Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Filter Characteristics for better Characters

One thing most writers struggle with is differentiating characters in a story, and "making them real" rather than stereotypical. Short of coming down with schizophrenia, what can we do to get inside the heads of so many different characters to understand why they do the things they do, say the things they say, see the world the way they see it? I hope that we know it is important to do this especially with the main characters: the hero, the manipulator/mentor and the villain. But, when there is so much competition for readers' attention, even the minor characters have to quickly take form in their mind as the story unfolds.

Observation is a time-tested tool for most writers, but unless you have a voice over narrative in your film then the observation of characters falls into the lap of the audience. Therefore, once again, the art of knowing and showing is the necessary evil of screenwriting. You must know what is behind your character's choices and then show the subtleties to the audience for them to observe. It's not enough to give a redneck character a southern accent to make his choices consistent with a "real" human being. You must understand his frame of reference, how he filters the world, in order to understand how to manipulate him. Where to start?

Back-story is sold to screenwriters as a sure-fire way to develop characters. Knowing what happened to a character BEFORE the film starts, and creating a believable history that a writer may or may not draw upon in dialogue and action in the film is a good thing. Right? Some writers create such intricate back-stories that they might fill up a completely different film. Some back-stories do become "prequel" films, in fact. It is dangerous territory for a writer, though to delve into the pre-film history too deeply, because I’ve seen it lead writers away from perfectly viable stories often.

Studying and understanding the way people communicate and perceive the world in general must be in a writer’s tool chest. I’ve written of the “point of view” of the screenwriter being important to a screenplay’s very hypothesis, and so taking this logic further into a story follows like this: the point of view of each character is important to the character’s very hypothesis. It may not be entirely necessary to construct a complete history for every character to do this well. (What did she say???)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming has been around since the 1970s. In the forty years since, there has been a boatload of research done on the behavior of human beings in the world. Focusing just on what we know through NLP can help writers understand how characters filter information differently. This can be a short cut to creating a plausible set of traits for any character in your screenplay. There are experts who can help you quickly understand why a person might respond to information presented one way, and ignore or be confused by the same information presented another way. Last night I went to a fun class about this field taught by expert, Tracy L. Brown, a Master Certified NLP Practitioner, to learn more. She was so entertaining as she showed us how people give their lies away, or how we might get out of speeding tickets by simply changing the way we communicate.

It was clear to me from the outset that each believable character in your screenplay will necessarily have a specific filter through which they either get or refuse information, and that knowledge will drive many entertaining moments in a film. For instance, I’m a visual leaning person. I respond to the way things appear in presentation. I used to call myself a marketer’s dream come true, but maybe only for those who paint me a pretty picture. A close second is my auditory perception, or how things sound, and I always question whether something resonates with me, or sounds true. Put me in a room of kinesthetic people who want to touch and feel can really creep me out. Present me with a stack of facts or credentials that give me no visual clues and I’m just slogging through it with pure pain. These traits get more pronounced when there are big decisions to be made. I’m skeptical if it doesn’t “look good,” and I become enthusiastic if I feel I have a reasonable perspective, and these visual words naturally fall into the way I speak and color my world.

Therefore, as you create your characters mull over mixing and matching types. Consider a hero and villain who perceive the world through different filters and how they must finally reinterpret each other. Think about how people build connection when they exhibit similar filters. Consider what choices are made seemingly out of an arbitrary disregard for the facts, but are actually made because of the filter of perception that character carries around with them. All character decisions have an emotional basis, of course, but the filter frames the emotion. As a screenwriter, you can begin to work with the language you use to define those filters, and you may even be able to learn an infallible way to hook agents and producers through use of NLP and garner the rare, “Green Light” for your project. 

