The Writing Center

With our Writing for the Screen class coming up — as well as the Academy Awards! — we wanted to get Metro screenwriting instructor Garrett Chaffin-Quiray’s take on a few things about film and film writing…

Q: What are your picks this year for Best Film/Best Adapted Screenplay?

A: “Little Miss Sunshine” will likely win best original screenplay, both because it’s the “deserving little picture that could” and because it’s often a consolation prize for best picture. On the adapted screenplay front, the field is wide open with every nomination worthy of recognition. Even so, I have particular fondness for “Borat,” which is as insightful and offensive as has been noted, and “Children of Men,” a film we’re likely to continue watching for years to come while many of the showier, more commercially successful awards front runners will be forgotten. Naturally, this has to do with the P. D. James source novel, but the screenwriters did their homework and created a world equal to that of the original.

Q: What is the first thing a screenwriter should know about writing a script?

A: Writing for the screen is concerned only with what an audience can see and hear, and nothing else. We must be able to see characters behave and take action, as a way of describing internal states like emotion, memory, and symbol, but we shouldn’t rely on being told things the way we would if reading a novel. This simple point isn’t the way we’re generally taught to write or tell stories, though, and it requires training, along with a good eye for what an audience most wants to see and hear in a dramatic story.

Q: What’s your favorite film?

A: I have trouble answering “best of” questions, but a few standout titles always bubble to the surface: widely respected, “serious” titles like “Once Were Warriors” (Lee Tamahori, 1994), “Unforgiven” (Clint Eastwood, 1992), “Blade Runner” (Ridley Scott, 1982), “All About Eve” (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1950), “Rear Window” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), “Nashville” (Robert Altman, 1975), “The Piano” (Jane Campion, 1993), “Lone Star” (John Sayles, 1996), “Taxi Driver” (Martin Scorsese, 1976), and “Reservoir Dogs” (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), versus “pop” titles like “Cocktail” (Roger Donaldson, 1988), “Dumb and Dumber” (Farrelly Brothers, 1994), and “The Matrix” (Wachowski Brothers, 1999). I’ll watch any of these titles right now.

Q: Nora Ephron once said that for her, the best preparation for becoming a screenwriter was being a reporter — this background, for example, helped her write some of the scenes in “Silkwood.” What sort of background do you think would be useful for screenwriters (i.e., acting, directing, journalism)?

A: Any career that forces a person to interact with lots of other people is a good start for screenwriting. Much of what we do when we write scripts is raid our memory. We then fit anecdotes inside our plots that take life when peopled by idiosyncratic flesh-and-blood characters. You can’t possibly fill in those plots with ordinary people if all you’re ever in contact with are a few incurious types with monotonous lives and no ambition. So it makes sense to read books and periodicals of all sorts; to employ techniques of journalism when meeting people (inquiring as to their background, what they do, where they live, what they like to eat, etc.); to keenly observe the world and fill in gaps of knowledge with imaginative leaps of creativity (I may not know much money is in that guy’s bank account, but he’s probably a millionaire, which is why he’s not buying a Coke at McDonald’s but drinking water to save $1.59); to see as many movies as materially possible; to take note of why you think particular screen stories work and emulate that success in your own projects.

Q: What books and scripts would you recommend to writers as good references and examples of the genre?

A: The old joke says that the only screenplay most Hollywood executives have ever read, cover to cover, is “Chinatown.” Update that to include “Pulp Fiction,” and you might be on to something. I try and make a loose habit of familiarizing myself with all best original screenplay winners (both on screen and, if available, in print), along with seeking out titles I like to listen to while sitting in a theater. For professional guidance, I’ve been recently reading “The Understructure of Writing for Film and Television,” “Story Sense,” Robert McKee’s “Story,” and “The Screenwriter’s Bible.”

Q: There are software applications that help with screenplay formatting. Do you use these and/or recommend them?

