Guido Segal, Screenwriter, Journalist, Film Critic, Instructor: When I started out I had
some resistance to rewrites
and it's important to understand that when you resist it's because you're scared of it.
Film Courage: What writing process do you teach your students?
Guido: I try to teach my students give them as many different tools as possible. I don't believe
in any dogmas. I don't believe there's one single way to do it.
When I teach, so for example I have a whole class for a three-hour class for structure
and I give them all the approaches. I know to structure the Save The Cat approach to it and the
Blake Snyder approach to it, the eight sequence structure, it’s whatever they find helpful
so it's not so daunting to break down story because we all feel it when you when you're
facing the story you're like Oh my goodness I have so much ground to cover and I don't know
so for example the eight sequence structure is really helpful because you're thinking in terms of
12 15 pages at a time so you're no you're writing shorts I'm talking about features of course
it's like writing short units and then by thinking of units you're not thinking about the whole thing
with with tv well tv I mean there is there are multiple ways to do tv but I do give them I do
compare tv structure with film structure in the sense that a drama pilot the end of the teaser
is usually the inciting incident the end of act one is where it kind of gets personal so the
the end of act two would be the midpoint in a 60 minute 55 minute pilot but I don't believe there's
one way to do things I whatever works for each person do you ever find students challenge that
because they've they've read books before they've taken your class or they've taken other classes
and they say well then this is actually how it's done and they like those rules they like structure
I do believe there should be structure I mean they don't usually question me because they understand
that I'm i'm very straightforward from the beginning and I said look I'm going to give you
everything I know and sometimes there are different options but
I'm no I mean they're adults so I'm giving them an option it's like I'm not going to tell you
there's one single way to do it I'm going to tell you all the ways I found out over the years
and some of my colleagues prefer this version and others this one and it's my my role as an
instructor is to give them tools not to give them the ultimate truth because there's no such thing
actually I would say the most important thing I don't know if you can teach people how to write
you can teach them discipline you can encourage them you can show them that it's not impossible
you you can share experience experiences that that reveal that
you can get frustrated and keep going you can have failures and get up it's amazing how many times
everyone including myself and everyone else we tend to think that what happens to us
is only happening to ourselves and it's ridiculous because it's very
liberating to hear that other people have gone through the same actually you don't all you don't
you never get you rarely get a chance but if you can read first drafts by acclaimed writers
which of course you'll never find because they don't want you to but academy award
writers winning writers also have awful first drafts they also have scripts that don't work
it's it's not that they sit down and write the most perfect script ever it takes many rewrites
so I mean I know Aaron Sorkin will go on and say like he wrote the social network in three months
I'm like maybe I don't know I'm sure he's very talented and smart and qualified I'm saying
we all need time to get there is that something that's hard for your students
to accept or or was that something for you in the beginning that you just wanted to get
this idea out there these characters out there you didn't want to have to do multiple drafts
you mean if if they challenged the idea of of rewrites sure or did you yourself challenge it
I well when I started out I had some resistance to rewrites
and it's important to understand that when you resist it's because you're scared of it
and I would say it is it is scary because the first draft once you
understand that the first draft is not the final product it's just your first approach
to it then you understand that the rewrites is where it actually gets tricky and there are many
ways to approach rewrites it took me a while to learn how to do it as well I usually use the
image it's like a wound it's a scar that you're reopening and being being very dramatic here but
you finish the draft and you're very pleased then you want to step back right and take some
distance and then you go back to it and you have to reopen the wound and like it's all bloody again
and then you have to stitch it up again I think that's when you need perspective the most
that's when you could use feedback from close people conversations maybe even the help of a
script doctor at some point why not it's really hard to have perspective on your own writing
sometimes you need some time to go by maybe weeks or a month before you dive in again
and you need someone's perspective to know what works and what doesn't and maybe you
love a scene and that scene needs to go and you need someone to tell you that scene needs to go
the good thing about working for hire working with with with people is that they actually give you
notes and I could spend hours talking about notes themselves and sometimes
they'll give you the best notes and it hurts because you have to work a lot on them but
they're good notes you can tell and sometimes you gotta find the note behind the note
some you don't you can't expect people always to have the perfect note to give you but it's
your job to find out what they mean and also I try to be very careful when someone has one
opinion okay i'll see if I consider or not but when one note keeps coming up over and over again
in different manners right but it's the same note well then there's a problem right when
I a script I have to rewrite now that I rewrote a couple of times it's a period
script and a note I kept getting back was the main character is an why do I care
and at first I resisted saying like no it's the 60s that's how people did things back then
but then when I keep getting the same notes especially from female
readers they're like no that guy's an well then I have a problem because I'm not making a movie
for the 60s I'm making a movie for nowadays so even though I'm trying to be very accurate in
terms of how I portray the period my audience is now so I got to do something about it so
you had to make the character somewhat more relatable and human to today's standards not
60s well I mean he's a guy who's focused on on his work and is is disregarding his he's very young
his wife is also very young and they have a baby so instead of being a good father which he can't
because he's like he's too young he doesn't know I mean it's not he means anything by it he just
doesn't know how to do it so he escapes family his family's responsibilities by focusing on his work
and the note was he's being am I'm like no well he's a kid he doesn't know he shouldn't have been
a dad in the first place it's the 60s back in the 60s you didn't share that responsibility they're
like no I don't care I don't care how good he is at his job he left her alone to raise a child
and there's really no point in me arguing that what about don draper well
this is the thing I love mad men and I love don draper and I use that as a reference
don draper only works for today's audiences because Jon Hamm is really sexy okay that's fair
enough yeah I remember back when it came out I was watching it with my girlfriend at the time and
I would say he's disgusting he's an awful person and she would be like I don't care he's too hot
and what there's a point there I don't know how that they got that that show made before casting
I think it took a while yeah he's awful he's a broken man but he's Jon Hamm in a suit.
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