Table Of Content

Write What You Don’t Know WRITE WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW An Accessible Manual for Screenwriters Julian Hoxter Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © 2011 by Julian Hoxter All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hoxter, Julian. Write what you don’t know : an accessible manual for screenwriters / by Julian Hoxter. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-0210-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4411-0210-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion picture authorship. I. Title. PN1996.H735 2011 808.2’3--dc22 2011003732 ISBN: 978-1-4411-0932-3 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN All excerpts from ‘Knocked Up’ are courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLLP Contents Acknowledgments ........................................ix Introduction: Oh joy, another screenwriting book ........... 1 ‘Kneel before Book!’....................................... 1 Breaking the ice........................................... 4 Top ten tasks that are more important than reading this book. 6 1. What’s it all about? ...................................... 12 ‘I saw Screenwriting Manual with the Devil!’................. 12 ‘What’s in the box?’....................................... 14 How movies work, only without the complicated bits ......... 16 The trinity .............................................. 17 A boring pair of everyday shoes: narrative economy .......... 17 Staring open-mouthed at cool stuff: narrative excess .......... 24 Remember who you are writing for: show, don’t tell........... 27 When format nerds attack! ................................ 31 ‘Write what you know’: why this idea sucks and what to do about it ................................................. 33 Creativity today, or: ‘Don’t try this at home!’................. 34 Write what you know? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Write what you never realized that you knew? ............... 37 Write what you don’t know ................................ 37 2. Screenwriting: the hardest easy thing you will ever do....... 38 Kind of a pep talk: you should write a movie................. 40 Bad reasons to write a screenplay........................... 44 When ‘Write What You Know’ attacks!...................... 44 When ‘Write What You Don’t Know’ attacks! ................ 45 ‘I want to make lots of green’ .............................. 45 ‘I want supermodels on my d’.............................. 46 ‘Pfft, I could do that. It’s just some car chases and ’splosions, how hard can it be?’ ...................................... 46 Copying the ‘hot’ concept, or: ‘Amagawd, I totally got off on Transformers 2!!11one’.................................... 47 v vi Contents Good reasons to write a screenplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 ‘I don’t know exactly but I love movies and it’s my dream and I don’t know—wait, I already said that …’ /blush / facepalm /hide........................................... 50 ‘I have something really important I need to say’ ............. 50 ‘My story is so visual it just needs to be filmed’............... 52 ‘I have an idea that I love for a story, but I don’t know whether it should be a novel or a screenplay’................. 53 ‘I want to be a director’ ................................... 54 Ideas and where the pesky things hide ...................... 55 Creativity in the movies................................... 56 Some kind of comedian................................... 59 ‘Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau’..................... 61 Learning something new: the joys of research. Yes, really...... 69 3. Screenwriting is For the Birds: a simple model for cinematic storytelling.................................... 74 Story worlds: their creation and destruction ................. 74 Understanding story worlds ............................... 76 The ‘V’: build a world, break it and then fix it again........... 80 Rules of story worlds ..................................... 86 ‘I just do eyes, just eyes’: outside-in story world creation....... 88 ‘Now that’s our ball now, right? And we’re playing here’: inside-out story world creation ....................... 90 Playing story worlds to character and theme................. 92 Plots and stories: why everything comes from character....... 93 Story worlds, not plot worlds............................... 94 4. It’s all about the concept ................................. 97 No ifs. No buts. It’s the law. You just have to get this part right... 98 First steps, or when bunnies attack!......................... 99 The theme ............................................. 106 The wardrobe........................................... 112 The premise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 The pitch statement ..................................... 115 The top ten ground rules for a good movie pitch ............116 What is a screenplay and how do I get there? ............... 120 The treatment ..........................................121 The top ten ground rules for a good movie treatment ........122 The screenplay.......................................... 126 Basic spec screenplay format: it looks like this for a reason.... 127 Spec script vs shooting script ............................. 128 Contents vii 5. ‘Taming wild words’: it’s all about the structure............ 