How To Succeed At Screenwriting… By Really Trying — Part 3: Write Pages
You may remember a 1967 movie How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Here is the IMDB plot summary:
Twenty-seven year old New York window washer J. Pierpont Finch believes he can be a success in the corporate world after he impulsively picks up the book “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. The book promises its reader that he can climb the corporate ladder simply and quickly. The Worldwide Wicket Corporation, the business in the office building whose windows he washes, is, according to the book, the perfect type of business. There, he meets secretary Rosemary Pilkington, who sees in Ponty, as she calls him, an unassuming man whom she believes the corporate world will eat alive. But Ponty, memorizing what the book tells him, does quickly climb the corporate ladder, but not by doing any real work.
Ah, if only learning the craft of screenwriting was so easy. It’s not. Despite all the products in the marketplace promoting “proven systems” and “secret formulas,” there is only one way to become proficient at the craft: You have to really try. That is the only legitimate path to success as a screenwriter.
This week I’d like to present to you five things you can do to help you learn the craft of screenwriting and put you in a position to succeed. They are completely free. They don’t require anything at all except this — your time, commitment, focus and effort.
In other words, by really trying.
Can it help to read books, attend seminars and take screenwriting classes? Absolutely, I wouldn’t have co-founded Screenwriting Master Class if I didn’t think Tom Benedek and I could help mentor writers in what it takes to write and approach the craft like professional screenwriters. But no matter what you learn in any formal setting or through your own ad hoc approach to educating yourself about the craft, these five practices I’m presenting to you this week are important and should be an essential part of your learning process.
Part 3: Write Pages
The last part of a trilogy of screenwriting things to do: Read scripts. Watch movies. Write pages. Of course, writing pages comes with its own unique set of challenges, first and foremost the simple act of forcing butt onto chair to write. And then turning off the damn Internet! Yet we all know this one incontrovertible fact: If we don’t write it, we can’t sell it. So we either write… or die [to quote the mantra of another online screenwriting community… you know who you are].
There are all sorts of motivational tools to get oneself to write. In fact most of my Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work series are precisely that, everything from 1 Page A Day to Don’t Finish That Scene! to Snacks.
However I want to delve into the subject today from a different vantage point. We know we need to write, we know we can’t have a chance at success if we don’t finish scripts, but do we really know how the very act of writing pages is a learning experience in and of itself? That the more you write, the more you learn?
* Every time you wrangle a story in prep — concept, character development, brainstorming, research, plotting — you learn about that part of the process, refining your ability to know what you’re doing when you experience the amorphous world of a script’s life before FADE IN.
* Every time you write a first draft, you learn more than you knew about the story, its characters, its themes. Moreover whenever you successfully make it from FADE IN to FADE OUT, you learn that you can defeat the powers of negativity that haunt you in their special first draft way [You’ll never make it… This script sucks… Stop now before you waste any more time]. This means that each script project in which you face FADE IN for the first time, feeling that inevitable clutch of fear at your throat, you can look back on the times you succeeded in getting through that initial draft, calling upon that knowledge to summon up the courage you need to plunge into the project.
* Every time you rewrite and rewrite… and yes, rewrite a script until you’ve nailed it, you learn various tricks of the trade to hone a story. Indeed the more scripts you write and rewrite, the more intuitive your ability will be to know what works and what doesn’t work in a story, and how to fix it. Furthermore whereas on your first or second screenplay, you may have been tempted to settle for a final draft that in your heart of hearts you knew wasn’t ready, the more scripts you write, the more patience, persistence and sheer strength of will you will discover to help push you through multiple rewrites.
* Every time you write a scene, your are confronted by several forks-in-the-road. Do you start the scene here or enter later? Which point of narrative attack should you use: His or Hers? Is the point of the scene this or that? What’s the best way to handle exposition in the scene: Revelation or Fascination? On and on and on, a multitude of crossroads and decisions to be made. In a fundamental way, screenwriting is scene-writing, a set of creative choices we make anywhere from 60, 90 or even more times per script. The more scenes you write, the better you get at it. If, for example, you write one script, let’s say that represents 75 scenes. If you write five scripts, that’s 375 scenes. Eight scripts, that’s 600 scenes. And each scene you write, you learn something.
* Every time you work with a character and suddenly in the middle of Act II, they get up off the page and veer away from your outline or treatment, instead of forcing them back into your neat little plan, like you did the first or second script you wrote, you will have faith in your characters, you will believe they know what they’re doing, they know the story better than you, and you will follow them. Yes, that means your finely tuned outline could come crashing down and now you’re adrift with characters wandering about going who knows where, but the more you write, the more you will realize that this is it, this is the stuff of a writer’s dreams: Characters who come to life and help you go into the story in a powerful way, engaging the story not as something for you to lord over and master, but rather a vibrant, organic entity humming with its own energy. That direct experience of story can be scary as shit, but also the key to you writing a story that comes to life in the mind of readers.
So whether it’s the micro or macro aspect of writing a script, or even the more ‘spiritual’ nature of the process, the fact is the more you write, the more you learn.
You know you must write. You know you must write to succeed. You also know you must write to learn the craft.
A few questions for you:
* How many feature length scripts have you written?
* Do you feel like you know more about the craft of screenwriting now than when you wrote your first script?
* What have you learned about the craft of screenwriting from writing scripts?
For Part 1 of this series [Read Scripts], go here.
For Part 2 of this series [Watch Movies], go here.
Tomorrow in Part 4: Set goals.
[Originally posted November 9, 2011]
Comment Archive