Capturing your angst...

At a Christmas party this past weekend I ran into a writer I know who has been having a rough time emotionally this fall, to the point that she can't really move forward in her creative life.  I suspect there are a lot of folks out there who are experiencing the same symptoms to one degree or another this election year.

What I suggested to this writer (and anyone who considers him/herself any kind of scribe in this predicament) is to put down on paper or pound out in a document all your raw feelings.  In other words, to journal your way through your angst and/or the thoughts that are bringing you down.

Journaling can do wonders to help you objectify what you're feeling, getting out in front of you what you're experiencing emotionally and what you suspect are the reasons for it.  And by journaling I mean really venting and letting loose and putting down in words exactly what comes to mind when you target the root causes of the dark mood you find yourself stuck in--describing the sadness, the depressing thoughts, and so on and making an attempt to articulate in detail the reasons for it.

No one will ever see this but you, but the dividends are often significant and long lasting.  On the short term, you'll find that it tends to help you process your way through the doldrums you're going through.  But also, what I've learned over the years with of this type of journaling, is that sometimes months or even years later I can go back to these entries and there staring back at me is a vividly captured emotion that I experienced in my past and that I can now use in my current work.  I'm still connected to it, but I now have the necessary distance from it to be able to fold it into my writing.

At times it's been exhilarating as a writer to have this documentation of my past emotional struggles available to me--my own private treasure trove.  And on occasion a past journal entry has unlocked a key I'd been searching for and that I needed to unwrap for a project I was currently in the middle of.

At any rate, it's always a good practice for a writer to use words--the raw material we work with day in and day out--to help guide us through the down times.  And you may find that down the line it will prove a bonanza.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15 or for starting with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process    

Honored to be one of the top 50 screenwriting blogs...

I'm claiming some bragging rights here and announcing that this blog has just been included in the top 50 screenwriting blogs by Feedspot.  Out of the thousands of blogs on the subject, that is sweet news indeed.

Feedspot lists all 50 selected blogs and annotates each with a brief description of the blog, the average frequency of postings, and other data.  The site is updated weekly.  

Needless to say, I'm happy to be included in their listing.  

Thanks, Feedspot--and thanks to all my loyal readers!

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15 or for starting with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process

More on fighting the negative voice...

Last week I shared some thoughts about how important it is to keep your cool when that first draft just doesn't seem to measure up.  How you have to realize that it's all process and peeling off the layers.

I thought it'd be useful to reinforce that thinking by sharing what some of our most successful writers have to say about encountering that negative voice.

Playwright Terrence McNally told me he has days when he asks himself: "Why can't I just get a job at a bank and be an honest worker?"  He related to me that one day while working on his first draft of a script he thought:  "I wanted to kill myself, burn the play, quite the Dramatists Guild, resign from being their vice president, quit teaching at Juilliard.  How can I teach playwriting?  I don't know what I'm doing."

Two-thirds of the way through writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'night Mother, Marsha Norman told me she heard an inner voice saying:  "I don't know what this is.  I'm in real trouble here.  I mean, nobody's going to want to do this, right?  It's going to be real embarrassing."

Emily Mann captured it nicely when she said:  "There are crazy days when you lose all belief."

Almost every successful writer that I asked about this in my extensive interview series I did at the Dramatists Guild several years ago and many writers since have related to me their own stories of temporary despair.

So when you hear such a voice yourself, it's imperative that you find some way to tune it out and push on--especially when you're writing your first draft.  You're in the most vulnerable phase of the work, when it's easy to get seduced into giving up.  First drafts are tough largely because they don't have that polished and professional authority you sense when reading successful produced and published scripts.  Your initial pages just aren't measuring up.  What's important is to keep reminding yourself that every one of these successful scripts were brought into existence in the same way your script is.  Any given play or screenplay on your bookshelf may be a fifth, or tenth, or twentieth reworking of a tentative first draft.  And it's possible that very little, if any, of the very first draft may still be contained in that script you admire the most.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15 or for starting with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process 

What to do when your first draft sucks...

