Essential Screenwriting Craft

You've been thinking about a film script forever, it seems. You've even written some scenes, but, darn it, you keep getting stuck. Life takes over and leads you away from that dream. It seemed so easy in your head to see a full movie, but now that you want to put it on paper...argh! What a mess!

EVERY SCREENWRITER GOES THROUGH THIS AT SOME POINT.

Screenwriting is a craft first and an art form second. It is a business venture. When you are in business, you learn skills that will support your business. This means you can learn the bits and pieces that you need to know, and you can practice the craft until you become its master. You want to become a master crafts person so that you can succeed. Once you are a master crafts person, then your work is so indelible and unique, it becomes art.

I have been teaching screenwriting for more than half a decade. I have seen it all. The big resistance I get almost every single class is the idea that "formula" is a bad thing. "Damned rules! I became a writer so I don't have to follow rules!" Ehscoose mi? sense win deed righting stup folouching roools? The "formula" behind a screenplay is so ancient that it precedes celluloid. The fact is that we start training in it beginning with the first fairy tale we see performed by puppets. It is ingrained in our expectations of every genre that certain milestones happen when we watch a story unfold. The rules allow us to participate as an audience, and to experience catharsis. As a writer, you want to move people, right?  All, I am doing is cluing you into the hidden structure beneath every successful story you have ever seen.

My class is chock full of insight and technique, and will make your brain explode with helpful lessons. I am not just saying that. I've seen the light bulbs turn on in front of me in the bright-eyed and renewed enthusiasm of my students. I love teaching this information, and I want nothing more than for my students to be wildly successful screenwriters.
I mark that success in many ways:

• You get out of your head and onto the page
• You understand the hidden structure of film writing
• You are more excited to share your story
• You have a holistic, beginning-middle-end plan for writing your script
• You are ready for the next step

There are a few spaces left in my screenwriting class that starts Monday. Go to the Events for Screenwriters tab and click on it to sign up! See you there.

Give up the Obvious

I have spent the last several months exploring all kinds of interesting options for screenwriters and filmmakers.

Starting with a broad idea that SOMETHING has to give in the world of movie making and movie distribution to bring the audience back, I have been interviewing people in different disciplines in the industry and related industries to get a handle on what the thinking is today, and what the possiblissities are tomorrow. My beef is that spending $100 on a mediocre experience is not something I want to repeat over and over again just because I think I love the movies. The number of times I have left a cinema thinking, "Wow, that was just not worth that much money," are countless and embarrassing. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice or maybe 30x and shame on me. You know?

In a world where technology drips from the rooftops like a rainy day, going to old-time, linear, flat screen experiences with no interaction are just...boring. I am a huge HUGE believer in story. But, the STORIES ARE BORING and redundant to the point of having always two movies out that seem to have the same story (i.e. "No Strings Attached" and "Friends with Benefits"). The presentation is BORING. The theaters are BORING. Yeah. 3-D worked for about a minute.

People in Hollywood! What are you thinking?

Well, I suspect the economy has been used as an excuse for lack of vision by more executives than just President Obama. It's like we've been playing a game of "freeze tag" and they didn't get the message that they can move. So, I'm saying they're out of the game for a while.

But, I have observed some movement on television that I find intriguing. They have those silly scan squares now popping up here and there, Jon Stewart, CBS shows, and I've followed a few of them with some curiosity. So far, nothing to write home about, but it gives me hope that there may be a shift happening. What Hollywood is missing is this very simple thing: the AUDIENCE can be as entertaining as the show.

I interviewed a lovely guy who has worked with a large cable network as a strategic development Senior VP person with visionary ideas. It seems that Hollywood wasn't quite ready to jump on board, and that is a shame because he had some very cool projects in the tube of development. In the end he ended up deciding to pursue the more avante guard world of film festivals where new experiences can be tested with less risk, and a more devoted audience. He told me that in the UK there is a preview show at some theaters where the audience in three different theaters "drive" race cars via motion control cameras in the theater. The three theatres each have their own vehicle, and one of them "wins" the race because the audience caught on to how to move to manipulate their assigned car. Then the winning theatre gets a concession coupon texted to their smart phones. Cool, huh? Ah the possiblissities!

