Remember, they call them screenplays for a reason – go play.
And have a fulfilling, successful and rewarding 2012.
Posted in Novel writing, Screenwriting
Tagged emotion, questions, screenplay, script, writing
I’ve read hundreds of scripts by very competent writers, and very few have ever given me a single moment of surprise. Yet all the great scripts I’ve read are constantly surprising.
So what’s going wrong?
By coincidence, I was listening to Robert Harris (no relation) talking about his new novel The Fear Index – set in the world of finance and computers.
He was talking about the way finance computers exploit our fears. Essentially, when people are afraid they become predictable – the computers that buy and sell in the City and Wall Street like it when we’re predictable.
Unfortunately audiences don’t. In fact, it’s one of the quickest ways to ensure that an otherwise well-written script ends up in the bin.
What to do?
Look at your mind-set first. Are you approaching writing with a feeling of anxiety? Probably. I don’t know any writers who are calm and relaxed all the time, much as they might like to be.
Actors, too. But I’ve helped nervous actors turn those natural “performance” nerves into creative energy, even playfulness. Writers can do the same.
How often do you sit down at the computer in a spirit of play? Could you imagine doing it? What difference would it make to how you write?
Actors, like musicians, footballers, and other performers also know that the best way to free up and lose your inhibitions is (paradoxically) to train constantly at the skills of the craft.
It doesn’t surprise me that the most consistently surprising writers and directors are also those who have studied film most profoundly. Martin Scorsese, to name one of the greatest living directors, is more knowledgeable about the history of the movies than any film buff.
(And if you love film and haven’t seen Hugo, you absolutely must, in 3D if possible).
So – surprise everyone: be playful and study your craft 24/7. Get so good at your craft that you can dance with it, with freshness and spontaneity.
Posted in Psychology of Creativity
Tagged anxiety, creative energy, freshness, play, predictability, script, spontaneity
Are you writing a crime story?
Good call.
Detective, crime and police stories are always popular, and include some of the greatest novels, films and TV dramas. But if you don’t watch out for the traps, they can fall very flat.
When I started writing crime and police scripts and novels I received great feedback. They were well written, strongly structured, highly visual. But they didn’t sell.
A major trap with this genre is language. Audiences and readers need to believe in the lead characters, and criminals and police are often thinly developed, with predictable dialogue and character traits.
I found I needed to research my language with care. The way characters worked, the way they thought, all was reflected in the way they spoke. Not only did this research transform my writing, it was also great fun.
Police dialogue in particular turned out to be especially valuable. There were no books on police slang at the time, so I tapped my contacts in forces all over the country. The words and phrases they came up with were very un-PC (pun intended), scurrilous, funny, and remarkably revealing of the psychology of a policeman, or woman, working today.
So interesting, that I ended up getting commissioned to compile a short book on police slang for Abson Books. (Shameless plug: it makes a great low-budget Christmas stocking filler for any crime writer).
Language is an important route to authenticity in crime and police scripts. David Newman and Robert Benton researched Texan dialects so that each character had a distinct sound in Bonnie & Clyde. Scorsese and Pileggi’s mastery of New York Sicilian patois is essential to the success of Goodfellas.
The bottom line is that I never regret a single second I spend on research in this genre. Even if it doesn’t end up as a book on its own, it always ends up illuminating some little corner of my script, dialogue, action or characters.
Police Slang, by Charles Harris, was published in 2010 by Abson Books, price £2.50.
His next workshop for Euroscript will be the Selling Your Script Masterclass Weekend, January 28-29 2012.
I’m thinking a good deal about creativity at the moment, as I plan Unblock Your Creativity. In particular I’m aware that these are difficult times to let yourself go and be your full creative self.
This applies to all writers – however great the level of experience. When life is so tough for many people, the writing itself can become a problem.
It is easy to put off our most valued plans – or just find that the writing doesn’t flow as richly as it could.
The irony is that this is a vital time to be writing – the media become even more important to people in a recession. The demand for good quality writing grows stronger than ever.
