Writers’ Resolutions

Have you made a New Year’s Resolution? To start that script? Or finish it? To start selling the novel you finished? To get proper feedback? To write more? Or less?

Do you really think you’re going to keep it?

I used to make New Year’s Resolutions that lasted about as long as the turkey left-overs, if that. But if you know how your brain works, you can make resolutions that really do have an effect on your writing.

To have effect a resolution needs to be exciting, acted on and frequently rewarded.

When I make a resolution, I like to see what it will look like when I succeed.

What will you see when you achieve it? What excites you? A beautifully finished script? An agent shaking you warmly by the hand? A producer shaking you warmly by the cheque?

What do you hear? What do you feel?

Next – take action. Now.

Decide now on two actions that you’re going to take to follow up on your resolution. One small action that you can take immediately without thinking. A second, maybe bigger, action that will make sure you’re really on your way.

Maybe the first action is to write the title on the first page and the second action is to start roughing out an outline in your head.

Or make one phone call to research a character. Or book yourself out an hour in your diary to write the opening scene.

Finally, if it’s a big resolution, how are you going to reward yourself along the way? Be generous to your creative mind and your creative mind will be generous to you. Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) believes in “artists’ treats” –  how will you treat yourself when you’ve taken those first two actions? How will you reward yourself at each stage along the way?

A movie? A downloaded mp3? Veg out for an hour in front of a mindless TV show? Make a trip to a local art gallery? Make a list of potential rewards.

So, this New Year: Decide what you want to do. Start doing it. Reward yourself.

And make 2011 a year for celebration. Have a very happy and successful one.

Apologies for being unable to complain

I write to apologise for my complete unpreparedness for the current winter weather winge.

Owing to my failure to plan ahead, I have had no ability to write letters of complaint or grouse to my neighbours.

By clearing the pavement outside our house, failing to take inappropriate journeys, owning good snow boots and ensuring I could continue to work uninterrupted, I have totally failed to join in the nation’s collective moaning.

On the one occasion when I was unable to drive up our hill, I could only park less than two minutes walk away on a red route, where the traffic wardens totally failed to give me a parking ticket.

I have been further hindered by Camden Council who gritted the roads and pavements before the first snowfall, ensured the local grit bin was well filled in advance and have kept collecting refuse and recycling.

I have been left alone to admire the beauty of the snow, enjoy the silence when it falls, walk through crisp white drifts, and even throw the odd snow ball.

I cannot express my dismay more powerfully and shall endeavour to do much better next time.

Have a great holiday.

Planning to write over the holidays? Here’s a Christmas tip.

Many writers put aside time to write over the holidays. It can be a great idea, and it can also be a quick way to get writers block!

The problem is that squeezing all your writing into one short space of time puts you under a great deal of pressure to deliver – and that can be difficult to deal with.

Personally if time is short I feel it’s better to allocate a short time regularly than a long time irregularly: 30 minutes a day can produce an enormous amount of writing very quickly.

But what’s to do if you have only a fixed time and no ideas? You know what you should be writing, but you can’t get started. Here’s the Christmas tip:

Write what’s on your mind. However stupid or irrelevant it may seem.

Yes, don’t get precious. Just start. If you have to write the opening and all you can think of is turkey and chipolatas – well, stick them in there on the page. Fade in on your hero shopping in a supermarket, or a couple having an argument about dinner, or two villains breaking into a turkey farm.

If you’ve got to the big courtroom showdown and your mind gives you nothing but fear that you don’t have the skill that it takes: put that fear in the mouth of your main character and you’re away.

You can always cut it out later. It’s only a way to get started. But from experience I know those little offbeat ideas are often the very ones that turn out to be the best.

Have a merry holiday – whether or not you intend to write a single word – and a very happy and productive New Year.

(My next posting will be on Writers’ New Year’s Resolutions – well, that’s if my resolve lasts).

