A love letter to storytellers

I'm thinking about my mentor tonight.

I took two classes from Irvin Kershner, and a scholarship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation made it possible for me to complete an internship with him. He was generous with his time--in fact he once gave me an assignment that he had designed after pondering for a day how best to help me learn to tell a story in screenplay form.

I remember Kersh pausing during a lecture to ask passionately, "Have any of you seen someone die? Have you felt what it's like to not have enough to eat? How can you tell a story if you haven't experienced life?"

I often wish I could call him and stop by to ask his thoughts about what has happened to Star Wars (he directed "Empire Strikes Back") and about the consolidation of entertainment companies resulting in fewer original stories being told.

I read a quote recently about how, without stories, each new day would meld into the next without meaning. There is much we are losing as fewer original stories are developed and shared.

The problem of noise

I work across the street from a building site; live construction feeds of the site can be seen here.

For almost two years I'd glance out my office window and see construction workers guide immense pieces of the building hanging from cranes, into place. Some of them had worked on casinos in Las Vegas and when it was no longer needed, specialized machinery from the site was transported to a construction site at a NFL stadium that was being built.

For more than a year, construction sounds as 25,000 tons of steel became a building were part of my daily life. While sound levels every day were loud, most of the sounds I heard didn't bother me. Once in awhile, however, I'd hear a new sound -- a piece of machinery or a straining engine -- that would catch my attention, making it hard to concentrate.

The construction sounds were just as out of my control as the constant stream of content that is published on every platform and on every device.

A few weeks ago I joined the local community garden. Gardening supplies in local stores had been removed from shelves after 75 percent off sales shelves that had previously held potting soil and planters had been replaced by back-to-school supplies.

While friends said it was futile to plant seeds in a mini heat wave, in late summer in the desert, tiny makes shown climate and growing zones on the back of watermelon and cucumber, chard and basil packets said that the seeds could be sown in August and September.

Even if no seeds had germinated, having time away from cell phones, tablets and endless streams of content would have been worth it.

Green bean vines, watermelon and cucumber seeds sprouted and just as quickly aphids began munching on tender new leaves. Yesterday as I stopped by to water I wondered if the plants would survive. Garden rules do not allow the us of pesticides. I paused to examine the underside of a leaf and was surprised and thrilled to see a bright red, shiny ladybug doing her job. The small drama was an amazing gift. Delight!

While I've spent a couple of sleepless nights thinking about the entertainment industry and how difficult storytelling is, I will sleep well tonight. Storylines are also beginning to spontaneously pop into my thoughts.

The disheartening reports about the entertainment industry will continue be pushed to all available platforms. Motivated by the desire to capture the depth of humanity and create meaning, storytellers can benefit from disconnecting, and not just for a weekend or the duration of a writers' retreat.

Create. The world is waiting.

storytelling, inspiration, film, creative writing, entertainment industry

The writers room weeks 6-7-8: "Writing better dialogue"

It's late Friday afternoon, end of week eight working on the screenplay my co-writer and I are planning to enter into the 2013 Nicholl Fellowship competition, I believe.

Clicking on a link to an Onion article, "Find the one thing you're most passionate about, then do it on nights and weekends for the rest of your life," has made me feel much better about not updating the blog sooner. Here's the link: onion.com/11YVZeN

In spite of the painful truth highlighted in the Onion feature, my friend and I are making progress on our screenplay. We're working on every day at lunch and some Friday afternoons. with four-and-a-half weeks left we're determined to finish before the May 1 Nicholl deadline.

Here's this week's writing lesson (Writing better dialogue):

When I first began studying screenwriting, I remember struggling to write dialogue. Everything I wrote seemed fake and unnatural. Even worse every character's voice sounded the same. 

During my first screenwriting course, Sandi Berg's favorite saying was, "better line!" She said these words often, to each student in the summer production workshop she taught. What her words really meant was: "that dialogue is weak, pitiful, and I know you can create better dialogue; you owe it to your characters."

As we've been working in the writers room there have been incredibly powerful lines, perfection. But as we try to write other scenes the dialogue is lame and I hear Sandi's directive, "Better line!"

As we worked on one of these scenes nothing was helping. The scene was dead. The audience would squirm uncomfortably. We threw out more ideas but each was as lame as the last. The energy in our writers room lagged.

Then I began talking about our character—She's a kick-ass girl. We talked about the other person in the scene (a doctor). We talked about their relationship to each other (to succeed she may just outwit the brilliant doctor; she is street-wise). My co-writer and I talked about what each person in the scene wanted and what they really needed. Then, magically, lines of dialogue came alive and the energy in the writers room returned.

And even better, the momentum from scene to scene and page to page remains unpredictable and yet right on; the story is becoming powerful and intriguing. 

During a break we spoke about how certain we were about what we were going to include in the story. However, because we had patiently tried to understand each character and honored who they were before beginning to write the direction we thought the screenplay would take faded. While following a solid outline the characters have awakened and are now commanding the creative space. They are alive and are driving the story.