From personal experience, I feel that the key to performing well under pressure lies in your unconscious mind and in learning how to stay in full contact with it.
Roughly 5% of your mind is conscious – the part that plans, runs and observes what you do. The remaining 95% is unconscious. However this 95% is a crucial source of inspiration – it is that 95% that provides you with the energy, the excitement, the ideas, the flow that you need to succeed creatively.
When the pressure is on, the temptation is to fall back on the 5% that we have direct control over. However the result is almost invariably an anaemic, over-controlled, thin kind of creativity.
By contrast, we all have experience of those moments when surprising, fresh ideas just seemed to come automatically, the words fell into place, the characters came to life – if only for a moment. That is the working of the powerful resources of your unconscious.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be able to draw on those deep, rich resources on a regular basis? That is a central skill that successful writers need to develop.
One way to do this, is to use your habits.
Habits are unconscious actions. We have bad habits – some writers procrastinate, others fall back on tried and tested ideas that have run out of steam.
We also have good habits – such as brushing your teeth, reading books or going to movies.
One quick and powerful method of training your unconscious is to link a habit you’d like to have with one you already do have – by chaining one activity onto another.
For example, immediately after a habit such as brushing your teeth in the morning, think of one thing you could do that will improve your writing.
You could (for example) spend the next ten minutes writing the first page of that draft script you’ve been meaning to start. Next day, page two…
Or you could spend an hour playing with an aspect of your writing you’ve been aware of neglecting (develop a character, explore a theme, write a joke…)
After a week or so, the new activity will become a good habit, enriching all your work.
In Unblock Your Creativity, we have great fun playing around with a whole number of powerful ways to get re-inspired and tap into your unconscious mind with all its energy and inventiveness – advanced, practical techniques.
You can learn to turn bad habits into good ones, to get rid of bad habits, to create vivid characters in a matter of seconds, to write down ideas you never thought you had and allow your story to tell you the best way it wants to be told.
To learn more techniques this go to the Unblock Your Creativity page.
Posted in Psychology of Creativity
Tagged character, creativity, mental game, Screenwriting, success, technique, writing
My son Oliver, whose first novel The Hollow Man came out this year (it’s great and I’m not biased) has a good insight into how writers use time in their writing – both in how we write and also what we write.
Let’s start with What.
Oliver talks about how he learned to “buy time” at the start of his novel. His story grabs you from the start, creating questions and in particular involving you in a complex and off-beat central character. This draws you in and “buys time” for the writer to step back and allow the plot to unfurl at its own pace.
You can see this technique at work in many great film scripts. Sunset Boulevard begins with a dead body (whose owner narrates the story of his own life up to his own murder) and then cuts straight to a chase, allowing Billy Wilder, and his co-writers Charles Brackett and DJ Marshman Jr to buy time to develop the central characters in a series of more thoughtful scenes that follow.
Could you imagine using this creative technique to boost up what could otherwise be a sedate first act?
The same idea also applies to How we write.
Our creative minds often need a little nudge to get going. Often we also feel guilty because there are other demands on our time. We tell ourselves we’ll sit down to write when we’ve done all the other work – but often that work is never-ending – and if it does end we are generally too tired to take advantage.
In this case, I suggest you buy time by doing a deal with yourself. Start the day with a fixed amount of time devoted only to writing. It doesn’t matter how short, you can get a great more written in regular 30 minute or 1 hour slots early in the morning than in a snatched day or two, grabbed out of your schedule at irregular intervals.
It may involve a little motivation – getting up early perhaps, or cutting down on the time you spend on other things – but the good feelings you get as you start immediately moving ahead will soon be their own reward.
If you want to learn more ways to get your creative mind working in powerful ways, then click here.
I’m running Unblock Your Creativity for Euroscript on Saturday November 26th (note this is a date change from the printed brochure).
We’ll be exploring advanced writers’ techniques for enriching your work, whether you are blocked, going slow or just want to tap into that writer’s muse to create better scripts.