A: I recommend any software that helps a writer remain productive. But since software is great at automating formats, and since most software is relatively easy to learn, I prefer focusing on fundamentals. For me, this means I tend toward low-tech writing tools: often a spiral-bound notebook with a ballpoint pen will do, but as a laptop user I am partial to using Microsoft Word for just about everything.

Q: What’s the most common mistake beginning screenwriters make?

A: In order of frequency, and this isn’t just true of new screenwriters: describing how a character feels or what a character remembers without figuring out how to put those intangibles into behavior, action, setting, costume, or dialogue; using script pages to describe, in great detail, exactly how an environment looks when simple remarks will do; not remembering that a script is a blueprint that requires a tremendous number of collaborators to transform the story into a finished TV show or movie; writing dialogue no breathing person would actually say.

Q: With Hollywood making fewer films these days, are students better off writing scripts that they can produce themselves?

A: Yes, but … it’s important to recognize that writing and producing your own work is often only going to be a brilliant education without much commercial upside or a very big audience. Still, becoming better at the craft of storytelling is always a good idea. In the end, though, most all of us aspire to big bucks, fame, popularity, and great success — and this isn’t likely to come from producing one’s own work. Knowing how to translate a script into a winning screen story is important, but the mass media are not presently set up to help unknown parties succeed, aside from the web, which is a good way to present work but not to make money or enter the system.

Q: As a film professor and workshop leader, what is the most important thing you hope your students learn?

A: Screen storytelling is a craft, like plumbing or cooking. Everyone can learn the basic components of good storytelling and that sensitivity makes for better audiences, consumers, writers, and people. The catch is screen storytelling isn’t natural, and not everyone has an aptitude for its conventions and requirements.

Q: How has being a writer/film reviewer changed the way you view films?

A: I discovered an industry and art form strongly suited to my needs and sensitivities when I went to film school. Fortunately, that form requires stories, which I’m accustomed to building through my “other” career as a novelist. Being familiar with the craft of movies is therefore a lens I frequently employ when writing fiction of any sort.

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray’s screenwriting class begins on March 7, 2007. Click here for complete information, including registration.

Continuing a wonderful trend of publishing literary work among hard news and features, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is starting a writers-in-residence program in which it will publish new, unpublished work by some of the Northwest’s best-known authors.

The program launches next Friday with National Book Award winner Pete Dexter. A list of all twelve authors — including Sherman Alexie, Tom Robbins, and Ann Rule — and their bios is on the P-I web site.

Post-Intelligencer managing editor David McCumber ran a similar program when he was at the San Francisco Examiner, and the P-I joins other newspapers — including the New York Times and LA Times, which publish fiction in their Sunday magazines, and the Washington Post, whose Chapter One publishes the first chapters of new books — in highlighting literary work. Let’s hope this trend continues to grow and to bring more authors to larger audiences.

Lemn Sissay’s article in today’s Guardian revealed rather shocking news about literary prizes (the big ones), pointing out that the nominees are not simply authors whose books their publishers admire but authors whose publishing contracts guarantee them prize nominations. And if this weren’t enough, Sissay also notes that this isn’t exactly breaking news. The article quotes Francis Bickmore, an editor at Canongate Books, as saying, “It’s standard for the big hitters and big prizes” (though Bickmore adds that he isn’t aware that Canongate has any such contracts). At any rate, this is not good news for writers who don’t realize that these prizes are something to negotiate before their books come out.

As a judge for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Fiction, Sissay was unaware that this sort of agreement exists and believes most other prize judges are as well. Though literary agents, too, are in on the secret (”It’s a way of guaranteeing press coverage,” literary agent Emily Hayward told Sissay), most writers are probably not. It may make writers who didn’t make the short lists feel a little better — or not — but it will definitely have them thinking twice about their next contract.

Last week in a workshop, I asked writers to make a list of excuses they use not to write. (These were long and very creative.) Then I read them a passage from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and posed her question: “Why Do I Write?” (They later compared their two lists, discovering that the lists of excuses were longer than the lists of reasons they write.)

