Finding time to write
I enjoy writing just as much as another person, but my time is limited. I work 9-5 everyday and when I get home I am dead tired. I have some good ideas for a story/screenplay but have trouble finding the time. Do you have any advice on how I can stretch my time out in order to start writing again?
–Kevin B Smith
Writing is now my full-time job, but I wrote my first few scripts while working full-time. Outside of some wacky high-concept family movie (likely starring either Eddie Murphy or Tim Allen), there’s simply no way to squeeze more time into the day. So something has to give.
Some how-to-be-a-writer books will recommend you get up an hour earlier, or stay up an hour later in order to write. If that works for you, God bless, because I need every bit of sleep I can get.
You might be able to give up weekends. I ended up staying in a lot of Friday and Saturday nights in order to write, which was a little pathetic and lonely at the time, but hey. It worked.
One relatively safe bet is to give up television. It’s a giant time-suck, and now that it’s summer, who needs it anyway? I’ve been known to make a sign that says "NO," which I tape directly onto the TV screen. Other times, I’ve rationed my TV viewing: one hour for every four pages written, or somesuch.
Delete all the games on your computer. That’s a no-brainer. And unplug your internet connection.
When I was writing my first script, I was fortunate to be working a completely brainless summer job at Universal, answering phones and making copies. I ended up getting a lot of writing done. After work, I’d come home, eat some spaghetti and start writing longhand, siting on the floor of my apartment. (Note: I had almost no furniture, thus the floor.) I would take my PowerBook 180 into work, then type up those pages on my lunch break. Repeat this process for four weeks, and I’d written a script. As a bonus, I’d avoided banal office lunch conversation.
Everyone’s situation is different, so what worked for me may not work for you, but my general point is that you need to actively clear time in your day to write, which means giving up something.
Script promotion websites
I have a question about websites designed to promote your script for either a motion picture production or for television. Are these sites legitimate and worth paying money to? I ask because every instinct in my body tells me an agent will do the exact same thing for me and that agents, directors and producers are not spending their time scouring the internet looking for new talent.
–Dawn Wilson
Your instincts are right. I think they’re a waste of time and money.
While there might be one or two sites out there that are genuinely interested in helping writers get their scripts into the hands of real buyers, I suspect most of these "services" are just set up to take money from the gullible and desperate. And those one or two sites not actively seeking to screw writers probably don’t have the connections to make a difference.
If any readers have had an experience with one of these pay-for-read sites, positive or negative, I’d love to hear about it.
Script adaptations
How does someone go about adapting a written story to film format? Thanks.
–Sam Ruin
Probably half the movies made are adaptations of one sort or another. The original source material might have been a novel, a short story, an article or even a 1970’s TV show (such as "Charlie’s Angels," coming to a theater near you November 3).
Sorry for the blatant plug. Back to the question.
The first issue you face with any adaptation is rights. The author of the original material generally holds the copyright, which means he or she has say over whether or not a movie can be made based on the material, and for what price. So if you’re serious about adapting the work, you’ll want to check with the original author’s publisher (in the "sub-rights" department) and get contact information so you can start the process of buying or optioning these rights. ("Optioning" is something like "leasing-to-buy," where you pay a fraction of the money up front, with a promise to pay more later if the movie gets made.)
It’s important to note that copyright expires, so if you’re looking at adapting something originally written in the 1800’s, there’s a good chance the work is considered to be "in the public domain," which means you won’t have to secure any rights at all.
Of course, there’s a big difference between having the rights to a story and actually having a movie to make. Adapting a story into movie form is a lot harder than it might seem at first.
The basic problem is that movies work so differently than most fiction or other prose.
In novels or short stories, the prose is the final product. Screenplays, on the other hand, are blueprints. They’re a plan for making a movie, but not the movie itself. While the author of a novel has the final say about everything that happens in a story, the screenwriter is by default only one of many hands in making the movie, and everyone who becomes involved with the project will change it in one way or another. Thus the screenplay has to communicate the overall vision for the movie, above and beyond all the details of character, plot and theme. In short, a book is just a book, but a screenplay has to be a story, a plan, a sales tool and a mission statement all in one.
Fiction can ramble. Screenplays have to be ruthlessly efficient.
In fiction, the author can say what a character is thinking. In movies, a screenwriter doesn’t have that option, without resorting to some device like a voice-over or flashback.
The reader of a book can put a book down and think about it, or flip back a few pages if something was confusing. Sitting in the theater, the audience doesn’t have that opportunity. The movie keeps going, 24 frames per second, no matter what. Therefore, the screenwriter has to be extra attentive to make certain the audience will be able to follow the story at every moment.
Finally, movies are fundamentally a visual medium, so the screenwriter has to be able to tell the story with images. Yes, there’s sound and dialogue, but the picture is king. In a book, the author can say what a character tastses or smells or feels. In a movie, all the audience can experience is sight and sound, so the screenwriter needs to communicate everything through only these two senses.
Given these challenges, it becomes clear why adapting a book into a movie isn’t a matter of feeding the pages into a projector. It also explains why so many bad movies are made from good books.
