John August

Writing Process

Writing characters you would hate in real life

QandA, Writing Process

How do you go about writing characters that you don’t identify with, or even find abhorrent, as good as the ones you like?

— Dan
Redditch, England

The same way many actors find playing villains liberating, I often enjoy writing characters who, in real life, I would actively avoid.

For instance, in [Go](http://imdb.com/title/tt0139239/combined), the four guys who go to Vegas in the middle chapter are sort of my bete noire. Simon is id-driven, wantonly impulsive, and only gets away with it because of his accent. Marcus is too righteous by half, the self-appointed leader who only got the title by picking the least-capable of travelling companions. Tiny is a faux-Black chihuahua, and Singh is sort of a perma-stoner. They’re all little [lizard brains](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_brain), and I kinda love them, though I wouldn’t want to be within 20 feet of any of them.

[For the record, the character in Go who I best relate to is Claire. Like her, I’m the one who’s always trying to be the voice of reason. But eventually I give up, and hook up with the hot, scary guy.]

In many ways, it can be easier to write characters with whom you don’t have a lot in common. Unlike a novel, where you’re digging inside a character’s head, screenwriting is about what you see and hear. Even the most rigorous self-examination probably won’t reveal the dialogue and behavior you would notice just watching actual people going about their lives. Sometimes, the most fascinating people are the most annoying, or the most abhorrent.

So don’t strive for likeability. It’s a fool’s errand. Rather, aim for believability. Make sure your characters are consistent, and real within the universe you’ve built for them. The audience will happily watch loathsome characters doing terrible things, as long as you keep them engaging.

Screenwriting wastes a lot of paper

QandA, Recycled, Writing Process

Do you print out your script pages as you go along, or do you wait until you have a completed draft before printing out the whole thing (assuming you’re using a word processor and not a typewriter.) There’s nothing more motivating to me than to see pages of script piling up, but then if I want to make a change to what I’ve written already there’s a potential for waste and I feel bad enough that we’re still using trees for paper instead of something more plentiful and efficient like cotton or hemp.

–Rob Workman
Saint Paul, MN

In the early days of ink-jet printers, there was a lot more incentive to economize: printing an entire script could take half an hour, and cost a few bucks’ worth of ink. Now, with fast-and-cheap laser printers, the temptation is to print a lot more. Fight it. The business of making movies already wastes a lot of paper — everything from call sheets, to budgets, to rainbow-colored script revisions. As a single screenwriter, you can at least make sure you’re not adding to the problem.

I tend to write first drafts longhand, scene by scene, and print out pages as they get typed up. Call it paranoid, but I like to have at least one hard copy in case my hard drive commits hara-kiri. So, for a normal first draft, that means about 240 pages — 120 hand-written, and 120 typed.

The real waste comes during countless drafts of the rewriting process. Here are some suggestions to keep it somewhat reasonable:

1. Only print what you need.
Before you hit Print, ask yourself if you really need the whole script, or whether you simply need a few pages. Often, your corrections are contained to just a few pages, and it’s easy to print only the range you need.

2. Double-up.
If you’re using Mac OS X, use the pull-down menu in the Print dialog box to select ‘Layout’. Set it for two pages, with a hairline border. (Confused? Here’s a screenshot.) You’ll end up with two pages side-by-side, and it’s perfectly readable. Your 120-page script is now sixty pages, and can be held together with a binder clip. (Never hand in a script printed this way; keep it for your own use.)

3. Use recycled paper.
HP makes a good paper that’s 30% post-consumer. Unfortunately, recycled paper rarely comes three-holed, but if you’re printing the two-page layout, that doesn’t matter.

4. Reuse the back sides.
I avoid printing scripts on the back sides of scripts — I get confused which pages are new. But script pages are perfectly good scratch paper for everything else you need to print.

5. Use .pdfs.
If you’re giving somebody your script to read, consider emailing them a .pdf rather than printing it out. These days, almost anyone can handle a .pdf file.

Even if you only implement a few of these suggestions, you can cut your paper use by 75%. Until they start making hemp copier paper, you’re doing your part to keep the trees in the forest where they belong.

(Originally posted January 20, 2005.)

Happy Easter from Beijing

News, Writing Process

I’m in China for a week of sight-seeing, research for one those Someday Scripts I hope to eventually write. The project is very much Old World, so most of my time has been spent tromping around the [Great Wall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_wall), the [Summer Palace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace) and the [Forbidden City](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City), getting a feel for the architecture and details that you don’t really find in a book.

