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INTRODUCTION

I am a professional screenwriter. I also teach screenwriting to aspiring screenwriters. I consider myself skilled at both and I actively seek to better myself in each role. It was a great surprise to learn just how much one informs and improves the other. Teaching has become a great pleasure of mine and I have invested more time to it each year. This is not a complaint. I enjoy it. There is honestly no downside to teaching willing and eager students.

I am not a “script consultant” or a “script analyst”. I am not a guru (though admittedly, my ego will get the better of me sometimes). I don’t like those pursuits much as the aspiring writer usually needs far more than just notes on their script. The questionable value of paid consultants was a tremendous part of my hesitance when I first started teaching. I didn’t want to be “one of them”. But rather than being too critical of what the consultant/analyst sub-economy pushes, I would rather focus on what I believe:

As a general introduction, I can assure you, there is no formula. If anyone knew of a formula that worked they would be making far more money executing that formula than they’re making as a consultant. If they’re promising you a formula that will sell they’re lying. This business is strange in that it is totally unpredictable, yet those inexplicable decisions will never surprise you. They are the norm. One of William Goldman’s most famous lines about Hollywood was, “Nobody knows anything.” Most seem to agree with this assessment.

Most of my writings on screenwriting have been limited to listing and explaining (in marvelously eloquent language of course!) the principles that I thought most important. This is absolutely a worth-while exercise, but let’s face it, it’s not really all that different than what the so-called consultants do. I try to do a better job of it, making things of more practical use, and simplifying and clarifying as best as possible, but it still isn’t teaching. It gives the appearance of teaching, and those reading get the feeling they’re learning, but it doesn’t really get to the real heart of the matter.

Teaching a creative endeavor is not like teaching plumbing. You are teaching individuals. You are helping aspiring artists to find their own way. Certainly there are fundamentals that must be understood (they’re called fundamentals for a reason) but ultimately you are teaching someone to discover, nurture and mature their own voice. This is not going to be done from an essay, a book or a workshop. It’s going to be a personal relationship and it’s going to be done over time. While talent may shorten the learning curve for some, there isn’t a short-cut for anyone.

After teaching for some years I am finally able to verbalize what I believe it is that I do. I can actually communicate an actionable philosophy, rather than a listing of principles and advice, no matter how efficiently that listing is accomplished. I hope it serves as an introduction and gives people an idea of whether it’s something they want to pursue. But needless to say, reading about something is not the pursuit itself. Learning how to write is 95% writing. Nothing will ever change that.

AN EVOLVING PHILOSOPHY ON TEACHING SCREENWRITING

I can break down how (not what - that’s a different conversation entirely) I teach into three different, but mutually supportive concepts. There really isn’t a starting point, and there really isn’t an end. Each steps builds off the others - somewhat of a snowball effect that pushes the writer forward.

1) The “Buy in” to a Value System

It is important that a teacher and a student build a shared value system that serves as a criteria by which what is created is judged. This is extremely helpful. But even more important is that the new writer finds a criteria at all. This is crucial in forming their own voice as a writer. Without this criteria they are not only at the mercy of their own whims, but the whims of others. It is doubtful that anything of value is created from this space.

The values I try to instill in my students include the importance of putting story first, writing to evoke emotion, the constant battle to remove the ego from the process, and working one moment at a time with emotional truth. Some of these might seem self-evident, but you would be surprised how quickly they’re pushed aside when they come at a cost the writer doesn’t want, or is too lazy to pay.

By instilling these values the writer has a way to define a desired achievement and accurately judge whether they have succeeded or not. This helps them in their own rewrites, as well as determining the usefulness of outside notes and comments. “Does this note help me better tell the story I am trying to tell?” Without this criteria suddenly all opinions are created equal and one is relying on their gut instinct, often led by arrogance or fear, to know which notes to embrace or reject. The writer is essentially twisting in the wind. This is a tough way to write!

2) Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

From a practical standpoint, this is the area where I have probably “innovated” the most, though the innovation is in how something is communicated not what is communicated. Those that teach storytelling are still standing on the shoulders of giants, communicating and refining the same basic principles that have been taught for over 2200 years. The goal here is to simplify the process. This is where I feel the current wave of screenwriting teachings fail miserably. They complicate where they should enlighten, and they burden when they should liberate.