For starters, first take a deep breath.  Then give yourself a pat on the back for having pushed through the wilderness to the finish line for the first time regardless of how bad you think it is.  Pushing through the entire story in draft form is obviously a major step.  Finally, put that first draft away and forget all about it for at least two or three days or a week or longer and let it cool.  Getting some distance is critical.  Remember, what you at first think is terrible is usually much better once you come back to it--if you've put it out of your mind for a while.  

In that cooling off period, remind yourself that successful and well known scripts you have read and studied are projects that have gone through several if not many many drafts.  Scripts that have been tested with actors and that have incorporated lots of good feedback in subsequent drafts by people who understand what makes a script work and lift off the page.  That these plays and screenplays have gone through the ringer so to speak in order to eventually come out as polished finished works.

So many of the writers I work with need to be reminded that the name of the game is process.  That once you come back to your initial draft your job is to take it one step at a time regarding rewrites. You first need to determine where you sense the biggest road blocks--the scenes that stop the forward movement of your story.  Then determine which of these is the biggest problem and fix it by trying a different approach.  Just that one problem.  Then examine the ripple effect that one fix has on the rest of your script and make necessary adjustments along the way so your fix fits in and makes sense throughout your tale as it unfolds.  Then tackle the next biggest issue, and so on and on...

The key is to never panic and to always realize that you peel the onion one layer at a time.  And when you make one fix it will suggest another fix and another.  Some big, some small, but all making a contribution to allowing your script to eventually get better and begin to lift off.

I will always remember what Athol Fugard, the highly successful South African playwright, told me in an interview I did with him regarding his first draft woes:

There is always a mortifying moment when, having pushed through that first draft without going back and checking anything--just working, just driving, just trying to create that arc on paper using the scraps that you've accumulated--there is always that moment when you say, "All right, that's finished, now I've got to read this."  And then you read it, and it's an awful experience....I have never experienced anything but the most appalling, sinking feeling on reading the first drat of a play.  Every time!  

The difference with this writer and all successful writers?  He knew it was all process and that he'd eventually produce another wonderful finished work.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

The tyranny of the written...

Often, the biggest rewriting hurdle for writers is freeing themselves from words already written-- prying loose material that's been, for one reason or another, set in concrete in your mind but in truth is weighing your script down and keeping it from lifting off as it needs to.  And, of course, the remedy is to develop an attitude that doesn't allow your mix of words to harden in place prematurely.

The late Horton Foote, one of our revered playwrights and screenwriters, once told me the following:

You have to divorce yourself emotionally....There's a point where I just calm down and cool it and become as objective as I can.  I find those moments that are really essential, and I find those that are nonessential, and sometimes it kills me; I've cut some of the best writing that I've ever done.

The basic rule here is that if the script as a whole is to be served, you sometimes have to be willing and able to let things go.

Probably the most striking example of this is Edward Albee's experience with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape.  He told me that he discovered at the first rehearsal that what he thought was a play in three acts was really a play in two acts, so he cut out the second act entirely, going from two intermissions to one.  One day the play had three acts and the next morning it had two.  And he told this story with no regrets whatsoever.  The work as a whole was served, and that's what counted. Extreme, yes.  Necessary?  Absolutely.  He discovered the play was structurally sound without the material between the first and third act.

So be tough on yourself if you can.  More than likely you'll be serving your script by heeding the mantra "less is more."

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Finding a title for your script that works, Part 2

Last week I focused on the critical importance of capturing a great title for any script you write.  Here I offer up a simple title search exercise that has proven very successful for myself and with my students and clients over the years in finding a title that really works.

First, reread the early draft you have completed or, if you haven't yet gotten to draft, meditate on your preliminary jottings about the script you hope to write and the ideas you want to deal with and make a concerted effort to capture in your mind what you want to leave in the heart and mind of your audience once your story has been experienced.