I've interviewed web designers, app designers and programmers of all sorts to see how this magnificent idea engine of the internet and smartphones can be integrated into a cinematic experience. It turns out that it isn't really that hard to imagine accomplishing it in a short time. OMG.  All I have to do is raise about $35- $55,000 to develop some kind of interactive app that we could be enjoying in a year or so with some brave Hollywood and Cinema Distribution people on board.  Somebody give me the money!

To this end...and to other ends...I am experimenting and hoping to raise funds for another creative project that has been near and dear to my heart for a long time. It may seem to have nothing to do with film, however, give up the obvious on this one folks. I love Tarot. I'm not the only screenwriter and screenwriting instructor who does -- John Truby has a whole development program using Tarot on his website. I could wax poetic about how they're linked in story, in character, in the way symbolism and allegory communicates, but that would miss the real point. The point is I am raising funds for a creative project to write and illustrate about Tarot on Kickstarter called The Kosmic Egg Tarot Project and the thing is that I really want to finish this piece of work as much as I want to do all of the other creative projects I have up my sleeve. I need financial support to start getting my ideas out into the world where you all can experience them! This is my first foray into the world of Kickstarter, but if it works, I promise you that I will be bringing an experimental cinema experience project before you within the next  6-12 months. Ah the possiblissities!

Introduction To Screenwriting Class

Next week I teach Introduction To Screenwriting. It used to be that I kept it simply to the subject of learning how to write a screenplay, but frankly, I believe that is an unfair scenario to launch any writer into with the starry-eyed gaze of hope.  If you want to be a writer, you have to start somewhere. This much is true. However, of all writing venues screenwriting is perhaps the most unforgiving.

I’ve talked about the odds here: 55,000 story ideas, 400 chosen. Pretty sad. Then take it even further. There are 400 film schools in the world just about. Therefore, if just one student who has practiced this craft for 3-4 years makes it, that cuts out all the hobby screenwriters who are just learning the craft. Screenwriting is a professional choice, and not a good hobby. It takes a year to develop a good feature-length screenplay for the most professional writers, working about 10 hours a week. They generally work on several projects at once. There are methods. There is a structure to learn. There are those scenes that need truer vision, and dialogue that must be trim and support the action.

Learning how to write a screenplay could very well be helpful for writing any other kind of story because at its best it is dynamic, structured, active and tidy. A novel, poetry, and even proposals for business would be helped by understanding screenwriting. There is no doubt to me about that. Screenwriting is specific in its demands, and yet the best screenplays are unique and revealing. The heart of a great screenplay is a point of view that stays truthful. This is what makes a screenplay transcend the “formulaic” trap screenplays can fall into, and sometimes this means honing a story down to the simplest of themes.

The way a ballerina makes dance look easy, a screenwriter makes writing look easy. It doesn’t mean that there haven’t been years of practice behind the work. The rule of thumb is that most screenwriters don’t get this on their first, second or even third try. It can take up to ten speculative screenplays before a writer finds the screenwriting groove. When you taste it, you’ll realize that all the crap you were writing before was just crap. I don’t know any other way of putting it kindly. The iconic literary agent I once worked for put it this way to me, “Don’t worry about it, Amanda, the cream always rises to the top.”

So, if you’re going to take my class, realize that Hollywood is fat because it only takes cream. If you’re going for that dream, it will take hard work, and lots and lots of planning, and practice runs. That’s just the way it is and will continue to be for the near future. However, that said, I do believe that we are entering a new era. At the beginning of new eras there are opportunities available for upstarts, improvisers and smart asses, like there never is once it becomes established.

In this Introductory Class, we’re going to touch on those new possibilities because I believe it is important to teach what, from my point of view, is becoming an obvious opening in the entertainment industry. I’ll introduce the different pathways that are meeting at this crossroads…there’s no longer one straight highway to the promised gig. If you pay attention to what is happening in Social Media and practice a little bit of extrapolation, you’re going to begin perceiving opportunities that never existed before. I’ll give you some clues as to where to start.

I hope to see you next week!