Why do I write for film?

I co-ordinate a Wellington writers group, and tomorrow night the topic is:

"Why have you decided to be a screenwriter/playwright/whatever you are? What makes that particular medium special to you?"

Why this topic? Well, longer time readers of this blog will know that I am narcissistically fascinated in my own desire to write. This blog began as ‘Why I Write?’ and many of the older posts are explorations of answers to that question.

So getting a bit deeper than that, I think I’m interested in why we choose the mediums that we do. I see our choices as a complex mix of contemporary forces and personal expression. Screenwriting in particular is a modern phenomenon, and in that respect a desire to be a screenwriter strikes me as almost faddish. If we were in the 18th century, none of us would be screenwriters. Screenwriting appears to me to be the young popular medium that has overshadowed all others, at least in the circles I move in (novelists/playwrights/poets/comic book artists/graffiti artists/Hallmark card writers feel free to blow me out of the water...) So I look at my own embrace of screenwriting with a certain degree of distrust; do I do it just because it’s the popular choice, or for more intrinsic reasons?

Well, there’s certainly some things I enjoy about film as a medium (I’ll talk about film, rather than TV, which I have also written for, but I’ll try to keep this post under control by dealing just with film.)

Film is fast – stories tend to be less than two hours long. That encourages brevity, which actually plays to a key strength of mine; I’m too lazy to write long. And I admire brevity – I like condensing material to its essence. I’ve never forgotten Hix telling me about what he did with the earlier drafts of Hopeless before I came on board as a co-writer; he talked about how he combined multiple characters into single characters, giving the single characters the strengths of the multiple ones. I like that kind of work - boiling things down to create a headier brew. Film demands you do that because you don’t have time.

Film is a collaborative medium, and I like others to read my work and get behind it. Film requires that I get a team around me; and if I can get a team around me, that feels validating for the work I’ve created. One of the reasons I started writing screenplays was because others were doing it, and that meant that I could do it with them.

I do love watching films, though I don’t think a great film stands above reading a great novel for me in terms of enjoyment. There are plenty of films that are etched in my brain though; and so I do feel a debt of love for the medium. I want to excel within it because I know how great it can be.

And finally film is something I’ve had some success in, and I know something about how to write screenplays. That doesn’t answer why I started screenwriting, but it does go some way to answer why I continue in it.

There are downsides to screenwriting too: most commercially minded cinema no longer especially interests me so I have trouble picturing a place for myself in the industry; the collaborative nature of film-making has the downside (as well as advantage) of being dependent on others for success; film is expensive and the competition for funding is tough.

Other mediums interest me too: theatre and novel writing are both starting to whisper to me. But I’ll stick with screenwriting in the medium term at least; I know it and love it, and want to consolidate the lessons that I’ve learnt.

Plus I need to finish something – so it might as well be that screenplay I’m in the middle of (Run), and then that other screenplay I’m in the middle of (The Gap)… That should keep me going for a while.

Why I Write: To Surprise

This post is about what I learnt about myself after getting through my Dip yesterday.

But first I want to talk about what I used to do when I was nine*.

When I was nine*, I spent my breaks at school in the classroom constructing a maze, that eventually grew to six full scrapbook pages. My maze was so devious that I spent one entire scrapbook page drawing a dead end. My reasoning was this - no one would believe that they could possibly be in a dead end. Who would believe that I had spent all that time and effort to simply lead them down a false trail? It would be too big a surprise for any of my nine year-old classmates to even fathom.

(And so it proved - they all gave up on my maze. And having lost my audience, I gave up too.)

After getting through my Dip, I realised yesterday that the same devious urge to surprise and mislead my audience still exists today inside me.

I like writing because I like to surprise people. Writing for me is a way of presenting creative surprises, shocks, twists, and turns.

A script for me is a vehicle for delivering those surprises to an audience. I'm willing to go to ridiculous effort, years of my life, in order to present something different, something which surprises and astounds.

