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.

Multitasking

Short of time? Multitask.

Newspapers tell us that women are better at it than men. Men tell us they are just as good really. Neurologists tell us that there’s no such thing: we appear to multitask by doing two or more things in very quick succession, rather like the rapid still frames of a movie appear to create movement. No matter, it feels the same, so what’s the problem?

Well, my problem is that I don’t like it. The First Harris Rule of Happiness is Do One Thing At A Time.

The history of human civilisation is the story of progression from multitasking to specialisation.

Once we all had to do everything: hunt, gather, fight, groom each other for fleas, you name it. Then we split things up and some people became hunters, some became gatherers, some became religious shamans, some became court jesters… and some became writers.

You know, I like that. But now things are going the other way. I partly blame the Internet – in the old days we had to pay people to do jobs we now do for ourselves for free. Great savings of money – not so great on our time.

Now instead of hiring an expert to do my VAT,  answer letters, book travel and deal with publicity (to name but a few) I hire myself, a non-expert, and have less time to do what I am expert in and love to do: write, direct and teach.

What I do know is that if you’re stuck in your writing, you may find you’re trying to do too many things at once. All creative artists need to focus.

Single-task.

Don’t try to prejudge the quality. Don’t try to edit while you write the draft. Don’t try to second-guess your audience. Switch off the emails, plan out the treatment, lock the door and write. It’s the only way.

And while you’re at it, you might want to single-task other areas of your life too: it’s the short-cut to true happiness.

Canaletto, Gaugin, Cezanne, Dickens and Screenwriting

I managed to get to three  of the biggest exhibitions in town this January and took time off to read a great novel. It wasn’t easy. There’s always a reason for not doing the things you enjoy. And you know the strange thing: whenever I fight the urge to work and do instead the thing I enjoy, I get an insight that feeds straight back into my work.

This time it was the same insight four times.

The first time was Canaletto and his Rivals at the National Gallery. I always liked Canaletto but tended to think of him as rather picture postcard. Not a bit of it. When you see him close up, you realise how strong is his sense of structure, how daring his compositions.

But what I saw most of all was his use of gesture. How he could create the sense of a real human being simply through the way a tiny figure stood, threw out an arm, or hunched over a basket.

Gaugin and Cezanne had the same ability to create a character in a simple posture or frozen movement. Dickens, maybe the most cinematic of novelists, had a similar flair for finding just the right actions to immortalise a human being before your very eyes.

How could this apply to screenwriting? How could it not?

Look at the way a great writer can introduce a new character with a simple action. Bonnie Parker putting on make-up. Scarlett O’Hara refusing to talk about war.

Not for them, lengthy descriptions, details of age, and so on.

Back to the easel…

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.

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.

The secret of telling a gripping true story

When I’ve got a workshop coming up, I like to post a tip or two about it – it’s a bonus for those who can’t make it, and an appetiser for those who can. Tomorrow night I’ve got an evening on True Stories, so I’ve been thinking about Truth.

True stories can be a massive elephant trap. I know, I’ve fallen in more than once. Like pebbles straight out of the sea, they seem so gleaming and fresh and full of potential – until a few weeks or months of writing dulls the sheen. And then you realise the first tip: Being true is never enough.

A true story still needs to have a strong spine to it. It’s all too easy to be seduced by all those exciting incidents into thinking there’s actually a movie or TV drama there, when all there is turns out to be a series of dramatic scenes with no link.

So, tip number two is:

Find the through line

The through line is anything that hangs the whole project together from beginning to end. That may well be a strong action line, or goal, though true stories tend to be less easily organised than that.

So you may have to find a strong theme to link  it all together. Such a theme might be the Goodfellas line “I always wanted to be a gangster.” In this very episodic story, that sentence, spoken right at the start, underlies everything that happens, although there is no single action line as you’d find it in a more conventional film.

There are other possible through lines. You could centre the whole story on a relationship line, or a character line, on a time (September 11, say), even on a location (Lawrence of Arabia) or prop (such as Enigma).

Until you’ve found that single unifying link, your True Story will be nothing more than a series of nice scenes in search of a script.

If you’re interested in coming to the True Story & Biopic workshop in London – there are just two places left for tomorrow night (6pm November 30 2010)  at £45 each (including three  free scripts to keep)  – click here to find out more.

