A Defense of Television

One of my favorite blogs on screenwriting, Complications Ensue, had a post recently called “Why TV?” I found it an excellent defense of a medium people always trash. My favorite part of his defense is this paragraph:

I write TV because it is the dominant medium in our time. It is where the best stuff is being done. It is what the most people are tuning into. It is the biggest lever to move people’s hearts. If this were the 19th Century I would probably be a novelist, and this would be a diary. If this were the 17th Century I would be a playwright and this would be drunken rantings in a pub. If this were the 6th Century BC I would be a poet and this would be drunken rantings at a private dinner.

To me, the problem is that many critics of television don’t recognize it as a medium but rather an entirely autonomous entity. While there are certainly political factors that affect what sort of television is being produced (the “big studios” certainly have the most say), every art has at some point been patronized by an entity that may have business interests at heart. Michaelangelo was commissioned by the Church, Shakespeare commissioned by the crown, and every film ever made had to be paid for by somebody. I think the resistance to television is a resistance to the democratization of art, stemming from a mix of elitism and fear of art’s impact being diluted because of its accessibility.

Yet time and time again I hear from professors that our generation – the YouTube generation that grew up on cable television – is the most visually sophisticated yet. We can process images faster than our parents could, which allows (though certainly shouldn’t mandate) more complicated editing in film and more visually descriptive text in a screenplay. If this is the unwanted effect of television, I’m not sure what the world is looking for.

Habits in Your Writing

As one of my favorite XKCD comics illustrates, it's easy to fall into the same shtick again and again.

Every writer has his or her habits” I’m not talking about our physical writing habits, such as when or where we write, but rather the phrases and structures that reappear in our writing time after time. Some people would call this a “signature style,” but often these habits devolve into lazy fallback devices.

In screenwriting, it’s particularly easy to fall back into personal cliches. Habits ingrained in our minds from years of watching television and movies become hard to break. I groan every time I find myself writing “she purses her lips” or “she quirks an eyebrow” and yet I do it again and again.

The best solution? For me, it’s all in the observation. I try to observe how people act at their most emotional. Skepticism is almost never demonstrated with a quirked eyebrow, for example. That’s visual shorthand and does nothing to add depth to an emotion. Perhaps the character can display their skepticism by tripping up their action a little or even acting towards a back-up plan if they think the plan they’re skeptical about won’t work.

I’d love to hear others writers’ takes on their own habits and how they break them, so feel free to comment away!

“Sweded” Films and Screenwriting

Anyone who has seen Be Kind, Rewind has heard the term “sweded,” which refers to a no-budget remake of a popular film. This post at 1000 Dollar Film discusses how one might be able to “swede” their own script.

My question is, does sweding have to be completed at the production phase? Why not write your high-concept script with the swede already in mind. To me, this seems like a great approach to writing for web content, which often plays up the no-budgety feel to appeal to the DIY crowd.

So maybe you should write the swede into your next short. Instead of writing about a spaceship, describe its cardboard exterior and the glimpse of your cat in the background. This would give more structure the “swede” since every element will be intentional rather than out of necessity. I certainly am going to give this a try.

And after all, didn’t Gondry have to script those swedes in the first place?

BONUS – An example of a YouTube swede:

Writing Exercises: Do They Work?

I think at some point everyone in high school had that English instructor that gave them the “creative writing” exercises that come in big books of student activities that teaches like to turn to when they run out of ideas. I probably have a little more experience than some with these as I was always a member of a creative writing club in middle school and high school. The question always remains: Do these actually do anything?

As usual, the answer isn’t simple. For me, the exercises are too cheesy to call for any progress in writing on a thematic or even structural level. You write them too quickly and play to a gimmick: “You’re late for class and need to come up with a ridiculous excuse” or “Write about the last person that made you laugh.” Of course, some of them can be more profound (a mentor of mine gave our afterschool writing shindig the assignment to write about a second-hand item we own and discuss what we think the owner may have been like), but even these tend to lead the writer too much and teach them that being clever is the only thing necessary for good writing.

On the other hand, these exercises do serve the purpose that the teacher giving them to you usually intends: they get you writing and they get you thinking creatively. While some kids have notebooks of limericks from five years old on, most young students would never even think of creating an imaginitive text and thus need prompting. It allows children (and yes, even adults) to understand that the written word is not simply for informational purposes but can serve to reimagine and reexamine reality.

My verdict? Basically, I see writing exercises as something that should be used only for very targeted purposes. When tackling a new genre (say… screenwriting!) you may want to try some to get the hang of the format and other pecularities of that genre, but overall a “creative writing exercise” will probably do little or nothing to inspire ideas or improve you as a writer.

Of course, that’s not to say you shouldn’t exercise your writing. Write something original everyday and – more importantly – rewrite something everyday.

Finding Time to Write

As my relative online silence might suggest, I have been a bit too busy to indulge in my usual blogging. I just moved back to New York for my final year of college and already I know that it will be very, very hard to ever leave here. In the midst of this big move (i.e. paring down my wardrobe into something that will fit in the trunk of my mother’s car), I found very little time to write at all.

This brings me to my main topic today: How do you find time to write when your day-to-day life gets hectic? Let’s face it, whether you’re a full-time wage slave, an at-home mom, or a college student, you’ve got a busy schedule just in getting your basic work done.

