Posts Tagged screenplay

Scriptwriting: Part 3 by ‘Michael Robert Johnson’

Posted by Andrew Michael Brown in movie scripts, screenplays, screenwriting, scriptwriting on May 20th, 2009

There’s a fantastic analogy made by Stephen King in his book

On Writing (which is well worth a read) on the subject of story. He likens the process of fashioning a story to that of uncovering a specimen in archaeology, that you chip and brush away at the tiny fragments until finally you have uncovered a complete entity. I think he’s really right about this, because ALL STORIES SHOULD ADHERE TO THEIR OWN INTERNAL LOGIC. It’s one of the most widespread mistakes in script writing, and it largely involves making characters do things that they clearly wouldn’t do in reality (or even worse, in the reality you’ve set up).

You know what it’s like, watching a crap film, when a character suddenly does something outrageously stupid or completely out-of-character, and it’s all because the writer suddenly makes them do something for the sole reason that that the plot requires them do it – it is sheer laziness. This is what I mean about writing being a craft. If you want to do it, you have to adhere to the internal logic; and if you want a character to do something, you have to make it believable for him or her to do so.

I’ll make the example very basic. Say, at a particular juncture in the events, that your main character has a choice of three different avenues to pursue: now the lazy way is simply to have him choose the route – avenue 3 – that leads him to the desired climax of the story, but in real life (i.e. internal logic) it’s not so simple, there may be a variety of reason why avenues 1 or 2 may be taken. The best way to adhere to logic is instead of making him decide which route to take, find reasons that actually prevent him from taking avenues 1 or 2.

Just remember to listen to your characters, if you understand them enough, they will tell you which way the story is going to go next; and be prepared, because it’s often in an entirely different direction to the one you thought you were taking. This is one of the reasons why the rigidity of the “three-act structure” or the card system can work against you, because sometimes you need to hear your characters speaking before you know what will happen next.

To be fair, a lot of this can be worked out when your first draft is complete and you’re going back through it.

As your first draft will more than likely be from the point of view of the main character, it’s important to go through it again making different “passes” for different characters. By that I mean going right through the script and looking at the all events from the point of view of each minor character. This is the best way of finding out whether or not they’re behaving realistically; finding out if – when someone responds to the hero with the reply “yes, that’s not a problem” – the real response is actually, “are you crazy? They know where my wife and children live!”.

A lot of this comes down to really getting to know your characters and the worlds they inhabit – in their own heads and beyond. Most of them are simply versions of you who have been through different experiences. But don’t mistake this difference. Say, for example, you have a character who suddenly gets a gun pointed into their face; if that person is a soldier, or a bodyguard or an armed robber, they’re going to act differently than if they are a teacher or singer; and if they are the latter, they’re going to turn cold, feel faint and possibly shit themselves. Just because they are your heroes, you can’t fake bravado in the face of cold reality, it just won’t wash.

Mike Johnson is a scriptwriter

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Scriptwriting: Part 1 by ‘Michael Robert Johnson’

Posted by Andrew Michael Brown in movie scripts, scriptwriting on May 20th, 2009

First of all, just because you speak English and own a copy of Final Draft, IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU A WRITER – in much the same way as running your fingers across the strings of a guitar does not make you a guitarist. It’s important to remember that script-writing is a craft, in much the same way as building a set, creating a performance or operating a camera is; it’s just that without a trained eye it’s often a lot harder to tell the difference between good and bad writing.

Now there are plenty of books on the market which will tell you the right and wrong ways to write a script; this is a fallacy –

-THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY TO WRITE A SCRIPT (other than “on time” if you’re being paid).

Every tutor or manual in the world spends half its time banging on about the three-act structure, in such a fashion that I believe it has now become detrimental to creative script-writing. “Three act structure” is just another way of saying every story needs a beginning, a middle and an end, which every good story achieves, usually without requiring that such-and-such piece of information has been imparted by page 35, and so-and-so a character has reached the peak of his arc by page 68. Knowing that a story needs a beginning, a middle and an end is just common sense, and so writing a good one is much the same.

Basically, whatever works for you is the correct way to write, be it a system of plot-points on cards, a huge wall chart filled with characters and arrows, or simply an idea for an opening line on page one that spurs you onwards. This last approach may seem like madness, but that’s exactly how the Coen Brothers write scripts – almost blindly, without any real inkling of the outcome of events.

One of the first and easiest traps to fall into when writing is to constantly re-write. On your first day you may write, say, six pages, then on day two you’ll fiddle with those pages before you continue, thus getting sucked into the trap, and what you’ll find, a week later, is you’re still re-writing those same six pages with nothing else to show for it. On the first draft,

-RESIST THE URGE TO FIDDLE.

The best way to write a first draft (in my opinion) is to start and simply not stop; now a lot of what you write will probably be sub-standard but that’s what first drafts are for – getting to page 100 and typing “Fade Out”. At that point you can then go back and start making it all good (or even better – as Stephen King suggests – put it in a drawer for four to six weeks and then come back to it, with a far more balanced eye for what works and what’s bullshit).

It can be a hard discipline to achieve but it’s well worth it, and all it really requires, when you become stuck on how to start or what to do in a scene, is the ability to come up with something, anything, that fits the bill enough to allow you to progress – and you’ll be amazed how much stuff you’ll eventually keep by working this way, because it’s coming from a gut level. Learn to rely on your gut, because trusting your instincts instead of a manual is how you will find your own voice.

Don’t be precious about you work, the only way to develop any sense of self-criticism (which is vital) is to approach re-reading your script as though someone else has written it. If things don’t work, you must be able to recognise that or you’ll never improve.

And even if something works, you may still have to bin it. It’s just words, they can be changed – serving the story is the important thing. As William Goldman says, you must learn to

-KILL YOUR BABIES.

You might have written the greatest scene you ever wrote, but if it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the script, it has to go; if it contains information that’s redundant, or has already been imparted, it has to go;

-IF IT DOESN’T SERVE THE STORY, IT HAS TO GO.

Don’t be afraid to gut your script, it might be the only thing that saves it. And don’t mistake homages for theft. Most so-called homages, if you removed them from the scene, would leave the scene with no reason to be there. Remember, don’t write it a certain way because you’ve seen it done before, write it because you haven’t seen it done before.

‘Mike Johnson’ is a scriptwriter held in the highest esteem and not just by his mom and pop.

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