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Transparency
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Many screenwriters, some very well known and successful, take a tactic of familiarity in their writing. They pepper their screenplays with jokes, or references to other films. They allow themselves editorial comments — well phrased, and perhaps funny or clever — to describe inner states or character facts that would not otherwise be knowable from the image.
In a way, screenplays styled this way are addressed directly to the reader. They contain phrases such as we see and we follow…
The overall effect of this tactic is to generate a casual, colloquial tone, almost conspiratorial. Me and you, dear reader, are on this journey…
The problem with this style of screenplay is that unless you are well known, and already have a deal, unless the reader is already pre-disposed to like your work (which is rare), it can come off as too cute. It can be distancing. It can feel like the writer's voice is too present. It can get in the way of the story telling.
It one thing to get the reader to like you, another to get them to like your story.
I believe that anything which takes me out of the story is bad. Whether it is a typo or an editorial comment, or tags like we see — they all have the effect of making the reader pause. The typo makes them think about spelling. The editorial comment makes them wonder How can we know this? How is that shown on screen? The tags are just padding that slows down the read.
The goal of a screenplay, especially by a newcomer, is transparency. To get the text out of the way of the story-telling. Be direct, be specific, and keep it all in the urgent present tense. Keep it clean. Say what you need to and no more. And proof-read.
Backstory
Friday, October 29, 2010
A term of art you hear tossed about all the time when discussing screenplays is "Backstory." It refers to a character's history, what's their story prior to the present tense of the film.
Lots of writers spend enormous amounts energy composing intricate histories for their characters, full of details and nuance, from favorite breakfast food to childhood trauma.
But all the backstory in the world means nothing if it isn't manifest in the relationships and motives in the present tense.
Phrase it this way: what does your backstory do? How does it impinge on behavior on the page? Knowing a nice character history is one thing. Using it is another.
Eliciting Dialogue
Monday, July 19, 2010
There's a particular kind of dialogue that almost always reads as false, that always sounds as if the writer ran out of steam.
It's sometimes called Asked and Answered. Or Asked to Answer. Or Prompting Dialogue. I like to call it Eliciting Dialogue.
It's a line of dialogue whose sole purpose is to elicit a response from the other character. The point of the exchange is not the exchange, but the response. It's a mark of laziness, or over-attachment to a comic line, or devotion to an agenda at the expense of character logic and verisimilitude.
Most of the time the writer has conceived line B before writing line A. They need to get in a bit of information, or reach a punch-line.
In such an exchange Character A is a tool (literally) to get to Character B's line.
We've all done it. It's one way a scene get's from here to there, one way to break a block or finish the shape of a scene. But we must always be on the look-out for such exchanges and they must be the first thing cut/altered in a revision.
Imagination vs. Composition
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Writers are sometimes lumped into one of two categories: the story-teller and the stylist. As if they were separate skills. In fact they are two sides of the same coin. There are no novels completely devoid of style, and none empty of story (even if only the one the reader creates). What is the relation between story and style?
Story is the field of imagined event and character that the writer hopes to convey. It is an ambition. Style is the manner in which story is made legible, given shape and tone. It is the ambition's execution.
Sounds simplistic.
But I think we can use this distinction to help us think about the act of writing, about how stories change and grow from insight through imagination to the blank page and finally finished work.
Looking at writing from the point of view of the completely blank page, from the first glimmer of story — what happens?
Imagination fills with image and event and character and voices.
This is the right brain's domain. Free-associating. Concocting story, letting the imagination have free rein. Or reign.
I like to think of this stage in writing as "brain dumping." Putting it down more or less as it streams out.
But as we start the hard work of transposing the imagined story to paper — giving it a physical form — the left brain must take over. And we compose. We construct.
Writing is not simply a matter of transcribing the contents of your imagination. It isn't a matter of simply taking dictation from your inspired self. If you simply dump your imagined world — more or less in the order in which it occurred to you — onto the page you will, I am certain, produce an unreadable, perhaps illegible, mess.
The brain dump must be composed. From the many imagined images and scenes and speeches and incidents, the writer must choose those that work, that function, that communicate intention.
Writing is a constant back and forth between imagination and composition. The more you construct the artifact the more the story settles, grows, becomes cogent and coherent. And in the act of taking story to composition, the choices — how the choices are made — render the writer's style visible on the page. Style refines story. Story-telling manifests style.
Ockham's Razor
Monday, May 17, 2010
It's one of those phrases you hear and think you know what it means. Something about simplicity. This definition crossed my screen via A.Word.A.Day and I thought it nice and succinct.
Ockham's razor states that "entities should not be multiplied needlessly". It's also called the principle of parsimony. It's the idea that other things being equal, among two theories the simpler one is preferable. Why razor? Because Ockham's razor shaves away unnecessary assumptions. Ockham's razor has applications in fields as diverse as medicine, religion, crime, and literature. Medical students are told, for example, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."
Variations on this theme: "Simple chess is best." "To do the necessary in the fewest possible steps: that is grace."
