The Art of Invisible Writing

Written by Elmore Leonard. Transcribed from an article in the Globe and Mail, Canada‘s National Newspaper, Tuesday, July 17, 2001 – posted by the New York Times Service

I thought the ideas here were helpful for all writers, and, in some instances, applicable to the challenging form of screenwriting. Good screenwriters need to embrace both the creative AND technical aspects of the screenplay format. I hope you find some value here:

photo credit: John Pozer | Venice, Italy | www.21centuryfilm.com

How do you keep words from getting in the way of what you want to say?

Elmore Leonard has a 10 step program.

There are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

• 1.  Never open a book with weather.  If it’s only to create atmosphere and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
• 2. Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a forward. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck‘s Sweet Thursday, but it’s okay because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says, “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks…. Figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I’d like some description but not too much of that…. Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. …Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”
• 3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character: the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
• 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb said. …he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in ernest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”
• 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
• 6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
• 7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words and dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.
• 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemmingway’s Hills Like White Elephants what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
• 9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. And finally:
• 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading in a novel called: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.
• My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.) If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character – the one whose view best brings the scene to life – I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they say and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight. What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.” Sweet Thursday came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue. Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

(Underlining is mine)

Everything You Need to Know and Do Before You Go to Film School

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 3)

Frank Daniel influenced world cinema. He was a film producer, director and screenwriter. He also made a tremendous impact as a teacher invigorating young, hopeful filmmakers. Researching his protégés, the students who sat in his classes and the films they went on to create reads like the guest list of a banquet for cinema greats.

Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver,Raging Bull), Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus), David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Lost Highway) are just a few.

David Lynch said: Frank Daniel—who was the dean of the Czechoslovakian film school—was by far the best teacher I ever had. Just a great, great teacher. Unbelievable! I never really liked teachers, but I liked Frank because he wasn’t a teacher, in a way. He just talked. And he loved cinema, and he knew everything about it.

Here’s a transcript from an audio recording of Frank Daniel talking with students about cinema in 1986:

THE LOST TAPES: FRANK DANIEL (pt 3)

On Sequences and Dramaturgy

Q. Will you explain the first culmination of the second act?

FD. Okay. Well, it’s not really the proper word, but it’s used. So why not stick with it? The story starts at the moment when the character is in trouble. I didn’t go into this in detail with 8 1/2 because that would have brought in new and different stuff. Anyway, in open stories like 8 1/2, the conflict has started before the film begins, and that’s why it’s difficult to point out where the first act ends.

In this case you discover the problem of the character, the conflict doesn’t happen in front of your eyes. You discover what the nature of the conflict is. Is it the wife, the lover, the problems with the production, problems with the meaning of the story? All those things are presented, and the summary of those creates the first act, but he has been in that trouble already. So that’s a little different strategy or “dramaturgy.”

Usually the story begins at the moment when the character faces the difficulty that he or she has to solve, and it better be a clear difficulty, and he better realize that he must do something. Otherwise we don’t have the feel that something has started, and the tension cannot be installed. We are dealing with dramatic form which means with action, and action without tension is pure nonsense. It doesn’t exist. Action immediately brings tension. So the awareness of the tension, and the clarification of what the nature of your tension is, helps to build the whole script.

Now, the character aims towards the goal, the objective, and you have the first meeting of the obstacles and antagonists or circumstances, and you have the rising action. The first sequence usually presents the alternative solutions. What are the choices? What should be done? And the character selects one alternative and if it’s skillfully handled, it’s the worst one. Then he selects another one and in the meantime the rest of the alternatives are eliminated.

Then one of the ways to solve the predicament seems to work. The character finds some expedient that seems to work, and that’s usually the first culmination. But, and that’s the “but” and “therefore,” that we talked about, it’s just not that simple, because there are consequences of things that happened before that he didn’t take into consideration. He offended somebody, he didn’t do things that he was supposed to do, he forgot about things. You bring those things back in the second part of the act and at that time they can be entered almost without motivation, because anything that works against your character at that time is acceptable.

Any accident, any coincidence, is fine, because it makes his predicament worse, and therefore we enjoy it. Also, it helps to explore the validity of the desire, of the dream. So it’s testing the character until you close the story, and at a certain point before the final culmination he has tried everything he could, and there is only one way left, because the alternatives were presented and eliminated. You see that, for some reason, he cannot use any of them any more, and therefore you have the final culmination, the confrontation with the inevitable.

After that you have the descending part of the story where we see what happened after the evil won, lost, or whatever. You see how they live afterwards. And the function of the twist in the middle of the third act is the last test. You wouldn’t believe the solution, very often, if it came directly from the resolution. So you come with something that once more offers the character a possibility to try for the last time, in a different manner.

Q. It’s supposed to be a truism that you have to write a lot of bad pages before you begin writing well. Is that right? Do you have to write some bad scripts before you start?

FD. It’s not necessary. There are people who come with a first script that’s excellent. It’s necessary to write a lot, and it’s necessary to rewrite even more. But don’t try to be perfect in the first draft. In the first draft don’t worry if you don’t have the right expression, the right words, just put anything there, underline it, and go full speed forward, because you’ll find it later.

There will be times that you drag your mind for weeks to find that really perfect sentence, but that’s after the first draft. If you start doing it during the process of putting the story on paper, then you will never finish, and script writing is mainly rewriting. That’s a real truism. If the scene doesn’t work, you start asking why doesn’t it work? It’s too flat, no obstacles. It’s because it was not prepared properly. Is it in the right place? What if I shift it?

Cards are also a very good help, but only after the script is written. You put each scene on a card and play with the continuity by shuffling them around. Before that they don’t help too much. The main thing is to feel the flow of the story. That fever that you find yourself into, as the characters are going somewhere and you must follow them. That’s what you need to pour the story out. And then the build-up begins.

Some people say scripts are first written, and then they are built. And I think this is close to the truth — that the building comes afterwards.

How You Start Doesn’t Matter

Q. In some cases we see the problem first before we introduce the main character, and sometimes we see the antagonist first and then the main character.

FD. It can be any way. You can have an idea of a nice location, a deserted house for instance. That’s how the story starts, with the atmosphere. The order they are introduced doesn’t matter, but you have to do the whole job, and be clear about it: the main characters and the exposition of their world, of their desires and dreams, of their predicament, and of the circumstances. How you start doesn’t matter.

Sometimes you can map out the world of the story for yourself. You can make all kinds of shopping lists to help yourself. You just take a sheet of paper and start putting down all the people that should be in the story. Then you start a list of the most exciting and important locations, and then all possible events that can happen or usually happen in that environment. It’s not necessary that you use them later, but if you ask what happens in a small town during the year, you can find events that help you to feel at home in that environment. And then list the relationships.

If you look at Star Wars, you can guess George Lucas had a shopping list — on paper or in his mind — of everything he remembered from the movies he saw as a teenager, and then put all those teasers in  the movie. He used elements of thrillers, and westerns, and fairy tales, and everything else that attracted him as a boy. And, from that shopping list, the stew was made.

The Way Things are Told

Q. Can you have a story that’s a story but it’s not a film? Can you waste time fooling yourself into thinking that it is a film? How do you apply and acid test?