Tips from Linda Aronson

It was great seeing so many people last night at Euroscript for the conversation I had with Linda Aronson (writer and guru!) – she was in good form and full of useful advice on all kinds of screenwriting, including the importance of breaking the rules and knowing how to do it. If you keep reading, I’m giving two of her thought-provoking tips below. I was also delighted that she sold every copy of her book that she brought along – and the UK publishers are also having to reprint due to the demand. However you can still get the book online at less than the cover price – click here.

Tip #1 – Remember the Spark It’s important to have a great, enticing pitch, Linda said. However she sees hundreds of scripts where the writing doesn’t reflect the underlying idea. “Find where the central “spark” of the story is –  what is it that makes people’s eyes light up. When you’ve found it, make sure that spark is there in the script – all the way through”. If necessary, rethink the plotting or build up elements to strengthen that element. Tip #2 – Don’t be betrayed by your own talent! “Talent can be a big problem” she says. “A talented writer can make any scene, any dialogue, look good – superficially. However that surface may be concealing the fact that the scene actually doesn’t work.” She also knows many talented writers who only write to 40% of their ability – coasting rather than working to their fullest capability. Don’t be fooled by your own ability to write well – make sure that everything works 100% – push yourself, keep learning, training and improving. Like I said, her book The 21st Century Screenplay is selling out everywhere, but you can still order it online at less than the cover price by clicking here. If you’re interested, I’ve got more details about it in my book recommendations.

The Kindest Cut

Here’s a tip that will work for just about every script, novel, short story, short film, movie or TV series.

You’ve just finished your draft. The story’s more or less there. But something’s not quite right. You look at it and you don’t know where to start editing. It’s not ready to send out to a professional script reviewer. It needs work – but what? And where?

Let me tell you in just a few short words. I don’t even have to read your script. I just know:

Cut the start

The opening is too long. You take too long to get into the story. Too many scenes before you establish the characters. Too many things are there to “set up” things that happen later.

How do I know? Because everyone does the same. Beginners and experienced. The difference is that the experienced writers know it and deal with it.

Get into it

Read through your script until you find where your story really starts. Not the bits you think you need to put in – where it actually gets going. There’s where you cut to. I don’t care if it’s page 3, page 30 or page 300.

Good stories dive straight in. Good stories grab you from the beginning with interesting, complex, active characters.

Cut the start of the script. And for good measure, cut the start of most scenes, cut the start of most speeches, cut all the explanation, the setting up, the exposition.

There – that feels better, doesn’t it?

How to make a drama out of a story

Having a problem writing a drama script? Do you find it’s full of wonderful character development but somehow it just doesn’t come together? Or you like it but your story isn’t getting across to the people who read it?

There is a rather pernicious false division in some industry people’s minds between “drama” and “genre” – as in “it’s not a genre movie, it’s drama” – as if Drama were not a genre in cinema and TV. Of course it is, and a very well defined genre, albeit one with many variations. And like all genres it has major traps for the unwary writer.

What’s the story?

If the major problem with action movies is that the writer forgets to write the Inner Story – what it is that really drives the characters along – the major problem with drama is the opposite.

Most drama scripts are almost all Inner Story – what we remember is not the characters’ outer goals but their inner struggles. Nowhere is this clearer than in Rite of Passage stories, including Coming of Age.

We are so absorbed by the Inner Story of (say) About Schmidt (Schmidt learning to live with old age) that we remember little or nothing of the Outer Story. Can you remember it? (See below). Or the Outer Stories of Stand By Me, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Diner or The Big Chill?

Get Outside

If you’re stuck with a drama, the chances are you’ve neglected the Outer Story. Go and check it out now. If you haven’t got one – invent one. You  have to have one, even if nobody will remember it! It can be as simple as driving to your daughter’s wedding (that’s the outer story of About Schmidt – did you get it?) or walking through the woods looking for a dead body (Stand By Me).

If you already have an Outer Story, then you may need to focus on it a bit more.

Social Drama and Coming of Age

This is just one of the requirements that get forgotten for Drama, for either film or television. You also need to know what emotions the audience will expect, the role of society in a drama story, what story patterns you have to deliver, and how to deliver them in fresh and surprising ways.

If you want to know more, I’m running a workshop in Social Drama and Coming of Age in London for Euroscript at 6.15pm on Tuesday 28 September. We look at a number of Drama stories in particular Juno – you get a free full script of Juno included in the price. It’s a small training and getting quickly booked up, but there are still a few places left – to find out more and book click here.

And have fun making a drama out of your story.