There's no way that their voices are boring and they don't sound identical. In fact they are completely different from anyone who has lived, or who will ever live. I wish I could share this with Kersh; I know he would smile.

Today at 3:40 as we were leaving the office my co-writer mentioned something that meant quite a bit to me after I finished my first screenplay. In less than two months he said, we will do something that most people will not accomplish their entire lives—completing an entire screenplay. 

That's a great feeling and we won't have given up one precious evening to do it. Take that, Onion!

Screenwriting: discovering answers to basic questions

December 25, 2011

What makes a good screenplay? What are the differences between a well-made television program and a movie that's shown in a theater? And what makes a film award-worthy?

Before I took my first class in screenwriting (beginning screenwriting) from Sandi Berg at USC, I read about 14 or so books about the subject. I wrote with enthusiasm but the skill of a beginner (think the first scrapings a child's bow makes as it is drawn across a violin's strings) Sandi's class, part of the School of Cinema's Summer Production Workshop, was one of the major reasons I was accepted into the Master of Professional Writing Program (MPW), also at USC.

The MPW program was once offered by the School of Cinematic Arts; while its early alumni are still invited to SCA events, the MPW program is now completely disassociated with SCA.

Dr. Jim Ragan was chair for much of the time I was in the MPW program. He often said that he wanted MPW graduates to be successful in more than one genre; our guest speakers had written plays and screenplays; they had written novels and short stories and some were poets.

My mentors included novelist Gina Nahai, who told me that a story I was working on was a "hell of a story," and introduced me to her agent, Barbara Lowenstein; I was thrilled to have been selected by the faculty to receive a scholarship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to work with my mentor, Irvin Kershner, one semester.

I'd work full-time as a director of marketing and then commute to L.A.; attend class from 7:00 to 10:00 one or two evenings a week, and return home after 11:00. Just walking onto the USC campus energized me; every class I attended I'd hear something or learn something that I knew would be helpful to me or my colleagues. Every class this happened, without fail. I'm writing about some of those pearls and diamonds and emeralds in this blog.

After I graduated, I felt a let-down. One of my top five personality strengths in the Clifton Strengthsfinder test is "learner," but it wasn't learning for learning's sake that I was grieving; I still didn't have answers to some basic questions about screenwriting.

USC allows alumni, with permission from the department, to continue to take classes. At first, the School of Cinematic Arts' writing division didn't let me take the classes I wanted to take. I was told that everyone must take beginning screenwriting first; so I treated Ron Friedman's beginning screenwriting course like a master class in screenwriting. I learned about the elements that are included in films that must be present for each scene to work. Our class explored tying storylines to deep psychological needs every human being feels. I've written a bit about my experiences that semester on this blog already.

Next, I asked for permission to take classes I was hungering for--business of screenwriting, and screenplay structure--I took them with master's level writing and directing students. It's funny, in those required classes I found more answers to questions I was hungering for--what are the differences between the best prime time cable/TV show (well-made and well-written, slick, polished), and feature films? What makes movie audiences lose track of time so that two-and-a-half hours seem like 15 minutes? Why are some movies so bad that the first 20 minutes seem like 10 hours?

Often, required courses aren't the courses that students are most excited to take. A friend who, while in dental school once mentioned his experience in a required "business of dentistry" class. Many of the students didn't listen; didn't participate. They wanted to be doing what they loved--dentistry. But later, after graduation, when their practices were not doing well, they would wish they hadn't been so creative about doing everything a student can do in class, except learning.

I didn't miss a class and in these SCA classes I began to tie new information with things I'd learned in the past.

Gems: Audiences are hungry for inventive, good stories that are told visually, using what Ron Friedman calls the screenwriter's palette of tools: dialogue; costume; supporting characters; psychology; knowledge of history and architecture, music. After reviewing a scene a student had written, he described how the screenwriter can write so skillfully that he can control and pinpoint the exact spot on the screen where the audience's eyes will be fixed. A huge wow moment for me.

From Don Bohlinger I learned structure (it was the first class I thought I might not pass; I spent hours on the take-home final, reviewing class notes, and using everything I'd studied previously. He later said that I'd scored 100 on the final and that he was using it as a template for grading the rest of the finals).

For the first time I understood that, like skillfully written symphonies, award-winning screenplays and films rely on structure and a knowledge of and use of basic screenwriting elements to tell the story.

In contrast, many blockbusters are like the charismatic but unpolished guy in the party; random people crowded around to hear him tell a funny story. There is energy there and some of the best, like this year's raunchy "Bridesmaids," make the audience laugh at the story and also make them feel something.

To write a screenplay that later creates an experience for audiences where the lights dim and within minutes there's electricity in the air; indescribable yet real energy as the audience anticipates, laughs together, cares about the characters, cries together...that's up to us as screenwriters.

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.