Screenplays... E-Book

Craig Batty

• Herausgeber: Creative Essentials
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 311

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Screenplays ... How to Write and Sell Them is an accessible yet comprehensive book aimed at those with a keen interest in writing feature film screenplays. Using case studies, creative exercises and interviews from the industry, the book will guide readers through the necessary stages of writing a screenplay, from finding and developing ideas to creating and executing characters to shaping structure and constructing scenes. It will also consider how a screenplay might be sold, or used to raise interest in the writer, looking at areas such as finding and working with an agent, networking, using competitions, and raising private production funds. The book's approach is both creative and reflective, giving readers the opportunity to learn a wealth of creative skills alongside skills that will encourage them to think about themselves as writers and the work that they are developing. As such, the book will empower readers in their own creative processes and allow them to successfully tell the stories they want to tell. Rich with analyses from classic and contemporary films, littered with practical models, paradigms and creative tasks, and enhanced by the views of key industry figures, the book is a must for any aspiring feature film screenwriter.

Leseprobe

Craig Batty

SCREENPLAYS

how to write and sell them

www.noexit.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To family, friends and students who’ve played their part in the making of this book. In particular, to RMIT students in the Anatomy of a Screenplay class, who were both insightful and inspiring. To Hannah for commissioning the book, and to Anne for doing a brilliant job editing it. To all the great screenwriters and filmmakers out there who’ve given me wonderful material to write about. And to all the book’s readers – may it serve you well.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. THE NATURE OF SCREENWRITING

Just a working document?

Layout

Form

A film about screenwriting

2. FINDING IDEAS

Sourcing ideas

What’s in an idea?

Knowing when an idea’s ready

3. DEVELOPING IDEAS

Where to start?

Development documents

4. CREATING A WORLD

Building your world

Case studies

5. SHAPING CHARACTERS

Inner character

Backstory

Outer character

Protagonism and antagonism

Cast design

Minor characters

6. DESIGNING A STRUCTURE

Character journeys

Three-act structure

The inciting incident

Case study

Tentpoles

Sequences

Alternative structures

7. WRITING VISUALLY

Thinking visually

Visual grammar

Setting

Visual objects and motifs

8. UNDERSTANDING GENRE

Who is genre for?

Genre – or style, or form?

Writing genre

9. WORKING WITH THEME

Defining theme

Theme in action

10. CONSTRUCTING SCENES

Finding a scene’s purpose

Driving a scene

Scenes and story texture

Writing screen directions

11. WRITING DIALOGUE

Stripping down

Character voice

Subtext

The key phrase

Key lines

Voiceover

12. SELLING YOUR SCREENPLAY

Pitching documents

Thinking strategically

Finding funding

13. SELLING YOURSELF AS A SCREENWRITER

Career planning

Promoting yourself as a screenwriter

14. SURVIVING AS A SCREENWRITER

First steps

Joining forces

Writers’ events

Conclusion and Resources

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Oh no, not another screenwriting book! And that’s just what I thought.

But then, when I thought about it some more, I realised we do need good screenwriting books; that, in fact, there’s quite a shortage of them. While there may be hundreds on the market, few of them actually speak to the writer, telling them instead what they should and shouldn’t be doing. What’s missing is a sense of conversation, a sense that the author knows what the writer’s trying to do, and so speaks to them in a way that’s helpful and personal, as well as insightful.

I want this book to speak to you as a writer, to connect with what you’re going through – good or bad – as you develop your screenplay, and to inspire you to move forward, helping you to find solutions that you’re happy with and that you believe in. Above all, I want this book to be a guide that you come back to again and again, if not for help with a specific screenplay problem, then as a guilty pleasure – perhaps reminding you that, yes, you do know what you’re doing. And I use the word guide intentionally here. It’s not a rule book. Nor is it a set of principles, techniques, tricks, tips, etc.

