Film Courage: What did you do to get better as a writer from 10 years ago all the way
to now?
Whether it’s been the 10,000 hours we talked about?
Christine Conradt, Screenwriter: A lot of it is the 10,000 hours.
I mean, I’m a big believer in that if you put in your 10,000, you’re at a place where
you just have confidence and you know what you’re doing and so the obstacles that you
encounter you just know how to tackle and so that’s very different than I think that
I was 10 years ago before I had done that.
But I think also just being able to recognize your deficiencies.
For me when I read a great script and I go “Oh my gosh, this is a great script,”
I get really excited about it.
What are they doing that I’m not doing?
What can I learn from what this writer did?
And I think just constantly learning and constantly reading and constantly researching and having
that in the back of your mind all of the time, that you want to get better and you’ll just
gravitate toward things that make you better instead of finding that comfortable place
where you know you are good at writing this.
So I’m just going to write this over and over.
I think forcing yourself to stretch.
Because once you do that, again it’s a great feeling when you’ve written something good
and you’ve done something you haven’t done before then you have something you are
really proud of.
Film Courage: I’m wondering what scripts those are?
Do you have one off the top of your head that you looked at and was like “Wow I wish I
had written that?”
Or “I want to do something like this?”
Christine Conradt: It happens all the time.
I can’t think of a specific one that’s just come out.
But I was just speaking on a panel and we were reading the first five pages of a bunch
of people’s scripts and then we were critiquing them (the whole panel was) and we didn’t
know whose was whose.
And there was one that I thought was great that I really gravitated to.
So this guy came up afterward and was like “Would you like to read it?
It was my script that you liked?”
And I read it and I just thought it was really fantastic.
He’s a great writer and I remember reading it and it was an action script and I don’t
typically write action.
It was so crisp and it was just moving so quickly and I was like I just love how he’s
structured this and how even on the page (the way it looks), just so conducive to what he
was trying to convey in terms of content that I was like but I’ve got to remember.
So as I was reading that I was absorbing all that because he may not be as far on his journey
as I am, but he’s certainly a better action writer than I am and so I was learning a lot
from how he structured…the words he chose.
Film Courage: Yeah and that’s where you were talking earlier and I’m not sure if
the word was bitterness but that’s where you get that chance to either take it from
[a place of] bitterness to so “Wow, what can I learn?
How can I do something similar?”
Christine Conradt: You can learn from everyone and that’s the thing, there’s so many
people who I think…people just want to feel validated so badly where they get to a place
where they are like “I’m the expert and everyone should be listening to what I have
to say about this.”
And it’s kind of crazy because yeah you may have put your 10,000 hours in, you may
be very good at what you do.
But you can learn something from everything that you read even learning what not to do.
But even in really bad scripts you’ll find these little moments where I’m like “Oh
my gosh, that was really well conveyed.”
So just being open to those things and learning from other people because people are constantly
adding to this body of work that exists in the world and there is so much for you to
be able to read out there.
Be open to what other people are doing, but then again you have to love reading.
So many writers don’t love reading.
So read, read, read, read and see what other people are doing.
A lot of people start writing without having read a script and I just don’t understand
it.
Film Courage: Are you also reading novels, too?
Christine Conradt: When I have time.
I don’t have a lot of time.
But yeah, when I get the chance, yeah I love to read novels.
Film Courage: Yeah, it’s such a lost art and I miss it, too.
And it’s really hard in today’s world because so much amazing content in on Youtube,
so we can learn something even faster by watching a video.
But I miss the act of reading and it seems lost.
Christine Conradt: And I even get caught up sometimes in reading nonfiction because I
feel like well at least I’m learning more than if I’m reading a novel.
But you should remember you are learning.
By getting caught up in it and seeing how that writer has taken you through this flow
of their words you’re learning a lot by just doing that, too that you can then bring
to screenwriting as well.