Oscar Roundtable: The Writers
A couple of comments about this post featuring John August brought to mind a recent Hollywood Reporter feature called “Oscar Roundtable: The Writers.” Featuring John Patrick Shanley (Doubt), Andrew Stanton (Wall-E), Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married), Dustin Lance Black (Milk), and other screenwriters of note re this year’s movies, I was interested to see their seemingly shared sensibilities when it comes to writing a script’s first draft:
John Patrick Shanley: When I write the first page, I’m fantasizing about finishing, and that is the propulsion that drags me through a screenplay. It makes me keep up the narrative pacing. I also know that if I think about what I am going to write in advance, and then I write fast, you’re going to feel that when you read it. You’re going to feel the action of forward propulsion. You can do anything once you have a first draft, but if you don’t have a first draft, you’re screwed.
Andrew Stanton: My mantra is: Be wrong as fast as you can. Because I have to have the liberty to know it doesn’t have to work so that I’ll just keep moving.
Jenny Lumet: The nature of my life: There are screaming children involved. I don’t have a choice about when I work, so I have to fail really fast. There are three hours in a day when I can write. Those are the three hours where I have to fail miserably.
Dustin Lance Black: Getting going is tough. I’ll stare at blank screens, and I’ll check my Web sites and blogs. But once I get going, it’s six hours in the morning, then lunch, and then six hours after that, then dinner. I get really obsessive. But I just plow through it. For me, that first 10 pages, I really get detailed, detailed, detailed. And then it’s just kind of a disastrous mess.
I used to be a real stickler about not going back when writing a first draft, always move toward the end. Hence the derivation of the screenwriting mantra, “The most important thing about a first draft is getting the damn thing done.” And I still think that is the best course of action — generally — for aspiring screenwriters, the basic point being that even if your first draft has plot holes in it and characters start to shift, the process of writing pages all the way to FADE OUT will be an invaluable benefit to the writer, giving them much more understanding of their story — and problems to be solved — than if they had turned back and started over.
I’ve changed my tune over the years and am more inclined to ask the writer, “What do you feel like doing?” Really spend time getting in touch with you and the story. If a writer spends that time and is honest, they’ll probably know what to do.
What about you? If a first draft isn’t working, do you plow ahead? Start over? Jump around and write the scenes you can ‘see’ in your head?