Partly Writer

This post is a bit of a cheat. It's taken from this Reddit thread, but I think the reply is dead-on. 

SPOILERS FOR "WHIPLASH" AHEAD

In the reddit thread, someone asked,

Is it cheap to tell readers what the characters feel? 

I was reading the Whiplash screenplay and (spoilers ahead) right at the end it said something about Fletcher smiling because he's finally found his Charlie Parker. It actually does this a lot throughout the script. Telling us what the characters are feeling.

To me it feels a bit like cheating because if the action and dialogue don't show it, you won't be able to simply tell the audience why the character is doing what they're doing.

Thoughts?

The following response is, in my opinion, SPOT ON

Nope. It's not cheap at all. And WHIPLASH is a great example why. When JK Simmons gives Miles Teller that look, you KNOW, what he's thinking. Simmons is such a great actor that he conveys that very idea without having to say a word. But a script doesn't have the luxury of great acting.

A screenplay isn't a piece of art meant to stand on its own. Above all, it is a sales document. It is a ream of paper meant to convince a handful of very busy producers to put money behind it in order for it to become art. So clarity is key. And sometimes that means telling the reader EXACTLY what the hell is going on, even when it will only be inferred by the audience.

It only becomes lazy if you use it as a crutch and lean too heavily on it. But used sparingly, it can do everything for your reader that a great actor will do for the audience.

The other day I listened to the latest episode of The Nerdist Writers Panel - a “must listen” episode, in my opinion - with Boardwalk Empire showrunner Terence Winter (Wolf of Wall Street, Sopranos). It’s a long show, but a few pieces stand out to me that I wanted to share.

BREAKING INTO HOLLYWOOD

I do want to warn that he broke in during the 90s, which was a very different time than now. Either way, his path is interesting, particularly the fact that he decided to abandon a lucrative career path in law to give it a shot.

MOVING FROM SISTER, SISTER TO SOPRANOS

As mentioned, Terence came up in a different era. If you look at his IMDB, it’s not what you would expect of the showrunner of Boadwalk Empire with recent credits like The Sopranos and The Wolf of Wall Street. He actually starting doing half-hour sitcoms like Sister, Sister.

In this clip he talks about how he got started and how he transitioned.

I personally loved the bit about exploring other genres even if you get started in another because I also feel like I can write a couple of different genres. It's a common frustration for writers. So I chatted a bit with well-regarded screenwriting career coach Lee Jessup on Twitter about the clip and she had some additional advice:

@partlywriter you can have a passion proj in different genre - but 4 breaking in, you have to deliver a brand reps/prodcos can sell...

— Lee Jessup (@LeeZJessup)

July 24, 2014

@partlywriter ... If they can put what sort of writer you are into 1 sentence, they will get you and you will get work.

— Lee Jessup (@LeeZJessup)

July 24, 2014

Good advice. And remember from Terence's own story, he ended up needing a bit of luck when he changed genres thanks to his friend who was hired for Season 1 of The Sopranos. What was important, though, was that he had a sample ready.

WRITER’S BLOCK

In this clip, Terence recalls how frustrated Sopranos showrunner David Chase would get with breaking stories. It’s an issue I face a lot while trying to get my stories from ideas to scripts.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I love writing podcasts. I’ve learned so much from them and always find a few gems in each episode that I can’t help but share. (see here and here)

While enjoying the most recent episode of Scriptnotes, I came across a bit where they were discussion Screenwriting books. I’ve read a good majority of them, but always felt they were too “neat.” It felt all reverse engineered and not all that helpful in the actual construction of a story.

The following is a day-to-day account of my attempt to complete my first feature-length screenplay. Read the other entries here.

What is it about late March? In revisiting my blog to write this post, I discovered that my first post about this project was published almost exactly a year ago.

It hasn’t gone as planned and I completely blame myself.

I’m not going to spend too much time pontificating on exactly why I haven’t plowed through the first draft of my script as I intended to 370 days ago. If you listen to enough episodes of The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith and the Nerdist Writers Panel, you quickly understand that the blank page is a paralyzing force working against every writer.

It all comes down to a simple call-to-arms popularized by a famous footwear brand: “Just Do It.”