I have met a lot of people who have a fairly regular writing schedule. I admire their discipline, and when I have the time I try to emulate it, but for the most part my schedule is always filled and always changing. During the schoolyear, I leave my apartment at 7AM and don’t get back until after 11 almost every day of the week (yes, even weekends… that’s when I have student shoots.) Fitting in solid blocks of writing can be hard when you’re on the go.

My method is basically this: at all times, I have either my laptop or my notebook on me… sometimes both. When I have a long break (maybe an hour or two between classes or an extra half-hour after lunch) I will sit down with my laptop and pound out the pages of scripts. When I can’t get together enough time to at least finish a page or two at once, I whip out the notebook and start brainstorming on new story ideas or solutions for old story problems. In fact, my main purpose is to constantly keep myself thinking about story. Even if there is no pen in sight, I will often mentally brainstorm (thank God for my geeky database of a memory) and the jot down my ideas later.

This is by no means a perfect method. Often I feel like I am scrounging for time or forcing myself to write when the ideas aren’t there. I’ll go for weeks without writing a single page and then finish an entire short or spec in one day. Yet, overall, I find that this suits my style. The discipline necessary to keep this up may not be apparent to those who like timetables for everything in their day, but it is there. The key is to make sure every spare moment is a moment for writing.

Of course, in the short-term I like to schedule out writing sessions so that I might be able to fit 3-4 hour blocks in on days when my schedule is a little lighter. But there is no way I – or many of the writers I have met- could keep a long-term schedule unless they were out of school and living on trust funds. (You’d be surprised.)

Progress Report: August 15, 2008

Instead of getting down about unemployment this summer (Catch-22 style, I can’t afford the car I need for a job in a suburb void of public transportation), I’ve been working away at several writing projects. Here’s an update on what I’ve done:

• Polished my “Office” spec
• Submitted said spec to both the Warner Bros. Workshop and the ABC/Disney Writer’s fellowship
• Slowly progress through the first act of my “Pushing Daisies” spec (I’m putting that gal down for a few weeks)
• Reworked outline of my untitled romantic comedy spec feature and continued writing its first act
• Added several pages to the high-concept, puppet-driven, action-adventure-fantasy-family-dark-comedy-insert-genre-here spec feature. The one that is for some reason taking me a year to write. (Meanwhile in TV-land I’m pumping out 20 page days)
• Wrote short (15-page) film about a girl who sleeps with her gay best friend
• Wrote short (10-page) musical film about a puppeteer who must choose between his gal and his felt fatale… And yes, I wrote the cheesy pop score to go with it.
• Reworked outline for the script-that-shall-not-be-named (intended for my thesis film next year)

With all of these bits and pieces of works, it’s a little disappointing that I haven’t produced another finished product. My high-concept spec is nearing completion, though, and I hope to finish that and the “Pushing Daisies” spec with the few weeks I have left before school starts.

The Trials and Liberations of Writing for Animation

I have a little (just a little) experience writing scripts intended for animation. Last year, I spent one exhausting semester entirely tucked away in the animation wing of my school. For hours on end I was slumped over a lightboard drawing pencil tests or cuddled up to a Cintiq inking my After Effects composition components. After dedicating dozens of hours to 30-second shorts (that frankly kind of sucked), I came out of the experience with one important lesson: I love writing for animation.

Why? Writing for animation is so liberating, both technically and creatively. First of all, many animated films aren’t even written in prose, but rather are sketched out in rows and rows of storyboards and fine-tuned through animatics. Secondly, there is almost nothing you can’t write so long as it supports a good story.

Suddenly you aren’t bound by reality. Budget expenses for scene changes are vastly smaller (at least on the independent level) since all you really have to do is draw some new backgrounds. Special effects are built-in. Physics doesn’t even have to exist if you don’t want to.

Think of anything you’ve ever wanted to write for a short film but couldn’t because nobody on a short film budget would DARE shoot it. Now write that into an animation.

Of course, writing for animation has less of a practical value. Animation specs are hard to sell, whether in TV or Film, since most animation production companies hire from in-house. Still, it’s a great experience – especially on the indie level – and I would recommend anybody with a friend in animation school to give it a try.

That said, pencil testing and syncing lips for those scripts is not quite as fun when you have trouble drawing stick figures.

The First Rejection

I received my first rejection from the first screenplay competition I’ve ever entered (not that a screenplay was actually entered… just a treatment):

Thanks so much for submitting HOW I HATED TED to the January Screenwriters Lab. With regrets, I am writing to let you know that we did not select your project for the 2009 Feature Film Program Labs. The selection process was extremely competitive. Despite the wealth of original and intriguing material submitted, we had to be extremely selective about requesting the screenplays we felt were the best fit for the program.

Because of the large volume of submissions received, we are unable to give you individual feedback. We wish you all the best with moving your project forward and encourage you to consider submitting future work to the Program.

Weirdly, I feel like celebrating. It really is a first submission, and in some ways, my first rejection as somebody trying to screenwrite professionally. There will probably be many more rejections, but isn’t that the fun of this?

Ah well. I’m 21. Can’t expect to win the world over yet… Wish me luck next year!