Blog One - What It's All About
August 30th 2006 13:18
Are you seeking a life of fame and fortune, the chance to rub shoulders with TV and movie stars? The chance to win an Emmy, Logie, BAFTA or Oscar?
Then this isn’t the place for you. You may achieve these things in time. But before that happens, there’s a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights wrestling with ideas and dialogue, doubts about decisions made, frustration trying to find the right words or make a meaningful contact in the industry. And if that doesn’t worry you, if you don’t mind putting the hard yards in, then maybe we’ll both get through. What you need most, startingh out, is a passion for telling the story.
The aim of The Scriptwriting Blog is to provide you with some the basic tools to take you from someone with an idea to at least being able to produce a readable script: books, practises, concepts, websites. Maybe this can be a crash course in what you need to have before you enter the halls of academe, orbefore setting out along your own path. Right off the bat I’ll tell you that it seems to me the best way is still to get the piece of paper from college or uni, even if it’s only to have access to production facilities. Doing it on your own, like I’ve been doing, is a much slower road, and most of it has to take place in your head. But at least you set your own agenda.
We’ll look at the basic ideas behind where you write (what space is yours?), where ideas come from (an ideas factory in Schenectady, New York, according to Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison, among others, so it must be true), what to write (which genre, which stories that you’re passionate about), review famous scripts that are available online (for educational purposes, not for you to copy)., and other arcana from the dark arts of scriptwriting.
I’m not here to read your scripts (see the post soon on Readers), I’m not here to tell you about competitions or agents. What we'll do is get the basics organised, to at least get a script right – one complaint that I read often on the net from writers, agents and competition organisers, is how often the so-called writer has no apparent idea about format, story structure, and other necessities in scriptwriting. Here, you’ll hopefully get enough information to at least get a fair hearing. Hell, I’m even going to watch bad movies so as we can figure out what not to do! And, at the end of the day, give you a feel of what it’s like to struggle with the muse day after day.
And by the way, while the tools will be in this blog, in the ‘personal’ blog also attached to this page I’ll detail some of ‘a writer’s life’, or the ‘what it’s like to deal with people’ stuff, the trial of trying to do it while nearly everyone around you is saying, “Yes, very good… but when are you going to get a real job?”
So, come back again, see what’s on offer. What do I get out of it? The old saying, to teach is to learn twice, and while I’m not exactly teaching, I hope I'm at least organising what I know into something clear and readable. I might figure out what I’m actually doing. And maybe soon I can share some highs, lows, and insights, as something I’ve written finally gets some recognition. Or is disastrously trashed in some way and crashes and burns. Whatever. Either way, it’s a lesson.
Next: Why Write?
Then this isn’t the place for you. You may achieve these things in time. But before that happens, there’s a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights wrestling with ideas and dialogue, doubts about decisions made, frustration trying to find the right words or make a meaningful contact in the industry. And if that doesn’t worry you, if you don’t mind putting the hard yards in, then maybe we’ll both get through. What you need most, startingh out, is a passion for telling the story.
The aim of The Scriptwriting Blog is to provide you with some the basic tools to take you from someone with an idea to at least being able to produce a readable script: books, practises, concepts, websites. Maybe this can be a crash course in what you need to have before you enter the halls of academe, orbefore setting out along your own path. Right off the bat I’ll tell you that it seems to me the best way is still to get the piece of paper from college or uni, even if it’s only to have access to production facilities. Doing it on your own, like I’ve been doing, is a much slower road, and most of it has to take place in your head. But at least you set your own agenda.
We’ll look at the basic ideas behind where you write (what space is yours?), where ideas come from (an ideas factory in Schenectady, New York, according to Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison, among others, so it must be true), what to write (which genre, which stories that you’re passionate about), review famous scripts that are available online (for educational purposes, not for you to copy)., and other arcana from the dark arts of scriptwriting.
I’m not here to read your scripts (see the post soon on Readers), I’m not here to tell you about competitions or agents. What we'll do is get the basics organised, to at least get a script right – one complaint that I read often on the net from writers, agents and competition organisers, is how often the so-called writer has no apparent idea about format, story structure, and other necessities in scriptwriting. Here, you’ll hopefully get enough information to at least get a fair hearing. Hell, I’m even going to watch bad movies so as we can figure out what not to do! And, at the end of the day, give you a feel of what it’s like to struggle with the muse day after day.
