Interview (Written): Brian Duffield
A Final Draft interview with Brian Duffield whose writing credits include Insurgent and Jane Got a Gun:
FD: You’ve mentioned before that you don’t like to outline. That you feel it stifles your creative output when you spend that much time being analytical. When you sit down to write a project, do you just let it flow? Or do you edit along the way to try and keep it under control?
BD: I would say that most of the time I know what my ending will be. For me, it’s about figuring out what the movie is about and writing each scene with that theme in mind. I think that takes away a lot of the confusion of starting from page 1 and making it up as you go along. I know what I want to be talking about and I know what I want the characters to go through. I don’t necessarily know how they’re going to go through it, but I have a pretty good idea.
On top of that, I am very much a fan of brevity in my writing. I always kind of have my eye on that 90-page mark. It’s something that I think you can kind of get a sense of in a small, tight script — what is working and what isn’t working. What’s going to advance the story as opposed to sitting around dwelling on something and just killing time? When you know who your characters are and what your world is, it helps gives guidance to what scene should be coming and what obstacles need to be and you can really put them up against the wall.
I think a lot of times people are too focused in on things like page 10 needing to be where the Inciting Incident is. I think on my last script the Inciting Incident was on page 30. Your goal is to set up the world and keep it interesting. I’ve done [scripts] where the Inciting Incident took place before the script even started. It needs to be about what’s right for the script, not about what makes each script the same. There’s no right or wrong. I think it’s a good way to start off writing. Kind of like learning to play guitar or playing sports, where you do the same drill over and over. Then you become good enough that you trust yourself to do something new and unique. I find that people are engrossed in the read and suddenly 20 minutes have gone by and they’re halfway through the script — they don’t care where things are.
For the rest of the interview, go here.
For my June 2014 interview with Brian, go here.