FD. There are stories that are totally introverted, and yet they are stories, and you cannot turn them inside out. Externalization is very essential to film, so in a case like that you find out after a while that you don’t have a chance to succeed.

Q. There’s no chance to externalize what’s going on?

FD. If you can, then it’s wonderful. Then the story lends itself to cinematic treatment. I had an experience with adapting a short story which was totally an internal story, and there were no scenes to use in the movie. I took a year and gave up. It was a paradox that everybody liked, but not a real situation. So sometimes it is infeasible.

It’s not understanding what the attraction is that makes it so difficult to adapt. Sometimes it’s the style. That can be the case with a humoristic story, for instance, where the whole beauty is in the way  things are told, and, when you start putting the scenes on paper, they are not funny at all. It’s the way they are seen when they are described, and that, in the end is impossible to develop into a movie because you lose something that was the beauty of the narrative form.

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The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 2)

I’m surprised by how many students take so few notes in class or screenings. It’s almost like pens, pencils and paper notebooks have been deemed too antiquated for the high-tech age. But trust me, they are essential tools for creativity and collaboration.

I was invited to a recent screening of a feature in the editing stage and I took copious notes — as usual. (One of the great tricks I learned in film school was how to write in a darkened theatre. Movie critics had to do it all the time.) Sitting down later to discuss the cut with the filmmakers, I took the opportunity to exercise my brain. First, I spoke about my reactions to the cut as thoroughly as I could until I had exhausted my memory. Then I pulled out my notepad and, to no surprise, had many more comments on the work that would have gone into thin air without the prompt of a hastily scribbled note.

The flip side is something that I’m sharing here: a transcribed recording of a question and answer meeting with the esteemed film and screenwriting instructor, Frank Daniel (circa 1986.) It’s unpublished – as far as I know – so this too would have disappeared. I’m so glad it didn’t.

If it’s helpful – in any way – please think about sending me a note. Thanks.

Audience Expectation

Q. Once in a while, I’ll see a movie, and I’ll like it very much in the beginning and even in the middle, and then when it gets to the end I sort of feel let down, like it didn’t really live up to what it set out to do.

Frank Daniel: There can be different reasons for that. For example, we had a problem with Desert Bloom. In the first edition, the end wasn’t there at all, and the problems of developing each scene in full length, and slow pacing were making it almost impossible to wrap up the story properly. So it was necessary to shoot some pick up shots, and then, by condensing the final sequence, the film got an ending. It still is not completely satisfying as it could have been, but the end of the picture is there, because the story always has an ending.

So the reason for the unsatisfying feeling might be the execution, as it was in this case, or it might be the three endings that we talked about that make you feel quite impatient, if not angry. Sometimes it is a problem with the final effect of the story itself. The reason why the story has been told is not clear. Every writer is obliged to ask himself: what will the audience leave the movie theatre with? What do I want them to feel? Not: what do I want them to think? They’ll think what they want, but feeling is something that is in your hands. If you don’t know how they should feel, the end cannot be there. You just end the story, but you don’t end the film.

Did you ever see a Fellini film? When you are leaving the theatre after Nights of Cabiria, or after 8 1/2, or La Strada, you know why he made the film, what he wanted your to feel. For real masters, stories are vehicles. They don’t tell stories to tell stories. They tell stories to create emotions, and in our medium there is no other way to communicate emotion except by evoking it, i.e. by using the story material, human conflicts and human relationships, and situations that created sympathy, empathy, hope and fear. If you start dealing just with the story, you are only doing half of your job.

Desire and Obstacles

Q. Is there a time when what you want to leave the audience with starts emerging? Is it as you’re developing the character?

FD: It’s actually just very simple mathematics. You have a main character that brings with him or with her a desire. That desire creates the obstacles. We identify with the character. Now, when the story ends, what happens to that desire is the key to the emotional impact. Are we glad that he reached what he was after, or do we hate him at the end because he reached it? Are we sad he didn’t make it, or are we glad that he couldn’t.

There are millions  of possibilities, but you must look at each conflict. Scientifically. That’s when you determine what the tension is – what we hope for and what we are afraid of. Because the basic theme is carried by the passionate action of the main character, the result comes in the resolution and our response depends on what happens to that passionate desire at the end. It’s simple… and it’s very difficult each time.

Adaptation

Q. What do you have to say about the script for Dr. Zhivago? Is it a different process to adapt a novel?

FD: As you know we don’t recommend adaptations in this program for several reasons. It’s not that any of us has anything against it. It’s a totally legitimate form, and film is entitled to use any material that lends itself to be made into a good film. But adaptations are really more difficult for a beginning writer than original stories, and paradoxically, you don’t learn as much from an adaptation as you do from an original story.

Then there is the danger, when a beginning writer starts adapting a narrative piece, that he starts indiscriminately transplanting things that are proper in one form, in the other form without the due transformation. Look at any of Hemingway’s novels. Look at the dialogue, and imagine actors saying the dialogue as it is in the novel. It would almost inevitably sound stupid. But it’s so brilliant on the page! To understand what each form requires takes some experience, trade skills.

Usually when you adapt, it is best to read the novel as many times as you can without any effort to start writing. Then you put the book aside and begin to imagine the film until you see it so clearly that you can start an outline – but a film outline. When you are able to tell the story in a film outline form, you still don’t go back to the novel. You work on the treatment – just scene, scene, scene, scene. Only then do you open the novel and start seeing how its material can be plugged in, and what can be used for the film.

The reading you do in the beginning is, let’s say, to analyze the novel for yourself. Why does he start where he starts? Why does he give some of the sequences in the form of a report and other sequences in scenes? Why does he use a certain point of view; first person narration, third person narration, omniscient narrator? That helps you understand what the stylistic decisions are based on – how the novelist came up with this accomplished narrative. Then you have to find equivalents for these elements.

For example, to transcribe a novel in the “I” form into a film is not that simple. Even worse is when you have a subsidiary character telling the story about the protagonist and antagonist, because the subsidiary character is there to tell the story, but as a rule he doesn’t have anything, or very little, to do in the story itself. You saw Sophie’s Choice, so you know what happens when the narrator, subsidiary character, stays in the story and the problem of the point of view has not been satisfactorily resolved.

Character vs. Plot

Q. You talked about characters being more important than plot in the beginning, that you have to think about your characters and know your characters before you tell them what to do. Then at the end you said that you need to write parts, not characters. I’m confused.

FD: There’s no controversy in it, I mean you first have to know the characters, but what you write are parts. In a novel you can write characters, because you have time to go into their thinking, and into their memories, their dreams, and their self evaluation and examination, in other persons’ views of them, even in the narrators analysis and commentary, and therefore, you really write characters. In our medium they must do it all. We portray people in actions. And the actor must have ways of showing who the character is, externalizing emotions and thoughts, and this is what leads to the parts. When you have a scene in which two people can sit down and talk as long as they wish, you haven’t got a scene.

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The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 1)

Sorting through one of my time-capsules of collectables, I’ve found personal recordings, micro-cassettes and VHS tapes with some truly priceless content. I hadn’t forgotten that I had dictated my observations about the first film sets I was on, or my university days in theatre and film – I just stored them in the basement. Until now.

