Published by KWA Admin on 28 Aug 2008
August Workshop: Screenwriting
Let Your Work Find Its Home
Of all the ways to tell a story, screenwriting is one of the most collaborative. The screenwriter provides the raw material for the story, then watches as it is further interpreted by the director, the actors, the editor, and who knows how many other cooks.
That’s why story analyst Elizabeth Stevens advised writers at our August workshop to be terse. Be essential. And be patient. “If you want to write screenplays, understand that it’s going to take years. The average screenwriter does half a dozen or more scripts before he or she has any success. You need the practice to get it right. Find stories you can invest in and hang with.”
Even people in Hollywood don’t always know what a story analyst does, says Stevens, who recently relocated to Lawrence from L.A. She has evaluated more than 1,500 scripts and novels for their suitability as film productions, writing both critiques and “coverage” — an industry standard report with brief comments, a synopsis, and commentary on the writing quality of a script. She recommends ways to strengthen a story’s structure, depth, character arc, and dialogue.
Her clients include Barry Levinson’s Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures, Sandra Bullock’s Fortis Films, and Lifetime Television, and she has been a judge in the Final Draft International Screenwriting Competition for several years.
We asked Stevens about rookie mistakes. Here are some common pitfalls of beginning screenwriters:
- Don’t be so polite to your characters, showing every scene from greeting to farewell. Instead, remember “in late, out early.”
- Don’t be “on the nose” with dialogue - i.e., too obvious. “People don’t say what they mean. People lie. They talk about something else that may be an analogy for what they really mean.”
- Don’t be vague about your setting. Give an exact time and place in your opening slugline.
- Don’t be sloppy! Study the precise formatting that a screenplay requires, and stick to it.
As for the Do’s:
- Really study the craft. Learn about exposition, narrative, those elements of storytelling. Read a lot of screenplays. Read books and see how they are adapted. Read everything.
- Break down a movie by yourself. Go minute-by-minute through a film and write down what happens and how it is shot.
- Enter contests - but not too many.
- If you know anyone in Hollywood, use your connection. Don’t be shy.
Finally, we asked Stevens how much a writer should worry about making his or her work marketable or following trends. Her advice: Don’t. “Write what you want to write, and let it find its home,” she said. “There are all kinds of producers, just like there are all kinds of publishers.”
– Erin Perry O’Donnell, KWA Webmaster
At our July workshop, author and KWA member Hazel Hart took us through the CASTS method for revising scenes. The system was created by author Nancy Pickard, who shared it at our Scene of the Crime Conference in April.
Greetings, friends!
If you didn’t join us, you missed out on taking a journey of the mind to Nigeria, the homeland of poet Dr. Chinyere Okafor, a professor of women’s studies at Wichita State University. Chinyere read — beautifully, lyrically — from her poetry collection It Grows In Winter. She shared with us some background about her country and about growing up in a storytelling culture — a culture that is already slipping away among the younger generation.