What is the essence of that feeling?  Try to feel it yourself.  Ponder this for a few minutes, keeping your focus solely on what you want your audience to feel when the stage lights make their final fade to black or the movie reaches its final fade out.

Next, keeping this focus in mind, write down as quickly as you can a list of every word or phrase you can think of that even in a small way describes or connects to this feeling.  Put down anything that comes to mind through free association, keeping each item as short as possible, a word or two or three should suffice for each.

As you do this, don't allow yourself to think about an actual title.  Just make a list of words or phrases that in some way captures the essence of your project emotionally, intellectually, or both.  Don't judge anything you put down.  Some of your items may sound silly.  Or out in left field.  Put them down anyway if your brain has brought them to the surface.  Just let these descriptions flow out of you. And don't stop and dwell on any of them.  Force yourself to create as long a list as you possible can--at least fifty or more items.

Next, when you've run completely dry, immediately put the list away for at least two days without looking back over it.  It's critical that at this point you don't go back over what you've come up with right away.  In fact, the exercise is largely worthless if you ignore this step and don't distance yourself from it.

When you finally do come back to your list, read it over carefully, putting check marks next to the items that trigger even the slightest positive response.  Don't necessarily be looking for a title yet. Then look back over the checked words and phrases.  See if any can be combined into something interesting.  If so, put them together.

Usually, but this time a title has jumped out at you.  All of sudden you see it sitting there in that list. You may have to create it by putting together words from two or more items on the list, but it'll be there.

I realize this may sound too good to be true , but it almost always works.  The three keys to success are first focusing clearly on what you want to leave your audience with at the end of your story; then giving your mind free rein when composing the initial list; and third, getting some distance from your list before dissecting it.

Try it and see.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Finding a title for your script that works...

Every writer I know needs to have a working title of his or her current project.  It's a label, a simple and often generic description of the story that's taking shape.  That's all it needs to be.  And sometimes you get lucky and find increasingly that as your script takes shape your working title resonates ever louder.  If that's the case, consider it a little gift from the muse.

In the vast majority of cases, however, there comes a time in the writing process when that working title needs to be looked at anew and an all out effort must be made to discover the title that truly resonates and that will seduce readers into opening that cover page to discover what's inside.

A good title is provocative and alluring (for you and everyone else), something that will stop people in their tracks and make them want to devour the script then and there.  It needs to capture perfectly the central idea you're dealing with and it should reverberate strongly in the reader's mind after the script has been experienced.  In other words, what you want to capture is a title that pulls the reader in and defines perfectly what the reader is left feeling and thinking after the read.

Of course, a good title does not a good script make, but a weak title can seriously threaten the future life of a good script.  It's a label for what's waiting to be read between those covers and eventually for what's running in theatres or seen on the screens of the world, and your title needs to reflect the life and passion found in it.  It's imperative that you settle for nothing less because it represents your initial gateway into that rarefied world where scripts find legs and start attracting serious attention.

Look at a handful of some of the all time great titles:

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A Streetcar Named Desire
Death of a Salesman
Angels in America
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Crimes and Misdemeanors
To Kill a Mockingbird
It Happened One Night
Five Easy Pieces
The Rules of the Game

Obviously, I could go on and on.  But my point is clear.  Every great title pulls you in, makes you want to discover and embrace the story it represents.

My next blog will walk you through a simple and field tested title search exercise that I've found is quite successful in uncovering your own perfect title.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Rules to live by in the entertainment industry...

Last week at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, the former Studio Head of Dreamworks Animation, Gail Currey, sat in front of a large audience and was interviewed by the Institute's President, Kent Devereaux, about her impressive career in the entertainment industry.

What transpired was quite inspirational.  But most significantly, Gail Currey offered a number of wonderful and insightful tips to any aspiring writer or artist hoping to forge a career in the 'Biz," tips that she followed herself as she rose through the ranks of Hollywood.

