Give your future readers a Christmas present

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.

Is your script predictable?

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.

The Detective Trap

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.