I started collecting info on film education, film schools and film teachers in the 80’s. Everything from newspaper and magazine articles to out-of-print books and esoteric recordings. I’m unpacking those goodies and leaving some of them here for posterity. WordPress – my new time-capsule.

Frank Daniel is American cinema’s direct link to the original curriculum developed at the All-Union State  Institute of Cinematography in Moscow – the birthplace of film education. He left Europe in 1969. He headed up various film schools in the United States and was a major influence on filmmakers from the 70’s to the 90’s. Screenwriting students had a chance to Q&A with Frank Daniel when he was at Columbia University (circa 1986.)

THE LOST TAPES (pt 1)

Sound, Color, Props, Costumes

Q. You were talking about sound, color, props and costumes, and that’s the place where I feel a little weak. Can you tell me some directors that you think are really good at doing that?

FRANK DANIEL: Wilder is the best. If you look at Lost Weekend or Sunset Boulevard you’ll see. Lost Weekend starts with a pan over the New York skyline, and the camera stops and sees a bottle hanging from a window. In the room there is a guy packing, and his brother is talking about their forthcoming long weekend, and convincing him how, after all those things he has been through he’ll have fresh air, water, and milk, and the guy is suddenly upset. He doesn’t want to hear about those dull liquids. Immediately you make a connection between the bottle outside, and then, when he tries to smuggle the bottle into his suitcase you are hooked. From that moment, the bottles, glasses, jiggers and snifters are props that go through the whole picture.

There is one scene in the movie when the main character first meets his girlfriend at the opera. He watches the drinking scene in La Traviata. People are standing with champagne in their hands, sipping it and singing. That part of the movie you should especially look at. It has some brilliant staging. In the center of the image there is always some drink. Bottles, glasses, more bottles, and more glasses, and people with glasses. Finally the poor guy can’t take it anymore and he just leaves and goes to the cloakroom for his coat, because he has a bottle of whisky in the pocket, but he cannot get his coat. Because of a mistake with the tickets, he is given a ladies fur coat. He has to wait until the whole opera is over to get his coat back, and that’s how he meets the girl.

They exchange coats and the coats begin to play a part in the movie. At the end of the picture he takes her coat and goes to the pawn shop. You believe that he is going there to get money for it, but he is going there to get his gun, to kill himself. She comes to get her fur coat back, and she is in his raincoat!

If you look at the way alcohol is presented in that movie you’ll see that it became a character. It goes through the whole story and the glasses and bottles and the circles they leave on tables express things that otherwise would have to be stated in dialogue, in words.

In Lubitsch’s Ninotchka, the hat that Ninotchka buys elucidates her whole character. It expresses the change of Ninotchka from a dogmatic Russian commissar into a loving woman completely. That’s the use of props, not for the purpose of more interesting acting business, but for dramatic emphasis, for creating poetic images, and metaphors.

Subplot

Q. Would you talk a little bit about subplot and how to know if your subplot is actually moving the story towards a culmination?

FD: It’s not that difficult. You check each scene as you write, or better when you finish the first draft against the main tension of the story. See if it helps, or if it leads somewhere else, or if it’s actually diluting the tension. Then you can decide if it’s used properly. That’s what needs to be done, and you always try to find out what the thematic connection of the subplot with the main theme of the story is. Is it a variation? Is it the opposite of the main character’s? Is it preparing new obstacles eventually? How does it relate thematically and plotwise to the main theme and the main action? Does it heighten the tension?

By the way, another thing, I might have mentioned, that happens often in the first draft, is that the third act scenes are, as a rule, too long. They are actually dealt with in a manner that is proper for the first part of the picture, but not when the story is reaching its resolution. The scenes in the third act have to be much shorter, much more condensed, and much more energetic because of the passions that collide into one another after you have reached the culmination. Usually the beginning writer tries to say too much there, and we, the audience, have no patience at that time.

Q. So when you’re doing a first draft or a treatment, you really have to know what the subplots are?

FD: If you don’t then you have to go back and give them the proper function and meaning. In the first treatment ever written, the first script, you are not ready to deal with all the people at the same time. It is enough to be able to jump from one character’s shoes in a scene, and if you have to take care of five story lines, it’s a little too much. You have seen Fellini’s 8 1/2 where he doesn’t have any problems with it, but if you look at La Strada or White Sheik you’ll see that he was learning too! He could, at that time, develop only two main characters, because he was just gaining the muscles. Milos Forman, you know, started with small scale stories, with one character in the center. And then he develops and directs Amadeus, and takes care of the whole world. One needs to learn to be able to do that.

Features vs. Shorts

Q. Do you think there’s a difference between setting out to write a feature length or say a half hour script? Is it more difficult or easier to write a short script? Do you apply all the same logic to it?

FD: Well, to write a good short is not that simple, but it is easier because in a short you deal with just one event, one situation that the story turns around. And usually you need a very small number of characters, because otherwise you couldn’t afford to shoot it. It takes less time and less energy to write a short than a feature, and that’s why at our school it’s obligatory to write shorts before you go on to treatments, and then to a feature script. It’s also a question of those dramatic explosives that you need for a two hour story. The conflict in a feature film must be strong enough to keep people watching it for two hours. And then there is the whole question of strategy. How do you open the conflict? How do you force the characters to come with the passions and the fights and where do place the up and downs? That comes from experience, from repeated exploring, and trying. There’s a generic difference, I would say, between a short and a feature. For a beginning director it’s quite different. A director can show his directorial capabilities in a short almost completely. You can see that he knows how to work with actors, that he knows where to put the camera, that he knows how to edit, that he knows how to use music, and so on. As a director you can have a calling card that’s ten minutes long and people will know that this guy is a potential director. But a short film doesn’t do too much for a writer. It can’t show that he knows how to divide those two hours into moments of full involvement, relaxation, surprise, build up. That is something that comes only by constant studies of films and scripts, and then by writing, writing, writing.

***

ONE PAGE FILM SCHOOL: Theme

As final exams approached in my first year as a film student at the University of British Columbia, I condensed two semesters of class notes onto one page as a study tool.

(Okay… it was double-sided. And the letters were tiny. But it was still a single page.)

One side was dedicated to the purely technical details; the other focused on the artistic and interpretive aspects of visual storytelling. Everything was on the table for the exam.

The first word at the top of the ‘story’ page was theme. In the list of all the story terms – plot, inciting incident, climax, resolution, and so on – theme was the one that generated the most interesting discussions in class.

Understanding themes – primary, secondary and tertiary – is critical for a thorough script analysis and requires a commanding knowledge of the content, characters and overall action of the story. Identifying and stating the themes isn’t always easy or straightforward, but it’s essential for anyone hoping to take on a key creative role in the film industry.

I love script analysis. In my graduate directing class, I dedicate three entire lessons to various analysis strategies. When I work with filmmakers and students, theme is still at the top of my list. It’s surprising how many story questions can be answered, how creative choices can be improved, and how audience satisfaction can be enhanced when there is a clear understanding of the themes.