Here are a few of the gems:

--In our rapidly changing world, a person in the arts (or any other field for that matter) shouldn't focus on finding the answers to questions, but rather on asking key questions. Specifically, she has repeatedly asked herself throughout her career questions like, "Am I bored with what I'm doing?"; "Am I fulfilled and happy with my current career?"; "What am I doing that I shouldn't be doing?"; and "What am I not doing that I should be doing?"

--What is looked for in new hires are people with genuine talent but also people who show up on time. She stressed that it is always the combination of attributes--standout talent in any specific area and a strong sense of personal discipline--that makes a person attractive and lifts careers.  Talent alone most often doesn't cut it.

--Be willing to take on menial entry-level positions and then prove your competence.  In other words, make yourself indispensable regardless of where you find yourself on the career ladder.

--Always volunteer to do more.

Unspoken, but clearly evident during the presentation, is that it certainly doesn't hurt to also be gracious and exhibit more than a dose of humility--traits Gail Currey has in spades.  This is a person who rose to the top of her highly competitive field and what was clearly evident last Thursday evening is that she has never stopped asking herself the important questions and is always reaching higher.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

How to have fun writing your first draft...

I'm a big believer that the writing of your first draft can for the most part be an enjoyable adventure. I know I mention this quite often, but I'm convinced it all depends on what kind of planning and prep work you've done before leaving on the journey.  It's no different than any kind of extensive trip you intend to head out on.

Primary among the items you want to have with you before embarking are a detailed working knowledge of your characters' personal and shared backstories, an ear for their distinct voices, and, of course, a plot outline road map that takes you on one possible basic route through your tale from beginning to end.  Armed with these key elements, you should be able to take off on your first draft trip relatively confident that you'll somehow find your way through to your predetermined destination or some other landing place that the writing of the draft itself has led you to.  And having this pre-draft work in hand can in fact liberate you as the writer, freeing you to try things and explore those interesting side roads along the way.

So it ultimately comes down to preparation for the journey.  I constantly stress this with the writers I work with.  And if that preparation is done thoroughly and you believe you have everything you might need with you as you venture forth, then the chances are that the writing of your first draft can indeed be a fun and creative experience.

On the other hand, if you prematurely plunge into your draft expecting that most if not all the answers to the questions your story raises will somehow magically be handed to you in the actual writing of pages, you are most likely headed for frustration and will find yourself staring at a mountain of exploratory scenes that lead you nowhere.  It'd be like heading out on a trip through unknown and uncharted territory with no road map or guideposts on the seat next to you when you inevitably take that wrong turn and end up totally and hopelessly lost.

It's been proven to me countless times that making the effort to do the necessary pre-draft exploratory work, including working your way through at least one rather detailed version of your entire story in outline form, will actually greatly increase the chances of allowing the writing of your first draft to be a relatively frustration-free and even a liberating experience.  Writing a first draft is always a tremendous effort regardless, but with your prep work beside you, you can now take those interesting and unexpected side trips when they materialize without worry of losing your way.  And if those side roads and detours uncover entirely new ideas and possibilities, you're still in a vastly superior position to digest them intelligently and make the necessary adjustments to your story.  Or you'll be able to find a way to somehow hook these new discoveries back into your central character's arc, thereby enriching the overall journey.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

A classic problem in scriptwriting...

I've been working with several writers in the past few weeks as they work on plot invention and laying in the necessary information for a story to make sense and to move forward at a good clip.
And in the process the old classic issue of how to deal with exposition always rears its head and one way or another has to be dealt with.

What I've been finding myself explaining multiple times is that often the one sure-fire way--maybe the only sure-fire way--to plant critical information in your developing story is to find a way to weave it into an argument between your characters.  The simple truth is that an audience will be interested first and foremost in the dynamics of the disagreement or conflict they're witnessing--how the characters are reacting to each other emotionally and how each is responding personally.  And in the midst of the argument and heated exchange, the characters will be compelled to throw out the information you need the audience to hear for the story to make sense and move forward.