The point, for our purposes, is to apply this notion to composition. It is always correct to cut what is not needed, to go with the simpler sentence over the complex, to be parsimonious in your use of modifiers.
Literalism and Poetic License
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The television series Mad Men got grief because the Selectric Typewriter had not been introduced at the time of its first episode. Recently, Treme got grief because the first episode had a character reach into a purse and pull out a Hubig's Pie (a New Orleans staple) when in fact the Hubig's bakery wasn't open at the time.
This is a kind of literalism bred of an over-dependence on familiarity. What often drives drama these days is playing to the audience's simplest sense of recognition. It's a symptom of Mannerism. In more radically adventurous times, the task of art is to render the familiar unfamiliar. Or the unfamiliar familiar. It often seems that the goal of much current art is the much more simple (some might say idiotic) task of rendering the familiar familiar.
It is comforting to have a fact or image or location that the audience can nod to itself and say "I know that, I've been there, that's just how it is." But recognition at this level is not the same as empathy. Which is the the stuff of dramatic engagement. Empathy has nothing to do with familiarity and comfort.
In fact, reality has nothing much to do with fiction. I tell my students all the time, "don't confuse me with the facts."
Authenticity in drama is not whether or not the incidents "happened" or are portrayed with archeological accuracy. Authenticity lies in whether or not the writer (then director and cast) manage to convince an audience of the truth of the incident. It's dramatic necessity. It's compelling and urgent rightness.
In fact, writing about something "true" from your life often leads to over possessiveness. "But it happened that way," a student will say in defense of a scene that simply doesn't work. Things happen in real life that are totally unbelievable on the screen.
Of course, there is a limit to Poetic License. The most obvious limit is Genre. Are you writing a fantasy in which flights of ir-reality or inaccuracy or anachronism are part of the very fabric of the piece? Or are you writing a gritty street drama that strives for a Naturalism? But most important in regulating the use of such license is consistency. Is the little tweak you've made to reality consistent with all the other elements of the story, is it grounded in character necessity. If so, then the deviation from literal truth will not diminish the authenticity of the dramatic moment.
I really got a chuckle out of the Hubig's pie moment in Treme. For anyone from New Orleans, or even who has been to New Orleans, the moment was immediately recognizeable, grounding the viewer in a very particular place (and so the moment, in fact, makes us comfortable). But it also speaks of the larger character and plot issues of the episode. And that part of the moment, I think, would be legible even to those who don't know what a Hubig's Pie tastes like. So, I think, the moment earned it's place in the scene despite the literal fact of the bakery being closed. As David Simon put it in a blog entry worth reading, it's a Magic Pie.
The Habit of Respect
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I read a lot of screenplays. Granted, most of them are works in progress or student work. But all of them — without exception — are sloppily presented.
The errors range from simple typos that the computer spell-check did not catch (its for it's and there for their) to mismatched character names or repeated chunks of text. Artifacts of computer composition.
Then there are the errors of laziness: missing question marks, missing commas. Really basic stuff.
And errors of a slightly higher order: errors in screenplay format, obvious errors in grammar.
These errors make the writer look like an amateur. They are errors that should never be in a public draft.
It is disrespectful to your work, to whatever talent you have, to present it sloppily.
Why should a reader take your work seriously if you do not?
PROOF-READ!
These errors are easily caught and corrected if you develop some little talent for proof-reading. Print a hard copy of your work. Sit down with a pencil. And read closely.
And if you do there will be a welcomed side-effect. Not only will you clean up the mistakes, I can guarantee that the process of fixing such errors will lead you to write more, fix more substantial things. Your writing will not only be presented more cleanly, it will be better writing.
A Good Note/Web Clipper
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
It works on the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. There are desktop applications for Windows and Mac.
You can install a button in your browser to easily save a web site, or excerpts from a web-site.
What you save using the web-clipper, or the desktop application is automatically synched with your smart phone.
It's called EverNote and it's free.
The Hurt Locker – Eldridge
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Something's bothering me about The Hurt Locker.
It has to do with Specialist Eldridge. The kid who, in the first scene, doesn't shoot the butcher with the cell phone.
He spends most of the rest of the film trying to atone for that mistake. He feels guilty. He feels incompetent (until he takes out the sniper in the desert).
His relationship with the camp psychiatrist — focused on how he's certain he will end up dead — leads to another death. Another dose of survivor guilt.
He becomes enamored of James and his adrenaline junkie bravado.
He actually says out loud, without remorse or fear, "He's going to get me killed," as if that were part of James' mission: to help him atone for his failures.
When James orders Eldridge and Sanborn to go renegade and try to get the bomber responsible for the Green Zone blast, Eldridge is all for it. "I could stand to get in some trouble."
But when that episode results in his being shot in the leg, his reaction is anger against James. He ends up the writer's mouthpiece, commenting on James' need for the drug of war.
It isn't consistent with the character I've been watching for the past hour and some.
