Dispatch From The Quest: Sandy Leviton
Over the course of the 24 weeks I am working with the writers in The Quest, each will write a weekly dispatch to share with the GITS community. There are several reasons for doing this, the main one educational: Hopefully you will learn something of value for your own understanding of the craft from the experiences of the Questers. I should also add they are a great group of people, so I expect you will enjoy getting to know them.
Today: Sandy talks about mastering time in one’s writing:
Timing is everything. Outside of death and taxes, it’s the only guarantee in life. It is one of the most critical aspects of what makes us who we are. Our lives are defined by time. It’s our daily schedule and how we make our choices. There are superstitions, stories, and sayings about time. It is essentially, our life force.
It’s no different in entertainment.
One of the highest compliments you can pay an actor, musician, editor, director, comedian, writer, and countless other creatives is that they have a great sense of time. It means they know how to utilize the time their given to make the biggest emotional impacts. It’s the ability to pinpoint the exact moment to create magic. Being able to master time as a writer is a fine art. Montages, flashback, flashforwards, and pacing in general is one of the most difficult tasks to master. Done wrong and it can feel lazy and uninspired. Done correctly and it’s beautiful and memorable.
This was our assignment this week, to dive deep into our stories and find a way to convey a passage of time. It brought up conversation among us Questers about various examples we loved and hated. Waka brought up the “Crystal Blue Persuasion” montage in the last season finale of “Breaking Bad”. If you watch the show, you know the sequence. It was gorgeous. The way they finessed the match movements, the music, the…well, I don’t want to be responsible for giving away spoilers. But suffice to say, it is a work of art and you should watch it if you haven’t seen it. It’s inspiring and after doing this week’s exercises, I think it’s safe to say we all are truly realizing just how difficult it is.
It is appropriate to end our core weeks on time. It’s definitely gotten myself and Miranda into a reflective mood about our script and our time together as writing partners. This experience has been a whirlwind; so fast and yet so enjoyable. We are so excited to dive into the next phase of prep work and cannot wait for the time to begin the actual writing process in a few weeks. What can I say? Time flies when you’re having fun.
Part of the discussion in last week’s part of The Quest goes to the nitty gritty of time management in a script, narrative techniques such as montage, series of shots, flashback, flashforward, transitions, and so forth. In my experience, there’s very little middle ground with these devices. When done well, they can be powerful as in the montage from “Breaking Bad” Sandy noted in her dispatch. When handled poorly, they lack entertainment value, contribute little to nothing to the story, and bog down the read.
Here again is another reason why each of us should be reading scripts by professional screenwriters. To make a montage work on screen is one thing. There the filmmakers have the benefit of visuals and sound to ‘sell’ it. To make a montage work on the page is another thing entirely. The same with any time management device. The more you read how good writers handle these type of things in scripts, the better off you will be with your own writing.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
About Sandy: Bostonian that learned how to pronounce “R’s” upon moving to LA. A lefty that loves the unusual. Dreams of owning a taxidermy dodo bird. @scriptchix & @lil_sjl.
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