It was deja vu all over again when I read Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, in which the playwright Greg Kotis begins an article on writing with a “short list” of excuses he has to avoid writing (”do the dishes; do laundry; do the Internet (Playbill.com, the Drudge Report); read the paper; install shelves; help my kids with their homework; follow the Red Sox; go to the gym; listen to podcasts (”This American Life,” “Meet the Press”); call my friends to talk about not writing; write lists”). His essay also quotes many of Goldberg’s words of wisdom from Writing Down the Bones.

Kotis’s point, though, offers insight into why our lists of excuses to write are longer than our reasons to write: perhaps we worry too much about writing bad stuff. Kotis, therefore, writes about “embrac[ing] the badness,” concluding that “the exhilaration of abandoning the effort to write well — sort of like the fun in destroying a sandcastle you’ve just made — leads to the desired oblivion. Eventually, the writing stops being strictly bad. It starts keeping to its own rhythms and rules and finally begins to feel sort of OK.”

He’s right; we need to get rid of our self-editors, at least initially, so we can find the “creative voice” that Goldberg writes about. And sometimes it feels even better than OK.

It looks as if Simon & Schuster isn’t giving up its plan to publish an unknown writer — today’s New York Times features a story about a contest on Gather.com (a social networking site described as “MySpace for adults”) in which unpublished novelists can enter by submitting a full-length manuscript. The first chapters will be posted and voted upon by the members of the site, then a second round will follow with the top twenty second chapters, and so on until a winner is chosen by a judging panel.

The good news about the First Chapters Writing Competition is that, unlike the Sobol Award, this contest is free to enter, from now until the March 15 deadline. (See below for posts on the expensive Sobol Award, the winner of which Simon & Schuster was to publish until the contest was cancelled this week.) More good news is that the winner (if one is chosen) will receive a $5,000 prize, a standard publishing contract with Simon & Schuster, and promotion and distribution by Borders (subject to all the fine print, of course).

The fine print posted at the site is not unlike other contests, requiring that manuscripts be unpublished, original works not under consideration elsewhere, and that authors agree upon entering to sign their rights over to Simon & Schuster. Of course, it includes this caveat: “In the event that less than 200 Submissions meeting the minimum standard criteria of the Competition are timely received by Gather, Simon & Schuster reserves the right to not award the publishing prize.”

Because the contest is free to enter, this competition will likely have fewer problems than the Sobol in attracting manuscripts. What’s unusual is that until the manuscripts are whittled down to the top five, the voting will be based upon the first three chapters only. While there are always exceptions, most publishers do not purchase books based on only three chapters. Hence another caveat: “If the Panel determines that there are no Submissions of publishable quality from the Round 4 finalists, Simon & Schuster reserves the right to review all Submissions from Round 3 (i.e. the 10 semifinalists) to determine the Grand Prize winner.” The rules don’t indicate what happens if none of the semifinalists’ books are “of publishable quality.”

In addition, there are bound to be additional questions from writers, among them what constitutes “book length” as well as “commercial fiction,” both listed in the guidelines without further explanation. And because it’s using the “community” voting system, which brings to mind images of a writer’s friends and family casting vote after vote, the contest has already announced that “Gather will monitor the Competition for irregular voting patterns and fraud, and will disqualify votes and entrants if, in the Sponsor’s sole judgment, we determine that the integrity or fairness of the Competition has been, or could be, compromised.”

Though unconventional, this contest does take into account what makes a book sell: readers. And by asking readers to vote, the publisher is assuming that the most popular book will win, and hence will sell in book form. It’ll be interesting to see how this new model is embraced by writers, readers, and the publishing industry alike.

The much-disputed Sobol Award, which we wrote about back in September, has now been cancelled for lack of entries, according to the award’s web site.

