I’ll be back at Paramount’s Van Ness gate Tuesday morning, beginning at 5:30 a.m.
Including the unknowable
I recently entered a screenwriting contest and got my wrists slapped for doing something that seemed logical to me. The first time I introduce a character, I do it like this:
- SMITH stares at the bleachers and sees his wife, NOREEN, and his two kids, MARK and SHEILA.
The evaluators commented that I had “written what we can’t possible know” — that Noreen is the wife and Mark and Sheila are the children. Is this true? Have I made a faux pas that would brand me as a total loser of a screenwriter?
— Sung
You’re not a total loser. You may have lost that particular screenwriting contest, so yes, you’re a total loser in terms of that competition, but in the grand scheme of things, you’re not irredeemably lost.
Assuming this is the first time we’ve met Smith or his family, you’ve written a pretty blah introduction. Yes, I’m hoping that it’s brevity for sake of example, but before you go any further, you may want to re-read [How to Introduce a Character](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/how-to-introduce-character).
Are you back? Let’s continue.
Sometimes, honest-to-goodness professional screenwriters will include information that doesn’t seem exactly knowable. Matching up characters to their families is a good example. Yes, Smith could be looking to the bleachers and see a woman and two kids, who we only later find out are his family. But close your eyes and picture the scene. Imagine the shots. Any reasonable viewer is going to immediately grasp that the folks in the bleachers are his wife and kids, so it’s not a big cheat to include that in the scene description.
There are two kinds of “unknowable” information you can safely slip into your script.
**Things that are inherently apparent on screen.**
* The door is locked from the inside. (action reveals condition)
* Matt unlocks his bike. (presumed ownership)
* Sandra has a terrible head cold. (visible condition)
* He races down the aisles, looking for diapers. (presumed in context)
**Details that add flavor, but don’t provide crucial information.**
* He hasn’t slept in days, and hasn’t showered in weeks.
* It’s the nicest house on the street — at least from the curb.
* She collects enemies the way nerds collect comics.
Please don’t take this as an opportunity to load up your scripts with unfilmmable details. Screenwriting is largely an art of economy, so you need to always be looking for ways to say more with less, and to externalize internal motivations. The evaluators weren’t wrong. They were likely just over-applying a pretty good rule-of-thumb: a screenplay should include only those things the audience can see or hear.
Strike, day 32
Picketing at Paramount was unremarkable, but further reinforced my theory that any session is greatly improved by two in-depth conversations. Yesterday, that was with [Aaron Peters](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0676313/), with whom I discussed Tom Green, Andy Dick and other MTV personalities, and Tracy, who came all the way from Houston to check out the picket line. That’s dedication, but not nearly as much as Alexa, an aspiring screenwriter (and young mom) who’s been out at Paramount at least 10 times, just because she believes in the cause.
Tonight, I’m loading vans at WGA Headquarters. I have no idea what that will really consist of, but I’m curious to see as many aspects of the process as possible.
There are some special events next week worth noting:
* Monday is Star Trek Day at Paramount, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Windsor Gate.
* Tuesday is student picket day, with film and screenwriting students joining the picket line at Sony’s Overland Gate from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Since film students are a significant portion of this blog’s readership, I hope to see many of you at the event.
* Thursday features an Indie Gate at Paramount, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. I’ll be one of the one of the speakers, along with Howard Rodman, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Robin Swicord and others. If you’re an indie writer or director, plan on coming. (And if I know you, plan on getting an email from me reminding you to come.)
I’ll confess that I was mildly skeptical about theme gates when they first started, but it’s been great to mix things up. Going into the strike, I never anticipated how many more writers I would get to know through picketing. Because feature screenwriting is a largely solitary career, there’s not the opportunity to develop colleagues the way you would in other professions — or in television writing, where you have staffs working together. I’m not so Pollyanna-ish to predict that we’ll all stay so tight and supportive once the strike is over. But for now, it’s a nice change.
Strike, days 30 and 31
Tuesday at Paramount was notable primarily for the presence of Angry Guy, a picketer who is always looking for a fight. The Van Ness gate is pretty busy, ((Though noticeably less busy in the last weeks, likely because of the drop in production as TV shows shut down.)) and lacking any traffic signals. So it’s not hard to make life difficult for motorists pulling onto the lot, and Angry Guy did his best to make it uncomfortable for everyone.
It’s a big Guild, full of adults, so it’s not my place to tell anyone how they should picket. But after he left, we found ourselves apologizing to one of the Paramount guys he nearly came to blows with. It was exactly the scene that happens outside a college bar on a Friday night, when the sober people try to talk down the drunk-and-surly. Only it was 6:32 in the morning. And no one was drinking.
On the plus side, I got to talk with Jennifer Jason Leigh. ((On Barbara Turner’s cellphone. And it’s about a Christmas present, so shhh.))
I had lunch with the Disney Feature Writing Fellows. I blogged about their situation after the Fox rally, then got involved in some of the behind-the-scenes discussions with Disney and the WGA about how to keep the fellows from getting crushed under the wheels of strike. Most of them are not WGA, but they of course hope to be, so they won’t cross a picket line to continue their fellowships. Jane Espenson, Howard Rodman and I have been working behind the scenes with WGA and Disney folks to find a solution. While that’s still forthcoming, I’m happy to say that despite all the bluster and rhetoric you see in the press, there’s a lot of level-headedness on both sides. Until the situation (or the strike) is resolved, Jane will be working the TV fellows, while I’ll handle the feature side.
Today was the gathering of screenbloggers at Warner Bros. That makes it sound like some sort of well-planned happening, when it was really just a few emails between Craig, Josh, Jane and I about which studio we should visit. Still, we had a good group of people turning out, some from as far as Texas.
I shot this picture of the LA river while walking from my car. That’s Warner Bros. on the left.
Warners Gate 2/3 is a pretty nice place to picket. There’s shade, a restroom, and a choice of two crosswalks for when you want a change of scenery.
Tomorrow, I’ll be back at my usual stomping ground: Paramount’s Van Ness gate, from 5:30 until 7:30 a.m. On Friday, I’ll be loading trucks at the mothership, WGA Headquarters.