Over the last nine years, I’ve worked with lots of screenwriters, student screenwriters, professional screenwriters, emerging screenwriters, and people who write screenplays as a hobby. I’ve read lots of screenplays and screen ideas (treatments, outlines) – at least a thousand – and I’ve discovered that I love working with screenwriters on their screenplays. Writing your own material is one thing – and I love that, too – but to work closely with someone on their idea is something else. There’s a buzz that comes from talking about characters, plots, themes, visual images and dialogue – it’s like chatting to your friends about a film when you come out of the cinema, only better. There’s even more of a frisson when you can see the passion rising in a writer; when you can see them getting excited about their screenplay, and talking about it with much more verve. And here’s the thing: the best buzz of all comes from seeing a writer suddenly make the leap into finding their own solutions. They’ve ‘got’ what they’ve been trying to achieve, and suddenly they fly. As a guide, a mentor, you get real satisfaction from this moment.

I’ve also written a lot about screenwriting. Some of you might be familiar with my first book, Writing for theScreen: Creative and Critical Approaches (2008), which was written with Zara Waldebäck. The response to that has been really positive. Not because we’re saying things that are explicitly new, but because we wrote it in a way that was intended to be helpful and inspiring. We touched on the idea of creativity, too, and how often in screenwriting training there’s a lack of attention paid to the creative process – it’s all about craft, technique and industry. Although these things are very important, they’re nothing without creativity. A screenwriter is a creative writer, after all. So we decided to follow this up with a second book, The Creative Screenwriter: Exercises to Expand Your Craft (2012). Quite different in tone and format, this book offers a plethora of creative writing exercises intended to deepen the screenwriter’s understanding of key aspects of screenwriting – character, structure, theme, dialogue, pitching, developing ideas, etc. I also wrote the book Movies That Move Us: Screenwriting and the Power of the Protagonist’s Journey (2011), which, in essence, develops Christopher Vogler’s famous Hero’s Journey model to take into account both the physical and the emotional journey experienced by a protagonist. There’s quite a lot of theory in that book, but there are six case studies of famous films that highlight the points I’m making. Vogler himself endorsed the book, which was very nice. I don’t expect everyone to agree with my ideas – how boring life would be if they did – and I know that there will be things I’ve missed or seen differently to others. But I’m certain there will be something in this book that will connect with you; something that will make you see and understand screenwriting in a different way than before. I’ll not see the recognition in your eyes – the passion rising – but I’ll know it’s there.

So, I hope you find this book useful, and I hope you enjoy it. In the end, we write because we get pleasure from it. There are times when we utterly despise our art – we can’t get the plot right, the character doesn’t sound right and nobody likes the screenplay – but we only despise it because we love it so much. And, because we get so much joy out of it, we want it to be perfect, and we want others to enjoy it, too. Rather than seeing this book as a chore, then – something you’ve got to read for university, or plough through to see where you might be going wrong – try to relish working through the material. Let it guide your own thoughts and feelings about good screenwriting. Have fun thinking of your own examples. And, where it feels appropriate, enjoy having your own alternative readings, or the fact that you disagree with what I’ve said!

1. THE NATURE OF SCREENWRITING

A few years ago, when I was delivering a workshop on creativity at the London Screenwriters’ Festival, three men walked out. As they left, one of them mumbled something along the lines of, ‘This is ridiculous… creativity’s got nothing to do with screenwriting.’ Maybe it was the way I was pitching it – though I’d only been talking for about five minutes – but creativity and screenwriting not connecting? Being creative having nothing to do with screenwriting? Well, actually, this is a view that many people have. But it’s wrong. Screenwriting is creative writing. It’s perhaps got more of a business slant to it than other kinds of fiction, but it’s still creative writing. And it’s through developing creativity that a screenwriter can make a film leap from being formulaic to formidable.

For those who stayed in the workshop – about 40 of them – we proved that, by thinking ‘outside the box’, ideas were strengthened and stories became more engaging and original. Some of the writers realised that their ideas had to be abandoned in favour of new ones that emerged – but that’s what it’s all about. After all, who wants to stick with an idea just for the sake of it, when there’s a better one out there waiting to be tackled?

Nevertheless, a common perception is that screenwriting is driven by business. In one way, it is – there’s a lot of money involved usually, and many more people needed to make a film possible, which of course brings with it financial risks. The development of a screenplay also leans more towards the business-driven model, with more people vying for their voice to be heard, and more ‘at stake’ when people like the director and financier get involved. All of this is important, and screenwriters should know about these kinds of factors, but that doesn’t mean that creativity should be sidelined. Being a screenwriter is still about being creative. It’s about having the ability to see things in different and interesting ways and, when the going gets tough, being able to find creative solutions to problems – your problems or other people’s problems (which you might very well have to take on board).