One of the reasons I struggle with scripts is because I often forget the surprises that are in them, given the huge amount of time it takes to finish. I have to apply this lesson to The Gap, and remember the surprises that someone should get approaching the story fresh. And I need to keep projects going until they're made so I get to deliver those surprises.

I can see now that this wish to surprise has been a key driver in my creative writing/paid work/humour/this blog/my approach to just about everything. And it's taken a Dip to see it...


* Approximate age only

Why I Don't Write: The Dip

I got through a Dip today.

I was asking myself whether I should continue writing. Not whether I should quit writing The Gap and write something else, but whether I should quit writing altogether.

At the same time as I was going through the Dip, I knew that the Dip itself wasn't actually a bad thing. If I did decide to stop writing, then that would be the right decision for me. But if I didn't stop writing (which I have to admit in my heart of hearts seemed the far more likely scenario), then I would learn something important about myself.

I didn't quit. I did learn something important about myself.

My next post will be on what that was.

Looking Back

Given this blog has been around for a year now (Happy Birthday blog!), I thought it was time to look back and see if I’d learnt anything.

Looking back over my previous posts I can see that:

• I’m more interested in questions than answers. The posts I find most interesting are the ones that explore inner conflicts, live issues, and conflicting positions, rather than the posts that try to provide the definitive answer to a problem.
• I suffer from perfectionism. Just getting stuff done in a systematic and consistent fashion is helping to balance that out.
• Writing is getting easier for me. It no longer tends to put me in a bad mood. In fact, I’m more conscious of the ways it puts me in a good mood.
• Some of my projects have been put to bed (either permanently or temporarily). I’m now solely working on The Gap, and hope to work on The Kingdoms once that is done. I have no further plans, because I can sense how much time and effort I am going to put into The Gap. At the same time, I believe I will finish The Gap and get it made.
• I drink ginger beer now rather than Coke.

Why I Write: To Grow Myself

I’ve been realising recently that I really love growing myself, or helping others to grow.

What do I mean by ‘growing myself’? I think it’s about deepening my understanding so I change the way I relate to others, my environment, and even myself.

I love this process of progressively understanding something at a deeper level. For instance, I’m really enjoying working on The Gap, the script I’m writing. As my understanding of the script develops, the way I relate to it changes. I become more and more capable of writing it!

(Plus The Gap is all about people who are growing themselves. So in the process of writing The Gap, I am growing myself by writing about people growing themselves...)

This is also something I find hugely rewarding about my day job. I am encouraged to grow in my job and develop my thinking, and I’m also asked to coach other people to help develop themselves.

I will not be tomorrow who I am today – though mostly it’s hard to tell any difference! I have trouble remembering how I’ve changed. Writing this blog is one way for me to remember who I used to be...

What are my goals as a writer?

I came up with this question for discussion at our most recent NZWG Wellington Writer’s Group. Having set it, I then had to try and answer it!

I came up with these answers:

In one year

I want to have finished a first and second draft of The Gap (the script I’m working on), and started to assemble a project team that can actually get it made.

In five years

I want to have a slate of projects with some level of funding attached, so I can reduce the level of non-writing work I have to do.

In ten years

I want to be able to make a good living out of writing things that I want to write!

Now that I’ve defined my goals, I want to think further about how to achieve those goals, and what the obstacles are.

How about you? What are your goals? And do you find goal-setting useful?

How I Write: In The Flow

On Sunday, I found my writing flow. I thought I'd write down how I found it and what it is, partly as a reminder for myself for when I don't have it!

First thing Sunday, I was working on The Gap but finding the process hard going. I wanted to be doing anything else, and found myself continually procrastinating.

More than that - I realised I was stressed.

I was stressed in exactly the same way I would be if I was at a dinner party where I wasn't enjoying myself, but was making an effort to look like I was having a great time.

That realisation woke me up. Instead of being in touch with the writing, I was at a distance. And I was finding working like that was a draining experience. It was tiring me out!

