Dispatch from The Quest: Ben Odgren
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the third week of Prep. Today’s dispatch: Ben Odgren talks about Ninja Turtles, genre movies, and writing what you know:
The earliest story I can remember writing involved two brothers shrinking down to action-figure size, thanks to some sort of glowing substance one of them finds on some shrubbery outside their house (science!), and fighting some rats with the help of all the weapons and vehicles from the action figures they had lying around the bedroom they shared. I’m pretty sure it ended with the two of them riding around in some sort of battery-operated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle vehicle that shot plastic pizzas.
This is to say that I was writing what I knew. Obsessed with the Ninja Turtles, and watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at least once a week.
And I’d like to think that I know a lot more now than I did then. But when I think about it, the kinds of stories I like to write now haven’t really changed all that much. It’s still all larger-than-life situations. Or smaller-than-life, in the case of the shrinking. Genre stuff. The kind that’s real easy to not take seriously.
It used to get me worried that maybe I wasn’t branching out enough. Maybe I wasn’t watching enough Criterion movies. Or reading the right scripts. Or the right books. More nonfiction, maybe. Less serialized television.
What if I knew just as much now as I did when I was writing about tiny people fending off rats with rounds of high-velocity pizza?
And then I started thinking that maybe it’s not WHAT we know that’s important. Maybe it’s HOW we know what we know that’s important. When it comes to writing the things we seem to be attracted to writing, it becomes more about how we approach the subject matter based on our cumulative experiences that’s important, rather than the subject matter itself.
Because the truth is that of course we know a heck of alot more now than we did as kids. We have more life experiences and hopefully we’re learning something new every day. I’d argue this is why a lot of writers hate the things they wrote the night before, let alone the stuff they wrote six months ago.
And it’s why our tastes change over time. For instance, there was a time in my life where I thought that all it took for a movie to be good was that it had good special effects. And maybe not even good special effects….maybe it was just that it had special effects at all. This is why Dragonheart was one of my favorite movies for like a year. Dark times, man.
We all want the thing we’re working on currently to be the best thing we’ve ever written. And if you’re writing with a personal, character-centric, approach, then the script almost becomes a time capsule of who we were while writing it. That also means that when we get to the next (and hopefully best) script we write, we’re going to look back at the previous one and go, “What was I even thinking!? This is the worst!”
This was way more stream-of-conscious than normal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should take it easy on ourselves when we get better at the things we want to be good at, and at telling the kinds of stories we want to tell. Just write what you know right now and write it as well as you can.
Suppose I could’ve just said that.
As Ben suggests, I think most of us have the experience of changing tastes over time. When I was a teenager, I loved horror and sci-fi. I can still get motivated to see those type of movies, but give me a smart drama with compelling characters, and I’m all over that.
The thing is, as a screenwriter trying to break into Hollywood, Ben’s advice — Just write what you know right now and write it as well as you can — is solid words of wisdom. Whatever script you sell, whatever genre and tone it is, that is how Hollywood is going to perceive. For all intents and purposes, that script is you. Managers and agents know this. The line of least resistance as far as they are concerned is to represent clients who work in one genre. If you are an action writer and they get you a meeting about a prospective action project, there is no leap of imagination required for the producer or exec involved.
So my advice: Make sure you are passionate about the genre you are writing. Make sure you have immersed yourself in that genre. Make sure are good at that genre.
Over time, your interests may change. Fine. 5–7 years down the road, you can write a spec script in another genre and reinvent yourself. But only after you’ve made a shit-ton of money in a genre you know, love, and are good at.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch from The Quest.
About Ben: Maine writer with a love for pulpy genre movies, keeping library books out for a little too long, and strong coffee. Twitter: @benodgren.
Comment Archive