You cannot teach talent. Nor should you try. This is akin to the old joke of trying to teach a pig to dance. It’s a waste of time and you piss off the pig. The dream-factory sub-economy tries to teach talent. It has to. You can’t make money marketing solely to talented writers - the market isn’t big enough! Unfortunately, trying to teach talent will almost certainly inhibit the genuinely talented. The complicated theories, formulas and “rules” create friction with the writer. It freezes them up and diminishes their confidence. The writing is stifled if it exist at all or the writer will instinctively know it’s bullshit and rebel. They reject all dramatic principles and try to rely solely on their talent. This rarely leads to a much better result.

What I attempt to do is simplify the decision making process to allow the artistic aspect of screenwriting to emerge. The craft of writing is a constant decision making process of structure - what the audience knows and when. The artistic aspect is the exploitation of those structural choices through the writer’s own personal gifts and sensibilities. This is the writer’s talent and the idea is not to create it where it doesn’t exist, but to liberate it where it does. If structure is the backbone, then a writer’s talent is the connective tissue that keeps it all together and gives it its flavor.

This is why my classes work with different definitions than most other screenwriting teachings. This is not an accident. The definitions we work with are mutually-reliant. That is, once one structural question is answered it narrows the choices for the others. The decision making process becomes easier and easier with clearly defined goals. This takes a commitment to the value system as well as a great deal of confidence but in simplifying our own process we make stronger, more definitive choices that add value to the entire audience experience, and we’re able to exploit them more fully for dramatic effect.

It brings up another old adage: Keep it simple, stupid.(K.I.S.S.)

3) Build Confidence

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of confidence to a writer. It is the license and the fuel of so much of what the writer does. It allows the decisiveness to move forward, and the patience to stop and linger. It informs the writer to know what to actually write and what should be left off the page. It gives them the strength to embrace helpful notes as well as when to politely decline those less helpful. Sometimes most significantly, a writer’s genuine confidence allows them to get out of their own damn way.

It is not just the writing itself that is affected. It goes deeper than that. It also about the effect the writing has on the reader. The reader will sense the confidence of a writer even if they never quite know that’s what it is they’re registering. The writer’s confidence will subtly tell a reader that they’re in good hands and they need not worry. It puts the reader’s guard down and allows forgiveness for a multitude of sins. The writer’s confidence “sells” the reader on the quality of the script. The reader believes it’s a good story because the writer knows it’s a good story and writes it that way.

Confidence can be consciously faked for awhile (“Fake it ‘til you make it!”) but eventually it has to be earned. The only way to do that is write and write some more. The writer will make mistakes and will learn from them. They will do great things and learn from them as well. They will learn to define what story they’re trying to tell and measure how well they achieved it. There is no wasted energy when the young writer writes as long as they do not let hubris, ignorance or stupidity get in the way. But they must write and they must be teachable. There is no other way. As I tell my student early in the very first workshop: personality counts.

Coming Together

These concepts are all mutually supportive. The value system gives the writer something to believe in besides his or her self. It lightens the burden and allows them to judge how well they achieved what they set out to achieve. This faith and the ability to step back gives the writer a confidence they cannot have when they rely solely on their talent to measure their own script’s worth.

Simplified choices keeps the writer agile in their writing, and focused only on what’s important to the very things they value: story, emotions, truth. The distractions do not bog them down and undermine their decisiveness. They are set free. They are able to determine what’s important and what isn’t and therefore able to exploit it dramatically.

The more confident the writer becomes the more committed they are to the very things that got them there. The better they execute, the more confident they become. Around and around we go. I have been a professional screenwriter since 1996 with two years off for good behavior. I love that I am still learning. I love that I continue to get better and better at my craft. I am able to do this not because I know so little, but because I know so much. Including how little I know.

These are the three basic building blocks of how I teach and I am a teacher, not a consultant. The idea is not to create better screenplays but to train better writers. Those better writers will create the better screenplays.

The whole point is to get them to do that without me.


This post can also be found as a "note" on the Story and Plot Facebook Page, with comments.

Tags: Screenwriting