Creative exercise

How are you creative? What does creativity mean to you? Thinking specifically about your life as a screenwriter – however long it may be, or experienced you are – make a list of all the things you do that you’d categorise as creative. These might be decisions you make, or actions you take. When you’ve done this, make a list of all the things you do that you’d categorise as business oriented. How does the list look? Are there clear connections between creative and business decisions and actions – and if not, how might you try and connect them?

JUST A WORKING DOCUMENT?

Another common perception is that the screenplay is only a working document. It’s an artefact that will be turned into something else entirely – the film. So it goes from being a static, paper-based thing to a live piece of moving image. Although this is technically correct, it’s philosophically incorrect. A screenplay isn’t static at all – aside from the fact that it’ll go through many re-writes, it’s a document full of life. You don’t just read a screenplay because you want to understand how the film will be made – you read it because it’s a good story in itself, one that has the power to entertain and move you. The action on the page runs through your mind as you read. The dialogue comes to life in your head. Even the pace of the story emerges through the way the screenplay’s been written – the overall structure and scene-by-scene construction. Because a screenplay is written in the active voice, in present tense, it speaks to you as you read it. Your imagination works just as much as it might when reading a novel. So a screenplay isn’t ‘just’ a working document. It’s a well-crafted and experiential piece of writing, one that will hopefully be made into a film afterwards.

More will be said later about writing the actual text of a screenplay, but, for now, think about all the ways in which you might create a ‘good read’ on the page. Think about how you might use evocative language to capture the reader’s attention. About how you might use the layout of the page to help give a sense of the feel of a scene. About how you might connect scenes to punctuate meaning and build pace. And about how dialogue might be carefully crafted to complement or juxtapose with what we’re seeing on the screen.

Creative exercise

Get hold of a screenplay – hopefully you’re reading them regularly! – and think specifically about how the writing on the page is connecting you with the story (or not). What does the page look like? What kinds of description are being used – if any – in the screen directions? Which feelings are being evoked by what’s on the page, and how’s that being done? How do you know whether you should be empathising with a character or not? What’s the screenwriter giving you?

LAYOUT

There’s no point in giving a really detailed set of instructions about screenplay layout here, mainly because it can all be done for you nowadays using widely available software packages. The most well known package is Final Draft, which adheres to all industry standard layout guidelines. But it’s not free – and it’s actually not that cheap. Another one, slowly taking over the market, is Celtx. And this is free. The BBC also has one – Script Smart – which comes with a really handy instruction guide for laying out a screenplay, written as a screenplay itself. All of these packages – and others – are easy to use and allow you to save your documents in formats that others can open, such as Microsoft Word and PDF.

Nevertheless, I’ll point out here a few guiding principles about laying out a screenplay:

A slugline, or scene heading, indicates where a scene’s set, which is necessary for both reading and production purposes. INT. means interior, or inside, and EXT. means exterior, or outside. The slugline also indicates a general idea of the time, such as morning, day, evening or night. Occasionally, screenwriters will give specific times.Scene action, or screen directions, details what’s actually happening on the screen. It’s used to describe both what we see and what we hear, and is always written in the present tense. Scene action is divided into short paragraphs, each paragraph usually not exceeding three or four lines. Scene action can also be just a word or two.The character’s name indicates who’s speaking, and written underneath this is their dialogue. A character sometimes speaks in voiceover, and this is still written as dialogue, with ‘voiceover’ or ‘v/o’ in parentheses next to, or underneath, the character’s name.Parentheses are used when the screenwriter wants to indicate how something’s said, if it’s not clear from the dialogue. They’re also used when a character performs a minor action between his or her lines, stopping the need to write scene action and break up the flow.Occasionally, scene transitions are written at the end of a scene to suggest how one scene moves into the next. But this is usually only for specific effect. The start of a new scene (slugline) implies a cut between scenes anyway. ‘Cut to’ can be used, but isn’t necessary.

