Writing & Stuff
I am really close to finishing the first draft of this latest screenplay. It’s an indie dramedy about a radio station pulling off a make-or-break fundraiser to avoid bankruptcy. It’s nearly 180 pages. I can’t even tell you how the screenplay got so long.
Part of my writing process is to edit the screenplay during the first draft, rewriting what I did yesterday to get me into my work today (which is a quote I stole from writer Scott Frank). Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder writes his scripts all the way through as fast as he can. I used to think that there was a right way to write a screenplay from first draft to the final version. But I think part of the fun and the work of doing this is figuring out your own process, how you specifically create and refine a story.
One of the things I like most about working on screenplays is the process of refining sentences to communicate the story as clearly as possible on the page. Sometimes this comes down to removing a few words from a sentence, changing a verb to a stronger one to better channel the emotion and context of a scene. For example, I’m reading Gone Girl this week and one of the action lines in Scene 219 of the shooting script is “Amy is wielding the remote.” Gillian Flynn could have simply written “Amy has the remote”, but in the context of the scene and with who Amy is as a character, the word “wielding” just says it all. It adds a whole new dynamic to everything, communicates volumes without being obvious. Flynn’s word choice and sense of humor in this screenplay is part of what makes Gone Girl so entertaining, on the page and on the screen.
The past couple of days when I’ve started my writing time, I really didn’t want to get into it at all. I just got this feeling that I wanted to run away from the chair and do something else, anything else. I used to follow that feeling, but now I force myself to sit at the desk. When that happens, the first few minutes of writing are really hard, but I’ve found that I eventually relax and then the process becomes organic and fluid. Even if I’m struggling to think of a line or the next step in a scene, it all feels like part of the process.
When I was writing the final pages of the screenplay last night, I was struggling. It felt like work. I used to have a bad habit, which I think I don’t do as much anymore — but during big moments or key scenes in the screenplays I’d write, I felt so much pressure to write them perfectly, or with such captivating dialogue, that I’d ultimately get away from truth of what was happening. I’ve actually found trying to tap into the truth more effective than trying to write the perfect or most captivating line or whatever in these instances. Movie moments can still have a lot of impact even when the characters are speaking casually, as long as they’re speaking from the heart.
I hope the above makes sense. I am so tired. I got four hours of sleep last night and I’ve been yawning every seven seconds while writing this blog.
In other news, I am still unemployed. I’ve been searching for production assistant jobs to no avail for months, but I’m now unsure as to whether that’s the best path for me. I would take any production assistant job on any kind of narrative film set to get production experience. You can so learn so much from the bottom up, but I haven’t been able to get any work. I’d really, really like to get a couple more sets under my belt before I shoot my next film (if I shoot my next film), but I honestly don’t know if that’s going to happen.