Category: Writing Workshop

Scriptwriting Tips October

For all the busy nanowriters out there, here’s a best-of for October at Scriptwriting Tips. Whether you’re writing comedy or horror, there’s something here for you. Hope they help you push forward!

421: For god’s sake, don’t throw away/delete your original notes, no matter how much your idea may have changed. You’ll need them for when you get halfway through the script and realize you have no idea why you were ever interested in this concept.

422: If you can’t explain your screenplay idea to somebody in a casual conversation, you don’t actually have a screenplay idea. What you probably have is a setting, a character or a cool theme — now take it to the next level.

423: If you’re going to break the rules, do it in spectacular fashion. That way it’s obvious that you’re breaking the rules, not ignorant of them.

424: Better to outline too many scenes, characters and subplots than to run out of material in the middle of Act Two. Think of it as scouting out the terrain before taking the best route.

427: Your unique point of view is your most valuable asset as a writer… assuming your unique point of view is interesting.

428: Don’t open a story by having everything that could possibly go wrong happen to your protagonist (husband leaves her, fired from job, dog runs away, etc.). Pick one thing — the one that hurts the most.

432: Jokes can’t save a scene that’s not advancing the plot or affecting the protagonist. Comedy should never be the entire point of a scene.

433: Your screenplay is not about what happens. It’s about who it happens to.

434: You have to truly, deeply, unconditionally believe in your premise. That process starts with being able to sum it up in one or two sentences.

Guest 4: Nothing breaks immersion quite like a character saying, “This isn’t the movies, this is the real world” or “This always works in the movies”. As soon as you do, we remember we’re watching a movie.

Guest 6: Male writers, is getting into the mind of a woman really THAT much harder than getting into the mind of a psychopathic criminal with no qualms about killing? Women would like to be the hero once in a while, too.

Guest 7: Please actually hang out with or talk to minorities before you put them in your screenplay. We can tell when everything you know about us comes from glances and snippets of conversation you hear at the checkout line.

Guest 8: Audiences like thinking they’ve got it all figured out. So give them an “I knew it!” moment…. then pull the rug out from under them.

436: When you’re writing horror, dread is your friend. What’s dread? It’s the man in the mask. It’s the closed door at the end of the hallway. It’s what’s waiting for us when we turn on the lights. A sense of something horrible that can’t be avoided, only delayed.

Write!

And stop messing around.


Procrastination from ism studios on Vimeo.

NaNoWriMo 2010

I’ve mentioned it before so I won’t explain it again: NaNoWriMo is here, beginning next Monday, November 1st.

Do you dare write a novel in 30 days? It’s worth trying!

I’m not doing it this year because I’m busy with several projects, one of which is, precisely, revising mi nanowrimo 2006 for publication, because -yes- the thing I poured in a rush, after long revisions, seems ready for publication. I hope. At most, I may try to write the second season of Mrs. Carrington in a month. That would be a challenge too.

but don’t let my stories distract you, focus on your own story. Improvise. Unplug the router. Turn off the TV. Those episodes of Glee and Fringe will still be there in four weeks, there’s no hurry. A sandwich will do. Type.

You’re not alone, the whole NaNoWriMo community is feeling the same and they are more then a hundred thousand people. One made the NaNoWriMo report card to help you visualize where you are and how much there’s left. Others draw funny calendars. Some buy AlphaSmarts to write anywhere, even I am considering getting one – donations accepted. It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter what – the question is how much. Come on, you’ve been reading stuff like this for years now, write the damn novel once and for all.


(Español) Podcast sobre manga en España

Of human bondage

W. Somerset Maugham

Yesterday we posed a question: Which is the best chosen word in this line?

Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great distance.

It’s not the verb, “was”, as it doesn’t express action but merely introduces the attribute. It might be “voice”, which is the noun that the sentence describes, or “weak”, which is its main feature. It might even be “distance”, a noun that evokes the weakness even better than the adjective can. All the words in the sentence are common, simple. Any reader will understand them.

But the best chosen word is “already”. The moment I read those seven letters, I knew that the kid’s mother was dying.

Imagine the line without that word. It becomes a correct description with no additional meaning. It is the “already” that places us in context by telling us so much with so little.

I noted the lesson and decided I had to share it with you.

The precise word

I’d like to present you today with a good example of the simple, precise prose to which we always aspire. And with the example, an exercise.

Last night I started reading “Of Human Bondage” by W. Somerset Maugham. On the first page, a maid takes a sleepy child in her arms to his mother’s bed. The mother greets him. Maugham writes:

Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great distance.

Exercise: Which is, in your opinion, the best chosen word in this line? My answer, tomorrow.

(Español) Cedo la palabra