Frank Daniel, my teacher-in-absentia, offered excellent notes on the challenges of screenwriting. Here’s a transcript from his lecture discussion on theme:

“One of the most difficult terms to deal with — and to understand — is the term ‘theme.’

The theme — simply spoken — is the principal subject: the main aim why a story is being told. This specific purpose, eventually, becomes the resulting effect of the finished work and can be analytically deducted from it. It gives the whole its unity. It gives each part and each element its place and function.

But how should a writer apprehend it when he is beginning just to meditate over his future story? From what end should he approach this confusing matter when his story is barely emerging as a possibility? If you are writing a film story, think of your theme only as the final effect, of the resulting impact that the audience should feel when the picture is over. You are offering an experience – a visceral, emotional, almost physical excitation.

Tension and Release

That’s why the tension, its gradation, culmination and release is the ‘vehicle,’ the tool, and de facto form in which the theme materializes. It consists, therefore, from the realization of the dramatic situation. From the apprehension of whose story, whose predicament is going to be followed, displayed and participated in. From the aroused intent and the consequent empathy, followed by the resulting sympathy and continuous anticipation.

Full involvement in the main character’s conflict becomes a distressing uncertainty about the surmised development of the events and the gradual crystallization of the wish to see the fulfillment of the main character’s desire.

Ordeal and Craving

The sympathy with the protagonist’s ordeal and craving brings with it, simultaneously, the fear from the threatening destruction of this desire, scheming or dream. In other words, the theme becomes, in the story itself, the craving for the fulfillment, imperiled either by natural, social or psychological circumstances or, many times, by all three of them. The more specific and simultaneously humanly universal this protagonist’s craving gets, the easier it becomes to create the viewer’s sympathy.

But there can be a totally opposite case. Instead of a humanly positive desire for human fulfillment, a story can follow a depraved, accursed, appalling aspiration, evil coveting, anti-humane obsession, destructive or even self-destructive mania. The history of tragedy offers great examples of this type of ogre: Richard III, Macbeth, Medea…

The Audience’s Emotional Approval or Rejection

In essence, we see either the audience’s emotional approval, or rejection, abhorrence, and even repulsion, depending upon the nature of the dominant drive (spine) that carries the story from its genesis to its resolution.

If the drive of the main character is a desire for human fulfillment, from its lowest, modest forms to the most heroic ones, in other words, love in any of its appearances, the theme becomes the acceptance, and the approval of the main character’s objective and the emotional effect of the story — feeling joy, satisfaction, elation or sadness, anger, bitterness – depends on the outcome of the presented conflict.

If the drive, fixation, or fascination of the protagonist is any kind of destructive or self-destructive delusion, then the theme unfolds as a progressing disapprobation. It can take a form of horrified aversion, hatred or just derision and the final effect, again, depends on the outcome of the conflict: relief, anger, sadness, etc.

The Storyteller’s Position

The storyteller’s position, his philosophical moral stand, shows itself inevitably in the theme. There is always the dichotomy between what he or she sees as reality or delusion, creation or destruction — what’s presented as meaningful, and what’s shown as nonsensical, harmful or harmless.

From this realization it is easy to approach the basic structure of the cinematic or dramatic story: the protagonist craves for a humanly positive value. Othello — to take the most blatantly clear example — is love, giving oneself to the loved woman, trust, etc.

The Antagonist desires to destroy this value, i.e. to change love into jealousy and a feeling of disgust from female vileness. The story carries and contains us, necessarily, by the deception of the protagonist, of his temporary or lasting error.

It leads, consequently, to the obligatory moment of recognition, the horrifying realization that the deception has caused. If the scene of recognition precedes the ‘catastrophe’ (the tragic resolution), we have a happy ending. If it follow the catastrophic conclusion, then the end is obviously tragic.

Protagonists are almost always wrong. Their values are not clarified. The scene of recognition becomes obligatory and leads to self-recognition, self-knowledge.

It figures that for the strongest possible effect, it is much better when the viewer has a chance to realize that the protagonist is in error and when he expects, with suspense, the moment of recognition, we will have a chance to see other story patterns and realize how the specific tension in each one of them determines the structure of the story.

The Most Important Fact

The most important fact to keep in mind is that the theme is not a philosophical, political, moral, or any other ‘thesis,’ (or ‘premise’ as some people call it) but an emotional response – social, personal, or any other – a stand, an engagement of the whole human being for a certain human truth, displayed in a process of its affirmation in the conflict of the story.

One way of originating a story is to start asking – What is threatened? What’s being offended, exploited, smothered? What human values are being destroyed? What truth is getting silenced or smeared? What beautiful dreams are being thwarted, or ruined, or crushed? And how should we feel about it? Horrified? Sad? Appalled? Victorious? Triumphant?”

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 6): Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

The transition from first to second draft – or any subsequent draft – is an opportunity to advance all of the story elements in play. Rewriting for sound, color and lighting builds more layers that help to elevate a visual story. Focusing on the further details of location, props and costumes help advance the characters, their world and their obstacles.

Frank Daniel offers up a list of tips for the re-writing screenwriter in my final part of his last lecture at Columbia University. I think it’s pure gold.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 6)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

“Usually, in the first draft, sound is used only in the most pedestrian and naturalistic form. There are special ways that sound can help create the best metaphoric effects, for example, sound that means something for the character. You introduce it at the beginning and it pays off later. Suddenly just the sound of a train, or a jet landing, or whatever, assumes a meaning that dialogue cannot ever express. Well, pay attention to sound and explore its dramatic and poetic possibilities.

Colors

Another thing, the first draft is very rarely written in colors. It’s always black and white. It pays off to look at the script from this point of view also, and to think how you can use colors for dramatic impact. Most of the scripts, in the first draft, are lit in a television manner. Everything is clear, there are no shadows, no darks, no overly bright scenes. So that’s another element that you look at and try to use for the point of contrast and emotional reaction.

Locations

Locations in the first draft are very often completely cliché. Masters always try to figure out how to make the locations special. Do it their way. Ask how the place can help the scene, how it can work against the character, or for it, how it can create obstacles, offer difficulties, and how you can get rid of the stereotypes.

Props

Props are not properly used in the first draft. They are introduced and they are not continued. Props have tremendous power of poetically enlightening the story. You have seen it in the analysis classes, you know how they can be used. If you look at any of Billy Wilder’s or Lubitsch’s pictures, you know that props can do as bearers of metaphors. Why not learn from them and help your script to gain sophistication and cinematic magic?

Wardrobe

Costumes are never taken care of in the first draft. Again, from the analysis classes you learned that you have to be aware where change of costume becomes a part of the dramatic buildup in your story. Again, it’s something that you can play with in the second draft. The dress of a character can be more expressive than a whole monologue. It can let us know what has happened to the character. If he or she is “dressed for the occasion,” the viewer reads it, guesses the meaning of it, and becomes more involved. These are things that, if you are aware of them, can help your scripts to be better, and more professional.

Transitions

Transitions between the scenes can have tremendous effectiveness. In the first draft, as a rule, scenes are written in their entirety. People come into a room, say good morning, take their hat off, put it on the hanger, and although the scene actually starts five minutes later, you get into it at the beginning. That’s why the transition from one scene to the other cannot have that desired sparking power. Try to jump into scenes as late as possible. Ask how you can eliminate all that unnecessary early stage of the scene that makes the writing flat, banal, anti-dramatic. That’s where you see more exciting possible connections between the scenes.

