Screenwriter in Residence

Final Blog

Last night I conducted the final event of the screenwriter-in-residence program, part 2 of the rewrite workshop for writers who submitted scripts.

About 20 writers joined me to spend an hour and a half going over all the tasks required for a rewrite. I'm not going to try and duplicate my seminar, (complete with Powerpoint slides!), but there are books written on the subject that you can purchase.

But the real reason I did this workshop, aside from giving some practical information to the writers, was to bring them together. I think community can be so important to the development of artists and Toronto needs to crank up it's screenwriting presence. I encouraged the writers who came to stay in touch with each other, exchange scripts, give each other feedback and hopefully raise the level of everyone's work.

And who knows? If one of them strikes gold, it can't hurt to know them. And if you or I are the lucky ones, then it helps to know some writers who knew you before you were famous so they can keep you honest.

I want to thank the Library for appointing me to this position. It's been a terrific job, a fabulous eight weeks with a lovely office--bigger than the one I have at home--and the opportunity to read scripts by such dedicated writers that I was inspired. I'm taking their dreams and dedication to writing their stories as inspiration and motivation to continue my own work and development. Good luck to all of them.

If you wish to continue reading blogs from me, you can click over to my regular blog, buildingtheiceberg.blogspot.com. Hope to see you there.

Table reading

Last Wednesday, I held the first of a two part rewrite workshop for writers who submitted scripts to the residency. I had asked some of the writers whom I'd met to go over their submissions to send me a 5 page excerpt from their script to work on during the workshop.

What I hadn't told them was that I was bringing in some actors to read these excerpts aloud. Table reads are a ruthlessly useful tool in script development. Having good actors read not only the dialogue but the stage directions gives you a sense of the flow of the piece, how easy it is to follow and how well things are working.

What I told each writer whose work was being read to do was try to mark in their copy of the script anything that worked with a check mark and anything that didn't with an a x. After the reading, I asked the writer how they felt. Rather than getting into an evaluation of the script, it is important, I think, to examine how we felt through the reading. It was difficult for most of the writers to get in touch with those feelings--other than perhaps terror at unknowingly allowing their work to be read aloud to other writers--but when they could I think it was a useful clue at assessing the script. Once you figure out how you feel, then you can start figuring out what you want to do.

In fact, I feel that's true for all kinds of feedback. It's important not to take it at face value, and especially not to do what someone suggests, until you've figured out what they're actually flagging in your script. Perhaps they felt confused. It's important to know that, before deciding anything else.

It was, I believe, a useful exercise for the writers involved and even the writers whose work wasn't read appreciated the opportunity to get in touch with their own feelings about the scripts. Moreover, the actors' feedback was invaluable. They can tell you so much about how your characters are working, in terms of plausibility, and most importantly PLAYability.

After the readings, I went over what I believe is the next stage in the process, distilling the essence of what you've written in your first draft, to the basic story, which I'll describe in a future post.

Syd Field or Robert McKee?

I spoke to a group of aspiring screenwriters at the Toronto Film School today and as I was leaving, one of them asked me, "Syd Field or Robert McKee?" I replied, "Aristotle."

Whatever Syd Field, McKee or all the other cats making a fortune writing how to write a screenplay books have to say was said 2500 years ago by Aristotle.

What I told the screenwriting student was that it would be better to read 100 screenplays than Syd Field. Or at least read a few screenplays BEFORE reading Syd Field. The problem, and this is based on reading scripts for the Toronto Public Library for 2 months as part of my screenwriter-in-residence gig there, is that people ONLY read Syd Field and think that's all there is to screenwriting. (I'm not saying Syd Field or any of the other gurus even make this claim, but it's probably easier to read one copy of Screenplay than 100 screenplays.) Then these aspiring writers start writing fill-in-the-blanks scripts. Look, isn't it obvious that writing a good screenplay this way is like trying to paint the Mona Lisa using a paint by numbers kit? (It's sort of like da Vinci, but I doubt it's worth much.)

It's really hard to write a good screenplay. Accept it. Embrace this truth. Recognize you are aspiring to winning the creative lottery.

If it was easy, then everyone would do it and successful screenwriters would be a dime a dozen. How many do you know? See? It ain't easy! And even if it is--say you're massively talented and can't help writing award-winning scripts unlike the rest of us mere mortals--you still have to have SOMETHING TO SAY.

Maybe this is self-evident, but after reading a few of the Toronto Public LIbrary's submissions, I think it bears repeating: without a point of view, a personal perspective, something that you need to get across to the world about the human condition or whatever you're passionate about, no matter what you write will be a waste of pages.

If you do have something to say, if the passion burns off those pages, then you can pretty much break any rule Syd Field et al ever came up with, (though not Aristotle, I daresay.) And your script will still be readable and generate interest from someone. They're not going to toss it out because you haven't had a first act turning point by page 28. That kind of stuff can be adjusted, if necessary. But what no one can do for you is give you something to say.

Read screenplays, live an interesting life, be introspective about that life and maybe, just maybe, you might have something to say that is best said in a screenplay. (Remember, they were writing great scripts long before Robert McKee started making a fortune selling books and seminars.) It's worth doing, but don't expect this to be an easy thing to do. If you read 100 screenplays you probably won't have to read Syd Field at that point. (And since you can read 100 scripts for free off various internet screenplay sites, you'll save some money for your post-draft steak dinner--my personal reward to myself.)

Raising the stakes

Someone posted a comment on this blog requesting advice on raising the stakes. I'll try and explain what this means.

Often producers will read scripts--or really their lowly readers will read scripts--and complain about the stakes. Many of the scripts submitted to the library that I've been reading suffer from either low or unclear stakes.

What's at stake? Ask yourself that question when planning your screenplay. Your lead character must have something serious--preferably life or death--at stake in pursuing their quest. Without the highest stakes possible, the audience won't be interested in the fate of your character.

Stakes can only be life or death, really. If not literally, (and really try to have literal life and death at stake in your script), then the life or death of something that we would all find just below actual life in the importance scale needs to be at stake: love or way of life seem to be the only stakes that could still have as much impact for an audience as literal life or death. Anything less than this holy trinity of stakes is dangerous for a writer because we go to the movies to worry. Writers need to give the audience lots to worry about!

When I wrote Fraggle Rock, after the first season, Jim Henson insisted that on the first page of every script we wrote out a story grid:

Whose story:
Goal:
Obstacle:
Stakes:
What we learn:

Check out item 4 in that list. It wasn't enough for Jim to have it in the script. He wanted there to be no doubt for anyone from the cast to anyone on the crew what were the basic elements of that episode. If it's good enough for Jim Henson, it's good enough for me.

You probably can't raise stakes high enough. Don't hold back on stakes. Go for it. More is more. So always choose the story beat that will push your story to have the highest stakes you can imagine. You'll be surprised at how dramatic and engaging your script can become if you do.