The interesting aspect of this is that your audience won't even realize that they've just absorbed key facts that have to be a part of your unfolding story.  They hear the exposition--the actual words describing the info that has to somehow get into your script--but it's delivered to them under the table so to speak.  What your audience is caught up by is the argument and the accompanying emotional colors that couch it.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.                                 

Contaminating the writing process...

A lot of my students and clients are currently in the middle of writing their first working drafts of new work.  Something about the fall season and the urge to hunker down that writers pick up on, not to mention my MFA program's requirement for every student to turn in a working draft of a new full-length script by mid-December.  

So I feel compelled to once again remind all writers out there that it's so important to keep your developing draft to yourself as you work your way through it for the first time.  In my view, it's imperative that you protect this private process from all outside influence.  Other than sharing with a professional and experienced mentor or script consultant, you should embrace as a hard and fast rule to always keep your journey through that first draft a private experience. Otherwise you risk seriously contaminating your writing and your own artistic vision of the story you're creating.

Nothing can destroy a first draft faster than to show pages to your close friends and other well-meaning people in your life.  They'll want to and even feel obligated to give you feedback.  But the moment you allow people to give you input, you won't be able to get it out of your head, whether it's positive or negative.  It's contamination either way.  You've let others into a place where they should never be allowed to enter. 

Resisting this urge to share your first draft discoveries helps build an increasingly stronger and more intimate connection between you and your material.  It's as if your relationship with your characters were taking on the deeper sense of trust and mutual confidence that you would have with real people.  What's happening as you pile up pages is that your script becomes increasingly yours and your characters' own secret and your unique source of strength.  This, in turn, produces an energy which helps propel you through to the end.  Even when you're stuck on something and go through a few or many days of feeling lost, the experience remains a private one, shared only with the people inside the developing story.

The time will come soon enough when it's necessary and useful to share your script with others and hear what they have to say.  In the writing of your first draft, however, it's just as critical that you don't.  

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

My encounter with Edward Albee...

Last month the news swept through the theatre and entertainment world that Edward Albee passed away.  Unarguably one of America's greatest playwrights, Albee left a mark on American dramatic literature that has only been equaled by the likes of O'Neill, Miller, and Williams.  He was a towering figure and his work will live on after him as his plays continually come alive on the stages of the world.

During his professional life Albee also had a reputation of being a prickly and oftentimes difficult man whose arrogance could turn people off and that could make him a handful to work with.  I thought my own encounter with him several years ago might be interesting to relate in this regard.

Trusting the writing process...

I'm continually struck by the degree to which I find myself telling writers to take their efforts with creating a new script one step at a time.  There are days we all have when everything seems totally out of reach and all you can hear is that nasty whispering voice saying "who are you trying to kid."  And it's on those days that you have to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that it's baby step after baby step that allows a script to come into being.  It's all a process, with one element building on the next.

As I've often said in this blog, writing a play or screenplay is a big undertaking, a complicated and intricate puzzle to solve.  And like puzzle pieces poured out of the box and onto a table, you start by finding a method, an approach to organizing that jumbled pile of tiny cut pieces into a plan of attack that will eventually produce a beautiful finished picture.

How to avoid getting lost in your first draft...

I'm so often struck by the number of playwrights and screenwriters who attempt to "discover" their stories by starting with page one and just forcing it out by trial and error--riding on a hunch and a prayer that somehow they will find their story in the writing of actual pages of script.  Usually lots and lots of pages, hundreds in fact.  They are often very good writers with loads of talent and believe this is the only way they can work.

Frankly, this never ceases to baffle me.

I once asked a famous and established playwright how many pages using this approach he actually writes on average and he held up the palm of his hand about six inches above the top of the table we were sitting at and said "about this many," meaning at least two reams of paper or around a thousand or more pages.

My apologies to all of you out there who work this way, but it seems to me it's the equivalent of consciously taking a hundred mile trip to ultimately arrive at a destination a block away from where you started.