You Can Master All the Tricks of the Trade

These tips are a sort of shopping list that you can keep, and use whenever you go back to your first draft with the goal of changing it into a full-fledged script. They may help you. And they may foster the realization that there are no mysteries in our craft, that you can master all the tricks of the trade.

The most difficult thing to learn, as I’ve seen it so far, is not the structuring of a story. Finally, that is based on the psychological truth of the characters’ behavior and on the logic of events. Far more difficult to acquire is the awareness of how the anticipation of the audience should be built and structured into the way the story is presented – the difference between the narrative and the dramatic, if you want. All the techniques of suspense, surprise, mystery, irony, etc., exist because of the viewer’s anticipation. If there is not anticipation, there cannot be tension, there cannot be suspense. And you learn to understand it.

William Archer, in his book Playmaking, says that dramatic writing is constant preparation. Think about it. What else are we doing but preparing the audience for the resolution of the story? Where does the viewer’s anticipation come from? What is it based upon? Somebody must put it in the picture. And who else can it be if not the writer? He tries to “use all the pointers,” all the elements that lead to the future. That’s why he weaves all the fears, all the hopes, all the desires, dreams, plans, and warnings into the texture of the story.

That’s the secret and it’s odd to see how most students resist accepting this simple truth. They have the feeling that somehow it is not necessary. But watch films. Look at the way the writer and the director keep you excited. Anticipation is the device. It’s getting you to wish, to want, to predict what’s going to happen, to make you afraid, to hope. It cannot be in the story on its own. It must be put there. It’s too late to think about these things when the picture is shot.

Another difficulty for a beginning scriptwriter is the realization that we are not writing characters but parts. As a scriptwriter you are writing roles for actors. You have to give the actors something exciting to play. Dialogue is the least valuable thing you can give an actor. Difficult action, physically or psychologically embarrassing moments, moments that require the actor to do something considerable, memorable, unheard of, chances for the characters to display their intelligence, their inventiveness, their skills.

That’s what you are obliged to offer. Actors are the first ones who are going to make the decision whether or not the film will be made, and they can become your allies in the hard world of filmmaking. And you will need allies, believe me.”

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 5): Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 5)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

“Sometimes, just before going to sleep, suddenly you get that wonderful moment — it doesn’t happen often, but when it happens it’s great — where the characters begin to play for you the scene you are working on. They lay out the conversation, they do things that you’d never thought of, and you know that it’s right, great, perfect. If you fall asleep you lose it. It can never be recovered. Well then, when it happens, force yourself to sit up and take notes, because these lucky moments won’t repeat.

It’s not necessary to polish the notes. It’s enough to put down just the essence of the scene that you were seeing and hearing. The next day it will be there. You can sleep without any anxiety. There is a joke about a young writer who was given this advice, so he zealously wakes up and scribbles down the note of the greatest idea that he has ever stumbled over. Then he goes blissfully to sleep. The next morning he wakes up, rushes to the notebook, and reads, “Boy meets girl.”

The outlined approach to the first draft helps you get rid of many problems. Nobody can keep two hours of a story in his mind in all its complexity. You have to simplify the process for yourself. In the outline you can, in the abstract form, see the beginning, middle, and end. then you can broaden it and start thinking in terms of sequences.

Sequences are still too large to be in one’s mind clearly. That’s why you go into scenes and the scenes help to shape the sequences, and finally help to propel the story to it’s final fruition. When you finish the first draft, you know it’s a first draft. Now, with the word processors, it’s a pleasure to rewrite, because you know that you can make changes, you can make cuts, you can edit, you can shift scenes. You can do anything that the first draft needs, and if you save the disc, you feel safe. The draft is there, as long as the copy is there. The next draft can only be better because you can always go back to the first.

The Dramatic Predicament

Obviously in the first draft there will be a lot of soft spots, errors, and gaps. The major problem, as a rule, is that the beginning doesn’t work. In my writing classes the first two sequences are always rewritten a couple of times until they work, and then the students finish the whole first draft. That’s because I believe that one needs to know and see the dramatic predicament as clearly as possible. If you don’t build the set-up of the dramatic situation, you cannot have a second act! And no way can you have a third act, because the third act is the answer for the question you put into our minds in the first act.

That’s why we rewrite the first act until it’s solid. But that doesn’t mean that it’s finished, because what happens during the writing of the whole script is that your characters begin to live, you begin to know them better, and the relationships begin to clarify and sharpen.

The characters develop as you write, and when the first draft is finished you see that at the beginning they were not alive yet. They were stiff. You needed three scenes to tell us what the guy is about, because you illustrated his relationships, his likes, his dislikes, and that is why the first part hiccups. It doesn’t flow, it doesn’t roll, and it’s too long. Exposition is always too long in the first draft, and you should be prepared for that. It’s just going back and using the method of “looking at the story backwards.”

Since you know where the characters will arrive at the end, you can now put yourself in the position of a Greek God on Mount Olympus who looks at them as they are starting their journey. What you see as a rule is that it’s too easy. So you put obstacles in their way, take care of complications, and force them to find more inventive ways of coping with the situations, and you don’t allow them to get too resilient until the resolution. That’s how you begin to see all the possibilities for flourishing scenes, because a scene is good only when it’s difficult, weary and demanding for the character. If you don’t put obstacles in the scene, it’s flat, and it doesn’t offer anything to the others.

Another Usual Problem

Another usual problem in the first draft is that it has three endings and three culminations. And that’s natural because usually you need three basic characters in the story, and each of the characters requires a culmination, and each of them requires a resolution. In the first draft you write them as a rule, one after the other, and then you try to combine those three culmination scenes and find one event in which all three can happen. That will create the impact, within one strong scene, that we, the spectators, are waiting for, and then the resolution is easy. If the culmination of all the characters happens at one time, you can see more clearly how to tie up all the loose ends.

Sometimes there is a problem with resolving the subplots. To take care of this, you just need to do what a director does. You go through the story with each character separately — main characters, as well as subplot characters. You examine their lines of action, their “spines,” and make sure that their stories are clear, that they have been completely told. Did you introduce a character with a problem, and then the poor creature never appeared again, or appeared without being able to cope with the problem? You better correct that.

The tension in the second act sometimes suffers from the fact that the relationships between the characters are static. They like each other or hate each other and nothing is there to help develop a line of progression. So you look at that relationship and open it, put the characters at the start as far from each other as you can, so that they have space to fight and to accommodate themselves. Then you are able to find interesting scenes for them.

The Forbidden Pattern

Monotony is a problem in first drafts as well. There are several reasons for it. One usually is the fact that the scenes follow in the forbidden pattern: and then, and then, and then, and then. In such a case, immediately you have monotony. In a dramatic story the pattern usually for the connecting scenes is: “and then,” “but,” “therefore,” and towards the culmination, “meanwhile.”  That’s because near the culmination the subplots have already been developed and you need to jump from one wagon to the other. If you don’t have this “but” and “therefore” connection between the parts, the story becomes linear, monotonous, just narrative. Diaries and chronicles are written that way, but not scripts. There is no way of heightening the conflict and continuing the suspense in such a pattern.