131 What structure is for and where it comes from..............135 Ring compositions and the ‘origin’ of structure..............140 Narration: positioning your audience ...................... 147 Narrators ..............................................148 The control of story information ..........................150 Exposition ............................................. 153 The ‘W’ model of screenplay structure: acts and angles....... 159 Acting it all out ......................................... 161 Act one: first down angle................................. 163 Act two................................................ 164 First up angle........................................... 167 Midpoint .............................................. 169 Second down angle...................................... 170 Act three: second up angle ............................... 172 Spanking your hero/ine.................................. 174 Beating it up............................................ 176 Bite size morsels ........................................ 176 The ‘W’ beat sheets...................................... 177 The ‘W’ in half angles....................................177 The ‘W’ in sixteen beats.................................. 189 The ‘W’ as a ring........................................190 Making a scene ......................................... 194 Writing to be acted and directed ..........................197 Scene beats and character tactics .......................... 198 Case study: scene beats in Juno............................ 201 6. Case study: Brick in the ‘W’ ............................. 204 7. It’s all about the characters: this time I really mean it ......231 Character development, or why writing a character bio is often a waste of ink ............................................ 232 Return of the bunnies: story goals, plot goals and the need to share the pain ........................................ 234 Wants and needs........................................237 The ‘C Team’ ........................................... 238 Hero/ines .............................................. 238 Why ‘my character is kind of an everyman’ often translates as ‘I’m a lazy-ass writer’ ........................................ 242 Antagonists ............................................ 245 The rest of the C Team...................................250 Ensembles do it (sigh) together ........................... 254 viii Contents 8. Dialogue is not just people talking ....................... 256 Dialogue is unnatural naturalism.......................... 256 Mundanity is boring only when it is mundane .............. 257 Sociolect, genderlect and idiolect, or ‘vocabulary’ for grad students ............................................... 259 Articulacy is not a default human skill .....................265 Movie dialogue is dynamic—except when it isn’t ............ 266 Why clarity always spanks dialect .........................272 Having all your characters constantly swear like troopers is basically you holding up a big sign reading: ‘Don’t buy my script!’.................................................274 Dialogue comes to life in the re-writes ..................... 276 9. OK, what now?......................................... 277 Well, now we start rewrites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Remember to kill your darlings ........................... 280 Kind of a kick in the butt: keep at it........................ 283 Acknowledgments There’s a long list, and it starts with my parents Hans and Shirley, who supported me in everything, even though they didn’t always understand exactly what they were supporting! I want to give special mention to a few people who have directly or indirectly helped, influenced and generally supported me in developing my ideas and in writing this book. Let’s start with my students of the last 16 years, many now friends and some even collaborators. I’m first and foremost a teacher and this book has been written to help students like them. It couldn’t have been written without the inspiration I have always taken from their energy, enthusiasm, creativity and critical engagement. It couldn’t have been written without them teaching me that sometimes, as a teacher, you have to start from unexpected places to make the journey easier. The idiosyncratic style and structure of this book is testament to that. The best friends are the ones who challenge you and make you defend your opinions. I have been most fortunate in sharing a love of films with a bunch of writers and artists who never let me get away with easy answers, always call me on my sloppiest thinking and don’t complain when I call them on theirs. Of these, Roy Brown, Jo Bushnell, Franc Donohoe, Billy Smith and Martin Stollery have been the staunchest supporters and guides. I am grateful to the many colleagues in England who helped me develop as a teacher. Amongst them I want to single out my old friend Tony Moon, a terrific educator whose influence I can feel throughout the pages to come. Our many years working together, team teaching, hearing student pitches and doing story development ‘on the fly’ have been the most valuable preparation I could imagine for trying to write about the way ideas develop and how to guide students along a constructive path. In California I have been lucky to have had the help and support of another group of talented and generous friends and colleagues. Amongst them my particular thanks go out to my old UCLA buddy Scott Sublett, Screenwriting Professor at San Jose State University who encouraged ix