This week I've decided to feature the words of four screenwriters each day to demonstrate the endless varieties of ways to approach the craft of writing:
CAROLINE THOMPSON (Edward Scissorshand, Corpse Bride)You never know where you may learn something that becomes a critical part of your writing process. I remember reading this quote from Linus Pauling: "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." That is the best advice I've ever gotten about how to approach generating story concepts. Wisdom not from a screenwriter, but a Nobel Prize winning scientist.
"I had a writing partner in The Addams Family and we were stuck at one point. He sent me some notes from a story structure class and I tore them up and sent them back because I just don't think you can be taught that way. I think you can learn by watching movies and I think you can learn by doing, but I don't think somebody can tell you. You either have your intuition or you don't. I don't think you can be taught intuition. I never took classes, nor do I believe in them. I think it's a good idea to have people that you respect read your work as sometimes it's difficult to determine if you've sold that image or theme that you're tying to put across. You don't know if it works until somebody reads it. I think that screenwriting groups where people read each other's work is a terrific idea.
"Edwards Scissorhands is about the cleanest example to the extent that I knew that I wanted to have various numbers of characters who had specific and very different perspectives on the characters of Edwards Scissorhands. You have the woman that's compassionate, the woman who wanted to go to bed with him, the woman who thinks he's the devil. The roles that they were to play were so clear to me that I basically took what I needed them to do and then fashioned the character secondly. I would say that for me, character is my strength. I don't really write plots very well. For me, the course of the story is determined by what these characters would or wouldn't do in any given situation. Situations accumulate based on the situations that have come up before. I'm what they call a very character-driven writer."
LARRY GELBART (Oh, God!, Tootsie)
"First, you get the idea. It may germinate for a long time or it just pops into your head. And then you work out a structure. And when you feel confident enough, you start to write. And you have to allow yourself the liberty of writing poorly. You have to get the bulk of it done, and then you start to refine it. You have to put down less than marvelous material just to keep going to whatever you think the end is going to be – which may be something else altogether by the time you get there."
WILLIAM GOLDMAN (All the President's Men, The Princess Bride)
"The writing is never the problem, it's knowing what the structure is and what goes where and who the people are and how this scene relates to this, and do I put in this dialogue line in the third scene so I can play it back in the 23rd scene, so I can get an echo. I mean, I have to know all that before I start.
"Screenplays are not dialogue. Screenplays are structure. That's all they are. The reason we can't quote many lines of dialogue is because the dialogue doesn't matter that much. Obviously good dialogue is better than inept dialogue at any time, but for the most part, you have to have the scene that is in its proper place in the structure of the piece.
"It's simply making the spine, and you must protect the spine. There can be wonderful scenes, and if they're off the spine and you see them in a movie, they will simply die. So what you must do at all costs in a screenplay is to protect your spine. Keep it clear, keep it clean.
"I may not know what the final shots are going to be in my head, but I know the falling narrative at the end… or ascending narrative line at the end… yes, I know that. I know that before I begin. I'm going straight for it. That's my structure. There it is and here I am and I got to get there… as fast and as cleanly as I can."
DAVID LYNCH (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet)
"For seven years I ate at Bob's Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee – with lots of sugar. And there's lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It's a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob's.
"If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film."
Read books on the craft. Take courses. Follow blogs. Study theories. Analyze movies. Break down scripts.
Or not. Maybe that will confuse you. Perhaps you're better off just relying on your instinct. I doubt it, but maybe.
Beware of anyone who says they have the way to write a screenplay. It may work for this story. It may not work for that one. In fact, it may not work for you at all.
And that's the point: You are the writer. It's your talent, your voice, your creativity. If who you are as a writer aligns with a specific approach to screenwriting, great. But if it doesn't, why force yourself into the confines of somebody else's approach?
Be active in seeking out knowledge about the craft. Pay attention to the world around you. Wisdom and insight are out there.
But at the end of the day, it's your journey as a writer. And if like David Lynch, it takes drinking chocolate milk shakes and seven cups of coffee to kick-start your creative process, then that's what you need to do.
Go Into The Story: There's no right way to write: Part 3
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