So I did something totally different. I wrote a dialogue between my two main characters.

I let them talk about their issues, but in a very unreal way - something I'd never use in the finished script. I let them be my mouthpieces and just let them talk about what they were concerned about. Or rather, what I was interested in.

What I was looking for was not to get to the heart of them, but to get to the heart of my interest in the script. The nugget, to throw back to an old idea.

And I got into the flow. The writing wasn't hard anymore. It was rejuvenating actually. I wrote the first scenes for The Gap that I thought were actually good.

I haven't been able to totally hold on to Sunday's flow experience. It hasn't taken permanently. However I have been able to get back to feelings similar to it. And I'm continuing to write stuff which I think is better. So I think Sunday has made a lasting impact on me.

How I Write: Maturing My Scripter Self

I've realised that I have at least two writing 'selves'.

The first, which I'll call the Planner, is my more familiar self.

In my Planner self, I'm figuring the script out from a distance - I don't want to get too close. I'm considering the questions of theme, of structure, of the purpose of a script. I come up with plot, characters, and situations, and can write a million and one notes (for the current script, 'The Gap', Hix and I have put together a Foolscap File Box full of notes...) I can stay in this Planner self long enough to kill a script - to have written it to death in my head without actually having written it at all.

The second self, which I've been experiencing again as I start to write 'The Gap', is my Scripter self. In this self, I'm actually writing, but in many ways I'm running scared. I'm usually just trying to blat it out. Thinking? Consideration? Who needs it? I just want to get the scene written as fast as possible and get it done.

The Scripter self picks up directly from the point I left him, which happens to have been the moment I finished working on my previous script 'Run' last year. I use the same style, the same tone, the same voice for the characters... And I can sense my Planner frustration (what's happened to all that good work we were doing!!) with the results the Scripter self is firing out.

I'm not suggesting that this differentiation of writing 'selves' is utterly unique to me - in fact I hope that other writers reading this post may be able to relate. But I am very conscious that in my case, I've spent a lot of time in my Planning self for the last ten years, and far less time in my Scripter self.

Consequently I'm feeling that my Scripter self has a lot of maturing to do. I need to be able to loosen up and consider options while I'm actually writing. I want to be able to calmly think about the best ways to express character and the heart of the scene, rather than always going for the easiest course, just because I want to be done with it as fast as possible. If I want to be a professional writer, then I need to be a lot more comfortable in my Scripter self.

I'm hoping that my Planner self can help my Scripter self, so that this maturing process doesn't take years! But it seems to me that getting more comfortable with my Scripter self is the most important thing I can be doing right now as a writer. So if it takes years, it takes years!

Finally, I'm sure there's some things my Planner self can learn from my Scripter self too - like when to let go and just do it!

How I Write: By Ambush

Yesterday I started writing 'The Gap'.

I wasn't expecting to. Well, I knew I was heading in that general direction, but I knew that I wanted to write a step-by-step outline for the project first, and knowing me that would have taken at least a month...

So I knew I wasn't ready. But then, all of a sudden, I was.

I picked up my pen, grabbed the back of an old script (which is what I use for scrap-paper), and worked my way through my first scene. (Not a good first scene, but it'll get better). And past that first scene I can feel a whole reservoir of words.

So, I've officially started writing 'The Gap'.

Thinking about it today, I've realised that starting to write my last script 'Run' was exactly the same. I don't see the actual writing coming.

I dawdle around the edge of the pool, afraid to dive in. And eventually there's a moment when I realise 'Hey, I could just leap in now'. So I dive in, swim around, and think 'There, that's not so bad'. And then I feel ashamed about the dawdling before taking the dive, and all that thinking work feels like procrastination...

So either I have to sneak up on the script or the script has to sneak up on me.

How about you? Does the writing take you by surprise?

