Keep a Light, Hopeful Heart. But Expect The Worst.

ONE OF THE THINGS I worry about (among soooo many) is what the proliferation of blogs & books & software & contests have done to the modern wannabe screenwriter.

Forgive me for a "back in the day" thing -- especially since my BITD isn't that far in the past. But I was fortunate enough to start writing longhand and in the age of the typewriter (which did shape your attitude toward words differently; they felt more permanent when erasing them was so...difficult) and certainly in the age before the rise of the Screenwriting blog. I daresay that my friend Alex's was the first writing blog I ever read, a month or two before I found John August.

I looked for a bit of validation on the contest front at the beginning of my career; we all do. But most of them are scams or wastes of time -- at best, diversions, at worst, closed harbors designed to trap you into venerating your own self-regard & masturbatory tendencies.

And with very, very few exceptions, I think screenwriting books suffer the same problems.

What feeds good writing is reading. And finishing bad scripts, and maybe exposing your slightly less-bad scripts. I did this in theatre before I started making money writing for TV. I still believe, honestly, that one of the main reasons why I stopped writing plays was that I had too much respect for the people who were really good at that form.  I remain an avid reader of plays, always.

In any case, it always comes back to the same three things:  1) writers finish stuff, 2) they know that it's okay to fail and 3) they do not motivate themselves exclusively through dollar signs.

All of that tenacity was kind of hinted at in the before-time, when it was harder to find info or interviews with screenwriters; where to most people writing a screenwriter & getting a response would be roughly akin to getting a personal response from Rocky the Squirrel or Elmer Fudd.

There's a certain cohort today -- and this always shocks me -- who want to be spoonfed to the extent that they think a writer should answer any question they email them in a timely fashion -- even if, you know, that question is answered in lots of places on the blog that supposedly sparked the person to write to that writer in the first place.

I mean, if you can't read, how can one expect you to have the stamina to live through 1) and 2)?

So it's with a bit of mixed emotion that I recommend a fascinating collection of advice on writing I've pored through in five mintue increments over the last couple of days.

It started from a few Twitter links, which led me to a Salon article by Lauren Miller. Miller was riffing off a special at Guardian Unlimited, celebrating Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for writing fiction. (And is there any more hilarious evocation of the perils of the modern proctrastophere than that last sentence?)

Anyway, the Guardian approached a bunch of Fiction writers, including Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Neil Gaiman & others for their own lists. And though they're mostly talking about writing novels, I actually think the once-removed status of the advice makes it just as trenchant for screenwriters.

Here are a few random pieces from some of the different lists:

6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

4 Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

8 Don't wish ill on your colleagues.

6 Don't drink and write at the same time.

5 Don't wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key.

6 Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

7 No one has ever achieved consistency as a screenwriter.

4 Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn't matter that much.

5 You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.

5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6 Take no notice of anyone you don't respect.

7 If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.

Of course, the craft wonk in me marvels and wonders at the possible significance at the fact that most of the advice I find most compelling, each writer has chosen to place in the middle of their lists. (Second act problems, maybe?)

But I also encourage readers to take a long look for some unexpected insight at Laura Miller's list at Salon.com. There's one entry that particularly caught my eye:

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting. Of course all these elements are interlinked, and in the best fiction they all contribute to and enhance each other. But if you were to eliminate these elements, starting at the end of the list and moving toward the beginning, you could still end up with a novel that lots of people wanted to read; the average mass-market thriller is nothing but story. If you sacrifice these elements starting from the beginning of the list, you will instead wind up with a sliver of arty experimentation that, if you're very, very good, a handful of other people might someday read and admire. There's honor in that, but it's daft to write something with the deliberate intention of denying readers what they love and want and then to be heartbroken when they aren't interested. If you want to engage with more than a tiny coterie, take storytelling seriously; if you think that's incompatible with art, you are in the wrong line of work.

I think this is one of those elemental truths of writing. But what struck me most about this -- and longtime readers of the blog, you can probably see this coming -- is how often in a development meeting at Canadian networks or production companies, you have to deal with notes that work the back end of the list.  You get a lot of talk from Telefilm or this Exec or that about Character, an awful lot about theme, and what you're "saying," and very, very, very little about story. And so often, we get highly celebrated Canadian films or TV shows where the story comes last.  Coincidentally, story is the hardest thing for non-writers to talk intelligently about -- because it relies heaviest on the boring part of writing: the craft.

The funny thing about good writing about writing? Every once in a while, there's a break in the clouds of solipsism and you get to see the plain laid out starkly before you.

Ah well. Back to Webisodes & Project#2.