Film Courage: Jill what are the five biggest mistakes screenwriters make?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: Well I don't know if I'm going to do five
but off the top of my head?
But I will say underestimating the importance of structure.
A good structure is like one, two, three and four, right?
It's going to paint the way.
It is the story, structure is story.
William Goldman is the one who said that.
It is determining character development.
So all of those...I really do think one, two, three and four are the importance of structure.
And then if I had to say fifth thing...I want to say it's sort of contradictory thing that
you need to be both tougher on yourself and you need to be easier on yourself.
That I see writers do things like they’ll say to a friend (maybe the friend is more
accomplished writer than they are) and they will say “I finished my draft, would you
read it?
It’s not very good.”
Why are you bothering your friend (a more accomplished writer) to read your draft that
is not very good?
Right?
You need to put a little more effort into it.
You need to be a little harder on yourself.
You should think your draft is very good before you are opening it up for feedback.
You are kind of wasting the expertise of those around you.
You’re sharing drafts when you don’t think they are very good.
At the same time you kind of need to be easier on yourself.
So be harder on yourself in the sense that don’t bug your friend until your script
is in good place but also be kind to yourself that there’s a lot of what makes people
successful is luck, is dumb luck you know?
There are people who are more talented than you that are successful and there are people
who are less talented than you that are successful.
So give yourself a break that no script is going to be perfect.
Even a great writer can…and I’ve seen writers kind of stress themselves out doing
draft after draft after draft.
And obsessing and getting contradictory notes and then they don’t know what they are doing
and then they are driving themselves crazy because they are being a little too hard on
themselves.
At some point you’ve got to let it be.
Once you feel good about it, you’ve gotten some good drafts on it, you feel good, you’ve
gotten some good feedback from your writing group or people you trust, not everyone is
going to like it.
You’ve got to put it out in the world and relax and you’re going to get some notes
back that aren’t what you agree with.
Don’t obsess about it because you can’t please everyone.
Film Courage: With your book The Nutshell Technique, which chapter is most debated by
people, whether it’s a friendly debate or whether it’s outright where people have
these severe beliefs about writing.
Jill: I’ll say the most confusion is the concept of the want.
So the very first thing I talk about is that in the first scene the character has something
that they want that they get in the point of no return.
This is the trickiest piece for some reason and I have two chapters on it.
It’s actually the only element I devote two chapters to for this reason.
I try to and this is just from years of experience that I’ve learned this, I’ve tried to
help people by calling it and explaining and yet still there is confusion about this.
This want that I’m talking about here, I call it the set-up want.
It’s not necessarily the character’s greatest want.
It is not necessarily the character’s biggest motivation.
And yet people still do that.
They still think it’s that “Well my character wants one thing and according to Jill’s
Nutshell Technique they have to get it in the point of no return.
But that doesn’t work with my point of no return.
My point that I’ve tried to make clear is that just because your character has multiple
flaws, they have multiple things that they want.
There’s not a one-to-one relationship between wants and point of no returns.
Your character wants multiple things.
All I’m saying is there is one want that they get in the point-of-no-return.
It may not be there biggest want, it may not be their defining one, it may not be the thing
that they say that they want, it’s just something that they want.
So sometimes I call it a throwaway want.
Sometimes your character just wants a sandwich.
All we’re doing is we’re setting up this little piece “be careful what you wish for”
in what happens in the point of no return.
Be careful and don’t think that that makes the movie not apply to The Nutshell Technique
because it didn’t seem like the character got what it wanted.
I talk about it in GROUNDHOG DAY because it’s a great example of this point.
His most obvious of what he talks about in the first scene.
He thinks there’s a network that is scouting him for a big network job.
That’s his most obvious want.
He wants a big network job.
He doesn’t get that want.
I’m not saying he doesn’t want it.
He says he wants it, I believe him.
It’s just not the set-up want.
So you need to look at find something else that the character wants that they get.
So I’m not negating the fact that Phil Connors wants a network job.
I’m not negating the fact that Phil Connors wants women to worship him.
There are lots of things he’s not going to get just like we all want things we don’t
get.
The thing that he wants that he gets is a little throwaway line that he says.
That he doesn’t want to spend more than 24 hours in Punxsutawney.
It’s a little throwaway line.
Matter of fact it wasn’t in the three versions of the screenplay that I looked at researching
for this book.
It was very late in the process that they also discovered “We are missing something.”
We are missing something that makes Phil (even Phil, this jerk) isn’t a victim of the Universe
suddenly making him stuck on one day.
He kind of in the original drafts was kind of a victim, just this thing happened to him
and he’s stuck.
The writer is at a very latent process because it’s not in the three scripts I’ve seen
but some place between those three drafts and the movie was shot, they added a scene
where he says to the substitute weatherman that he wants to spend more time covering
for him when he’s in Punxsutawney.
Phil says “Please, like I want to spend an extra second in Punxsutawney?”
It’s a throwaway line “I don’t want to spend more than 24 hours in Punxsutawney.”
We are just setting up, be careful of what you wish for because he got his want.
He only has to spend 24 hours in Punxsutawney, right?
Except for there’s a big catch.
He’s going to have to spend the same 24 hours over and over again.
So the want is a set-up want.
I call it the “set-up want” with quotes around it.
It’s not necessarily the characters big want.
Film Courage: Can we use an example from CHINATOWN?
Jill: Okay.
Film Courage: Jack Nicholson’s character and the initial want.
He meets Faye Dunaway.
What the first want that he gets that is not really his real want?
Jill: Well…I’ll tell you what the real want is.
So the set-up want we are going to see literally in their first scene.
So it’s before he meets Faye Dunaway.
It would be in that very first scene where’s he’s got Curly sitting across from him.
Curly is the client showing pictures showing that he’s been cheating on him right?
And Curly is sobbing all over the place.
So what he wants is what he doesn’t have here.
He wants a classic case.
This cheating wives thing is not really classy.
So what he wants is a classic case.
He wants something classier than what he is getting.
He gets that in the main case that is going to be Chinatown.
The catch is it’s got corruption all over it.
It’s a lot bigger than he thought it was.
Film Courage: It’s not even the wife.
Jill: Right.
Film Courage: Interesting.
So that is his initial want.
He thinks he gets it and he gets this femme fatale that comes in and it turns out it’s
a whole mess of trouble.
Jill: Right.
So the want right away is this throwaway thing that they say.
In JUNO it’s got another nice example I talk about in the book that the want is a…it’s
a really clever one actually where she’s drinking the SunnyD because she’s taking
the pregnancy test and she’s trying to pee.
She’s drinking the SunnyD and she sees an old discarded chair that somebody left out
on the curb and that reminds her of the flashback of her being intimate with Pauly (the moment
that got her pregnant).
The thing that she wants is she’s just looking at a chair.
She wants to save something that is being discarded (the chair that she pulls out and
puts on Pauly’s lawn is sort of this act, right?
And then how does she save something that is being discarded at the point of no return?
What’s the point of no return?
Film Courage: …It’s been a few years.
Something with her babysitting job?
Jill: No.
She’s pregnant and she’s planning to terminate it and she can’t go through with it.
So that is something that is about to be discarded, a fetus.
So what we’re doing is you’re getting your want but you’re getting it with irony,
right?
In the beginning she just wanted to save a chair, right?
And I call it a throwaway want.
It also fits with her character really nicely as someone who kind of saves discarded things.
She has a hamburger phone, you know?
And people like Pauly who is sort of discarded, so it’s very fitting in her character that
she wants to save this discarded living room set.
But then she goes to save a fetus that she thought she could discard and discovers that’s
a lot harder than she thought it was going to be.