Here’s an example of how a screenplay might look:

FORM

There are two things to consider when thinking about form. Firstly, screenwriting as a form – what does it mean to write a screenplay, and does that shape the writing process? As mentioned above, screenwriting is like no other form of creative writing. It does have similarities, of course, but it also has its own distinguishing features. The dominant vessel for telling the story is usually imagery, complemented by dialogue and driven by a central character, sometimes multiple central characters. The currency of screenwriting, although it’s a visual medium, is structure. When people talk about screenplays, they talk about what happens. Common parlance involves plot points, inciting incidents, climaxes, resolutions and character arcs. Although these are important in all forms of writing, in screenwriting it’s much more common to plan these things down to their fine detail. In fact, some screenwriters work on planning the screenplay (treatment, step outline) for months, even years, so that everyone understands how it’s going to work. More often than not, the screenplay won’t even be written. Or it might be written, but it won’t have been commissioned. Some screenwriters make good careers out of selling story ideas. They dream of seeing their work on the screen, of course, but they spend years developing and selling outlines, treatments and step outlines.

Screenwriting is also a highly collaborative form, where everyone and their assistant will have ideas and notes. There’s a lot at stake in screenwriting, especially feature films, most notably money. Everyone wants to make sure there’s a good return. So, with that, everyone wants to make sure the story works – or at least ticks the boxes they think will make it work. Collaboration can begin with a screenwriter and producer developing an idea together, and can end with re-writes on the day of filming. In between, a whole host of notes can come from developers, financiers, script editors, executive producers, even actors. There’s also the screenplay re-writer – the person or people brought in and paid to re-write sections of the screenplay, or the whole of it. There’s a career to be had just doing this! It’s more common than people think, and certainly more common than people know, because re-writers aren’t often credited. Or, the re-writer gets the whole credit – and the original writer gets nothing (apart from payment). It’s certainly a minefield, and not a form of writing for the faint-hearted. There are extremes, of course, and not every project will have this many people involved. But it’s something to be aware of. Especially if you’re transitioning from writing short stories and novels, where your words are your art and there’s a lot less interference. Paul Ashton has a really useful chapter on screenwriting form in his book, The Calling Card Script: A Writer’s Toolbox for Screen, Stage and Radio (2011). It’s well worth a read, if not to give you new insights, then to clarify in your mind exactly how different writing forms – in this case, scriptwriting – are conceived and executed.

Secondly, there’s the idea of what specific screenplay form your story should be told in. In other words, is your idea feature-film material or short-film gold? Or does your story lend itself better to television, as a series (continuing) or serial (closed)? Increasingly, is there scope for your story to work across different forms? Maybe you start with a feature, but you follow it up with a series of short films or webisodes? Or perhaps you start with webisodes that develop your central characters and their backstories, then feed these into a feature film? The whole cross-platform concept is complex and challenging – yet very exciting – and there’s no space to talk about it here, I’m afraid. But it’s definitely something you should think about if you’ve got a story idea that has many potential avenues of exploration – spin-offs, audience interaction, multi-threaded narratives, etc.

Here are some things to think about when deciding on your specific screenplay form:

Short films tend to explore one event or an emotion, yet with great magnitude. They’re tightly focused and, although they do have a narrative arc, may not have obvious or explicit beginnings, middles and ends.Short films can also be more experimental, playing around with shape, style and pace. Because they’re short, they don’t run the risk of losing their audience.Feature films tend to be much bigger in scale – not just length – exploring emotions and themes through various characters and situations. They’re still tightly focused, but have a more expansive narrative and wider palette of characters, worlds, themes and subplots. They can be experimental, but, in the main, tend to follow traditional story structures and audience-friendly styles. Even ‘alternative structures’ are becoming mainstream, no longer feeling experimental and niche.Television series and serials tend to explore greater numbers of central characters in much more depth. Whether told over six, thirteen or twenty-six hours per year, the stories have a greater number of beats (physical and emotional advances) and often weave together many character journeys from the same story world.

