My new play Sparkling Object opens on November 3, 2010 at The Canal Park Playhouse, a new theater in Tribeca in New York City.
Rehearsals have just begun and I've been doing rewrites and making changes in the script. There's nothing like hearing your lines not only read aloud, but "acted" by a first-rate cast. From the first read-through of the play I started hearing words and lines differently. Fortunately, most of what I'd written worked very well. But then there were the occasional lines, beats, moments and parts of scenes that didn't work.
I knew it the instant I heard them. After the first read-through the actors had questions. Good questions. Why does he say this? What do you mean by that? What does she want? Guess what? All the questions came in places where I knew something wasn't right. So I fixed them.
As rehearsal progressed there were more questions, not only from the cast but from the director. Important questions. Sometimes about the choice of a word or a pause or line that didn't feel right. Sometimes an actor or the director had a suggestion that made great sense or a question that drove me straight into a rewrite to do some clarifying.
With each rehearsal the script is getting better and tighter. And the changes I'm making are becoming fewer. I felt confident that the play worked on the first day of rehearsal. I feel even more confident now and that's because I've had the good fortune to have wonderful actors and a savvy director who inspire me to work harder to make the play--and our production--better.
I'll be taking a break from blogging for the duration of rehearsal and throughout the production. I expect to resume posting in January.
The Short, Sweet Destiny Of A Scene
Whether it’s in my own work or in the scripts of others that I read, there are often characters and scenes that have no reason for being there.
As writers, we may think we need this stuff while we’re doing the first draft or the first scribblings of a project, but there must come a time when we have to realize that something needs to be cut. I’m not referring to the “kill your babies” maxim attributed to William Faulkner. Those are moments, usually lines, that we fall in love with and with great reluctance, must excise.
Instead, I mean the scene or character that literally has no dramatic purpose. In layman’s turns: no reason for being in the script. If something has no dramatic purpose it’s got to go. Why? It either takes the reader/audience out of the story or it brings the forward movement of a story to a crushing halt.
A monologue in a play is acceptable. Plays are about words. They are talkie. Screenplays can’t be. There are exceptions, of course. Quentin Tarantino and a handful of other screenwriters/filmmakers can get away with it. But most can’t. You can’t. Maybe, near the end of your script, after, hopefully, the reader/audience is emotionally involved with your protagonist, maybe we’ll tolerate a two-page speech.
The plus side of the scenes and characters we eventually have to cut is that in the beginning we do need them because their initial dramatic purpose is to exist so you can get your main character from one place to another. Or it feels right at the time to have your protagonist talk to someone to give information. Or one day you’re not feeling it and you start writing a scene just to be writing and it suddenly resonates with you so you keep it.
If the writing of that scene gets you back on track it has fulfilled it’s destiny. And you can move on.
What Good Is A Great Idea If You Can't Finish It?
Ordinary, workmanlike ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas aren’t. When I say great I mean commercial, high concept, extremely sellable ideas. If you haven’t figured it out yet, most of the time Hollywood buys the “idea.” It could be a book, play, comic strip, comic book, graphic novel, blog, twitter, a true story and, oh, yeah, a screenplay.
If you’re lucky enough to come up with a great idea you move to the front of the line. But if you can’t complete it you’re screwed. You’re more screwed than the screenwriter with an OK idea who has completed a script. At least he or she has something to put on the market. And sometimes that OK idea is so well-executed that the writing stands out and the characters are so interesting that the OK idea is overlooked because reading the script has been such an enjoyable ride.
Think Juno a few years ago. Ordinary idea. Really, old, done to death idea: teenage girl gets pregnant, wants the right couple to adopt it: will she find the right couple? Ho-hum. But the execution, as we all know, was spot on. We hadn’t seen dialogue like that in a while or such an appealing character. Hell, all the characters were appealing in this otherwise ordinary story.
So having the OK idea isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can rise to the occasion with superior execution.
But if you’re one of those people with the “big” idea that would make even the most jaded Hollywood type do an Irish jig and you can’t finish it, that’s just bad form.
I can’t tell you the number of great ideas I’ve heard from students, clients, friends and colleagues. I mean, really cool things. The kind of idea you’re immediately jealous of because you didn’t think of it. The kind of idea that makes you want to suggest a collaboration.
And I can’t tell you the number of great ideas I’ve heard that never get finished. Or maybe there’s a first draft, but the author can’t get the initiative to do the next couple of drafts to get it into perfect shape.
I’ve been saying for years that completion is everything. It’s the only thing that matters if you want to have a career.
If you’re one of those lucky people with a great idea, but you’re not completing the screenplay, you need to get in touch with why that’s happening. Life intrudes, as they say, so if life is piling on and you can’t get your head on straight, OK. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to help lift the fog. Or maybe you need help in the form of a collaborator. You need a second set of eyes to help you discover what was right before your eyes. Maybe you need a script consultant or a screenwriting class or a writers support group.