That said, here is my mini-update on the script I started writing over a year ago. The project has moved forward quite a bit, though I had no idea how I was going to wrap up the first act (truth is, I still don’t). I completely hit a roadblock on where the story would go after the inciting incident (I honestly hate using these terms, but they’re helpful) and folded under the weight of it. I couldn’t decide on where to go and every option seemed really shitty.

Over the past two months, my job has provided the answer. Brainstorm the hell out of it. Just get some sticky pads and write every goddamn thing that comes to mind. You’ll throw away 95% of it, but you need to lay it all out before you can find the nuggets of gold. And that’s exactly what I did today and I finally found some forward momentum on the project.

Tidbits - interesting notes and thoughts for you to consider

Writing tip: Learn the art of the mind-map to brainstorm your story. Just start with an idea and spider it out, then jump to another idea and spider that out. It’s a tool I use at work and, lo-and-behold, it works for creative writing too. 

Motivation: Love this short clip from the Nerdist Writers Panel on not letting people’s initial reactions to ideas kill your creative flow. It’s less than two minutes long, so give it a listen.

Motivation: Pixar’s CEO provides some wisdom on the creative process. Most notably: 

“Early on, all of our movies suck… This is as it should be. Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process--reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its through line or a hollow character finds its soul.”

- "Two Kings" feature from Creative Screenwriting Magazine, March/April 2011

As a writer working to break his way into the profession of screenwriting, something became clear tonight: fuck features.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love movies. They introduced me to visual storytelling. I've experienced rapturous ups and downs in the dark cocoon of the multiplex. Yet, tonight's episode of Breaking Bad (Ozymandias) cemented something I've been thinking about over the past few years: I really want to be in TV.

It's not because I don't believe in the potential of film. It's not because I'm saddened by the adaptation & sequel-whoring of film. It's because the best writers and the best writing is happening on TV, period. As such, there's no better place to be as a writer than in the modern day writer's room. It's the place for pushing boundaries, impacting culture, and testing your own creative limits.

The following is a day-to-day account of my attempt to complete my first feature-length screenplay. Read the other entries here.

So a whole shit-storm of life happened over the past couple of weeks including moving apartments and crazy work hours. 

The following is a day-to-day account of my attempt to complete my first feature-length screenplay. Read the other entries here.

At 10:45 pm, I picked up my Xbox 360 controller after a failed attempt at writing. Ten minutes earlier I had been laying chest-down on the bed (my preferred writing position) and felt like succumbing to the wishes of my numb, lifeless eyes. Then a stroke of brilliance - not on the page, unfortunately - came to me. "I need something to wake me up."

So I started up NBA 2K13. Unlike writing, I never get sleepy playing that. After a 123-111 stomping of the Knicks, I looked at the clock and tried to figure out what to do next? One more game? Write? Sleep?

In previous months, I would've started one last game. I would've rationalized that it was too late and I was too sleepy to write anything good anyway. But in reality, it would've just been procrastination

In fact, I don't know if my fatigue was ever really a factor in not writing up to that point yesterday. The reality was that I was completely dissatisfied with the previous day's pages. It was the introduction of both the world and the protagonist. And it sucked. 

It sucked hard.

So as the clock struck midnight, I turned the second game off (that I had started...) and forced myself to write. Forty-five minutes later, I had a damn good opening. As noted yesterday, I know that I shouldn't be re-writing my first draft as I'm writing it, but without a stronger opening it would've been tough to feed off that momentum for the rest of the first act. It's a fairly mellow first act in many ways, and I didn't want to resort to using a teaser as those are becoming really overused these days. Rather than throwing something exciting at you from the jump, i want to seduce you with the world from the opening shot. I don't want your attention by promising some interesting conflict later (the conceit of a teaser). I want to lure you in by stirring your imagination with a setting that disrupts your expectations.

All in all, the second day ended with me fighting against my own fears. And in the end, my fears didn't win. I got some work done.

Tidbits - interesting notes and thoughts for you to consider

I love John August's podcast and blog. He's the guy who wrote GO, Big Fish, and a bunch of recent Tim Burton stuff. He also has a new screenwriting program called Highland that is hugely helpful. It's based on a new screenwriting format in which you write your script in plain-text that is then automatically formatted later into proper screenplay format. It's surprisingly helpful to not SEE the formatting, particularly in a first draft.