Of course for some writers, this works fine.  I can't ignore that fact.  Great scripts eventually emerge from the mountain of pages produced.  However, to my mind there is a much more productive and faster way to create rich and successful scripts.  It starts with developing a process that includes extensive pre-draft exploratory work on your principle characters that then leads the way to inventing the basic building blocks of your story's dramatic structure--all before you attack page one.

In other words, a systematic writing process that views your story as an iceberg...

...and first takes a serious look at the nine-tenths of your emerging tale that will forever lie under the   surface and explores it thoroughly--putting under the microscope the milestone events that have shaped your characters lives and their attitude towards those past events, especially the personal episodes that relate in some way to the central dramatic dilemma you're dealing with.

This is what makes for rich and engaging storytelling.   And it can most successfully be achieved by exploring this subtext before plunging into actual draft.  Directly or indirectly, it's all part of your story and in working this way you are, in a very real sense, already in the process of writing your script.

As a result, when you've done this kind of pre-draft exploration, the actual writing of the script itself--the one-tenth of your tale that is above the surface--will be written with authority and sense of purpose.  And lo and behold, the characters that walk into your story will take over and on the best days start writing your script for you.  And the added bonus is that with a little luck and help from the muses, you'll soon have in your hands a viable and sturdy first draft of manageable length that's been written in a fraction of the time.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Welcome to the script factory...

Last month in Peterborough, New Hampshire there was a ten-day explosion of creative storytelling as 13 full-length scripts--plays, screenplays,and tv pilots--were lifted off the page for the first time.

Writers from all over the US and Canada gathered in this culturally alive village in the heart of New England to celebrate their art with professional actors, directors, designers, producers, and public audiences--everyone involved and focused on the new work being presented.  It was a high energy and exhilarating time for all participants and everyone left the gathering recharged and recommitted to our shared collaborative art form and the scripts that ignite it all.

What I'm referring to, of course, is the latest residency experience of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen program run out of the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  The program boasts a faculty of established professional writers and other visiting theatre and film professionals who teach classes and workshops and who mentor our students throughout the two-year course of study.  And at the heart of the program are the new scripts being written by every student--at least four full-length works while in the program--all of which are read and critiqued at each of the five residencies the students participate in.

Our program is nationally unique in its commitment to having every student create a substantial beginning body of work that serves as a launching pad for his or her script writing career.  Every effort is made to refine the craft and skill of our student writers and to realistically prepare them for the rigors of entering the professional writer's arena in the various mediums.  This is our trademark and our promise to every student, and our growing list of alumni and their successes lends credence to that commitment.

If you're looking for a place to learn and grow as a script writer in a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment, I suggest you check out our program.  The added bonus is that when you complete the program, you not only are prepared to begin your professional writing career, but you also walk away with that terminal degree under your arm.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Unlocking your screenplay...

Yesterday I was talking with a colleague of mine, a successful screenwriter, who was dumbfounded by the number of student writers she has recently worked with who didn't understand the importance of breaking down characters' actions into small pieces.  That it is in small, seemingly insignificant actions that a story is allowed to come fully to life and tremendous truths are revealed.

I was reminded again of Stanislavski in An Actor Prepares as his acting teacher Tortsov says to his students in Chapter 8 (see my first post on this book from a couple of weeks back):

"Since it is impossible to take control of the whole at once, we must break it up and absorb each piece separately...When you cannot believe in the larger action you must reduce it to smaller and smaller proportions until you can believe it."

What I find interesting is that what Stanislavski is telling his student actors could just as easily be told to writers learning their craft.  In fact, so much of what he says pertains directly to the writing process.  And, of course, that makes perfect sense seeing the material the actor works with is generated by us, the writers.

He goes on:

"Perhaps you do not even yet realize that from believing in the truth of one small action an actor can come to feel himself in his part and to have faith in the reality of the whole play."

Just substitute the word "writer" for "actor" and you have a basic truth in the writing process:  that action is the central driving force of any screenplay (or play for that matter) and that often it's the small, specific actions that hold the keys to good storytelling and the creation of a script that lifts off the page.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

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MFA scriptwriting program spreading its wings...