Choosing the right form is crucial, both for yourself (developing the idea) and others (pitching the idea). There’s nothing worse than spending weeks or months on an idea for a feature, only to be told that it’s worth about 15 minutes of screen time. Or writing a short film that’s really just a trailer for a feature – setting up lots of dramatic questions and webs of character relationships, rather than saying something meaningful and with a focused cast in the time allotted. It might sound strange, the idea of getting confused between a feature and a short, but it happens a lot. I’ve seen people passionately pitch their feature ideas, only to be told that what they’ve just described as the story will only take about five minutes of screen time. Lots of detail doesn’t mean lots of story – lots of story means lots of story. I’ve also read quite a few short films that just didn’t work in their own right, but did set up a world, a cast of characters and dramatic questions that would make a brilliant feature. Someone listening to such a pitch or reading such a screenplay might not take too kindly to having their time ‘wasted’ by your not having grasped the most basic of points. Something good may come of it – a professional rapport, advice for re-shaping the idea, etc – but that’s only if the person listening or reading is kind. Otherwise, you may have blown your chance.

Watching an array of short films can really help to distinguish between forms. Good short films aren’t always easy to find, but websites like YouTube, Shooting People, The Smalls, the BBC Film Network and Australian Short Films are increasingly showcasing brilliant work. And, of course, short film festivals – a great way to see what’s being made and what works. I recently attended two events at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and saw a collection of original, powerful short films about wartime death, children and immigration, the pressure to please and what it’s like being a drag queen in Cuba. They all worked because their stories suited the form – and they couldn’t have been anything else.

If you’re having trouble finding your form – especially whether or not your idea has enough fuel and appeal to be a feature – you might find some of the structural models offered in Chapter 6 useful. These models, along with the accompanying discussion of them, should give you a better idea of the amount of story and how big a controlling idea you’ll need.

Creative exercise

Using the title Lost and Found, come up with an idea for a short film of five minutes’ duration. Now come up with another idea, using the same title, this time for a short film lasting ten minutes. What’s changed? Is it a new idea, or based on the shorter one? How many more characters have you added? Now come up with an idea for a feature, using the same title. How has this changed? What does it tell you about the parameters of screenplay form?

A FILM ABOUT SCREENWRITING

A useful – and fun – film to watch that explores the nature of screenwriting is Adaptation (scr. Charlie Kaufman & Donald Kaufman, 2002). This is a film about a screenwriter – Charlie Kaufman – and his attempts to adapt a book written by Susan Orlean. It works on so many levels – his attempts to adapt a book that we see her writing, his twin brother’s attempts to also become a screenwriter, the character of screenwriting guru Robert McKee, etc – that, for a screenwriter, it’s actually a great insight into what it’s like to write. The irony of the film is that Charlie’s trying his hardest to get away from the usual structure-driven methods of screenwriting and instead find the theme of the book that he’s trying to adapt – the meaning that can drive the creation of his screenplay. All the while, his brother’s foray into screenwriting is epitomised by everything he’s trying to avoid. Donald talks about inciting incidents and act turning points, and even attends a Robert McKee seminar. There’s a scene that visualises this dilemma – the dilemma of the screenwriter, not just the relationship of these brothers – really well. We see both Charlie and Donald in the same room, reading. But whereas Charlie’s reading the book he’s trying to adapt, The Orchid Thief, Donald’s reading McKee’s book, Story. It’s a nice nod to the screenwriter in the audience.

What’s really interesting about this film is how the energy changes around the end of the second act, linked to the brothers’ preoccupations. As soon as Charlie invites Donald to New York to help him track down Susan, the film becomes much more like a ‘standard’ Hollywood film – everything that Donald epitomises. So, whereas Charlie is seeking help so that he can get the real meaning of the book from Susan, Donald arrives and totally changes the dynamic of what we’re watching. We go from thinking about themes and the inherent problems of the characters to espionage, car chases and, eventually, dramatic deaths. As a screenwriter, then, it’s really interesting to see this shift in the film’s pace and tone, and work out what it means for the character of the screenwriter, Charlie. In one way, Donald’s arrival destroys the story – it turns dark, and two characters get killed. In another way, however, Donald’s arrival helps the story: through the structure now imposed on the characters, both Charlie and Susan – the main protagonists – find their emotional arc, which is what Charlie’s been contemplating from the start. So structure – through the character of Donald – is both a friend and a foe. It moves the story on, but also destroys two of the people in the story. And it’s questions like this, raised through the complex, intertextual layers of the film, that make Adaptation a must-see for any aspiring or working screenwriter.

