John August

Psych 101

Write the way you speak

Psych 101, Words on the page

As he loses his voice to cancer, Christopher Hitchens writes about the idea of [literary voice](http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/06/christopher-hitchens-unspoken-truths-201106?currentPage=1):

> To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class can talk? I mean, really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect.

> I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really *was* a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own *voice.*

College was the first time I started writing how I speak.

Or, more accurately, college was when I stopped trying to write the way I thought I *should* write. Whether through explicit instruction (topic sentences, Roman outlines) or imitative insecurity (we all had a Hemingway phase), any unique quality in my prose had been flattened. The occasional quirks were mostly borrowed from Spy magazine, whose pithy precision I worshipped without really understanding.

A freshman year newswriting class probably changed me more than anything. J54 taught us how to align fact-bearing sentences in a deliberate pyramid structure so that the story could be truncated at any point without losing its meaning.

We learned the rules. We wrote the articles. The process was almost automated; given the same facts, any two news writers should generate very much the same story.

I hated it. I revolted. Why should I waste my time writing something anyone else could have churned out?

Writing isn’t harder than speaking, but it’s lonelier. It’s a conversation with someone who isn’t there.

When you’re writing, you end up hearing your own voice a lot. I think that’s why so many people struggle with it. We don’t like to be alone with our thoughts. They scare us. But in the same way people don’t stutter when talking to a dog, it helps to envision a friendly reader at the far side. Let writing be talking with someone you like.

All fiction is fan fiction

Psych 101, Random Advice

Sure: everyone’s already linked to Austin Kleon’s wonderful post [How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 other things nobody told me)](http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/).

But I can’t *know* that you’ve read it. And I don’t have better advice for you today, or even this week. So I really recommend you read it, and take some notes.

> There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called imposter syndrome. The clinical definition is a “psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing.

> Guess what?

> None of us do. […] Ask any real artist, and they’ll tell you the truth: they don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day.

I’m in the middle of a very busy showing-up-every-day project, and have found one of his points especially apt:

> You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.

That “stuff” includes people. Often, we’re intimidated by working with people beyond our capabilities. This week, on this project, I’m the newbie. But I’m a *wise* newbie. It’s taken me many years of work to recognize that my opinion can be valuable even if I don’t have the right lingo.

Be brave and humble. Be nice. And don’t wait to begin.

When to talk about your idea

Monsterpocalypse, Preacher, Producers, Psych 101

Last night, I moderated a panel with eleven of the writers nominated for WGA screenwriting awards. By any normal standard, it was way too many people to have on a stage, but we managed to make it work. My thanks to the panelists, the WGA and the Writers Guild Foundation for putting it all together.

The organizers had already decided there wouldn’t be a Q&A afterwards, but I wanted to give the audience a chance to participate a little. So I told them to tweet their best question to @johnaugust. I would pick one to ask before the end of the session.

I chose one by @oHaiZZ:

> Lawrence Turman suggests asking random people for their opinions of your concept. Any panelists do this or is mums the word?

Aaron Sorkin cautioned that talking about what you’re planning to write can easily sap your enthusiasm for it. Stuart Blumberg agreed, noting that even one ‘meh’ response might scare you off your dream project.

Lisa Cholodenko said that while they were working on The Kids Are All Right, they hadn’t talked to many folks about the plot. Only after the movie was finished did an executive mention that she’d read a couple of scripts with similar storylines over the years. Had Cholodenko known there were competing projects, she might have had second thoughts, worried that someone would beat her to the screen.

I largely agree with these opinions, but I also agree with Turman. I think the difference is that Larry Turman is a producer, not a writer.

A producer serves several functions, but one of the most important is pitchman. He needs to convince directors, actors, studios — and ultimately audiences — to invest their time and money in a movie. So he’s constantly testing and refining his message. He doesn’t have to write “Wuthering Heights with mummies” — he just has to gauge if there’s interest. If no one sparks to it, he has very little at stake.

The writer, on the other hand, has spent days, weeks or months thinking and writing. It’s so easy to get derailed and never finish. So my advice depends on your job title:

Producer – pitch constantly.

Screenwriter – zip it and write.

The 20-page threshold
—

Several panelists mentioned how valuable they found it to get feedback from trusted colleagues at around the 20-page mark. By that point, you’re far enough into the script to feel you have a handle on it. You hopefully like what you’ve written. But you’re wondering if it’s actually any good.