While the historical landmarks have been everything I hoped for, the real surprise has been modern China. It doesn’t feel anything like the Orwellian state I read about in high school. All the Business Week articles about China’s rush into a market economy understate the degree to which it already feels First World. People have cooler cell phones. They own their own apartments. Beijing feels like it could host the Olympics next year — although they have until 2008 to finish the new subways and all the other improvements underway.

I’ve been to St. Petersburg, which has a similar beautiful-buildings-to-ugly-cinderblocks ratio, but the mood couldn’t be more different. Beijing feels like it’s on a massive sugar rush, and the people in the park seem genuinely happy. It’s like Los Angeles, with more smog and darker hair. That doesn’t sound like a rave, but it’s actually pretty cool.

My advice is to come before the Olympics, when everyone will see how world-ready it is. Mandarin is notoriously difficult to master, but it’s pretty easy to pick up basic traveller pidgin: hello, excuse me, where is.., is it here?. As I overheard one expat Texan say over cocktails: “It’s easier to speak than to understand.” A great double-entendre, which in this case is true.

Writing vs. relationship

QandA, Writing Process

questionmarkHow do manage your time between writing and
relationships? Aside from the hours of just you and
your computer (not to mention meetings, phone calls,
and more meetings), how do you find time for
significant others?

I just broke up with a nice girl because I couldn’t
make enough time for the relationship. I felt guilty
every hour I spent not writing and when I got a free
moment, my first thought was writing when it should
have been my relationship. How can a writer remain
prolific and not estrange him/herself from people?
Can the two worlds coexist and if so how?

I don’t want to end up sad and lonely but at the same
time I’m unable to compromise my strong work ethic to
make time for new relationships (it’s hard enough
maintaining the existing ones!)

–Michael
Los Angeles, CA

Unless you work at Wendy’s, it’s always tough balancing a career and a relationship. What’s even harder is balancing three things: a day job, a relationship, and the writing career you’d like to have. So the first thing I’d say is, accept that one of these three things isn’t going to get all the attention he/she/it deserves.

These days, I mostly work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. Sometimes I have phone calls after hours or on weekends, and occasionally I’ll have to fly to London on five hours’ notice. I get up two or three times a night to jot down things that pop in my head, and I’m always borrowing my partner’s Treo to text-message myself some snippet of dialogue overheard at a party. But from outward appearances, I have a pretty normal working life. So, living with John August the screenwriter isn’t any more difficult than living with John August the attorney would be. That’s a luxury of being able to write as a career.

Back when I was working as an assistant, and writing at night, I had a lot less “free” time. I didn’t go out much. I stayed in on Friday nights and rewrote. I didn’t date a hell of a lot, either. I made a conscious choice to buckle down and get some scripts written. In the end, both work and relationship turned out well, so I guess it worked.

But I’m not sure it was the smartest choice, given my situation at the time. Many writers take ten years before they meet with any real success, and if I’d continued to put writing above relationships, I’d be a sadder, lonelier guy today.

For you, Michael, the better choice might be to stake out some Non-Writing Time, when you deliberately and guiltlessly do the things normal people do, including dating, parties, and watching your sweetheart’s favorite show even though you don’t particularly care for it. Once you specifically block off some Us time, it’s easier to set aside the ten or so hours a week you need for your writing. And if she can’t live with that, well, she can’t live with a writer. Better to know it now.

On a related note, make sure you’re not using your strong work ethic as an excuse to avoid social interaction. Writers are notorious hermits, and that can be dangerous.

During my writing-at-night era, I didn’t go out much at all, but the times I did were often revelatory. An example: I remember meeting [Trey Parker](http://imdb.com/name/nm0005295/maindetails) at Three of Clubs in Hollywood in either 1994 or 95. Although I’ve never spoken to him since, I know it was him, because this guy was also from Colorado, and he corrected me when I called him Troy. Twice. He told me that he and a friend were making this video Christmas card for a guy at MTV. I felt kind of bad for him, because it seemed like he was kind of struggling.

Of course, that video Christmas card was the original [South Park](http://imdb.com/title/tt0122264/), and he and Matt Stone became successful zillionaires. Seeing the first South Park, I felt some envy, sure, but more importantly I felt inspiration: this guy I met a year ago is now making this kick-ass show. If he can do it, well, maybe I can too.

Obviously, my life didn’t turn on one chance meeting at a bar. But the sum total of all these little incidents really do add up. So whether it’s drinking, dating, or relationship drama, make sure you’re out there experiencing actual life. It will make you a better writer, as well as a more-interesting person.