So how do you begin an adaptation? The most important thing is to approach the project as a movie, with all the strengths and limitations of the medium, rather than as a novel or short story. Focus on the primary characters, their goals and obstacles. Rather than trying to winnow down the source material to fit into 120 pages, try to invite in only the elements you really need; that is, build up rather than strip down.
And most importantly, remember that adaptation isn’t any easier than writing a screenplay from scratch. So don’t beat yourself when certain aspect worked in the novel but not in your script. They’re different beasts.
Process of writing
Briefly, could you explain to me your process of writing? How long does it take you to write a full screenplay? Do you listen to any music when you write?
–Justin Benton
Not only does every writer have a different process for getting words on the page, but the process often varies from project to project. Generally, most of the scripts I write have a long gestation period before a single scene is written. Since a lot of the movies I work on are studio assignments, there are inevitably a half-dozen meetings with producers, directors and studio executives before we "commit" on exactly what I’ll be writing.
I’ve written first drafts of screenplays in as little as three weeks, and as long as six months. As I’ve gotten more experience as a screenwriter, I’ve become much better at estimating how long it will take me to write a script, much like an experienced contractor will have a better idea how long it takes to build a house. In general, most studio contracts will list 12 weeks for a first draft, so I’d have to guess most writers could hand in a draft that fast.
Being easily distracted, I never listen to music as I’m writing, though I’ll often have music I use to get in the mood for a particular scene or sequence.
Action writing
Say you were writing the script to an action flick–LETHAL WEAPON, for instance. When you get to the part where Mel Gibson and Gary Busey are trouncing each other at the end of the movie, do you write a blow-by-blow account of the fight in the stage directions, or do you just write "Gibson and Busey trounce each other for a while, and Mel wins," and let the director/choreographer worry about the details? I’ve always wondered about that concerning the action scenes in movies, like fights and gun battles and car chases and such.
–Roger
There’s a common misconception that a screenwriter only writes the dialogue, while the director handles the rest. Being a guy who writes a lot of action sequences, I can say definitively that’s not the case — at least not in the 21st century.
Supposedly, when the screenplay for GONE WITH THE WIND got to the climactic fire scene, it stated only this: "Atlanta burns." Just two words, but in the movie the sequence took several minutes.
In modern screenplays, at least those that make it into production, the action written on the page pretty closely matches the action on-screen. A fight sequence will almost never going be written blow-for-blow, but will at the minimum give a sense of the action, the stakes and the most important moments within the battle. If you don’t believe me, flip through the script to THE MATRIX, which you can find in most bookstores. The Wachowski brothers don’t label each punch and kick, but reading the script, you get a very good idea what the fight sequences will look like.
The same holds true with almost any action sequence you can think of. In GO, I spend half a page describing the chase down the alley in Vegas, in which the Riviera gets stuck sideways. Everyone reading the script — producers, the director, studio executives — could see exactly how funny the moment would be, which is how such an expensive and time-consuming stunt stayed in the budget. Otherwise, it would have been the first thing cut.
The danger with properly-described action sequences is that if they’re not written very deftly, they can slow down the read immensely. That’s why I spend at least as much time working on these moments as the dialogue scenes. They’re much less glamorous, and honestly, more difficult to write. But the ability to write interesting and economical scene description is what distinguishes the screenwriter from the playwright.
That, and the weird "gh" in the name. If a playwright writes for plays, shouldn’t a screenwright write for screens?
Foreign languages
I’m curious about the use of foreign languages in predominately English scripts. In CHARLIE’S ANGELS, where the Angels speak a ’secret language’ in front of Eric Knox and his partner, how did you go about writing it? Is it standard to write the scene in English and later translate it? Could you offer any tips or ‘guidelines’ to be used when placing foreign languages in a script?
–Jaklene
The "secret language" spoken in CHARLIE’S ANGELS is actually Finnish, although the pronunciation is probably spotty. The screenplay only printed what they were saying in English. A translator came in quite a bit later, just before filming. (Incidentally, the subtitled English is completely different from what they’re actually saying in Finnish. Because some scenes got flopped around in post-production, we used the subtitles to switch a major part of the Dylan/Knox timeline.)
In terms of your own screenplays, obviously, most readers won’t be able to read dialogue in a foreign language, beyond the occasional "hola" or "s’il vous plait" which can go untranslated. So you need to make a decision how you’re going to handle it in your script. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but here’s how I usually do it.
- If it’s just a word here and there, and the meaning is obvious in context,
don’t bother translating it. An example is when a ubiquitous foreign bad
guy shouts at his men to do something. Since it doesn’t really matter what
he’s
saying, just use the foreign word if you know it. Sometimes, this type
of dialogue doesn’t even make it on to the dialogue line, and gets summarized
in the action
like, "Moldona SHOUTS at his men to stop the angels."
- If you think the dialogue would probably be subtitled in the movie, italicize
it in the script.
- If characters are speaking in a foreign language for the duration of a
scene or scenes, put a parenthical like "(in Russian; subtitled)" for
the first speaking character, then just use italicized English for the
rest of the scene or scenes.
- This is more of a pet peeve, but a lot of words that are technically foreign are pretty common in Engish too, so don’t italicize things like gringo, taco, samurai or vis-a-vis. It sticks out and feels pretentious.
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