That’s a good time to get feedback.

It doesn’t have to be 20 pages. For Monsterpocalypse, I shared the first act. For Preacher, it was 45 pages. In both cases, enthusiastic feedback gave me a nice bounce of energy to help me finish.

Yes, you’re taking a risk that you’ll get a bad reaction. But if it’s not working at this stage, it’s unlikely the problems would magically resolve themselves by page 120. Very few good movies have bad first acts. It’s worth stopping forward progress to get the beginning right.

All yourselves belong to us

Psych 101

I saw The Social Network again last week — the first movie this year I saw twice in the theater.

On second viewing, you notice how often the movie answers questions across a cut (such as in the overlapping depositions) and how often people run across a campus, or up a flight of stairs. For subject matter that might seem well-suited for a play, the filmmakers were determined to never let it feel like one.

Reading Lev Grossman’s [profile](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html) on Mark Zuckerberg for Time, it’s clear that the actual guy isn’t quite the character portrayed in the movie, particularly in terms of his social skills and motivation. That’s not a criticism at all; I’m sure the actual Henry V wasn’t much like the character in Shakespeare’s play. In both cases, I’m happy the writer’s first allegiance was to the audience’s enjoyment.

Beyond its rounder, softer profile of Zuckerberg, what I appreciate most about Time’s article is its concise description of what makes me uneasy about Facebook in its current form: the binary definition of friendship, and unified version of identity.

> Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what people are like. It herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure. On Facebook, there is one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You’re friends with your spouse, and you’re friends with your plumber.

In the seven years I’ve been running the blog, I’ve noticed the online version of myself drifting closer to the “actual” version. ((I’m sure a CS student could write a script to compare my usage of “me” and “I” over time.)) But there is still a difference, and that’s deliberate. Even though this site has my name on it, it’s still a fairly controlled product: *a ton of useful information on screenwriting.* You’re getting the screenwriter John August, not the Eagle Scout, the cook or the Real World/Road Rules Challenge completist.

I mostly write about screenwriting and the film industry. When I do go off-topic, I generally put it in the Off-Topic section or flag it as [Random Advice](http://johnaugust.com/archives/category/random-advice). ((I set up a Posterous blog to handle longer-form musings, but haven’t yet used it. I’m not sure I can split the streams any further.)) But I’m not an absolutist. It’s my blog, and I write about the things that interest me. When I see complaints about articles that don’t concern screenwriting, I happily offer readers their money back. (Oh, wait.)

Profiles in ambivalence
—-

I’ve found it harder to decide who I am on Facebook. Am I the writer of this blog, the sponsor of a [Malawian charity](http://www.fomo.co.uk) or the guy who went to Fairview High School? While they are physically the same person, their social worlds barely overlap. Screenwriting students don’t want to see vacation photos from Ohio, nor do I want them to.

I could limit Facebook to actual friends. Granted, “friend” is a slippery definition, but I might define it as someone I’d be glad to connect with at a moment’s notice and happy to hang out with for several hours. College and high school friends, whom I see rarely but would like to see more, would still fit nicely in this box.

The trouble is, actual friendship isn’t always so reciprocal. Am I hard-hearted enough to deny a friend request from my college roommate’s wife?

For the time being, I’ve decided to limit Facebook to “people I know in real life.” While that’s a fairly low bar, it seems to help cull the numbers a bit.

[My Twitter account](http://twitter.com/johnaugust), on the other hand, is come-one-come-all. Anything I tweet is open for the world to see. It’s less specifically about screenwriting, but still a version of Work Me. I’m circumspect about revealing much personal information, like travel plans or dining companions.

I’ve enjoyed meeting folks I follow online in real life, though it’s awkward to decide on levels of familiarity. I hugged [Melanie Lynskey](http://twitter.com/melanielynskey), but then, LA is a hugging town.

The most unnerving aspect of both Facebook and Twitter is following people you know well. It’s odd to learn about your husband’s day through a status update, or watch a friend take an odd side in a political discussion.

In real life, we carefully tailor which topics we discuss with which friends. Particularly on Facebook, that’s hard to do. We’re forced to be one person to more people. That affects what we say, and may ultimately affect who we perceive ourselves to be.