Storytelling -- the character's skills: how a part-time job helped a student get hired by Disney

While I was studying screenwriting/playwrighting and writing fiction at USC, creating believable characters was challenging. 

An early breakthrough came when a student in one of my classes wrote a scene that the professor wasn't satisfied with. He suggested that the she give one of the characters something to do in the scene that was unrelated to the dialogue -- he said that it was called the "actor's business."

About the same time, a man in his mid-30s stopped by the office where I worked to drop off an ad. He wanted to rent a room near the hospital several nights a week so he could study for his boards.

He was dressed in a physician's lab coat and was on a break from his work as a radiology resident.

Though the hospital seal, his department and his name were embroidered on the jacket, something didn't feel right to me. He didn't have the "look" of a physician who had spent endless hours studying. He had the build and demeanor of someone who had spent many hours doing physical labor.

We later became friends, and I asked how he'd entered medicine.

He laughed and said that he had been working as a painter. One day he watched as an older worker placed sparkle on a wall; he completed the task quickly, efficiently and with much skill. For a moment he was envious and then he was depressed. He thought, "I could work for 25 years and I'd match his skill. Is that what I want to do?"

He applied to medical school and was interviewed by a panel of physicians. "They were serious and intimidating," he recalled. "One of them asked why I wanted to go into medicine. I replied that it was because I didn't want to work outside for the rest of my life. The interviewer laughed and said that that was the most honest answer they'd heard all day."

When I asked him how it had been possible for him to switch from painting to medicine so easily, he said that while he was in school his father had always insisted that he take the hardest science and math courses that offered. Skills are learned over time. Including unique skills characters have developed helps make them fascinating.

Finally, as promised, the story about how becoming skilled in a field different from her course of study helped a student win her dream job -- working at Disneyland.

While I worked as a director of marketing and PR, student workers reported to me. I’d post notices all over campus requesting federal work study eligible students, and each time one student would apply and would work in the marketing/PR office until they graduated. They often were not familiar with many of the software programs; they were sometimes scared they would “break” the programs. I’d give them a template and ask them to have fun with it, moving things around, cutting and pasting and asking questions. 

When I gave them an assignment I’d explain the strategy behind it; this saved time because they could then make quite a few decisions themselves which kept projects on time and on track. 

It was so much fun teaching them about PR and media relations. In fact, one student enjoyed it so much that she considered changing from nursing to PR as a profession. An old boss dropped by the office and when he learned this he told her, “Don’t do it! It’s hard work and you will earn much more money as a nurse!”

Awhile ago I noticed perfect photo captions one of the past student workers posted on Facebook. I wrote on her wall, joking that she wrote the best photo captions because of her training in marketing and PR. She immediately wrote back. She said that after having worked as an ER nurse following graduation she applied for a job as a nurse at Disneyland. While the competition was fierce, she learned that she was offered the job over all of the other candidates because of her PR/communication/media relations experience/skill.

Fascinating!

The next post will be about pacing. 
The reality -- This scene and/or sequence is boring. A solution -- what changes can I make to the story so it will make my heart beat faster?

Making characters live and breathe—everyone's got skillz

Even after having taken several graduate writing classes, I struggled with creating real characters. All of the dialogue sounded the same. The writing I did at work was much easier—writing about dentists, students and housekeepers. It was fascinating interviewing and writing about young patients and families who wanted to share their stories.

But creating characters who have never lived or who have lived but who I'd never met seemed unattainable.

One evening at USC I was waiting for feedback from Irvin Kershner about a few pages I'd written about my father's mother. During a break he took me into the hallway. He was holding the pages I'd written, and he was so angry I remember the pages shaking in his hand as he tore into me. "This boy, his mother, his father. They are like no one whoever lived, or who will ever live. You've need to show that and if you can't, you don't have anything. And right now you don't have anything."

The semester would be over in a few days, I was working full-time, and I was certain I'd fail. Even worse, I was afraid I would disappoint him. Every day I woke up before my alarm and rewrote the story. I passed the class and the resulting first-draft screenplay was a finalist in a screenwriting competition.

Another breakthrough came more recently, when the electricity was out in my bathroom and hallway. I'd been stung by a wasp near the fuse box, and the area had become overgrown with mint. My fearless sister visited and became frustrated at the lack of lighting. She found a pole that can be used to prop doors closed, and went out onto the back deck. It was too short to reach the fuse box and so she glanced at it, pulled out a pin, lengthened it and reset the circuit breaker. All of this took less than a minute.

I thought about the pole and how I would've struggled with it, trying to figure out how the pin worked, probably pinching my fingers and then I realized, even within the same family people have unique skills. Sister is a physical therapist and works with walkers, canes, crutches every day. She could've adjusted the aluminum pole blindfolded.

As Kersh often told me, the dialogue is often the least important thing in a scene. "Always listen," he'd say. "Observe. Watch people. People who do this are better writers." He loved doing this himself.

I remember bringing chocolate chip cookies to work. A friend took a bite and told me, "you got skillz." It was the highest compliment he could give.

