Writer's Group: Your Script Family – The Script Lab

Writer's Group: Your Script Family – The Script Lab

Deadlines!

There’s nothing better than a deadline to get a writer to kick some screenplay butt, and if you’re like most script scribes (A-list writers working on assignments for major studio pictures not included), it’s hard to stay on track for self-imposed deadlines. Three months become six months, which turn into a year, and you’re still not finished with the stinking first draft! Not to mention, once you do finish, you must embark on the arduous task of getting feedback.

So, what’s the solution? Create a writer’s group. Six members is ideal, both men and women. If you meet once a month, you’ll present new material twice a year: that’s two features! Not too shabby. You’ll also read ten original spec scripts a year, providing critical feedback each time.

This is no hollow exercise, because you can often learn more about screenwriting by helping others solve their script problems, and those lessons taught will be parlayed into better writing of your own.

If you’re straight out of film school, putting together a group is easy. If not, use craigslist, social networking, or any platform really to make it happen. Virtual groups are okay (which may be the only option for the geographically isolated writer), but the best option is to find writers in the same local area, so you can literally sit down together and workshop.

Your Hero: Top Ten Rules – The Script Lab

The most important character in your screenplay is your protagonist: your hero. It's her story. We hope and fear for her. She' the interesting somebody who wants something badly and is having trouble getting it. Without your hero, there is no story. But when creating that unforgettable protagonist, you must know the whole package - the entire iceberg - which is no easy task, but follow these Ten Key Rules and you'll sculpt a hero that breaks the mold.

1. You must create an interesting protagonist, one that your audience will want to watch, hope, and fear for.

2. We don’t have to feel sympathetic toward him/her (although it is a great help), but we must at the very least feel empathy.

3. We love to see characters acting bravely, so it is not only what the character is trying to accomplish that makes us cheer for him or her, but it’s the lengths he/she is willing to go to get it. Make sure the lengths are far. We want a journey. 

4. Know your main character. His/her dreams, wants, desires must be there on page one. Ask how we identify with, relate to, or are fascinated with him/her. 

5. A central character cannot exist without conflict. Make sure you have enough obstacles (internal and external) that your character must face.

6. Your main character must have a weakness (hopefully many). They are often oblivious of these weaknesses, or in denial, or constantly trying to hide from themselves. 

7. Attack your main character at his/her weakest spot, and he/she will show things about him/herself that he/she doesn’t want to reveal. 

8. Your main character should not be aware of the full dimensions of the theme at the beginning of the story, but he/she will learn. 

9. Think of your main character unfavorably. This will make them believable and more human. 

10. Change. Make sure your characters learn as they go. How does he change? What does she learn? How is he/she becoming someone different.

Voice over narration

“God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you! That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.” So says screenwriting guru Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox) in Adaptation.

I agree… almost.

If you’re just starting out, yes: avoid voice-over in all circumstances. You must first learn how to write an effective screenplay without V.O. before you can understand how to use it successfully. Film is a visual medium, and it’s the screenwriter’s job to show the story, not simply tell it through narration.

It would be unfair, however, to say V.O. is never a useful tool, but the beginning screenwriter is not skilled enough to know how to use it effectively, and the probability of forcing us through the story with unnecessary or jolting narration is high.

The skilled screenwriter, on the other hand, can craft wonders when executing V.O. properly. Consider William Holden’s cynical, beyond the grave narration in Sunset Boulevard, Morgan Freeman’s smooth and harmonious tone in The Shawshank Redemption, Robert De Niro’s increasingly disturbed mind in Taxi Driver, or Edward Norton’s razor-edge delivery in Fight Club. These films are great examples of exemplary voice-over use because the writers are careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Rookie mistake.

When using V.O., it’s paramount that you create layers and let the audience add it up.