A few weeks back--March 28 to be exact--a group of theatre artists who are a part of our MFA program in Writing for Stage and Screen staged a reading at the historic Players Club in NYC.  The script was To Moscow by our faculty member Karen Sunde.  The director was Robert Lawson, also on our faculty.  The producer was Steve Ashworth from Edmonton, Canada, a recent graduate of our program.  And two of the lead actors, Lisa Bostnar and Gordan Clapp, are members of our program's acting ensemble.  To top it off, a large group of current students, faculty, and alums were in the packed audience and were a part of the talk-back session following the reading.

That's playwright Karen Sunde sitting on the stage, producer Steve Ashworth standing next to her, Gordon Clapp behind Steve, and Lisa Bostnar (in pink) with the other actors.

And here is the write up of the reading in the Greenwich Village paper Westview News.

I mention this event because it's a great example of what goes on with a writer's work once it starts to hit the development arena.  The hopes are that this project will experience a bigger life with this collected ensemble of artists.  And it also is a testament to our MFA program and our commitment to helping all of our writers get their work launched into the world and brought to life on the boards. For as we find ourselves constantly explaining, a script is a means to an end and not an end in itself.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

 

Stanislavski and scriptwriting...

I'm re-reading An Actor Prepares and I'm struck with the degree to which Stanislavski--the preeminent master teacher of the art of acting--is in many ways also speaking to writers at the same time.

In this classic text, he carefully illustrates how the actor, in preparing his/her work, must develop a process with an intentional progression, exploring "given circumstances" and playing with the "magic if" among other techniques in such a way as to open the doors of the imagination and tap into the treasure trove of creativity that lies hidden under the surface in the subconscious.

"...Our art teaches us first of all to create consciously and rightly because that will best prepare the way for the blossoming of the subconscious, which is inspiration."

And:

"Our subconscious power cannot function without its own engineer--our conscious technique."

And he keeps hammering home this truth as he progresses, all of his lessons famously being described in detail by his student Kostya Nazvanov.  Stanislavski, through the voice of the teacher Tortsov, also demands that the actor focus on the backstory of the character being portrayed and the necessity of bringing to life the subtext underlying the actual words, and on and on...

My point is that much of the book reads like a manual for writers as they dive into their pre-draft exploratory work on character and story, much like an actor must do in preparing for a role.

Well worth taking a look.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications (deadline in June 1) for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

The script for Brooklyn: a second act meltdown

My wife and I finally caught up with the film Brooklyn last weekend.  It's been in our queue and we were looking forward to screening it.  And many aspects didn't disappoint.  The performances are all first rate, the cinematography is beautiful, and the overall look and period feel reads authentic.  And, most importantly, an hour into the film we were totally swept away with the story.

The script's Act 1 is masterful in inviting us into young immigrant Eilis Lacey's journey to America--her bright spirit as well as her struggles, her fears, and her growing isolation resulting from her immense decision to cross the sea to a new life.  We fall in love with her and the life she finds herself in.  And then she meets this special and humble young man (Tony) at the end of Act 1 and suddenly everything shifts and we're further carried away into her Act 2 romance.  The film is succeeding to totally immerse us in Eilis's world, taking us inside the story, increasingly carrying us along with the tale's forward momentum, up and through Eilis and Tony's elopement. Then at the midpoint of Act 2 Eilis gets the news that her only sibling, her sister, has suddenly died back in Ireland and Eilis has no choice but to return home to comfort her widowed mother.  A key plot point that again throws us in a new direction--setting up strong jeopardy to her new found relationship.  All is well with the story up until now.  I even recall saying to my wife at this point what a beautifully constructed screenplay this is.