2. FINDING IDEAS

A good place to start when thinking about ideas for screenplays is to look both outside and inside of yourself. In other words, it’s about considering what’s happening around you (socially, culturally, economically, politically), and what’s happening within you (emotionally, psychologically). When you put these two things together – processing events happening around you into internal thoughts and feelings – you’ve got theme and meaning. Then, when you put all that into screenplay form – characters, world, plot, etc – you’ve got storytelling. And that’s why, as a species, we love stories: because they tell us about the world we live in, and through a lens we understand (the human perspective).

Michael Rabiger’s book, Developing Story Ideas (2005), asks its readers to think about the stories they want – and are able – to tell. In other words, what he’s getting at it is that, as a writer, you should take time to think about what you know and how that might be something that others want to know, too. You might think that you don’t know anything – or at least anything new or different – but that’s simply not true. Of course you know something. And although it might not be radical or different on the surface, it’s new and exciting in that it’s something seen through you – it’s your perspective. Take the following, for example:

LoveHatredForgivenessMarriageFamilyDeath

Your view on, or interpretation of, these things is different to mine. And your partner’s. And your neighbour’s. When you have a conversation about these things – or any things, really – with other people, what you say will be interesting to them. And what they say will be interesting to you – even if you don’t agree with their views. That’s because each and every one of us has an insight that’s interesting to someone else. We all have insights. Therefore, we all have ideas. An elaborate, blow-away plot or a unique, multi-dimensional protagonist can be developed and crafted around an idea. But if the idea isn’t there in the first place, these components will struggle to find intention and meaning.

Creative exercise

Using one of the words from the list above, write a stream-of-conscious monologue (automatic writing) about your views on the subject. Don’t hold back. Just write. Tell yourself what you think about it. Bring in any experiences you have of it. Be as judgemental as you like. When you’ve done that, step away from it and try to boil down your thoughts into a sentence or two. What’s your ‘manifesto’ on the subject? And how might you translate that into a character and a plot?

SOURCING IDEAS

It can be useful – especially if you really can’t find anything to write about – to look around you for story triggers. Hopefully you’ll find something you really want to write about, and so these triggers will be a mere exercise in being creative and trying to come up with good ideas. But you may find that you work better when you’re given the starting point for an idea – the job then being to create characters, themes, a world and a story structure from it. It doesn’t matter where you get your ideas, really – and you’ll probably find that ideas merge, fuse and change all the time. What does matter is that you can begin to work with an idea, and make it something more than it currently is.

Here are some examples of common – and fun – ways of getting ideas for screenplays. Each one is followed by a key consideration, so you can start to hone your skills in sourcing and developing ideas from each:

Newspaper headlines – they can be catchy (‘Text sex pest doesn’t get message’) and emotive (‘Woman loses mother and child in accident’). They usually give you a vague sense of plot, character and tone, and the starting point for a world. What you usually need to develop is theme and structure.Photographs – either personal or from a magazine, TV, website, etc, they can give a strong sense of theme and character. Because they usually depict a real person and/or event, memory comes into play quite strongly. They work well with film because they could be the basis for an actual scene or shot.Objects – pick an object and start writing about it. It could be an object you know, or something you see randomly. Forcing yourself to write about it makes you think about its qualities – personality, use, history, worth, etc. Though a fun exercise, it might actually give you an idea – such as an important object that a character possesses.Eavesdropping – this can be fun, if done properly – and ethically. Listen out for what people are talking about, and how they’re talking about it. It can often give you a really strong sense of character, through attitude and point-of-view. What you’d need to think about is how these ideas turn into a plot – what actually happens to bring this voice out?Music – there’s something really emotive about music, which is a great way of immersing yourself in thinking about the world, and it’s bound to give you ideas. You might use the actual words of a song as fuel for an idea, but it’ll be the emotion created by the score that connects with you. It might give you ideas for themes and worlds, which you can create characters and plots for.History – whether personal or national/global, reading about history can be fruitful. You might find an ‘angle’ that nobody’s explored, like someone’s alternate view of something that happened, or a hidden piece of information. Here, you usually try to find a new character and/or theme – a different perspective on something we already know about.Automatic writing – just writing – with no bounds – forces you to say something, which might eventually morph into a solid idea. Your brain works overtime, frantically trying to make something out of nothing – such as starting each new sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. It might create interesting dramatic combinations you hadn’t considered before.

