The writer's room: Screenwriting apprentice no more

Of all the names my co-writer could've chosen for his blog, he chose Screenwriting apprentice. I told him I didn't like the name. It reminds me of a guy I went out with awhile ago who is pursuing acting. He was excited about an acting class assignment: choose a character, then create and perform a scene which would be taped. I imagined him as a coach whose team was being crushed; in his scene he would give a speech so inspiring that the audience feeling the power in his performance, would know the outcome of the game even before the team returned to the field. Instead he chose to play the role of a man pleading with his wealthy uncle, whom he'd have to convince to let him reach his goal.

My cowriter kept the name. "We're collaborating," he said. The story would be inspired by a story which appeared in national and international media many years ago. Though my cowriter has a special interest in the story, family and friends are familiar with the events; it also has its own Wikipedia entry. Working almost every day during the lunch hour we finished preparing and then co-writing the screenplay in about 11 weeks.

We've continued meeting at lunch, and are following Frank Wuliger's advice to MFA screenwriting students in his business of writing course at USC: write two screenplays each year.

We're becoming acquainted with the characters in our next story, discovering their strengths and weaknesses; we know what our protagonist wants and what she needs. We've decided how we're going to approach the story. It's going well and it's almost time for me to write the short story that will become the screenplay.

Before continuing to work on the project I wanted to know what my cowriter had learned. The 11 weeks spent writing the screenplay was unlike taking classes; each minute spent on one project instead of a few minutes once a week for the semester. The learning curve was incredible but I wanted to know where we were starting from; repeating anything we'd covered would have been exhausting (energy draining).

So one morning a couple of weeks ago I said: "Today at lunch I'm going to sit back and listen. I'm not going to say anything; I want to know everything you've learned about screenwriting."

I took a notebook into the small glass-walled meeting room we've nicknamed the writer's room and I listened.

He began by saying that he had thought about what he had learned and had talked about it with a friend. "Screenwriting is like no other writing I've tried," he began. And then, for the next hour I took notes.

He talked about structure and the three acts. The importance of establishing the world the characters live in. How good screenwriting shows lives being changed (polarity). Learning how to grab peoples' attention and how to pull them into the story. And then one of my favorite topics, one that took me several years to figure out: "The screenwriter must make the audience lose track of time; forget everything that's happening outside of the theatre." He also spoke about how hard it is to create the story and how, when well-written, following the story is like a game for the audience. He is intrigued by how the tone of the story changes with the characters' dialogue, and how well-placed one-liners can make the audience laugh and can make them think.

He talked about how watching the story unfold can totally captivate the audience. He mentioned that he is now watching movies and studying them for their structure. He finds it fascinating to see how a story like Argo captures events well-known by people who lived during the time the events occurred; and that introducing the story to new generations can pull them into history.

He talked about respecting the various characters (and he named the characters we had used and created). He spoke about the multiple layers of stories that are interwoven—there's no doubt what the main story is yet each of the supporting stories sheds deeper light on the main, controversial theme; while each minor story is just as satisfying as the main story. The supporting characters are so interesting and their dilemmas are so intriguing that each person who watches the movie will come away having experienced a completely different movie.

He wants the characters to be so compelling that the audience feels as if they have made a friend by the time the movie ends. Finally, he talked about the importance of being able to market the story and how to identify a story worth telling.

He said there were times when we had divided up scenes to draft pages. He had worked for hours on his scenes and when I hadn't been excited about parts of the scene, he had wanted to keep what he had written. Instead he had decided to listen and see where it would go and those were some of the times he had learned the most.

Perhaps what's the most fun is that each story (and screenplay) is unlike any other. For a long time I didn't think I could do it on my own and so I kept signing up for more classes. I'd arrive early and stay late, and there were many gems faculty shared that I heard only one time though I've known many of them for years.

I never thought the octopus I'd been struggling with each time I opened a screenplay-in-progress would be tamed. But as lunch hour ended and my cowriter, using words from his own experience, talking about what he has learned while working on his first screenplay I realized I am ready, and so is he. Much gratitude to the many USC professors and mentors who love storytelling. I am convinced: they are the most patient people on earth.