A writing mantra that pays dividends...

So you have an exciting new idea you want to develop.  You've been mulling over the basics of the story in your head and are eager to dive into it and get started.

But wait.  What exactly does that mean?  To start on page one and see what evolves as the pages accumulate? To let the characters emerge as you place them in the unfolding story and let them wander where they will?  With you holding your breath as you wait to see if the writing actually leads you somewhere exciting?

In my experience, that's not the writing process that will consistently pay the best dividends.

Instead, what's first needed is a careful assessment of who your central character is going to be, what his or her primary external want and internal need is, how this character might face serious obstacles represented by other major characters, where your central figure lands at the end, and how he or she is significantly changed by the journey they've experienced.

And then the baggage your main characters walk into the story carrying needs to be explored thoroughly.

Think of them as standing at a closed starting gate with filled backpacks strapped to them and holding duffel bags and suitcases loaded to the brim.  It's your job to systematically open each of these pieces of luggage and examine every item inside.  This is the backstory stuff that these characters are going to walk into your story with once the gate is opened.  You're kidding yourself if you think you don't need to know what burdens they're carrying with them as they enter your tale at the front end.

And this leads you to fertile ground for initial plot invention and the structuring of your story. 

So many writers I work with make the mistake of being way too impatient to get to the actual production of script pages.  And in most cases this leads to an inevitable floundering and ultimate abandonment of what started out as a great idea.

Instead, I suggest that you take a deep breath, tackle this essential pre-draft exploratory work thoroughly and have as your mantra "I am already writing my script."

Because, of course, you are.

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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 from January 5 to 14 and we're currently  considering applications for starting the program at our June 2018 residency that runs from June 22 to July 1.  The application deadline for a June start is May 1.  If you're interested in finding out more about our program, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

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.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.  

The dangers of writing out of order...

There are writers I work with who have shared with me that they often write their first drafts out of order--initially writing scenes that take place at various places in their unfolding story.  They say that this gets them warmed up and connects them with the material they're working with, discovering the tone of the piece as well as getting a better bead on the principle characters and their voices.

My contention is that there are lurking dangers when you take this approach to your first draft.  Here are a few of them:

--There's a tendency to fall in love with key scenes you've written early that take place deep into the unfolding story.  And it's often very difficult to toss these pages out when you finally get to where those scenes belong in your plot even though they no longer really fit.  Many new discoveries have been made as your draft has taken shape and mostly likely scenes are now obsolete to one degree or another.

--There's a ripple effect operating as you write your first draft, meaning that one thing builds on another and many slight and not so slight adjustments in voice and behavior naturally occur as you work your way through your script.  But this can only be to your advantage if you write your draft from beginning to end.  Otherwise it's short circuited and you never allow this organic growth to happen as you work your way through, especially as you try to squeeze in that scene that you wrote too soon--a scene that most likely is void of many of the discoveries you've made along the way.

--Another aspect of the ripple effect is the subtle and not so subtle changes that occur in the actual plot of your story as you work through its telling from start to finish, incorporating the cumulative discoveries you've made along the way.  And that beautiful scene you wrote out of order will no longer quite fit.  And if you've fallen in love with the scene, there's the strong temptation to still try to force it in there--like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.  And this can be the death-knell to your script. 

--In a sense, writing a draft out of order is the lazy approach to tackling your draft.  By this I mean it tends to indicate that you've been in too big a hurry to get into the actual writing of the script and haven't had the patience to do the essential extensive pre-draft character work--digging into backstories and exploring the nine-tenths of your tale that's going to forever remain under the surface in the subtext. These critical discoveries don't happen by initially writing a scene that takes place deep into your script because you don't know who your people are or have a sense of the subtleties of personalities and relationships that will have evolved by that point in your story.

So the message here?  When you're ready to go to draft, start on page one.

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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 from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

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.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.   

Why most scripts are toss-aways

It may sound harsh, but most new scripts that are out there making the rounds will end up before long in the proverbial circular file.  As much as 90 percent or more is my estimate.

The reason?  Because most writers are are in much too big of a hurry to get into draft and let their accumulating pages dictate where their story goes.  And doing so makes them feel like they're making lovely progress when in fact in most cases they are blindly heading into the weeds.

What so often happens is that 30, 50, or 70 pages in it begins to be clear that something isn't right--the story needs another character to bolster a major element in the story, or a character who has taken up a lot of space in the story no longer has a structural reason for being in such a prominent position, or a new major exciting plot element suddenly surfaces that hasn't been even whispered about in the preceding pages.... It's inevitable that new discoveries like this will always be made as more and more pages materialize.

The problem--and I have run into this countless times as a script consultant and teacher--is that when gut instincts tell writers that major adjustments should be made usually involving reworking significant portions of a script-in-the making, they have so fallen in love with all those pages already in the stack that it becomes almost impossible to consider throwing them out.  They remember vividly the pain and struggle it took to produce them and in their judgement it's all very well written. So there's an attempt to "fix" around and in between those already written precious pages, with the rationalization that these patch ups are doing the trick.

Sadly, these fixes rarely work because what's really required is a major rewrite and finding the guts to throw out sometimes large portions of what's been already written and sometimes starting over from page one.  So the "finished" draft ends up a crippled patchwork of what could have been.  Those "darlings" are all still intact, but the story unfolds in fits and starts at best.

So what do I suggest?  Don't start your draft until you're ready.  Not until after you've done extensive character exploratory backstory work and worked out a detailed plot outline that has steady forward momentum and that has your central character landing where you want that character to land.  Many past posts on this blog deal with various aspects of this pre-draft work and a good portion of my book deals with this as well.

The message here is not to rush into draft before you're ready.  And always remember that you already are writing your script as you work through your pre-draft explorations.

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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 from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

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.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.