Film Courage: Two kinds of writing, creating and shaping?
Glenn Gers, Screenwriter: There are two kinds of writing and every piece of writing
uses both kinds. It’s not like somebody only does creating and somebody only does the shaping.
Every writer has to get used to sort of an over and over again process of creating
(what I call creating) and it’s just the stuff that comes out, what some people call the vomit
draft or the experience of just trying to imagine stuff and write down what you think trying to put
yourself in a scene or think what would they say next and write it down. You’re accessing
something that truly humanity has no idea what it is or where it comes from. I don’t know if
it’s something that other creatures have but people have this weird ability to make stuff up,
it’s essentially dreaming. You think of a story or a character or a moment or a scene or a line and
you don't you can't really say where it comes from and this is every artist in history has experience
has described the same experience of I was trying to write this thing and this line just came to me
this scene this twist whatever it is it just comes to you and the more that you can get used to the
need to let it happen however it happens to create without any judgment at all without any criticism
without any fear saying anything that comes out of me at this moment is fine and to be able to
sustain that and do that for a bit of time and get something down and to get used to the experience
of making that written down feeling free with the words even if they're bad even if if you're
bad at typing they're going to be misspelled doesn't matter what matters is that they
you grab them from that mysterious place and you get them on the paper that's creating but then
almost always it's going to need some shaping some editing some rethinking writing rewriting
and that second shaping part is where you say clean up all the typos break that long sentence
into two short ones make those two short ones into one long one that word there that's really
vague what do I mean when I say baffled baffle is actually pretty specific but what I mean
that do you start to think the way someone who's not you would read it and whether they would get
the experience you're trying to give them and then you start to be mechanical about it there's
tricks you can use putting the punch line at the end putting the set up at the beginning
finding funny sounding words for funny lines there's all these tricks of the trade
that goes in the shaping part when you're shaping you're spending a lot of time being critical
and trying to when you're critical what you're trying to do is I like to think of critical
as making the best of not saying bad i'm not critical of it I am wow there's a funny bit in
that but this is getting in the way so critically i'm going to get rid of the stuff that's in the
way of the good I like the good what's important about being critical is that you're doing it to
improve what it is trying to be not make it into something else and certainly not just slam it down
the editing part of you the rewriting part of you is the second part of the process usually
it goes back and forth several times sometimes you get weirdly creative while you're editing
a new line comes to you and then you so you're sort of doing a micro switch editing
editing oh the new line creative oh back to editing and that process goes over and over
most writers I know they tend to set aside a separate mood I know i'm going to have to
do seven days of creating creating craving i'm never going look back at what I wrote
and i'm just going every day set aside an hour throw it down and then go make myself a nice lunch
then for another seven days i'm going to look at what I wrote take a big deep breath start to break
it down start to do the work stretch a little go back to it and that process over and over
will make for great writing do you think too many writers are focused on positive feedback
instead of writing something that can actually be made that's interesting actually I do think that
we have developed a script reading industry within the industry and that has sort of become a kind of
I don't know what the term is for like if you've got a river and it suddenly gets like a little
backwater and things get stuck in there instead of going with the flow but that's there is that
people who are writing scripts are unfortunately mostly writing them to be judged by people whose
jobs is to read them that could be professional script readers and critics it can also be anyone
who is an executive or a producer their job is to read a script and try and figure out if that
script is going to be producible but still they're they're working on the script many many people who
are in those fields don't know anything about production they don't know anything about making
a movie and in fact when I say movie I mean movie or show or filmed entertainment of any kind
the most important thing for a screenwriter because it's a particular kind of writer
is that you are writing for production there is no value to your writing until it is produced
someone may pay you money which is value in the sense that they think it's going to get produced
but truthfully the value is if that script can be acted and directed and edited and released
and there's different qualities which are valuable to the people doing the
acting directing editing than the readers and you need to be able to please both
because you can't get to the production people without going through the readers
so I would say you need to learn all the advice about how to please
a reader and what they're looking for and what they the rules they have and
everybody tells you different rules but know as many rules as you can
but still it's very important to understand what happens when a script gets made if you can
make it yourself write a script for the purpose of making it yourself just so that you learn what
happens when an actor has to say lines one of the things that happens is you'll learn