Friday, March 25, 2011

The Visionary Screenwriter - Part Three

Framing our film stories begins with who we write about and in what context. 
There are actual facts that reflect the changes happening in America and the world. A good place to start finding them is at the website for the U.S. Census Bureau.  You may think, “So what there are now over 50 million people of Hispanic identification in this country?” So what indeed. I estimate that fewer than 10% of the films and television shows produced by major studios and networks in Hollywood are reflecting the demographics of a rapidly changing America. They seem to be stuck in a nostalgic Jim Crow identity with a few “token minorities.” They are token because, even while they may have leading roles in a movie, white folks inevitably surround them in the story. They are minorities only because they’re still identified that way. America is changing and it is hard to continue going to films that largely exclude the changes that we deal with everyday. 2042 is not very far away, but how many Sci-Fi films have you seen that reflect the coming demographic fact that Hispanic heritage will surge ahead in all of the US the way it already has in major Southwest cities?
It’s not only America that is changing, the way the whole world interacts is changing. We no longer have to rely on the diplomatic corps to communicate with people from other countries. We can Facebook them. We can discover a lot about ourselves by interacting with people all over this little blue globe in a way that Hollywood seems to be unable to absorb and communicate. While we rely less and less on Hollywood to interpret our place in the world, it may simply be because they are not doing a very good job. Seemingly, they would have us return to a simplistic point of view where there is one big enemy and one big hero, but the reductionism just comes off as silly. Thank goodness for shows like “Outsourced” and “NCIS” because they admit that our contextual place in the world is very confusing at best, and we’re usually the butt of the jokes because we are so isolated and sure of our position…until we aren’t. Until we writers realize that a big story right now is our bewilderment in this new world order, we’re not seeing that story very often on screen, but instead see a lot of conspiracy stories that show how we lost our footing. In my opinion, that’s looking backwards.
Some of my new and young friends in places all over Africa are using technology to leap ahead of their parents, and even their siblings. It will not be too long before the changes in leadership, supported by way leaders and entrepreneurs like Dr. Mo Ibrahim of Sudan, make Africa extrapolate an entirely different world scenario with diverse resources and brain power. How do you think a strong Africa will change the way African Americans view themselves, and yet we still have stereotypical black men appearing in films made even by black filmmakers like Tyler Perry. I’m sorry but I don’t get it. I have yet to see films reflect the kind of insanity my dear husband still deals with everyday. It is far past time to call on the carpet the way Hollywood frames life as we know it.
Then there is the story of women. Women who make up 51% of the population, have infiltrated every stratum of society, and are still portrayed by the entertainment industry as being primarily interested in consuming lingerie and extravagant lifestyles rather than changing the world. Even my fourteen year old daughter can see that there is no difference between plastic surgery and a burqa. When will Hollywood wake up? Well in 100 years of film we JUST had a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, win "Best Director" from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences last year. I have so many talented women friends who have endured an unreasonable hazing in the entertainment industry, at every level, and they are still locked out.  As Tyler Perry has sometimes pigeonholed the black family in endless victimhood and violence, there are women who would rather be the only woman in the control room. Even women agents and executives still magnetize stories that portray women as victims or bitches. 
In all cases, it is a question of what is valuable to our culture, and frankly as reflected in Hollywood films we are more often than not found wanting. However, I'm not sure that is a true reflection of our culture and I ask screenwriters to challenge themselves to find the truth. To be a visionary screenwriter in times of chaos is an opportunity to reframe the discussion and the way we will be a part of the world.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Visionary Screenwriter - Part Two

It's a lot in the details...

We live in a different world than even five years ago. It’s 2011 and the items that have gone by the wayside in the last decade are too numerous to name. What I would like to call your attention to, though, is the ways in which we’ve really changed our lifestyles so much that when something about it appears, it dates a film immediately because of its appearance.

Phones. Nobody uses phones anymore. Gasp. That is nobody uses a phone to talk on anymore. (Case in point, even the old newspapers are saying good-bye to their chums: Don't Call Me, I won't Call You

I was watching “When Harry Met Sally” just a few nights ago and I was shocked by how much screen time was taken up by Harry and Sally talking on the phone to each other and their friends. Split screen? Are you kidding? In the recent “Wall Street II” movie one of the trailer-worthy funny moments is when Gordon Gecko gets his bulky, ancient cell phone back from his jailer.

