Getting Through That Awkward Phase

I’ve been teaching pilot-writing for a few years.  My approach is generally that writing the script is the best way to learn how to do it.  But I also do some lecturing about structure and character and story.  I have a new thought about why this is inadequate, but why it’s hard to teach around that inadequacy.  Maybe it will help you!

One of the hardest things about writing is simply knowing what your idea is.  And when you do know what it is, getting that idea onto the page clearly is very hard.

On the flip side, really great scenes often disguise what the writer is trying to make clear.  In most scenes, as in real life, characters communicate via subtext and subtlety. 

So screenwriters have to do two things at once: know clearly what their idea is, and communicate this to the audience via textured, interesting subtext. 

As a teacher, unlike as a writer, my job is, at first, to get beginners to write “bad” but very clear scenes.  They’ve got to be able to express what they mean first.  As a long-time sketch teacher (scenes only, no story structure), I know how valuable this is.  Then I have to tell students to stop doing that, and make the scenes have subtext.  And that’s a very difficult pivot!!!  

The second step is confusing after learning to do the first step.  I’ve learned this recently as I’ve now been teaching a few of the same students for more than one class.  I can see their progress! They know what they have to say and they’re saying it!  But I see them getting stuck on this step and psyching themselves out.

It’s true that as you get better at writing, you kind of just do this all at once.  But how to explain that?  The writer part of me wants to say: eh, just do it.  But the teacher part of me isn’t satisfied with that.

I once got advice from a very good writer who said that she does a first draft of a scene where everything that needs to happen happens without subtext, and then she goes back and “makes it good.”  I think I’ve said several times to students, “Make it sparkle!”  “Put icing on the cake!”

But what does “make it sparkle” mean?  Once you get to that step, how do you achieve that on the page?  It’s definitely harder to explain than structure, which is maybe why so many of the big books focus on that instead (books like Save the Cat).  Make the dialogue better? It’s a bit instinctual.  The things that make great dialogue and subtext are things like: understanding your character, understanding human psyches, understanding the poetry of the way a person talks, the poetry of what a person wants, understanding yourself.  Sometimes I want to give useless notes like: go to therapy if you can afford it or live a few more years.  Listen more.  Be more open to the world. “Make them sound different,” is the lazy, easy way of saying that, and it’s maybe the best I can do.  Think like an actor?  That’s more advice than pedagogy.

This is a growing pain in the life of a screenwriter, and my hope is that by even pointing this out, I can help some folks who are in this awkward phase feel better and push through to sparkle-town!  I’ll do more thinking about how to teach “make it sparkle” more clearly!  As of now, all I can think to say is that it’s instinct, it’s fun, it’s adding something surprising and (in comedy) delightful to every scene.  And if you’re still in phase one, getting ideas clearly onto the page, that’s good, too!  You have to learn how to do that first of all.  And a lot of the same things apply: know yourself.  Think about people.  Keep writing.