Whenever you see, hear or feel a story, keep it tucked away somewhere. You might want to come back to it another day, either as the starting point for a new story, or to inject into something you’re already writing. You might also find yourself in a situation where you’re being asked for your next idea – by a producer, for example – so it’s always worth having a bank of them somewhere. You might even work these ideas up to synopsis or outline stage, just in case – see Chapters 3 and 12 for further details.

WHAT’S IN AN IDEA?

An idea is only an idea when it’s got a future – when it’s got the potential to go somewhere. Otherwise, it’s just a fact – just a ‘thing’. An idea suggests intention – something that resides in the ‘thing’ that’s got the potential to become something else. In our case, it’s a musing about a character or a plot or a theme or a world that will eventually become a screenplay. Because our ideas are intended for other people – an audience – they need to have something that’s going to be of interest, and going to connect with them. Sometimes this is clear from the start. At other times, it’s going to take the advice of someone in the development process to help you. Either way, your idea needs to have something appealing in it that will warrant the film being made. And a good thing to consider here is its universal appeal. In other words, what’s in your idea that others are going to want to hear about, and possibly share? How will your screenplay create an emotional connection with its intended audience? Or, to use a well-worn phrase, how is art going to imitate life?

This is where it’s useful to ask, what’s in the zeitgeist? What are people talking about at the minute? What are society’s concerns? These are useful questions to ask because, essentially, you’re trying to reach out to people’s emotions and get them to see what you’re trying to say. Even in comedy, which might not be emotional in its appeal, there’s a sense that something’s funny in context. In other words, people laugh at the jokes because they mean something in relation to what they know. Satire and parody are obvious forms of comedy here – the laughs coming from a point of comparison between the joke and the context (political, social, cultural, etc). Ideas also have to work for the world and the characters of your screenplay – their zeitgeist. What’s being explored in your story might not necessarily tap into the specific consciousness of the people you’re writing for – though, arguably, it should certainly tap into their emotions – but it should tap into the consciousness of the people you’re writing about. This makes your screenplay feel real and true.

Films can easily fall down because they don’t feel relevant to our world or the characters’ world. Weekend (scr. Andrew Haigh, 2011) is an example of such a film – although its execution was strong, with great performances and some wonderful dialogue, thematically it’s very dated. The world it’s trying to convey – a contemporary Britain that still has major hang-ups about homosexuality – just doesn’t feel true. Worse still, the central character of Glen feels like he belongs in the 1970s, not the second decade of the twenty-first century. His entire arc centres around a deep need to prove to the world that gay people can live normal lives – a need so profound that he moves to America where he can be free and accepted. But it just doesn’t feel right. It jars, emotionally, because it feels like a world that no longer exists. Similarly, Any Questions For Ben (scr. Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner & Rob Sitch, 2012) feels really inappropriate for its characters. The film explores ideas of self-worth, social value and missed chances – all of which would suit a mid-life crisis type of situation. But the protagonist, Ben, is 27, and practically all of his friends are around the same age. What’s worse is that Ben declares his love for Alex, telling her that he regrets never getting to know her at university, and how he remembers watching her in the canteen in between lectures, and how he was enamoured of her. But because, at 27, he’s likely to have left university only five or six years before, it feels very contrived and convenient rather than credible and true. If the central characters were shaped around the film’s core themes, making the world of the story much more believable, then the film might have been much more successful – critically and commercially. So it’s really important when developing an idea to allow time for the story to find its own shape and a voice that speaks both to its audience and its characters.

KNOWING WHEN AN IDEA’S READY

The more you can let an idea gestate, the stronger it’s likely to be. Sometimes we make quick judgements and decisions, but it’s only when we let them brew for a while and come back to them that they find their own way and, in screenwriting, feel more original and true. So if you can let an idea breathe and morph, you might feel happier with what you’re writing.