If I were to write a scene with a phone in it, it would be only for comic relief about how stupid talking on the phone feels anymore. Yet movies released today still are rampant with phone talking scenes. Get over it. If you have any phone scenes in your script, seriously consider another way to convey that communication.

Newspapers are another thing that will be gone in a few years. I remember telling a twenty-something to look up an article for me in a newspaper. I handed the thing to her, and her reaction was actually disgust, "Why do I have to touch this? I get ink all over my hands. I'll go look it up on the web." This was a few years AGO.

The bookstore is a location that will quickly be obsolete. When the second largest chain Borders has declared bankruptcy because they failed to get on the electronic reader bandwagon, then you have to think where will bookstores be in five or ten years? Libraries are likely to be very limited or gone due to a number of factors. First, they are having their funding cut. Second, they are quickly jumping on to electronic borrowing. Three, who goes to the library anymore? Certainly not kids, who can research in 10 minutes what their parents researched over 10 hours in the book stacks.  

So, you’re looking for the cute meet spot? Try  "Idea Tourism" by Seth Godin, as a starting place, or maybe try getting out of the house and away from your laptop once in a while. See, you do it, too. The fact is that we are more connected to each other than ever before, and also more isolated than ever before. There are stories in that dichotomy. Look for them. These are the stories that will be the contemporary phenomenon in just a few years.

Now, say you are writing a story that takes place twenty years ago, or that you do have flashbacks, be particularly aware of how the lifestyle of twenty years ago, day-to-day, was so different. Typewriters, Walkmans, VCRs, a million remote controls, stick shift cars and uncomfortable office chairs are just a few of the things we had always around us and that are now gone forever. It isn’t just about hairstyles and music. Details are what make those places and people come alive.

Let’s say you’re writing a science fiction story. Puh-lease read some eBooks and articles about upcoming trends and try to extrapolate even beyond them. Be a visionary. It’s not so amazing that someone is carrying around an  iPad™ on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise® anymore, ya' know? You have to go further than we’ve gone, and further than the closest visions of the future take us.

To be a visionary screenwriter, you have to not only have great stories, you have to have great details.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Visionary Screenwriter - Part One

How many of you believe movies can stay the way they’ve been since the 1940’s? since the 1960’s? since 1980’s? since 2010? Accepting that the movies reflect changes in the way we see the world is one thing, but embracing that movies change the way we see the world is another. Over the years, since I began teaching, the world has changed innumerably, but the screenplay stories that I see from my students have been stuck in the 1980s in terms of worldview and voice. I want to help screenwriters leap into 2015 or even 2020 because the screenplays you’re writing today may not find their way to the screen until then. At the same time, there are structural truths that have withstood the challenges of change and so I am a believer in understanding the essential craft of screenwriting, too.

The audience now has entertainment media readily available. I’ve seen jokes, for instance, on my Facebook newsfeed that are better and about 12 hours ahead of the late-night talk show stand-up. The soap opera that runs on Twitter is as dramatic and fascinating as any story on daytime TV. Conspiracy theories, Magic and UFO sightings are a daily occurrence in threads of discussion forums with a thousand and more labels that are different worlds the user can enter. People may not know their neighbors but still feel they are part of specific communities spread all over the world. This is all free with access to the internet or a smart phone. How can a studio, much less a lowly screenwriter out in the hinterlands hope to compete with so many worthy distractions?