The Good, the Bad, and the Untruthfully Ugly

I’ve been interested in polarities lately – the key idea being that apparent opposite sides of an argument can each have a good case to make, hence the fact there’s a clash in the first place. I think polarities are rich for storytelling and expect I’ll talk more about my fascination with them in later posts.

For this post, I want to focus on an element of storytelling that isn’t quite this type of polarity but is still based around opposites. My focus is this – that as a storyteller, I can tell a story about the ‘Good life’ through portraying the good, or through the total inverse, portraying the bad.

I’m working on a science fiction movie called The Gap. A key aspect of this project is portraying the ‘Good life’ – as in a better way to live, which I admire – through the struggles of the two main characters. I want both of them to be heroes, by struggling their way through adversity and embodying virtues that I think are admirable.

Pretty standard, right? But not the only way to talk about the ‘Good life’.

Think about ‘Requiem for a Dream’ (spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen it). The characters in that story are terribly damaged by the end – perhaps not irrevocably – but still, as a friend of mine put it recently, in a state of suffering. It’s a traumatic movie, but I believe for good purpose. I believe the story is all about showing how bad life can get, and giving me (the viewer) a warning – this what life can be like. Avoid the abyss. Appreciate what I’ve got. In other words, value the Good life.

I’m fascinated that both approaches are effective. How can a writer do two opposite things and yet achieve the same overall effect?

I sense that a key concept at the heart of all this is authenticity. If a story is convincingly told, and rings with the truth, then I am encouraged to consider the relation of that story to my own life through the force of my engagement with it. Basically, if I care about the characters and believe in them, then I’ll compare their life to mine, and make my own moral judgements accordingly.

If, on the other hand, the depiction is shallow or cliched (a Goody-Goody-Two-Shoes character who I neither like or believe in), then that work can turn me away in horror. I’ll recoil from the depiction, but hopefully not from my own moral values.

Thinking about this has helped me articulate a problem I have with censorship. If a storyteller uses their work to challenge something repugnant by its truthful depiction (the rationalisations of Humbert Humbert in Lolita spring to mind), then the work should be celebrated for its moral effect rather than condemned or held up for censorship. Whereas a work that more falsely glamourised the actions of Humbert Humbert (simply by not ‘nailing’ the truth of the character) could be a nasty piece of work.

It’s a risk we run as storytellers. We’d better get it right, or it can get ugly.

Why I Write: So I'll be able to write my other ideas

I'm working on three scripts: The Gap, Run, and Utopia. I've been working on these ideas for over a year now (going on two years in one case), and still haven't got a proper first draft of any of them.

But I absolutely need to start finishing them! Because bubbling under and starting to sing to me are:

• Two seasons of a TV series I've been tentatively calling The Kingdoms
• An uncompleted Katherine Mansfield script
• A teenage horror movie called The Devil You Know
• An untitled horror project about the great advantage of being able to die.
• An abandoned fictional future documentary called Only Human, which is now re-surfacing after seeing the wonderful Guy Maddin 'documentary' My Winnipeg.

Arggh! Too much!

Why I Write: To find out why I'm driven to write this script

I'm currently working on two scripts - The Gap and Utopia, while I let a third script, Run, settle for a while after having written a very rough draft.

All three scripts are in approximately the same place - the process of finding out why I feel driven to write them.

There is something in all three of them that I cannot let go of. I'm going to call this something the nugget.

In the process of finding out what the nugget is, I will let go of vast amounts of extraneous ideas which surround the nugget. And I don't know what this extraneous dirt is and what the nugget is until I go through this process.

Should the protagonist in Run be a man? Turns out she's definitely a woman. Old or young? Young, but not too young. Is her love interest a man then? No, turns out she's gay.

Through feeling my way through all these choices, I somehow get closer and closer to the nugget that is driving me to write the script. Maybe the nugget is a question. Maybe it's an emotion. Maybe the nugget doesn't sit still. Can I trust it's worthwhile? I don't know, but it keeps on gleaming. And it promises answers.

On reflection that doesn't sound very trustworthy.