How to become a better writer? You may be surprised by the answer.

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dialogue, practice, scene, screenwriter, script, success, tuition, visuals

They all say practice makes perfect. But does it help you become a better screenwriter? Maybe there’s another issue here that you need to address if you are going to succeed in movies or TV.

The Guardian’s Matthew Syed has written an article How practice does make perfect which gives a number of examples of studies from General Electric to Stanford University. They all show that sticking to the job is one of the best ways to improve performance.

But hold on: surely it’s also a matter of what we practice, and how?

I could spend 100,000 hours trying to put up a shelf and never succeed. Why? Because I need someone to show me how. Practising the wrong way to do something will just get me really good at doing it wrong.

Practice doesn’t make perfect – it makes permanent.

Many screenwriters keep making the same mistake over and over again, because nobody told them any better. Or suggested a more useful way to learn.

Perfect practice makes perfect.

Here’s some random suggestions for better practising. These exercises take you outside your script to give you a new perspective:

• Read a script. Take a scene from it and copy its shape and structure exactly but in your own words, with your own characters and situation.
• Go somewhere. Set a scene in this real location, then bring in an invented character and see how they interact with the environment.
• Describe a real person you know very well, and put them in a totally fictional setting.
• Write a line of dialogue. Write a response (or lack of one). Keep on going. Watch what appears.
• Now take all that dialogue and see how much you can convey by cutting it out and creating visuals instead.

So, don’t just slog away at that script. The quality of your practice is as important as the length. Step away from time to time. Get good advice and good tuition. And find some fun ways to keep fresh and sharpen your game.

Perfect.

If you’re interested in doing more of this, check out my next workshops which give you a chance to practise the full range of techniques – fromfirst draft to final pitch – click here for details.

How you can use not knowing to write better scripts

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professional, skills, theories, treatment, writing

The strange realisation hit me the other day: the more I write, the less sure I become about all my theories about writing. One day, with luck, I’ll be sure about nothing at all.

This is not an argument for ignorance. In fact, it’s ignorant writers who are sure they know everything. It never ceases to amaze me how full of certainty some inexperienced writers can be about their craft. When I started writing, I too thought I knew everything about how to write. Then as I got further into it, I discovered how much more I needed to learn.

Knowing and not knowing in Adaptation

Now, every week I find the more I write, the less I know. Page by page, my certainties disappear.

This may sound a very strange thing for someone who also teaches writers to say. But actually, I think it’s very important.

Take planning a treatment. I used to sweat for months planning my stories in precise detail and then trying to write that detail into the script. Then I found that the less I remembered the plan, the better the writing became.

This is not an argument for not planning and not writing treatments. Quite the reverse.

Paradoxically, it is only by planning and researching the best possible treatment that I can write the script with true freedom. A half worked-out synopsis nags at the mind, distracting me. Only with a fully thought-out treatment can I relax and write… as if I really don’t know what happens next.

Actor Mark Rylance said recently that one of the key challenges of acting is in forgetting what happens next. I believe that applies to writers too.

Mark Rylance in Jerusalem

Know your story inside out – then write as if you don’t.

Strange irony.

The same applies to all the other screenwriting skills – from structure to character development.

Learn them so deeply you can forget and write as if you don’t know.

If you want to go deeply into knowing (and not knowing) the essential skills of screenwriting,  I’m running one of my favourite workshops very soon – the ScreenPLAY Advanced Summer School – so called, because you learn by role-playing.

Essentially you pick up techniques in the fastest and most effective way, by working like a studio screenwriter – purged of all the myths and half-understood rules that you thought you knew. For three days, you’re plunged into the atmosphere of a professional writers’ room, working on a series of short commissions, each of which is designed to lead you to unlearn a bad habit and learn a new skill.

It’s a very powerful way to become a solid confident screenwriter, with the techniques to deal easily with the daily demands of screenwriting – and be free to discover what you don’t know.

It’s in London – Friday July 27 to Sunday July 29 – full details here.

6 techniques for making your writing visual

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cinema, draft, scene, technique, TV, visual writing

Good visual writing puts pictures in the head of the reader without them realising you’re doing it. You guide your readers through a visual experience, so that they cannot help but “see” the movie as they go. This means being very focused on every moment to ensure that it pulls its weight.

You know you can’t write specific camera directions (that’s amateurish)but the best writers don’t need to. They know how to be visual without a single mention of the camera.

1. Visual flashes

Look at TV and print adverts – see how expertly they can condense a thought into a moment of time. Learn from them. How many ideas do you have in your script that could be expressed in a single visual, instead of pages of talk?

Amy is sacked unexpectedly. You could write reams of dialogue to show this – or she could open the door to her office and find all her belongings have been swept into a box.

2. Do a full visual rewrite

Before she finishes a script, writer-director Lena Wertmuller cuts out every single line of speech and tells the whole story with visuals. She only puts back those lines she absolutely has to have.

Try it. Rewrite your current script as a silent movie. Every beat must be expressed in a visual way. Then add back only the speech that’s essential.

3.Moving pictures

Does that conversation have to be static? Simply putting your characters in motion will automatically make the scene more visual. Have them talk as they walk (West Wing style). Or swim. Or drive. Or hang-glide…

In a key scene in Schindler’s List, Schindler and Stern have to discuss the advantages of employing Jews in Schindler’s new factory. To bring it to life, screenwriter Stephen Zailian has them shift boxes and papers around their office. The movement is meaningless, but it puts the scene “on its feet”.

4. Location, location

Look at the setting you’ve chosen for every scene. Is there a way you could make it more visually striking and add more cinematic energy?