There are going to be gimmicks that, as a screenwriter, you’ll need to consider incorporating into your screenplay. The most obvious and latest craze is 3-D as a value-add. What in a screenplay would make investment in 3-D technology worthwhile? Even the second to last “Harry Potter” installment took a step back from it in favor of a timely release of the movie. First, you have to ask yourself why 3-D is effective as a film tool. Back in the day, Hollywood was looking for a blockbuster film, a film that made the audience want to line-up around a block to see it not just once, but over and over again. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas somehow inherently understood that going to a film was a two-fold adventure – one being the character-driven hero story, and the other was a visual world that came alive on screen. Combining the hero’s journey with exciting and out-of-this-world action became the standard foundation of a blockbuster film most recently expressed by the 3-D film, “Avatar.”  It is not the hero’s journey that makes a 3-D film work, though, it is the out-of-this-world action that makes it worthwhile. Yet, without the hero's journey the gimmick becomes too obvious. Unfortunately, it may take a while for Hollywood to figure out that you can’t just stick a few action scenes in a movie and make it 3-D. This will cause 3-D to fall into the category of “been there, done that” for many filmgoers. Not every film is a blockbuster film. If 3-D is to survive as a value-add then screenwriters and studios will have to understand what makes it work for the audience rather than just celebrating the fact that they can do it.

However, now look at the world that our audience lives in again. What does the audience experience daily within entertainment that it never had before in a meaningful way? TV shows like “American Idol” call on the viewer to participate in the outcome of the story. These “reality” shows are based upon a belief that if the viewers become invested in the outcome, then they will put aside their time on the computer to come back each week and watch the show unfold. Even YouTube videos incorporate the ability to like, comment and share the films the audience sees.

Films do not offer this kind of interactivity at all. A filmmaker expects that the audience came because they want to invest in another’s point of view and experience catharsis by osmosis. I ask you with complete earnestness, can this possibly stand as the model? Setting nostalgia aside for a moment, can you imagine the children growing up in a world where they interact with technology on a daily basis wanting to go sit in a movie theater for 2 hours or more without expressing their opinions? When those short films come up at the beginning of the film asking for cell phones to be turned off, do you think they actually do that?

The Troubadours and Taliesins of old traveled from village to village singing and telling the news, and stories of their time. Who knows how they interacted with their audiences? Perhaps the event of storytelling, before the advent of writing, was a much more dynamic. Perhaps the story shamans asked the audience to participate. Then along came writing and set those stories on stone and papyrus, and the lasting power was not on the memory of the storyteller or the interaction with the village, but on the interpreter of the writing. Keep in mind that Socrates never learned to write or read and, presumably, his work would not have survived without the writing ability of his student, Plato, but who knows what Plato left out. Works have been commonly revised, including the bible, to fit their time. My suggestion today is that screenwriters must begin to think more flexibly than ever before.  As sure as there was chaos and opportunity in the age when troubadours found themselves replaced by books, there is chaos and opportunity now as we enter the digital age of storytelling but the key to success will be adaptation to change not insistence on the same old, same old.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Truth in the Age of Growing Transparency

In an age of growing transparency, truth is not fixed to fact. While  facts play an important role in reaching the truth, and in the case of mathematics certainly have stood the test of time, in all other arts and sciences facts are in the realm of proofs, and can change with an evolution of knowledge. I believe facts are showing their fragility, and their reliance on power structures that are falling away is making them shakier. Perspective, or point of view, then takes precedence over facts in conveying what is true


This makes the job of writing a movie based on facts challenging, especially contemporary stories, because point of view can be fluid. As social taboos, political polarization and analysis explode like colored balloons, we have to understand that the audience is not going to be interested in "fantasy" because reality is so much more interesting. I don't mean "fantasy" in terms of genre. I mean "fantasy" in terms with how characters resolve their moments of change and confrontation. The solutions of yesterday's stories aren’t reliable unless they contain that nugget of timeless truth, the kind of truth that Aristotle spoke of in Poetics, the truth that is greater than history. 

How do we find that nugget of timeless truth?