Script Tip: Voice Over Narration

VOICE OVER
c 2005 by William C. Martell
You may have noticed that SIN CITY has voice over narration. It fits the film's pulpy roots - the old Film Noirs of the 1940s and Roman Noirs of the 1930s and 1940s. Tough guy stuff. But wait - isn't Voice Over Narration one of the two big no-nos in screenwriting? Shouldn't someone from the Film Police take Robert Rodriguez out and shoot him? Shouldn't he at least be kicked out of Hollywood (or Austin)?
The reason why everyone says "Never use flashbacks or voice over narration" is that most of the time they are used wrong. 95% of the scripts they read with flashbacks and voice over narration suck because

the writer used both techniques to plug plot holes with a big chunk of verbal or visual exposition. The problem is, some of the greatets movies ever made have voice over - what would SUNSET BLVD be like without that "typical monkey funeral" narration?
One of my all time favorite undiscover flicks, PULP starring Michael Caine, uses voice over narration. It's about a novelist who writes tough guy action books, who takes a job writing the memoirs of a real mobster... and the narration is pure tough guy pulp - all of the cliches. What makes the film funny is that the tough guy narration is at counterpoint to the reality of the wimpy novelist. Like every other bookworm, he's not exactly an action hero. Often the narration describes him beating the heck out of the bad guys, while the picture shows the bad guys beating the heck out of the hero! And that's where the much of film's humor comes from. To remove the narration would remove much of the humor and kill the film! The story would still work,

it just wouldn't be *funny*. The resulting film would be a semi-serious

movie about a writer who gets in over his head with the mob... and a mob hit man - the late, great Al Letari dressed as a nun - is tracking him down.
So - is voice over a good thing or a bad thing? If Billy Wilder can use

it in classics like SUNSET BLVD and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, why can't the rest of us? Is it something that only working pros can use? Or must we give up our DGA & WGA cards and move to Texas if we want to use VO narration?
It's easier for some Guru to say "Never use voice over narration" than it is to explain WHY you shouldn't use voice over in most cases but SHOULD use voice over in other cases. This is complicated, may be difficult to understand at first, but here goes:
1) Voice Over and Flash Backs are STYLES - that is, they don't just pop

up here and there in the story. The entire story uses flashbacks or voice over. SUNSET BLVD is a narrated movie - the whole thing has a voice over. Same with THE OPPOSITE OF SEX. The voice over doesn't just pop up in the middle of the film. Look at any of those great films that

use voice over narration and you'll note that the *whole film* is narrated. One of the indicators that VO is being used to plug a plot hole is when it only pops up here and there - right where the plot holes are. Hmm, that's kind of suspicious! If you find yourself only needing the narration here and there, you are probably using it for evil rather than good and you should probably just get rid of it.
2) Voice Over isn't used to tell the story, it's used to comment on the

story already being told through actions and dialogue. Remember, film is a *visual* medium. That doesn't mean dialogue is unimportant. But if

you aren't using the picture part to tell the story, you're wasting film. You don't want a big chunk of narrative exposition telling your story, you want the audience to *experience* your story through what the characters SAY and DO. If the narration is telling us the story, what makes it a movie? Why don't you just stand in front of an audience

and *read* the narration? Skip the whole film thing. Moving pictures are stories told through *moving pictures*. Don't tell us with the narration, show us - let us see and hear what happens.
3) You should be able to remove Voice Over Narration and the entirescript still makes perfect sense. We still understand every character's
motivations, we still understand the connections and relationships between characters, we still understand what happens. The script doesn't *need* the voice over narration - you aren't using it as a crutch or to cover up story problems. Narration is often mis-used as a way to get inside a character's head - it's thought balloons. The problem with using narration to get inside a character's head is that it isn't *visceral* - it's intellectual. Words have to be processed by the audience - we have to convert the words into feelings.

They aren't actual feelings. If I show you a man kicking a puppy, *you* create the feelings yourself. *You* experience the feelings. No processiong required. So you want to find ways to convert thoughts and feelings into *experiences* rather than just have the character tell you about them. Make the story FIRST HAND instead of something related verbally. You want to make sure you are using the narration for the right reasons. If you're using narration to hide lazy writing, you're better off just getting rid of it.