And by the way, while the tools will be in this blog, in the ‘personal’ blog also attached to this page I’ll detail some of ‘a writer’s life’, or the ‘what it’s like to deal with people’ stuff, the trial of trying to do it while nearly everyone around you is saying, “Yes, very good… but when are you going to get a real job?”
So, come back again, see what’s on offer. What do I get out of it? The old saying, to teach is to learn twice, and while I’m not exactly teaching, I hope I'm at least organising what I know into something clear and readable. I might figure out what I’m actually doing. And maybe soon I can share some highs, lows, and insights, as something I’ve written finally gets some recognition. Or is disastrously trashed in some way and crashes and burns. Whatever. Either way, it’s a lesson.
Next: Why Write?
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I can't help but want to adopt the Charlie Kaufman anti-McKee attitude... Just feels like such a constraint on creativity.
McKee might be right in the end -- that stories do follow the patterns he's suggesting. I got a lot out of attending McKee's seminar myself. But I'd also suggest that one shouldn't think about such patterns prior to having written, but only in the editing stage...
Comment by Australis
The Scriptwriting Blog
Personal Blog - A Writer's Life
thanks for looking in.
It's not just McKee. One of the other posts is all about Joseph Campbell's compiling of the Hero's Journey, how myths around the world, whether from Norway or Nigeria, Timbuktu or Tahiti, all follow a discernable pattern, and it's a hard pattern to break, because it's a template for a story that filsl a need in us.
As for actual scriptwriting, I came at it from exactly the opposite direction. Started writing short stories and novels at an early age but could never make them work, lack of discipline internally, and lack of discipline on paper. Having to work to a TV format first off (five acts, no more than 60 pages, cliffhanger type scene at the end of each act to draw the audience on) and telling exactly the story I wanted to tell, made me think hard about it and how to make it work well, and I found to my surprise that the discipline improved the story, tightening it up and discarding all the unnecessary stuff, finding ten words to replace thirty, that kind of thing. Not every writer is Charlie Kaufman, and niot every audience wants to see a Charlie Kaufman film.
But I see your point, and it's correct: when thinking of the story, you should be flat out creative. And as the scriptwriting process begins you can then shape the format around the story, and the story around the format. How many regular TV series have we seen that have had an outstanding ep that goes against the regular format? Buffy the Musical comes to mind. And in the process of shaping story and format around each other, it becomes an intriguing process, part work, part craft, part creative.
Trust me. On a bad day it's a slog but the light can be seen, and on a good day... aaaaahhhhhh....
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I guess my basic problem with heroes' journeys is that I'm sus of any argument from human nature. You know ? Any time someone says, "It is human nature to do/be/want x" I do a double take and wonder why evolution or conditioning couldn't change things.
People are sometimes prone to classify plots. To say there are 19 basic plots, or 7, or 3, or 1. I can see the usefulness of this from a critic's point of view, but don't you find it stifling creatively? It's like, "Why should I bother writing anything? It's all been said before..."
Comment by Australis
The Scriptwriting Blog
Personal Blog - A Writer's Life
And the HJ can go in any direction. I use Star Wars as an example, because Lucas has said explicitly he followed it closely in crafting his scripts, but you can see how the template emphasised the journey into darkness (Anakin) or the journey towards light (Luke), according to the storyteller's requirements. You could even say that Eps 4-6 are a go around again for Anakin/Vader, and a struggle, after the darkness, into the light.
The HJ is particularly useful if you have a lull in your story that seems like one long dull passage and you can't figure out why. You lay the HJ template over the top to figure out where you are in the overall story, and see that a certain element (introducing a new character, passing through another threshold) should occur there. You aren't bound to do it, but it could liven the plot and strengthen the characters.
As for the idea of "all been said before", we live in changing times that demand the stories be retold in a modern context; at its most unsubtle, that's resetting Shakespeare in modern times (and I'm not disparaging them for that, I think Ian McKellen's take on Richard III is brilliant), but it can be a lot more subtle than that. And on top of that, I try to find what I call the 'second story', the one that comes after the more obvious one, or, to put it another way, you think up the obvious story, then tell it from another aspect or angle or a different time to bring out different elements. A good example of this, if you can find it, is "Passing Of The Western", a short story by Howard Waldrop, who tells a story about an alternate Wild West in a very unconventional way. Matter of fact, he's very good at that across a number of stories, and just plain fun to read.
And as for 17 plots, yeah, I've seen them, get the idea, and then just tell the story I want to tell anyway.