most of the lines that you wrote were probably information in other words you were thinking
I need the audience to know this thing so I'll write a line where somebody says it in some way
but what the actor and the director and the editor need is for the character to need to say something
totally different the character has to need to say the information if they don't need to say
it it's not going to work for the actor and the director the only way that you can learn that
is by having actors and directors work with your script if you are a diy type of person
try it find a way to at this point you can do it on your phone you can get a bunch of actors
from the nearby community theater or college write something that's appropriate to their ability of
talent and try it out it's going to take you some time it's going to be some heartache there's going
to be some arguments but you will learn how your script is transformed by the production process
what works and doesn't work and that is incredibly valuable to everyone who eventually will make the
movie and if you can learn that stuff by and you can pretty much only learn it by doing it
then you will be a screenwriter who's making something not just to get approval but to actually
get made and be good so by running these lines by these actors and filming it with your phone you're
finding out what's filler in the dialogue and what is an actor or character wanting something
portraying that to another character who also wants something what it really will come down
to is you'll learn what dramatic action is because dialogue is action when somebody speaks actually
in real life too you're trying to do something like when you go to a counter and say may I have
a pack of cigarettes well don't say that say say may I have a club soda and a lottery ticket yeah
when you say that it's because you're trying to accomplish something when you say to someone I
love you or I don't love you anymore it's because you're trying to accomplish something you're
trying to make something happen or get something you're trying to change your relationship with
them you're trying to get something some of them to do something all dialogue should be action
that's what an actor needs to play and that's what a director needs to direct is that almost
every writer you'll meet especially the ones who have not been in production will think in terms of
information this dialogue is conveying this information and they can make it sound nice
but if it's not actually action if the character is not trying to change something in that moment
it's not going to play by the way the other thing I wanted to say was i'm a fan of DIY and I think
that we should demystify it the point of DIY filmmaking is mostly not to get your big break
and to have it sell for a billion dollars it's to get experience it's the it's the same thing that
the the the ten thousand hours Malcolm Gladwell in oh gosh I can't remember the name of the book now
Malcolm Gladwell publicize this phrase Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers
ten thousand hours is what it takes to be real mastery of any particular thing you're doing
it took me like 30 000 because i'm really stubborn and slow but that process for a screenwriter
has to include the production and what happened was the the indie industry
blew up in the the 80s and 90s over somebody makes a 3 000 movie and it sells a billion dollars and
and they're great for the rest of their career and so everyone started making movies for that
aim for every one of those that was huge there were thousands that lost all their money and
the important thing to know about DIY is you're going to lose all your money the you might as well
grab a lottery ticket to try and make money off of of indie filmmaking but that's not the point
the point is to do the work and get it to an audience to get in production and if you don't
feel like DIYing yourself there are people who are wanting to DIY who can't write and they will
love you if you just want to write and give it to them so the important thing about that is the same
thing that the 10 000 hours taught The Beatles when they went to hamburg and they had to play
eight hour sets every day for weeks and weeks on end supposedly that's when they got good
the work they were doing was not necessarily their best work but they were
producing their work and putting it in front of an audience and doing it again the next day
that's the important thing that screenwriters are not given the opportunity to do you're not going
to be given that opportunity so you should take it yourself do it a nice safe way like I said if
you're a writer and you don't feel like producing find people out there they want good scripts
when you were attempt for those 12 years was there one story that you really clung to of your own of
your own writing that you thought this is going to be it or were you constantly working on new things
well I did have this one script that kept on getting passed around and people liked for those
10 years and eventually it did sell so that that for those who out there yeah 10 years it can still
sell and frankly after that 10 years 10 years after that it was still being shown and people
were showing interest in it so that's one of the important things that you should remember when you
write something and you're thinking this will be my break it might be your break in the sense that
people recognize your talent through it and they never make that but it becomes quote a show script
that's a perfectly valuable thing I got a lot of show scripts I thought they were going to
be big hits I thought they were going to make me a fortune but they were just something that somebody
read and said wow you're a good writer why don't you write this thing that I think will make money
that's still a valid reason to write a script and the script still exists
somebody doesn't buy it it's not like it gets burned somebody else later on might like it.
Question For The Viewers: Creating or shaping, which one is easier for you?