Dispatch From The Quest: Troy Klith
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: Troy talks about writing fully in the moment:
Each week, I’ve tried to internalize the one thing from the lectures that I felt captured the essence of the specific subject. The core of the Core so to speak.
This week, our lectures addressed the concept of “Time.” When writing, it’s smart to look forward, and we’re conditioned to focus on arcs and payoffs and final struggles. But, while it’s important to know where the story is heading, my central takeaway this week is that it’s equally important to write in the now.
What I hope to internalize is that scenes must be written not just in the present tense, but fully in the moment. Write as if the events are actually happening and you are there, the invisible observer, whispering the play-by-play. In great scripts, you can feel when the writer has truly inhabited the world they’ve created. There’s the small detail, that telling gesture or unique description that pulls the reader in and makes the scene come alive. We must maximize the potential of every single scene, and avoid the temptation to go through the motions on the small scenes because we’re eager to get to the good stuff.
Speaking of time, has it really been eight weeks? The Core portion of the Quest is over? Say it isn’t so. Obviously there’s a lot more to come, but as we leave Core and enter Prep, there is that sense of leaving school to go into the real world. It’s exciting to move on, but it was pretty fun to sit around and theorize.
I can truly say I’ve enjoyed every “lecture.” What’s more, I learned more about the craft of screenwriting in these eight weeks than in all of my previous efforts combined. What I appreciated most was that the theory was made concrete. Abstract concepts were discussed in a way that offered specific writing tools to help when you’re in the trenches of a draft.
So, thanks Scott! Looking forward to the next phase.
A few things:
* We write screenplays in the present tense, not past tense as in most novels and short stories. In my view, this is a big deal and for a lot of reasons. Troy notes one of them: Writing in the present tense reminds us we need to write in the moment, as if the scene is unfolding in the here and now. There is the influence of the Past and the pull of the Future, adding to the dynamism of a Present that has the potential to play out in an infinite number of ways.
* Core has been about screenwriting theory in eight parts — Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, Time. But even there, I ground what we learn in lectures in the pragmatic realities of what it means to write a script in Hollywood. As I am prone to say, it’s not just about writing a good script, it’s about learning key practices and principles of a professional screenwriter.
* Moving from Core to Prep is like “leaving school to go into the real world”? Yes, indeed. For now we move into workshop mode. No longer weekly writing exercises, now writing assignments. And while that may sound like The Questers are still in school, what it means practically is digging into the story, wrangling it into form, constructing a narrative, and hitting due dates. In other words the work of a screenwriter.
Bottom line: It’s time to… wait for it… go into the story.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
About Troy: Born Midwesterner with heart in San Francisco, but nothing beats NYC. Entrepreneur. Writer. Lover of the underdog. Grateful father of 3. @troyklith.
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