These are all practical techniques that I use myself every day in my professional working life, and have kept me creating and earning now for many years.
Join me on an inspiring and invigorating journey into the essential ways of working as a creative writer. Click here to learn more.
What links Tom Waits, suicide and the Klu Klux Klan? They’ve all come up in a recent podcast I was listening to about creativity, writing and the mental games we play.
The more I write, the more I realise that my creative life depends on how I handle my mental game – how I use that highly complex lump of grey matter in my head.
Everyone gets stuck, everyone procrastinates at times, everyone has days when writing comes easily, and days when it doesn’t. The key to unlocking that creative flow is how you handle those issues.
The podcast I was listening to came from the excellent people at Radio Lab, I do recommend them. Titled Help! it looked at various ways that different people have tried to get to grips with that arch-enemy that always seems to be sabotaging our best efforts – ourselves.
Nice or nasty?
And this is where the nasties came in. Because it turns out that while being nice to ourselves may well be a useful way to persuade our mind to get down to work – sometimes it needs a bit of a fright too.
Stuck writing his first book, Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, became so frustrated with his lack of progress he made a serious pact with himself that he would kill himself if he didn’t finish the draft.
Would he have gone through with it? Even he doesn’t know. But what happened was that suddenly his writing mind shifted into gear and words started to flow. The start of a long writing career.
One woman, not a writer this time, found she could only give up smoking if she pledged in front of a friend that she’d donate $5,000 to the Klu Klux Klan if she ever smoked again. The horrific thought of having to go through with her promise succeeded where years of trying had failed.
Could you imagine making such a commitment to writing your next script? Or novel? How successful might you be?
Mind you, I’m not sure that nasty is always the way. Tom Waits was also quoted, saying that every song needs a different approach to getting it to reveal itself in full. Some need to be coaxed and cajoled, others seduced, tempted out and persuaded.
And – yes – some need to be bullied too.
That’s the thing about being a professional. When it comes to getting the work done – you need to be ready to commit to whatever it takes.
Charles Harris is running masterclasses in pitching and how to use your brain for writing success at the London Screenwriters’ Festival from October 27, and Unblock Your Creativity on November 12 2011. Details of both at www.euroscript.co.uk
I have a soft spot for Le Carré and I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with certain trepidation. The reviews were good, but not universally so, and adaptations can be dire – especially of good books and even more especially of good books that have already been adapted into a much-loved TV series.
Famously, Le Carré has compared adapting his novels with turning a rhinoceros into an oxo cube.
Gary Oldman looks moody in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
So what’s it like?
Well, TTSS turns out to be just what I expected, moody and evocative in a neo-romantic way. At least as I use the term. Neo-romantics are less concerned with classically constructed plots, and interwoven subplots, than with mood. The plot and subplots are there, but not the most important thing in the movie.
The movie is watchable, even gripping despite (or perhaps because of) its resolutely deliberate long-held shots (at last a filmmaker who doesn’t need to cut like it’s MTV!)
The film is set in the 1970s – as was the novel. However the novel (and TV series) were contemporary fiction. By keeping the same period, the movie is set in the past.
This has allowed some reviewers to criticise it for being irrelevant today. I’m not so sure. The contemporary relevance was clear for me but not hammered home – essentially it’s about betrayal of trust, corruption and courage.
There was no attempt to say “look how this compares to 2011″ but an intelligent audience would get the point.
However, the movie fell short of greatness. At their best Le Carré’s books pack a surprising emotional punch at the end – which is largely down to a deep involvement with the characters. Here, the mood was all – and somehow the screen characters never got the extra oomph that they did on the page, so the final whammy never quite hit home.
And you don’t get involved in the detective story as participant so much as detached observer – there is little chance for the audience to evaluate the suspects for themselves. Same reason, not enough character development.
It’s not easy fitting a novel into 127 mins.
Having said that, the time flew by, the style and mood were the point and while I usually hate films where that’s the case, in this instance I thought it was justified.
Monet rather than Velasquez, if you see what I mean.
Yet still one of the best movies around. Recommended.