Another reason for monotony is that there is not sufficient contrast between the scenes and sequences. That can be helped, completely rationally, if you are aware of it. You look at the script and you try to find out how the scenes or sequences can contrast with each other.

There are always ways to achieve or heighten the contrast if you use everything that’s variable in the medium: rhythm, tempo, colors, light and sound. One scene is silent, the other can be ebullient. One scene is slow, the other can be fast. Staccato, legato — long smooth camera movement, short cuts, “chopped” scene, etc. Anything that the scene suggests to help you awaken the audience’s attention.

In the analysis class we talked about the difference between tension, suspense, mystery and surprise. If these devices are not fittingly put to work, the sequence won’t have sufficient power. Appropriately you ask yourself, what am I working with? Is it mystery, suspense or surprise? And then you sharpen the applicable means. To determine what solution to use, you ask: what does the viewer know, and what does the character know? Because that’s what the devices of suspense and surprise are always based upon.”

* * *

Frank Daniel gave his last lecture at Columbia University, Film Division on May 5, 1986.  This is part 5 of that lecture in my series entitled: Searching for an Authentic Education.

More to come…

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 4): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

When you find an approach, a technique, or a combination of techniques that unlocks a positive flow of creativity in your work — new worlds open up. This can be a powerful discovery that leads you through the uncharted lands of your imagination. This is where the best stories and characters come from.

Frank Daniel taught screenwriting for decades. He encouraged stories to well up from the subconscious mind. Filmmakers need to go deep. The deeper the better.

If you’re wondering what sage advice he provided to David Lynch and others, read on…

[Part 4 of a bootlegged transcript from Frank Daniel’s last lecture at Columbia U.]

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 4)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

Now, let’s talk about the way you find stories. There are millions of approaches. You can overhear something, you can meet somebody, you can read something in the newspapers, you can have a conversation with somebody and suddenly an idea for a certain type of a story that no one has done comes to you. These beginnings aren’t something that can be prescribed, that you can rationally categorize, but once begun there are always certain obligations that you have to assume towards your story.

The best stories are stories about human beings, and if you find a character that you believe should be shown and seen, start the exploration of this person.

Those who begin to work on plots first always abominate this part. They think that you don’t need to do it. They fancy that you just select some fixed character units and move them around like puppets, manipulating them so they do what’s necessary to be done, fast and easy. They think you don’t need to involve yourself in the story. But when they finish the first draft there’s the problem of what to do next. They finally have to go back and start thinking about the characters, and then all the plotting becomes questionable. The characters begin to determine the direction in which the story should move. That’s why it’s much better to just accept this unpleasant must.

Know Your Characters

You need to know your character — backwards, forwards, and in depth. That’s the reason why we put together the character questionnaire. You’ve got it, and it helps you to ask all  the questions about the character — about his or her relationship to his or her family, to himself, or herself, to his co-worker, to his or her class, work, nature, art, etc. etc. They are all on the list to help you when you start exploring relationships of the character.

The moment you begin to imagine how your character dealt with and deals with his parents, how he gets along with his brothers and sisters, what are the conflicts with his co-workers, and all that, you begin to explore the world of your story, and suddenly scenes begin to emerge. You start putting the character in different situations in your mind, and you begin to hallucinate — to imagine him in the most mundane and exciting moments of his life.

The courage and audacity to deal with trivia and banalities is something you should develop. Because the best stories are made from the most banal material and if you don’t know how your character pays bills, does his laundry, what he likes for lunch and dinner, and what his little vexations are, his petty likes and dislikes, a lively, juicy story will never happen.

I had a wonderful experience this year with one of my students. You know her… She wrote a treatment last year that she brought into class at the beginning of the semester. It was dreadful. It was really very bad, and I had to tell her. So I did, and she was, as you can imagine, quite devastated. And then we sat down and talked for a good three hours. And now that she has a finished script which is really wonderful, I asked her what helped her to write it. She said that she was scared of banalities and trivialities, and that’s why the people in her first year story were cardboard figures And then there was the moment when she tried to see her characters as real, familiar, ordinary people and suddenly she felt free.

“They Will Never Recognize Themselves”

She came to me with the first outline of a new story, and I told her: Right! Use the people whom you know best. Sell all your friends, neighbors, relatives. Everybody has done it. They will never recognize themselves. They have a totally different idea of themselves, and besides your use them in a different context and there’s no danger that they will accuse you of anything. They’ll love the stories, really. Such comedy writers like Lubitsch always made people laugh at themselves without knowing it was them they were snickering at.

Tolstoy’s diary and the notes he kept while he was writing his novels are full of notes how he has combined cousins and friends, his relatives and acquaintances into the fictional personages. Some of them he used directly as he knew or remembered them, some of them he mixed with other people. that’s one of the best ways of finding characters that feel real.

The people, the things, that are familiar, the trivialities, the banalities of life as you observed them are always the spices in a story, in a sequence, in a scene. They make the script believable, they make it come “from somewhere.” The worst stories are stories that don’t have their roots in an environment, in a certain place of life. Such contes are just pure concoctions and no one can relate to them. You can avoid that by starting with exploring that one character that attracts you.

And you should ask yourself why. Why does this character ask to be in a story? What is it I feel about him or about her? Because then you begin to find out why you want to write the whole story, and what the passion of that character is, and why he wants what he wants.

Dream For Your Character

Eventually you reach a moment where you can dream for your character, where you can remember for him or her everything that happened in his or her past. When that happens then you are absolutely safe. The character will find his or her way towards the resolution of the story.

At this point the problem is how to hit that character in his most vulnerable spot. How to put him in the worst predicament imaginable, how to strengthen that predicament, and how you can increase, at the same time, his desire to achieve his dreams. Once you do that, you’ve got a story growing, and there is no problem what to do next.

You just use the rational approach and start asking yourself: what are the sequences in which this character tries to get himself out of the predicament? And you put him or her in that predicament as a rule, in about two sequences, of about 10 – 12 minutes. Then you have the steps from the set up of the dramatic situation to the culmination. When you can see the sequences and you start asking what event you can put in the center of each sequence, the story begins to unravel and then you have a chance to feel quite safe. You begin to have an outline, and you can, after that, begin to write.

The Thread of Your Story

There are people who don’t believe in outlines, so they start writing the script without knowing where they are going. What they end up with is something that resembles a script, because it’s typed in the format, and looks like a script, but it’s not a script, and it’s not a story, although it resembles it, and then, although they have written over a hundred pages and discovered something, they have to go back and decide finally what it is that they want to write about. Eventually, they have to throw away most of the scenes they have written, because the scenes don’t fit in the the new story.

The moment you know what the thread of your story is, you see why those etudes, those hallucinations that you should do before you begin to write, are so important. You all know that actors, for example, when they begin to explore a part, make all kinds of etudes for themselves. They go shopping as the character. They wake up as the character, do their toilet, go to a party, or whatever, as the character. They make up scenes that don’t exist in the script, but these explorations, these etudes, help them to understand all the trivia, all those elements that an actor needs to perform the part. You need to do the same thing.