Writer’s Voice

I’ve just read an interesting blog post on the writer’s voice by the always interesting Ron Aberdeen http://www.ronaberdeen.com/?p=1004/

Have a look. I do agree that as a writer (and a director) you have to find your voice, and I also feel that your voice must find you – you must look but you can push too hard.

This is important and not often discussed. Ron has inspired me to write something about voice in my blog in the very near future.

Top 10 Ways to be a Great Writer: #8

Today we have an attribute that I didn’t recognise for a long time.

When great artists of all kinds are discussed we usually get a load of blah about originality and spontaneity as if great creative work appears by magic. Or alternatively from individual slog, the writer alone in his or her garret.

It took me many years of mistakes and failed scripts to realise that true originality and spontaneity comes paradoxically from a deep knowledge of everything that went before. What I see in all the best writers of film, stage and literature (and also directors as it happens) is a love of Life-Long Learning.

Listen to just about any writer or director talk. Say Paul Schrader or Martin Scorsese. They have a profound understanding of their trade, of the people who went before (famous and also obscure), of the most esoteric corners of their art, and are still learning.

As a good screenwriter, what do you need to keep on learning about?

Technique, of course; structure; treatment writing; sales and marketing; mentors – the study of successful writers; the history of film and TV; language, style and vocabulary (too many writers have only one style and no ability to adapt their words to the situation); psychology (what makes characters tick); social settings; the background to your story (Kubrick became a world expert in the subjects of each of his movies); ideas.

How to learn? Any way you enjoy learning. Speaking personally these ways work best for me (in ascending order of effectiveness): websites, podcasts, documentaries, newspapers and magazines, books, personal meetings, workshops (because they compress an enormous amount into a short time).

I’ve personally also had great spin-off rewards from the information I’ve picked up while learning, including a website, magazine articles, a book, TV documentaries and script commissions.

At the same time, the most important part is that you enjoy the learning. Then that enjoyment will shine through everything you create.

Wave Your Wooden Leg

Here’s a screenwriting tip that will make your life so much easier.

And before I get to it, just a word about difficulty. Many screenwriting books seem to want to make screenwriting hard – and I believe some writers want to make things hard for themselves. I don’t know why.

The books give us loads of rules that we have to fit in with, or else. The writers slog away trying to solve their script problems, believing that hard work is the only solution.

Professionals delight in finding techniques that make work easier. They swap ideas, study, talk to other professionals and shamelessly nick their ways of working.

There’s one kind of major script problem that trips many writers up. It’s the kind of major problem in the script that seems central. You can’t solve it without abandoning the script, which may also mean abandoning some great things that are in it too. So you…

Wave your wooden leg

To wave your wooden leg means to take your problem and put it up there on the screen, full-on, no apologies.

We were watching Good Night and Good Luck this week at a training. There’s a very wordy, intellectual, film of ideas. The writers could have cut the words, simplified the ideas. Instead they put them up front, in the very first scene. Long speeches, cool discussions of important ideas. Take it or leave it.

If you’ve got a film that’s in seven acts, why not call it Seven? It all takes place in a box? Call it Buried and make your one tiny location an essential part of the plot. You’ve got an unlikeable central character? Make sure everyone says how unlikeable he is.

How do you do this technique? Find the biggest problem you face in putting your story on the screen, and then put it right at the start, up front, an essential part of the story.

Go on – try it now. Go find your biggest problem. Have fun with it.

If you like learning and using professional techniques that make your writing life easier, then you’d love the very special workshop I’m running on Saturday 11th December in London. It’s called ScreenPLAY and it covers the kind of problems that trip up the most talented screenwriters, problems like structure, subtext and exposition.

It’s only for a small group, so that I can give close attention to everyone. You’ll role-play as if you were working in a real professional TV or film studio, and I’ll be teaching you professional techniques you won’t find elsewhere.

When you know these techniques you’ll find structure, characters, dialogue and visual writing fall into place, you’ll trust your ideas and your writing will flow so much more easily. So you can concentrate on the fun part. Details here.