Notice talents / skills people have. It's what makes every person unique. The skills they have are often why they love what they're doing, or why they hate what they've chosen.

As I write, I consider what skills each character has. As they show their skills they become real, they begin to breath. They show emotion. And I can work with that.

It's not (just) about the story

It's Sunday, weekend errands are finished and I just took a phone call (a friend is excited that she will be helping cater Nicki Minaj's party after the BET Awards tonight). 

It's been a long time since I've blogged, but I have been working on a new screenplay. It's been fun to begin the process again with my colleague Alan* as he knows more about crafting a screenplay now than I did when I finished my writing program at USC. As we began to cowrite the screenplay last year I shared what I'd learned over several years from professions with hundreds of combined years of experience. I've captured many of the same theories/ideas/counsel here.

Since my last blog post, Alan and I edited the screenplay we wrote last year. I remember not wanting him to feel so frustrated about screenwriting that he would give up, so we submitted the first draft to the Nicholl Fellowships competition, even if it wasn't as polished as it could be. Earlier this year it was fun rewriting scenes, fixing problems and tightening up dialogue. We resubmitted it to the 2014 competition, with results to be announced in August. 

One of the most important things to do to make it into the industry is to create material that can be sold. Most writers who accept professional positions are not able to do this. In fact, if I remember correctly Frank Wuliger mentioned in class that he hadn't met anyone, even talented writers, working full-time professional positions who had entered the industry.

I received an A- on the mid-term and an A and "Well thought through" on his Business of Screenwriting final in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The assignment was for each student to create an outline of their path into the industry. 

I continue to follow that outline. So, though we didn't make it into the quarter finals last year, we've continued to write.

I had an idea for an animated story and Alan was interested in being the second/supporting co-writer, but we've decided to follow advice from Frank Wuliger, Mark Ross, and others — choose one genre. We've been meeting at lunch or during breaks at work, and eventually spent weeks talking about a story inspired by real events. 

We talked about why we were interested this story. Why should we tell it now. Why would someone in the midwest United States be interested? Russia? China? Why would families want to invest the time and entertainment budget to go to this movie?

We talked about the characters. We pared them down. Nothing was rushed, everything planned carefully. Some ideas became strong while others faded. We were determined that the story should be strong enough to create controversy.

Finally, we talked about creating enough tension. If we couldn't, then we'd have to say, "next idea!"

We reviewed lessons learned from Irvin Kershner (Kersh) and notes and final test from Advanced Screenplay Analysis class (USC School of Cinematic Arts).

Finally, this past week we began transferring ideas onto 3 x 5 cards. We followed Kersh's advice to write two words, MAYBE three, on each card. He had become so frustrated with me writing too many tiny details on cards. He finally told me to get the biggest, boldest marker I could find to write on the 3 x 5 cards so it would be impossible for me to write too many details on them.

Alan found about seven 3 x 5 cards in his office, and I had a few cards that I'd tossed into the recycle bin earlier in the day, and so after weeks of preparation, we began sketching out the story. Alan had wanted everyone to change and for all problems to be resolved and for the characters to be happy; we talked about the characters again.

I told him that true, lasting change in any human being is so rare, the magic of sitting in a theater, the magic of experiencing a well-told story is that miraculously, the protagonist changes (polarity).

My greatest wish is that I could sit with Kersh in his study and tell him about this experience. It's something he never thought I would completely understand. "You're TOO NICE!" he would roar after reading my latest work. He thought I'd never learn that the audience has to cry for our characters, their hearts must break, the screenwriter can't let them off easily. Then, they must be tested.

Screenwriting is the most challenging type of writing I've ever attempted. We used sound, and begin to plant things in the story that will be paid off, we followed structure with the intent that it would not be obvious. 

We had both felt disconnected to the story at first but we both agree that amazing, creative things are happening. 

The next time we met I sat back and asked Alan to tell the story (we're about halfway into the first act). 

In our small, glass-walled writers room I sat back and Alan told the story we've developed so far. Then I said OK, I love it. I'm not changing anything we've written. Now relax, sit back and listen — I want to talk about what we've written. I'm not going to change the story and I'm going to follow the story cards.

I talked about the opening scene and why where we began is powerful. I said that it's told with great simplicity but that it flips back and forth so nothing is what it seems and that the audience will enjoy figuring out important details without having the characters tell them. In each scene every character wants something. They may not say a word. What will they do to get it? Now that's interesting.

I described protagonist; his flaw. What he thinks he wants and what he really needs. I talked about the younger character and why it's important that he doesn't change; yet he becomes powerful enough in the protagonist's life that the protagonist changes. I talked about one of the adult figures in the story. She is strong and futuristic (or is she crazy and manipulative)?

I've enjoy watching David Edelstein critique movies on the Sunday Morning show. He's also  a film critic for New York magazine. Mr. Edelstein looks into the souls of the characters in the films he discusses; he feels what they're feeling. 