You better know everything that could and might happen to your character. It’s not writing yet. It’s just the ideation, just the thread count. It needs to be combined with this other side of the process which is asking sober-minded questions like: what is the story about? What is the main character’s problem? What is the difficulty, the stress, in which the character can be put and how can the character solve it?

First Drafts

Personally I believe in a first draft written as fast as possible. When you polish each scene as you go, you stop the flow of your imagination. If you start taking care of every line of dialogue and every adjective in the descriptions, you are under restraint in imagining the total, the whole story. Well, the moment you feel that your character is ready to go on the trip, just start writing.

The best advisable way is to write the first draft without stopping.

And there — it’s only again, my advice, some do take it, some don’t — but my advice is to get used to regular writing hours, and write at least one page a day. For me the best thing is to write in the morning when your mind is more or less fresh, and if it’s not, if you have a hangover, for instance, then you write from a feeling of guilt, and that’s not bad either.

But if you have one finished page written every day that means 360 pages a year, which is enough. That’s three drafts of a script, if you rewrite it completely. But you will learn that the second and third drafts are usually written much faster, so 360 pages can be two scripts a year. That’s just writing one page a day. It gives you a feeling of freedom. You can waste the rest of the day and nothing happens. You have done that one page and you feel comfortable and relaxed.

At the same time something else is happening. You don’t necessarily think consciously about writing for the rest of the day, but subconsciously you still do. Your imagination is at work, unforced, at its leisure. And the next page next day is better.

Also, you shouldn’t ever try to finish everything that is clear in your mind in one writing session. If you do you will find yourself at an impasse. You’ll be stumped. But if you leave part of the scene, or part of the sequence that’s clearly in front of your eyes for the next day, you won’t have that awful feeling of getting started again, because you just continue, and the moment you begin to continue with the things that were clear the day before, new horizons usually open immediately. That’s because the imagination begins to work.

So one page a day — and that’s it. Next day, again.

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 3): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

It’s hard to find and write strong original stories that are realistic for independent film production — and particularly low-budget/no-budget film production. There are several tricks that experienced writers have used to conceive, believe and achieve their storytelling goals — and Frank Daniel passes a few of them along in [part three of] this last lecture at Columbia U.

For some, the difficulty with writing is exactly that — the difficulty with writing. There’s much to be said about understanding your own process for getting the words on the page. Distractions are everywhere in today’s world. But there’s always been distractions — and many times we seek them out, intentionally or not. Sometimes the distractions can lead you to great things. Sometimes not.

Your Creative Process

Trusting and embracing your creative process is something that can be learned and developed. It takes time, and it’s helpful to employ strategies to organize your understanding of how you work — your creative process.

I’ve used these tricks and never regretted it. It doesn’t cost anything to try’em. The title for this section might be ‘New Dogs, Old Tricks.’ Let me know if you find it helpful.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 3)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

It’s not a bad habit to keep files. You can make notes about the interesting originals that you meet, and you can put them into the files that say ‘characters.’ It’s not necessary to write long treatises. You just need to make a couple of notes, but you must put it in writing. You cannot rely on your memory. You need to create this habit of verbalizing your observations — one file for characters, one file for sets and locations and things, one file for gags, one file for lines that you overheard, one file for titles, one for situations, etc. You don’t need to know what the situation is going to be used for, just that there was something interesting that you saw happening. Make notes and collect these observations.

Titles are difficult to find. Sometimes you suddenly get an idea of a title that has nothing to do with anything you are writing at the moment. So you put it in the file. It can be the first step of a foresight of a story coming off. You know what the first ideas usually look like, oftentimes those are just germs of ideas. It’s a scene that’s not a scene yet. It can be a sensation of some figments of character that asks to be put in a story. An atmosphere of a place or environment that attracts you — whatever. These beginnings of ideas are coming from your subconscious mind, so they can have any kind of form. And before those dim silhouettes of characters, imagined bits and pieces of scenes or elements become alive and interesting enough, before they begin to make some sense and create some whole — it takes a long, long time and you have to help the process.

Ideation

So these notes, and a constant alertness in which you need to train yourself, help the first step, the ideation of the story. In my classes, I always spend several weeks at the beginning of the year just getting the germs of ideas from the students and trying to see where an idea leads and finding out why the writer has a desire to deal with it. The fact is that the students very often don’t know the answers clearly. It takes time to figure all those factors out.

You might have had an experience that I’ve had very often. Suddenly you start reading strange stuff. You go into the library and browse through volumes on biology, history, horticulture, or something else that evidently doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re working on. I never stop myself when this happens, because I know that there is a need for it. You just read whatever strange book you feel like reading, and then suddenly, when the idea comes, you see why it was necessary.

Just One Idea

Maybe from a three hundred page book you have read, there is just one idea, maybe just one line that appears in the script at the end. But it helped you to explore the territory, the subject matter, maybe the character or relationships. In other words, the ideation can be helped, and that’s what you need to learn — to play games with your subconscious creative mind. You constantly trick yourself, you put yourself into difficulties and solve problems that you have created for yourself.

You play other kinds of games, as well. For example, it’s well known that your desk, the place where you write should be used only when you work — when you really sit down and write. When you think and when you have what’s called writer’s block — which is just a very kind term for what’s called laziness in other professions — you don’t use your “creative” niche. Because your desk should be the place where the pleasure of writing occurs. You sit down when the scene is clear and when you can start typing. It’s a trick, sure, but try it, and you’ll see that it works.

Another way to help yourself — it may sound crazy, but it has worked for many people and I didn’t invent it — when you have an idea that is still unclear, when it still is more of a feeling of emotion and you know that you have got something you feel like doing, something you want to write, take a sheet of paper and write everything that you can tell about it: whey this script will be the greatest piece ever written, how it’s going to shake the world — in other words, brag on paper as much as you can. Use all the superlatives that you can imagine. Tell how people will stand in line to see it. Tell about all the festivals that will be astonished by it — whatever. And the moment you start writing all these gasconades some strange things will begin to happen. There will be some ideas that still may not have any specificity, but they’ll still be ideas that express the push and pull of the story.

The Envelope Please…

When you finish this bravado, take an envelope, fold the paper, put it in the envelope, seal the envelope, lock it up so that nobody can ever read it, and then forget about it. Then the work starts, the ideas start to become clear, and you get into the drudgery of writing. It becomes a question of how the scenes connect, and what the next sequence is going to be, what to tell now, what to reveal later, and all that.

Then, usually when you are approaching page seventy to seventy-five of the first draft of the script, there comes a moment when you are getting at least fifteen new ideas for better scripts than the one you are working on. Don’t throw those ideas away, make notes about each of them and by so doing get rid of them, for the time being, but if you reach that moment when you sincerely believe that the script you have been working on really stinks, and that it’s a piece of ‘you know what,’ then take out the envelope, open it, read the paper you wrote at the time of the prime inspiration, and you’ll be surprised.

The tormenting problems that you have had with your script have been there in the envelope, solved. You begin to see the answers, keys, the locks start opening. Now you can finish the script and then you can go back and improve it — make it into what it was originally dreamed to be.