Yesterday's story of a gay person excluded becomes today's story of a gay couple raising teenaged children. Yesterday's story of an evil witch becomes today's story of a misunderstood magical woman. Yesterday's story of monsters out of control becomes today's story of humanity out of control needing to be secretly controlled by monsters. Does that mean that there are no stories about alienation, evil, or unvarnished fear? No! It means that we have to figure out what tomorrow's story is about and how it addresses these basic human experiences. Moreover, this is not a case of screenwriters being ahead of the curve of knowledge. The only writers interested in this, write science-fiction; again a genre.  This means we are required to be ahead of the curve of comprehension of change. We must see the bend in the road ahead before we’re actually taking that turn. A screenwriter must look for the thread of truth that survives the collapse of taboos, and the throws of transformation.

As I sit down to write my story, I consider the truths that I see today. There are changes taking place on a global scale because of the greater degree of interconnectivity you and I enjoy. My own self-awareness in this environment grows rapidly. Schism freezes me in place one moment and dissolves the next, leaving me feeling often bewildered by the pace of change. My investment in self-evident truths either pays off, or turns out to be misplaced. Yes, I will have to dig a little deeper to test my theories. It is possible that the solution I originally thought up for my hero is based upon yesterday’s news and I may have to redouble my efforts to understand my subject matter. I trust this will take me closer to the real meaning I seek as a writer.

It comes down to a willingness to analyze and discern where I’m being too opaque, too squarely solid with an easy way out for my story’s characters. By opaque, I mean to suggest a surface rather than a layered depth of meaning. Because scripts are limited by time, and thus by page number, it is always tempting to get to the point quickly, but does that serve the deeper meaning?  What I hope for is something like sinking down through that opacity, and from the inside out making the emotional, mental and moral movements of my character transparent. Then, I have to know the heart of my character. Then, I have to trust that the truth within my stories will be told through perspectives gained by my character, and tying down details is all about supporting that point of view.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Speculative is the Opposite of Definitive

As we begin to explore the rough world of screenwriting, we have to wonder at our objectives. The facts, the definite facts about screenwriting as a trade are a slippery slope that may send any writer, new or tried and true, down. Some say there are 55,000 things (treatments, premises, outlines, and scripts) registered with the WGA ever year, and only about 400 new writers joining the guild each year, but there are also many scripts that are bought and made into independent films before the writer ever registers the script. As filmmaking becomes a more and more accessible venture, the definite facts become less and less important. Therefore, I’m telling you that somewhere amongst a screenwriter’s objectives should be the desire to see a story up on the silver screen or at the very least posted on YouTube for a viral share of the market.

Yes, we’d all like to make a seven-figure screenplay sale. Selling a speculative, or “spec,” script is often what first inspires a writer to pursue the craft of screenwriting. It is a risky venture, but potentially highly profitable. What is most risky about it? I mean it is not as if it is very likely that a screenwriter’s laptop will blow up. Death by screenwriting is the theme of the classic movies, “Sunset Boulevard,” “Barton Fink,” and “Adaptation,” but it certainly isn’t the norm. The risk of screenwriting is far more the loss of heart and soul than of life and limb. As we learn the craft and accepted methods of screenwriting, we can begin to feel we’ve lost our voice, that our writing has become formulaic.  The risk of screenwriting can mean that we’ve distracted ourselves from other sure things in our lives. It is a battle each writer must decide to enter for him or herself for this reason.

Screenplays often have many facts in them, and so often, we’ll see in the credits, “based on true life,” or some such nonsense. However, I would pose to you that though a screenplay often presents facts, those facts are there only to support a deeper truth. As Aristotle famously wrote,Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular,” and the best screenplays are often closer to poetry than history. We form a hypothesis with our screenplay premise with the intention of setting out a proof for our point of view. This is how a screenplay reveals the truth may not always rest solely with the facts.

Our journey as speculative screenwriters is fraught with the dangers of facing limitation, and the demands of endurance. It relies not only on creative vision, but also on willingness to bear the burdens of speculation on so many levels.  Building upon the shoulders of screenwriters who have gone before us, let’s commit to the finest within ourselves to deliver to that visual medium film stories that are worth considering and entertainment that has something to say about the world we live in and its truths beyond facts.