It’s bad enough to have an OK idea and not be able to complete it. But when you have that killer premise that makes everyone who you tell it to smile, and you can’t get it done, it’s not quite tragic, but it’s pretty damn sad because the risk you take is that someone else will come up with the same idea and beat you to the punch.
Making Hay While The Sun Shines
It’s been a busy and productive Summer. The only place I haven’t been productive is right here. Only 3 posts in 3 months. Until I started blogging in January I never understood why some of the blogs I follow had lengthy periods without posts. Common sense dictates that bloggers who don’t post have either run out of ideas for a column or maybe just maybe they were, uh, busy?Duh?
That’s been the case with me. Work on 3 different projects has taken up lots of my time since May.
Years ago I read an interview with Stephen King. If you’re a fan of Mr. King you know he’s a prolific writer. I probably read this 25 years ago. He said that when someone is paying him to write he works on that during the day, giving it his full attention. When he’s working on something else on spec or for fun simultaneously, he works on that at night. His point was that if it’s someone else’s nickel you give that priority.
I’m not now nor have I ever been as prolific as Stephen King. The idea of spending 5 or 6 hours in the daytime working on a paying job, then working that same evening on a non-paying job (something I’m doing for fun) is alien to me.
If I get 3 or 4 pages on a given day it’s cause for celebration.
Because of the projects I’ve been working on this summer, along with two classes that I taught, I’ve had to view the time I spend on this blog like what Stephin King refers to his nighttime fun work. Symbolically, the projects I’ve been working on are “somebody else’s nickel.”
The thing I want to convey is that for most writers, we can go weeks, months and years without anything happening. Nobody likes your script or you can’t finish it or you can’t come up with a good idea or you’re having your annual self-doubt week. But when something, or more than one thing, happens and it means that something you’ve written finally has forward movement, that’s when, as the farmers of yore used to say we should: make hay while the sun shines.
This Summer has been a positive hay-making time for me. Some good things are happening and I’ll be discussing them soon.
I’m also going to free up time to get back to making posts on a regularly basis.
As my friend Lew Hunter likes to say: “Write on!”
Character Motivation Is A Bitch!
As Shakespeare said, “strong reasons make strong actions.” The reason this is so profound is because if you don’t know why a character, especially your protagonist, is doing something or wants something, you will have a rambling screenplay.
Your plot will be unclear and your dialogue, no matter how clever, will mean little once your audience starts wondering why your main character is saying these things.
An old rule of writing: every line of dialogue should reveal character, move the story forward or get a laugh. If it doesn’t do any of those things you need to rethink it.
And it’s not just one thing in the script. You need to justify every line in every scene. If your protagonist goes into a dry cleaning store she better have a reason. If it’s just for her to pick up eleven dresses so we can see that she has excellent taste in clothes, that’s not enough of a reason for the scene (unless her taste in fashion is key to the character and plot). We can learn that by looking into her closet.
If she has an exchange of dialogue with the proprietor that’s about the difficult stains he was able to remove—-not enough—unless it’s a thriller and as he’s telling her how he got the stains out it triggers a memory that will move the plot forward.
If you have her go into that dry cleaners it must be for a reason germane to the plot or her persona.
I have a friend whose mother is super grandma. He has four kids under twelve. When he was growing up he didn’t have a grandmother because his mother’s mom died when she was a child. So his mom’s children (my friend and his two sisters) grew up without a grandmother.
When my friend started to have children, along with his two sisters, his mother very quickly became the greatest grandmother in the world.
I’ve known this woman all my life. I asked her about being super grandma and she said that her kids had to grow up without a grandmother and she didn’t want that to happen to her grandchildren.
How’s that for a strong reason resulting in a strong action?
Whenever I have trouble pinpointing why a character is doing something, I think of her. And it helps me concentrate and giving a character proper motivation.
Don’t Underestimate The Value of Distancing Yourself From Your Work
It’s been over a month since my last post, but I have a good reason. I had a great vacation during which I did no writing. I also got a new book deal and I spent time before the vacation finishing it up. Since I got back I’ve been involved in another project that’s kept me not only away from Screenwriters Rehab, but the project I’d been working on since February.
Without going into details (it’s not good to talk about your work when you’re writing it), it’s something I’ve gone back and forth on for over a year, but it was going to be the thing I wanted to finish by the end of Summer. I think I still may be able to, primarily because the distance I’ve had from it has invigorated me. I feel refreshed and excited to get back into it.
And I do mean excited. I re-read what I have so far to familiarize myself with the characters and plot and I’ve already gotten fresh ideas and a stronger perspective. One of the story points I came up with is major. I don’t believe I ever would’ve found it if I hadn’t been away from the script these last couple of months.