If you *can't* get rid of the narration and

still have a script that works, your script doesn't work... fix the danged script!
4) Voice over is never used to plug plot holes... One of the reasonswhy Voice Over Narration has a bad name is that it's often used to "fix" screwed up films. When they used to have a film where the story didn't make any sense, or they had to chop a half hour out of the middle of he story for running time, or the film had some other big problem; the studio would try to fix it with narration. They were plugging holes. So Voice Over Narration became one of those signs thaat

a movie sucked, along with no critic screenings and the words "Starring

Ben Affleck". Though so many *great* films use narration, there are probably many many more bad ones that do. So when a producer sees narration in your script they may worry the narration might be seen as a negative. Why buy a script with a negative element?
5) Voice Over adds an ADDITIONAL LAYER to the story. Think of it as the

icing on the cake. It's not the cake. You can eat the cake without the icing, but it's even better *with* the icing.
6) Voice Over is often used with book ended stories - where we beginafter the story is over and flash back to the story in progress. AMERICAN BEAUTY does this very well. Again - you could remove the Voice

Over from AMERICAN BEAUTY and the story would still make perfect sense.. We just wouldn't have Lester's funny commentary on the story. Same thing with PULP: we'd still get the whole story of novelist Michael Caine writing a gangster's tell-all biography and meeting up with other mosbeters who would rather he not *tell all*, but we'd miss the comedy that comes from the contrast between the tough guy Caine imagines himself as, and the wimpy writer he really is. SUNSET BLVD would work perfectly... but we wouldn't get William Holden's sarcastic commentary on the film biz. That commentary is an additional layer - it's icing on the cake.
7) Your Voice Over better be damned funny... who wants a cake spoiledby crappy icing? If the Voice Over doesn't make an already great script

even better, it's best to just leave it out. If the narration isn't making a great story even better, it's just taking up space, isn't it? Because Voice Over is never REQUIRED TO TELL THE STORY a Voice Over that doesn't really kick ass is adding weakness to a perfectly good story. It will drag your whole script down! So make sure your narration

*rocks*! Make sure it's as good as Billy Wilder's narration in SUNSET BLVD. If it isn't as good as Wilder's - get rid of it!
Voice Over Narration isn't evil. It can be used by new screenwriters as

well as old pros. The problem is, narration can be used for good or for

evil. Using it the wrong way makes your script suck really bad - and we

don't want that. So use it with caution. Make sure you are using voice over narration for the right reasons - to add that additional layer to your script. Don't give in to the dark side!
For more script tips:
http://www.ScriptSecrets.Net
1) What is the best use of VO Narration in a film?
2) What is the worst use?
3) What are exceptions - movies that have VO Narration that addsnothing, but plugs plot holes... and works?

King Hussein Son of Talal - Father of all the Jordanians الملك الحسين بن طلال - والد كل الاردنيين

نُــــحِبُهُ

لأنه السطر الجميل في صفحاتنا

ونكتب إسمَه على راياتنا

فليبقى احلى امنياتنا

وحبنا الجميل في حياتنا

k

رحمك الله يا مولاي ولا يمكنني القول إلا ان اسمك محفورٌ في قلبي ما حييت

The art of listening

It is through this creative process
that we at once love and are loved

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.

This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.
______________________________________________________
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice?
Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly
what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest,
least censorious, least bossy people you know.______________________________________________________

Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.

When we listen to people there is an alternating current that recharges us so we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.

Now, there are brilliant people who cannot listen much. They have no ingoing wires on their apparatus. They are entertaining, but exhausting, too.

I think it is because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let this little creative fountain inside us begin to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. That is why, when someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted.

When people listen, creative waters flow

Now this little creative fountain is in us all. It is the spirit, or the intelligence, or the imagination - whatever you want to call it. If you are very tired, strained, have no solitude, run too many errands, talk to too many people, drink too many cocktails, this little fountain is muddied over and covered with a lot of debris. The result is you stop living from the center, the creative fountain, and you live from the periphery, from externals. That is, you go along on mere willpower without imagination.

It is when people really listen to us, with quiet, fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.

I discovered all this about three years ago, and truly it made a revolutionary change in my life. Before that, when I went to a party, I would think anxiously: "Now try hard. Be lively. Say bright things. Talk. Don't let down." And when tired, I would have to drink a lot of coffee to keep this up.

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk; to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject.

Sometimes, of course, I cannot listen as well as others. But when I have this listening power, people crowd around and their heads keep turning to me as though irresistibly pulled. By listening I have started up their creative fountain. I do them good.