Orson Welles’ famous cuckoo clock speech in The Third Man didn’t have to take place in a Ferris wheel. Hitchcock didn’t have to set the climax of Saboteur at the top of the Statue of Liberty. But if not would they have become so iconic?

Stretch your imagination. Does the argument you’ve written have to take place in a dining room? Why not a lumber yard? A cemetery? Backstage in a theatre? On a Thames barge? At a cage fighting venue?

5. Create an obstacle race

Inexperienced writers misunderstand the word “visual”, thinking it means that every shot must be cleverly lit or designed. The best way to be visual is to be active -and the best way for characters to be active is to overcome obstacles.

So – create more obstacles. Greg walking across a room isn’t visual, unless you put something in his way.

Which is more visual?

Greg walks across the room to Anna.

Greg throws the chair out of the way and runs to Anna.

How many useful obstacles can you create?

6. Use visual verbs

Some words are more visual than others. Verbs in particular.

Too many scripts are filled with verbs like “walk”, “sit”, “look”, “give” “take” – which tell me next to nothing about what I should be seeing.

Cut these out rigorously and find stronger, more visually stimulating verbs. Verbs and phrases like “stride” “tiptoe” “subside” “drop” “stare” “peer” “toss” “thrust” “grab” “slide”… Get that thesaurus working for you.

Was that interesting? Try these:
Three things you need to improve your script sales
Why sometimes you have to write a bad scene
How to become  a better writer? You may be surprised by the answer

8 ways to make your characters come vividly to life

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character, film, movie, voice, writer

House – NBC

Fully live characters leap off the page and out of the screen at us. We become fascinated by them, want to spend time with them, care about their hopes and fears.

Think of Bonnie and Clyde, Romeo and Juliet, Mr Darcy, Sarah Lund, Gregory House… and also anti-heroes, villains and bit parts in a thousand movies and TV programmes, from Hannibal Lecter to Private Godfrey.

To create living, interesting characters, you need to draw on your experience of life, and add to it. Or to put it another way, bring us your unique take on people.

1. Draw on people you know

Some of the best characters come from the people around you. But, strangely, that rarely means direct copy. You don’t have to portray your friends and relations, in fact it’s often best if you don’t (if only to avoid loss of said friends and libel actions).

I usually take a combination of character traits from a number of people I know and combine them for best effect, and no-one has so far ever recognised themselves.

One of my favourite characters, an aged, homicidal Portuguese farmer, was based in part on my maternal grandmother. She was neither Portuguese nor homicidal, but she gave me just the right flavour of salty sharpness and odd-ball humour the character needed. And she never knew.

2. Surprise us

Does your lawyer need to be white, male and middle class? Does your drug dealer need to be young and black? These are obvious clichés, but also watch out for the less obvious assumptions we all make. Surprise us.

Boogie Nights is full of surprising twists on character. One of the most memorable is the almost invisible part of a night-club doorman – invisible that is until it was decided that he should be enormously camp. That one twist made what was virtually a walk-on part stand out.

3. give them contradictions

Strong characters show strong contradictions. The boxer who loves ballet. The good detective who can’t stop shoplifting. Contradictions bring characters to life.

Othello can fight anyone, except his own jealousy, which brings him down. Jed Bartlet is a liberal history buff and an economist, who – in more than one episode of The West Wing – has to be restrained from overusing American armed force. How many of your characters could gain from being less consistent?

4. give them goals

All the characters in a well-written script have goals, even the smallest. The taxi-driver whose only role is to find the briefcase, what might her goal be?

Without a goal, she becomes a mere plot device. But give her a goal, say, to get home quickly, or to mend the car stereo, and the character (and the scene) come to life.

5. give them flaws

People are not perfect, not even heroes. Flaws draw in an audience. We care about House all the more because of his almost autistic inability to empathise, his drug abuse, his bolshie attitude towards his colleagues.

Without those, he’d be a clever-dick who wouldn’t last a scene, let alone eight series.

6. give them strengths

At the same time, characters need to be good at something, whoever they are, even if they are evil incarnate! Hannibal Lecter has charm, intelligence and considerable talents, even if they aren’t necessarily put to good use. Even Hitler is given strengths in Downfall.

At the other end of the scale, Norah Ephron took care to ensure that both Harry and Sally had strong positive elements to their characters – this indeed is what attracted them to each other. Harry has the practicality and groundedness that Sally needs to counterbalance her. While Sally brings a positive attitude to Harry’s dark broodiness.

Your characters’ strengths show us why we should care what happens to them.

7. find their picture

Can you see your characters in your mind? In how much detail? I always want to have a clear picture of each character before I write them. (This does not mean that I will write that picture in the script – it’s far better to leave that to the reader’s, and casting director’s, imagination).

One very useful trick is to “cast” your characters from photographs, for example in magazines or on the Internet. Here’s an exercise: search through Google images for pictures that fit the characters in your current script. This is particularly valuable for any character who is refusing to come to life, or insisting on remaining a cliché.

8. hear their voices

Harold Pinter started The Homecoming with two lines of dialogue. That line would suggest two voices, and from those two voices grew one of his greatest plays.

Listen for your characters’ voices. You may find them in your head, or on TV or sitting next to you in the tube. Then, when you have their voices, listen to what they tell you. You may find your characters tell you more about themselves, and even more about how the story should go, than you ever could yourself.

If this is useful to you, you might also like:

Fun writing exercise – using the moment
Four steps to starting a compelling script
Give your flashbacks the kiss of life
Why do we call them Screen – Plays?
Avoid the mistakes made by would-be thriller writers

And you may like to check out the courses I’m running in London and elsewhere. You can find details here