This is a simple example of the importance of distance, whether you have 30 pages or a first draft.
Most screenwriters, myself included, loathe putting the script away for a few weeks, let alone a few months, largely because we want to get it done and “out there” to get a deal or an agent or manager.
I can speak from past experience: distance works. Usually it was forced on me. I’d finished something. It got read. The feedback wasn’t great or it was good, but with a proviso strong enough to make me take another pass. And that pass made the script better.
As difficult as it is for me to be patient, I’ve learned that being patient with a script is crucial. And to me, patience means giving yourself some time away from your baby.
Without Dramatic Conflict Your Characters Are Boring
Most of the screenplays I read lack dramatic conflict. Characters just talk and say empty words. Nothing’s happening. Often, the reason for this is because we don’t push ourselves to find drama in the lives of our characters.
So maybe we look into our own lives for some dramatic conflict to inspire us. You argue with your spouse or significant other. You quarrel with your parents or siblings or friends. You squabble with an obnoxious neighbor, rude sales clerk or whoever.
But sometimes we don’t have enough drama in our lives. Things may be going smoothly and pleasantly. There’s no crisis or chaos. While this is good for our peace of mind, it’s bad for our sense of the dramatic. There’s nothing like something happening to shake things up. We’re thrown off guard, we lose our balance, we’re knocked out of our comfort zone and lose our cool.
But if nothing’s going on we get lazy.
This is when we must truly use our imaginations to try and stir up some drama. What I do is try to picture celebrities or people connected to celebrities in their real lives. Not as we’ve come to know them publicly, but how they really are in their private lives.
What do Michelle and Barack Obama talk about when the kids are tucked in and they’re alone? Does she ask him to rub her feet? Do they argue about what to watch on TV? What is it like to be Sharon Stone’s personal assistant? Does Paul McCartney ever wonder if he or Ringo will be the last surviving Beatle? Do Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have their own secret language?
What were the first words exchanged between Sarah Palin and her daughter when she learned of her pregnancy? What went on in the mind of the coroner who did the autopsy on Brittany Murphy? Is Kate Gosselin petrified that she’ll never find a man because she has 8 kids? What was the mind set of the guy who tried to blackmail David Letterman?
What is it like to have been married to Rush Limbaugh? Wife #1 was when he was young and struggling. Wife #2 came along as his career took off. Wife #3 hit the jackpot. What would it be like if those three women got together and dished about life with Rush? I heard recently that he’s getting married again this summer. What goes through the mind of the next Mrs. Limbaugh as she processes the fact that she’ll be #4? Does she secretly wonder if she'll be his last wife?
Think of this as a mind exercise. Pick a handful of people you like (or don’t like) and imagine what goes on in their private lives. It just might open up some new doors for you when it comes to writing more powerful scenes.
So maybe we look into our own lives for some dramatic conflict to inspire us. You argue with your spouse or significant other. You quarrel with your parents or siblings or friends. You squabble with an obnoxious neighbor, rude sales clerk or whoever.
But sometimes we don’t have enough drama in our lives. Things may be going smoothly and pleasantly. There’s no crisis or chaos. While this is good for our peace of mind, it’s bad for our sense of the dramatic. There’s nothing like something happening to shake things up. We’re thrown off guard, we lose our balance, we’re knocked out of our comfort zone and lose our cool.
But if nothing’s going on we get lazy.
This is when we must truly use our imaginations to try and stir up some drama. What I do is try to picture celebrities or people connected to celebrities in their real lives. Not as we’ve come to know them publicly, but how they really are in their private lives.
What do Michelle and Barack Obama talk about when the kids are tucked in and they’re alone? Does she ask him to rub her feet? Do they argue about what to watch on TV? What is it like to be Sharon Stone’s personal assistant? Does Paul McCartney ever wonder if he or Ringo will be the last surviving Beatle? Do Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have their own secret language?
What were the first words exchanged between Sarah Palin and her daughter when she learned of her pregnancy? What went on in the mind of the coroner who did the autopsy on Brittany Murphy? Is Kate Gosselin petrified that she’ll never find a man because she has 8 kids? What was the mind set of the guy who tried to blackmail David Letterman?
What is it like to have been married to Rush Limbaugh? Wife #1 was when he was young and struggling. Wife #2 came along as his career took off. Wife #3 hit the jackpot. What would it be like if those three women got together and dished about life with Rush? I heard recently that he’s getting married again this summer. What goes through the mind of the next Mrs. Limbaugh as she processes the fact that she’ll be #4? Does she secretly wonder if she'll be his last wife?
Think of this as a mind exercise. Pick a handful of people you like (or don’t like) and imagine what goes on in their private lives. It just might open up some new doors for you when it comes to writing more powerful scenes.
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