Try it. Those who have used it have never regretted it. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s an old trick that I’ve learned from old script writers years ago.

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Searching for an Authentic Education (part 2): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

Film moves on paper. It may be read on a laptop, but someone has to put the words on the page. Not every student who signs up for film school wants to be a writer, but every creative key in the filmmaking chain needs to know the fundamentals of storytelling and the different styles of contemporary screenwriting.

Screenwriting is hard. It’s one of the most challenging literary forms because it’s not what it’s supposed to be. It’s a written document that tells a story – but it’s supposed to become something else. The pages of a script are intended to be interpreted by a creative team – and then transformed into images on a screen. How that transformation turns out is anybody’s guess.

Average screenplays rarely become great films. It can happen, but the smart money starts with quality writing. If you start with good writing, the chances of making a good film are vastly improved.

I took a screenwriting class at the University of British Columbia around the same time I got this Columbia U bootleg lecture transcript. I had a great teacher, Bill Gough, who mentored me through the writing of my first feature film. I felt very fortunate to have his ongoing feedback and advice. Writing is about listening.

This is part two of:

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

Scriptwriting, if it were taught only in the writing classes, would just be writing, but it’s more. It’s filmmaking on paper. Only when the other elements, the proper use of the language of the medium, are included does it begin to really work. That again is the reason why, in the first year, you are asked to take the directing workshop, even when you don’t have any intentions of becoming a director. You must try, at least once, to see what a director can do, what it means to devise an interpretation, to see what the camera and the editing can do for you. Then, even if you never continue directing, it will stay with you.

The problem with many Hollywood writers nowadays is that although they are very often good writers, they have been working, since the studio system disappeared, as total loners. They write in their offices and homes and they don’t feel the contact that, in the old days, the studio days, a writer necessarily did. He was forced to come every day at nine, sit in his cubicle, and type or do whatever. The writers usually played cards and had fun, but they were on the premises of the studio. They had a chance to see what happens when a picture was shot. They were constantly meeting the other professionals, they could ask questions, and they could collect and pick up all the know-how. That’s what we are trying to supply in our program.

We hope that having professionals as teachers will give you the basic idea of what it means to be a scriptwriter. Once you are on the right track and moving forward, you will realize that you will be learning all your life. There’s no end to it. The moment a writer or a director thinks he knows it all he should stop working, because from that moment he will only repeat himself. So if you learn the basics while you’re here, it will be easy to see all the ramifications later. The other classes and the other parts of the program, history, theory, etc., just add to your broader vision of your profession.

As you know, most of you come to the school with very little education in the history of cinema. For most film students all over the world, cinema means what’s being shown in the movie theatres now, today, and things that were made before are seen as prehistory or archeology, something that nobody needs to know about. Then everyone is surprised when a genre that had existed for at least fifty of sixty years reappears and is revived. Everyone looks at it as if it were a brand new phenomenon, a miracle. However, if you are familiar with the history of cinema you will be aware of the other forms, other genres, other types of narrative structures and styles that filmmakers have explored in the past. And that can help you explore different ideas with a new understanding of your own writing.

Now, let me try to explain what the reasons behind the design of the curriculum at Columbia were. It took several years to put the program into shape. Both Milos Forman  and I are firm believers in the validity of a solid curriculum. Curriculum for us means a step-by-step outline of the tasks and the problems that the student should go through and solve. That means that if the curriculum, in this sense, is clearly designed any professional who comes in to teach can start functioning. He doesn’t need to invent anything. He just follows the outline and uses his professional expertise to help the students. It make me feel happy that we have achieved it, and that I am leaving the school with a sound curriculum in existence, functioning and working.

Now let’s go back to the two parts of screenwriting: the writing and the dramaturgy. In the writing process the main educational problems are usually connected with the fear that everybody brings in the writing classes. Most of the beginning students don’t believe they have anything to say, and they feel like the director in Fellini’s “8 1/2.” Consequently they try to borrow from other people, and when they begin to write treatments, you can immediately tell who is scared to death, and thinks of avoiding the inevitable and who is trying to collect the courage to jump into the cold water and try something really new, original and personal.

Those who come with a genre story are usually trying to protect themselves, believing that the genre formula will help them put together some acceptable plot and that they will be in an area that’s foolproof. Which means that they start “plotting.” The only things they are concerned with are; where does my first act end and, what’s the culmination of the middle of the second act, etc. etc. They concentrate on all these purely technical and cerebral questions which don’t help the imagination at all. And what they usually end up with is something quite empty. They aren’t in their story, and they are not in the chosen genres. What they end up with are cliches, empty plots, flat characters and dull dialogue.

There is a belief that if you write a genre story, a thriller, a mystery story, etc., you are working on something that is commercial. This consideration, what’s commercial and what isn’t, is something you better forget about completely. All the marketing specialists, and I have a chance to see them every summer when they come to Sundance, are masters at telling you what was successful last year. They believe it will be successful next year, again, but it never works. If you look at those Columbia graduates whose scripts were acquired by the producers or made into film, you’ll see that they succeeded because they came with something that was original, that was not like anything that was made recently.

“After Hours” was not a commercial idea. When Lois Bonfiglio heard – she was then with the Ladd Company and was here when Joe Minion wrote the script – that Martin Scorsese was making the picture she was quite unhappy that she had passed on it. From that moment everybody started reading all the scripts the students were working on because maybe, now and then, something different might come along.

How many times have I seen people try to figure out what would be successful in two years with very little luck. And yet it takes two years to develop and finish a script, if you are fortunate enough to make it into a film. Can you imagine what the world will look like in two years? What will the trends in society be? What need will people feel? Nobody can predict that, and if you start taking the audience into consideration in this way, making assumptions about their future tastes and desire, you are in a field which is only based upon guesses, and usually wrong guesses, and unwillingly you create a sort of censorship for yourself.

The only thing you really need when you write is a total feeling of freedom. That’s why questions like; is this too expensive or, should I make it smaller so that maybe some independent producer will like it, should be forgotten. To make a film less expensive is something that you can do when the first draft is finished. There are always ways of finding the easier and less expensive solutions for scenes and sequences, or the whole scope of the picture.

There is a big difference between a cheap movie and a low budget movie. A low budget movie is a picture that’s designed to cost a certain amount of money that is not overwhelmingly high. A cheap movie is “Ben Hur” made with two horses and a few extras. Again, this idea of what’s expensive should not be on your mind at the time you are writing the script. It’s another form of censorship, and you don’t need that.

The most difficult thing, especially in the beginning years, is to trust yourself and to discover that you’ve got stories to tell, and a lot of stories at that. That realization usually comes as a surprise for most of the students at the moment when they begin to deal with only material that’s theirs and that nobody else can take, i.e. when they start utilizing their own experiences — when they begin to see that everybody they meet and talk to is a possible story or at least a character for a story.

You can sit on an airplane and next to you sits a lady or man, and if you encourage them, if you help them a little bit, and show that you are willing to listen, you get a story immediately. You can do that every day when you meet people. You should learn to listen and create this absolutely genuine interest in people around you, because that is the material that you write about.

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