And then, unfortunately, everything starts to fall apart.  Once back in Ireland, our heroine meets and slowly begins to fall for another young man and suddenly we start feeling as if a narrative switch has been turned off.  The Tony love story is literally dropped from the tale and we are left increasingly bewildered, watching our Eilis step ever deeper into this new life with scarcely a thought of who and what she left behind in America.  Absent are the moments of struggle pulling her heart in two opposite directions.  Absent is any visible concern over the fact that she is married to another man.   Or an explanation as to why she won't even open Tony's many letters to her. Or why she let her secret go on so long.  Or show moments of agonizing struggle as she's pulled ever deeper into this false life. We began to wonder if she would have ever told the truth of her marriage to anyone if she hadn't been eventually caught in her lie.  And as a result we felt like the rug was pulled out from under us.

The film is actually an excellent example of how a script can go wrong in the second half of Act 2, often the trickiest part of a screenplay to get right. Basically, the problem stems from the story not staying true to its central character who has been so expertly and successfully established in Act 1 and the first half of Act 2.  As a result, in Act 3 when Eilis finally makes the decision to return to America and her Tony, the story is so derailed that it rings false and isn't really earned.  As Anthony Lane asks in his review of the film in the The New Yorker, "Why does that choice [between the two men] not feel more like a wrench?"  The reason is that we no longer know who this central character is or why she is behaving the way she does.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

Can the plot of your script carry the load...?

One of my favorite script clients recently sent me a first draft of a new play.  It was the first time I'd seen or even heard of this particular project.  So I read it with great anticipation.  However, before I got to the third act, I knew that the plot was on increasingly thin ice, that the story was getting top heavy and that the script's structural engineering insufficient and faculty.  To put it bluntly, the whole thing came crashing down like a house of cards.

What happened here was that this writer likes to work out his plot structure as he writes his draft and doesn't want to create the framework for his plot before plunging into the actual script.  As a result, what inevitably happens time and again is that everything--all those many, many first draft pages--have to be put aside and the structure of the story has to be developed and planned out from the ground up.

It's like building a three story building and realizing when you get up to building the third floor that the load has become so great that this final floor can't be supported by what you've built underneath--the foundation and first and second floor can't hold the third.

It might look something like this underneath the surface...

So everything has to be dismantled stick by stick (or scene by scene, page by page) until you're back to square one and you're looking at your original hole in the ground.  And you have no choice--painful as it may be--but to figure out and create viable working drawings before you can attempt reconstructing your edifice.

The problem here is that many writers work this way--plunging into draft way too soon--and most of them have a huge problem with letting go of the pages and scenes they've already written in acts one and two.  I run into this time and again.  The reality is that, to do it right and have a fighting chance to eventually write a script that works, everything in that first draft effort needs to be dismantled and put aside and the story carefully reworked and designed from the ground up.  You have to be willing to let those original pages go. And instead, the story needs to be outlined carefully--engineered in fact--so that when it's reconstructed as a script it's able to carry the full load of the story--a critical part of which is your third act that sits on top of the other two.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

DiCaprio: It all starts with the script

For all of you writers who are working your way through an initial draft, keep in mind that any successful project always starts with the script.  And taking the time and effort to make that play or screenplay or teleplay totally lift off the page is well worth the struggle before releasing it to the world.

Here's what Leonardo DiCaprio had to say on the subject in an interview with Charlie Rose a couple of years ago:

"Everything at the end of the day when you're making a movie starts with the material and how well written the script is...  I've never seen a silk purse made from a sow's ear...  I've never seen it happen wherein a 'crap' script with 'crap' characters, a director somehow found a way to make a masterpiece out of it."

He goes on:  

"And that's the constant struggle we all sort of have as actors...it's finding those gems and that's why people grab onto them like vultures... When you find a great piece of material or a great script it's like (he motions with his hands in a vulture grip)...You should see what happens...it's like a piranha feeding fest!"

So take your time with that draft and your subsequent drafts.  Fight the urge to release that script before it's as good as it can possible be.  Set your sights high.  And never compromise or settle for second best.  Work at it until you know it's right and is, indeed, one of those gems that can trigger its own feeding fest.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.