Interview — Simon Kinberg
StoryLink has a nice interview with screenwriter Simon Kinberg. His writing credits include Mr. & Mrs. Smith, X-Men: The Last Stand, Jumper, and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes.
The interview has some pretty choice advice. Here are a couple of excerpts related to Kinberg’s writing process which I thought would be particularly interesting to GITS readers:
On top of having several character threads moving through your stories, some also have elements of fantasy or the supernatural. How do you gain and maintain the necessary distance to hold your stories together while sufficiently immersing yourself in very other worlds? Are they that tightly architected and outlined at the start? Do you just have a good sense of direction? — Jonathan
I outline like crazy. Writing would be too daunting to me without an outline. I need the blueprint before I start building. In some ways, the vast majority of the actual writing takes place in the outlining phase for me. I’m finding the architecture of the movie, but also the architecture of sequences and scenes, so I know how the central characters, relationships, and storylines evolve. There are still plenty of surprises along the way, but they tend to be happier surprises.
If I’m working on a movie with multiple storylines (like an X-Men movie or something like Fantastic Four that has four evenly balanced heroes), I create outlines for each story. Then I mix and merge them together before fading in.
When you first get one or more ideas for plots and characters, how do you process these toward a structure? Sticky-Notes, story boarding, blocking into a format such as Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey, linear formats, or a legal pad with stages laid out in an outline form? — Philip L
I take notes on any possible surface. Then I input those notes into the computer at the end of every day. It starts with random ideas, maybe scenes or moments for the characters. Then eventually I turn that list of notes into a detailed outline, which can run anywhere from 15–50 pages, depending on how intimidated I am by the script (the more intimidated I am, the longer the outline, so I feel like I have more support). When I actually start writing a first draft, I have a very strange and inefficient process: I write everything by hand on blank white pieces of paper, front and back. I keep those pages in a folder, and don’t input anything into the computer until I’m done with the whole script. I don’t know why I started working this way, but I find it does a few things for me: first, I never have a real sense of what page I’m on, so I’m a little freer to experiment; second, I can’t really go back to rewrite (since it would get messy), so I end up moving forward without looking over my shoulder; and third, I end up writing a very, very long first draft. When I input the script, it’s almost invariably 40–50 pages too long, which forces me to be ruthless about cutting. I eliminate anything that isn’t absolutely necessary, because I’m fighting page count. It’s a good exercise. It forces me to justify every line.
If you’ve been reading and watching the interviews I’ve been posting here over the last year, you can’t help but notice how writer after writer puts a ton of focus on the prep-writing phase: research, brainstorming, character development, plotting, outline. I think there are two major reasons for that: (1) It works. (2) If you’re a professional screenwriter and you have to meet deadlines, you want to know as much as you can before you type FADE IN that your story works.
Obviously every writer is different. Some writers just need to find the story while writing it. And once you get several scripts under your belt and you begin to intuit certain story elements, maybe you don’t need to be as rigorous on the outline front. But for pre-pro writers, I think it’s critical to learn how to break a story in the prep-writing phase.
You can read the rest of Kinberg’s interview here.