Even after finishing my writing program I kept going back to USC to take courses. I wanted to know how to make the audience suspend disbelief. I wanted to know why sometimes I sat in a movie theater and 10 minutes felt like 10 hours while other times two-and-a-half hours felt like 10 minutes. I dared hope that I could someday write a screenplay that would make others become lost in the story.

With our new screenplay the story is fascinating. The characters are strong; the protagonist is flawed, and changes. The young child is brave but does not change; the adult character may be a manipulator, unless she comes through with her promises. There aren't so many storylines that it becomes frustrating; it is fulfilling to see how they come together.

If I were able to talk to Kersh I would tell him I finally undersatnd. It's not (just) about the story, or mastering the elements of filmmaking. 

It's not about making charactesr act like puppets. Life isn't always nice and neat; rarely does anyone change. It is extremely challenging for a storyteller to capture the moments where the need to change is revealed to them, and the heartbreaking attempts are made followed by change and the final testing.

It's about a story well-told, that reveals the characters' souls.

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.

The writers room weeks 9-10-11: Screenplay complete

I left for London on April 12 and returned home a week-and-a-half before the May 1 Nicholl Fellowship deadline. My co-writer and I finished as much of the screenplay as we could before I left; we both planned to edit it during the week I was in Europe.

During the 11-hour flight home a man in the seat next to me noticed me editing the screenplay and gave me his contact information. He works for a company that licenses characters and produces video games for SONY and X-Box; they have offices in three countries.

Back home, the jet lag worked for me. I’d wake up just after 3:00 a.m. every day and work on the screenplay several hours before work.

My co-writer and I had given ourselves permission to create the story without being perfect. The final days before the deadline we met at lunch and reworked scenes to maintain tension. We also sharpened dialogue, throwing out options until a better line appeared.

We hope we accomplished the following:

•               The protagonist progresses from experiencing a want to identifying and fulfilling a need. She experiences polarity (challenging to accomplish)

•               The story's premise is controversial; the various characters' feelings about and reactions to the controversial choices the protagonist makes are equally strong. This shows that there is validity in the differing views, reveals passion and humanity, and hopefully creates a deeper understanding of the issue

•               The characters don't cry but we wrote the story so that (we hope) the audience will

•               We avoided using cliches and tried to remove the ones that had appeared

I received an email on the day we finished the screenplay from Irvin Kershner's son. It was a photo of his father playing the viola, taken on his 90th birthday; truly amazing. We had finished the screenplay on my mentor's birthday. We polished the screenplay and submitted it to the Nicholl Fellowship competition on May 1.

We’re planning to continue meeting at lunch to write and are working on an idea for a new screenplay I proposed. Our goal is to complete a new screenplay every six months (a guideline suggested by Frank Wuliger to aspiring screenwriters during a class I took from him: write two screenplays each year).

My co-writer is an editor/writer/designer who had never written a screenplay. Today I reviewed everything we’d done and the many elements that we had built into our screenplay.

This morning a USC professor invited me to share the process we'd used to a Facebook group of her current and past students. Making progress after graduation has been challenging for many of them and she wants them to see that it’s possible to make progress creatively in small periods of time.

In my next entry I’ll write more about that here; pretty amazing to have completed an entire screenplay in less than two months. Today as I reviewed with my co-writer what we’d accomplished I realized (and mentioned to him) that I hadn’t learned the process we’d used in any of the courses I’ve taken. Reading a summary of our journey might be helpful to new screenwriters.

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!

The writers' room, end of week five: Respect

Week five in the writer's room has ended.

My cowriter watched Argo just before we began working on our screenplay and he's determined that our screenplay keep the audience's attention from beginning to end as firmly as Argo did for him. He's way ahead of where I was when I finished the MPW program at USC.

I remember Irvin Kershner's words (shouting): "each scene must have rising tension!" But what does this mean?

In week 5 we had discussions about many scenes and I challenged my cowriter—is the story more powerful if our protagonist locks herself in the bathroom closing herself off, not connecting with her child separated by a door; or is it more revealing and powerful if she's less than five feet away from him in the same room, her mind a million miles away?

In another scene she was curled up on the couch, reeling from a painful event that had just happened.

After re-reading the scene we agreed that we would be losing the audience the way it was written. We knew what would happen next from our short story that had become cards and then had become our sequence breakdown. We rewrote the couch scene. How much more effective to watch her reeling from pain, and with her whole being, fight to numb the pain by doing something shocking and dangerous?

It's still Act 1; we aren't yet that interested in her. She hasn't yet earned the right to lie on the couch.

Explanations and understanding don't only come from dialogue; searching for visual clues is satisfying for the audience. Today we wrote a scene where our protagonist is thrust into a new and unfamiliar location--is it dangerous? How do we reveal this without dialogue, in a satisfying way? How are the characters in the new environment dressed to show their rank, the order of the place; what equipment do they use? And finally, should our character be trusting when everyone has let her down, beginning from early childhood? No, she fights! She has fought to survive her entire life; she cannot stop fighting now.

As we work and create, I continue to respect the process even more each day. I'm glad I kept going back to USC to take more classes. Everything is coming together in a pretty incredible way and our energy is high.