The contest, inviting writers to submit novels with a hefty $85 fee, promised a $100,000 award to the winner, plus “representation” by the Sobol Literary Agency, a brand-new entity apparently founded for the sole purpose of administering this contest (it has no clients and is not a member of AAR). The award did not include publication until a division of Simon & Shuster offered to publish the top three winning manuscripts.

This, along with a few high-profile judges, gave the contest some legitimacy — but the fact that this award did not receive enough submissions to sustain itself (even after extending the deadline) brings up some interesting questions. Perhaps writers, always vulnerable to publishing scams that are still rampant in the industry, are becoming more savvy. Perhaps the increasing ease and lower costs of self-publishing have reduced the need for a writer to go the traditional publishing route.

The contest, which hoped to draw 50,000 submissions, had received only 1,000 manuscripts by December. And the contest rules stipulate that “in the event less than 2,000 entries meeting the minimum standard criteria of the Contest are timely received by Sponsor, Simon & Schuster reserves the right to not award any publication prize.” This caveat, as well as the writer’s requirement to sign on with the yet unproven Sobol Agency, might have been among the many reasons writers did not respond as enthusiastically as the contest’s administrators hoped.

We may never know whether this contest would have turned out to be a good one, but the way it has ended certainly speaks volumes. The good news is that writers have lost nothing but their time, and the cost of paper and postage; the Sobel Award has promised to refund all entry fees. And, thanks to the contest’s outspoken industry critics, the even better news is that the contest’s failure might indicate that writers are feeling more confidence in their own work. The fact that this contest couldn’t continue seems to show that rather than forking over hefty reading fees, writers are willing to wait for their right to representation that reflects the industry’s ethical standards.

Authors and publishers have found yet another way to create buzz for their books … the New York Times ran a story yesterday on literary cruises, one of the newer trends in bookselling. The cruise featured is called “Book It to Bermuda,” which leaves out of Boston and entails five days at sea with popular authors. Rough seas aside (one presenter had to give her talk sitting down, due to high waves), both authors and readers — and especially publishers — are optimistic about the idea of books at sea.

Readers, of course, reported enjoying the authors as well as hanging out with others with similar literary interests. The authors’ experience was “special”; the story quoted one writer who was approached by fans in the bathroom and at the spa. And the book distributors reported good news on sales: authors sell books on the ship and have also seen increased sales after a cruise, thanks to travelers’ word of mouth.

The article notes that a typical Ship Lit cruise passenger is “older and female,” which creates a good match for such books as romances, as well as health and fitness books — but if the trend continues, we may see a wider variety of authors and themes. If you are in the market for a cruise, a literary cruise might be worth looking into — especially if you’re an author with a book to promote and you respond well to Dramamine. Bon voyage!

In today’s LA Times Book Review, California’s poet laureate, Al Young, offers up his New Year’s resolutions. Among them is to remind himself that This Is It, that “this melting moment is it, is all you’ve got.” Young plans to remind himself by writing the words on a sticky note and putting it on the bathroom mirror so that, as he says to himself, “morning or night, when you glance or gaze at yourself, you’ll know the score.”

“This Is It” sums up so many things about resolutions, as well as life in general, and I found his other resolutions inspiring as well. Among them are to write three pages a day of his novel (pointing out that even a page a day adds up to 365 pages by year’s end), memorize one poem a week, write by hand, and speak less and listen more.

I’m normally not the type to make New Year’s resolutions (I used to, but after years of forgetting or breaking them, I gave up) — but more and more I’m beginning to think that it’s a good idea for all writers to make them. In classes I’m always encouraging writers to establish goals for their work, whether it’s finishing a novel or sending a short story to an editor. Establishing and revising one’s writing goals would, ideally, happen more than once a year, but we all have to start somewhere.

So tonight (or tomorrow, or at least sometime before 2008), think about what you want to accomplish with your writing. Try to focus on what you can control (i.e., “finish my novel” vs. “become rich and famous”). Picture where you are a year from today. And then make it happen.

Happy New Year!