Now why does it do them good? I have a kind of mystical notion about this. I think it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come.

It is so in writing. You are taught in school to put down on paper only the bright things. Wrong. Pour out the dull things on paper too - you can tear them up afterward - for only then do the bright ones come.

If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.

Women listen better

I think women have this listening faculty more than men. It is not the fault of men. They lose it because of their long habit of striving in business, of self-assertion. And the more forceful men are, the less they can listen as they grow older. And that is why women in general are more fun than men, more restful and inspiriting.

Now this non-listening of able men is the cause of one of the saddest things in the world - the loneliness of fathers, of those quietly sad men who move along with their grown children like remote ghosts.

When my father was over 70, he was a fiery, humorous, admirable man, a scholar, a man of great force. But he was deep in the loneliness of old age and another generation. He was so fond of me. But he could not hear me - not one word I said, really. I was just audience. I would walk around the lake with him on a beautiful afternoon and he would talk to me about Darwin and Huxley and higher criticism of the Bible.

"Yes, I see, I see," I kept saying and tried to keep my mind pinned to it, but I was restive and bored. There was a feeling of helplessness because he could not hear what I had to say about it. When I spoke I found myself shouting, as one does to a foreigner, and in a kind of despair that he could not hear me. After the walk I would feel that I had worked off my duty and I was anxious to get him settled and reading in his Morris chair, so that I could go out and have a livelier time with other people. And he would sigh and look after me absentmindedly with perplexed loneliness.

For years afterward I have thought with real suffering about my father's loneliness. Such a wonderful man, and reaching out to me and wanting to know me! But he could not. He could not listen. But now I think that if only I had known as much about listening then as I do now, I could have bridged the chasm between us. To give an example:

Recently, a man I had not seen for 20 years wrote me. He was an unusually forceful man and had made a great deal of money. But he had lost his ability to listen. He talked rapidly and told wonderful stories and it was just fascinating to hear them. But when I spoke - restlessness: "Just hand me that, will you? ... Where is my pipe?" It was just a habit. He read countless books and was eager to take in ideas, but he just could not listen to people.

Patient listening

Well, this is what I did. I was more patient - I did not resist his non-listening talk as I did my father's. I listened and listened to him, not once pressing against him, even in thought, with my own self-assertion.

I said to myself: "He has been under a driving pressure for years. His family has grown to resist his talk. But now, by listening, I will pull it all out of him. He must talk freely and on and on. When he has been really listened to enough, he will grow tranquil. He will begin to want to hear me."

And he did, after a few days. He began asking me questions. And presently I was saying gently:

"You see, it has become hard for you to listen."

He stopped dead and stared at me. And it was because I had listened with such complete, absorbed, uncritical sympathy, without one flaw of boredom or impatience, that he now believed and trusted me, although he did not know this.

"Now talk," he said. "Tell me about that. Tell me all about that."

Well, we walked back and forth across the lawn and I told him my ideas about it.

"You love your children, but probably don't let them in. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is."

Well, I don't think I would have written this article if my notions had not had such an extraordinary effect on this man. For he says they have changed his whole life. He wrote me that his children at once came closer; he was astonished to see what they are; how original, independent, courageous. His wife seemed really to care about him again, and they were actually talking about all kinds of things and making each other laugh.

Family tragedies

For just as the tragedy of parents and children is not listening, so it is of husbands and wives. If they disagree they begin to shout louder and louder - if not actually, at least inwardly - hanging fiercely and deafly onto their own ideas, instead of listening and becoming quieter and more comprehending.

But the most serious result of not listening is that worst thing in the world, boredom; for it is really the death of love. It seals people off from each other more than any other thing.

Now, how to listen. It is harder than you think. Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad- tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

In order to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Sometimes say to yourself: "Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word." Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but also what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole.

Then watch your self-assertiveness. And give it up. Remember, it is not enough just to will to listen to people. One must really listen. Only then does the magic begin.
______________________________________________________We should all know this: that listening, not talking,
is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.
And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic
than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and
does more good.______________________________________________________

We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.

Source: http://traubman.igc.org/listenof.htm