Day 22: Roadmap into the industry (What I learned from Jackie Chan)

When I started this blog, I posted notes taken during hours of screenwriting courses, and lists of information. The content was good but the posts were as boring to read as a how-to manual.

For me, the fun of learning doesn't come from reading an Avid editing book; it happens when someone familiar with the program sits beside me and shows how to adjust the audio; explains how to corrects the mistakes I've made, showing me the many ways to place the various clips together. It's a shared experience and it's exciting as the story becomes more powerful.

While sitting in class for three or four hours, I'd hear or see something that would change my writing forever. That's what I've been writing about recently. Remembering and sharing those moments has made creating these posts much more fun.

Last year, when I was taking Ron Friedman's beginning screenwriting course in the School of Cinematic Arts, a student wrote: "The camera pauses on the scene for 15 seconds." Though including camera directions in a screenplay is a no-no, Ron didn't leave it at that. "You need to understand what time in screenwriting really means," he said. "During 15 seconds onscreen, Jackie Chan could defeat 28 opponents and play a game of chess with his toes."

It was the first time I'd thought about the importance of pacing in a story, and what time feels like as the story unfolds. It was something I hadn't thought about until a student's writing created a teachable moment for the entire class.

In an introductory playwrighting course taught by Lee Wochner, I wrote a play inspired by a sandwich shop in the Napa Valley. I wrote that one of the characters takes a pickle jar out of the refrigerator and places it on a counter. Lee was all over that--"...deli-style pickles, think about the container. How could one person carry a jar that size?" In playwrighting, physical distance (how far a character must walk across the stage as their action takes place) is important; how big objects are. The writing must be precise as the actors physically must be able to accomplish what the play asks them to do.

These are some of the details that are essential to remember while writing. Yet because there are so many other rules to keep in mind, details like these might not make sense if I read them in a writing textbook. They're the gems that came alive for me with a gifted mentor in the room patiently observing, using the students' works-in-progress that they shared in class, to teach.

I crave these moments...an opportunity to form a writing group, perhaps?

NOTE: These entries are inspired by the final assignment for The Business of Writing for Screen and Television, a School of Cinematic Arts' course taught by Frank Wuliger. Hoping to help his students become working screenwriters, he asked us to create a personal, five-year road map into the industry.