Film Courage: We took a break for a moment and off-camera you said something about
character and dialogue and how you help your students and how in some ways a lot
of it...they're the same thing? Corey Mandell, Screenwriter/Instructor: In some ways yeah. And I talked about this
sort of more globally in the creative integration video that people can go
back that I did for you guys a couple years ago I'll I'll I'll give a little
more specific so there's a little more specifics on the intuitive training and
and there'll be a practical test that people can take at the end to see where
they're at sort of so when I work with someone especially someone who needs to
improve on their characters and dialogue and I'm going to short-stroke this a
little bit because you can go back to the creative integration video for a
full explanation of the conceptual in the intuitive but often that the
conceptual brain is very focused on what other people think fear of rejection
want it to be good and it's controlling and that can be helpful and and there's
certainly when we're doing story designing we wanted design stories don't
even really engaging other people we want to be aware of how people are
seeing our scripts so the conceptual brain is a really important part in this
but the intuitive brain is where our authenticity comes from our emotional
authenticity and the intuitive brain doesn't have a past present or a future
just hasn't now and so the first part of what I'm working with someone to get
them better at characters and or dialogue the first thing is to train
them through practic ated practice to build to turn off the conceptual brain
and just work from a pure intuitive space and the metaphor I would give them
is imagine sounds crazy but you ride your horse to work so that's how you get
to work and you have to get to work in half an hour and your horse likes to
wander and wants to go grazing and look at waterfalls but you have to control
the horse because you got to get to work and you make sure that your horse gets
you to work in half an hour and this metaphor you the writer or the
conceptual brain and the horse is the intuitive part of it
and so the first thing is to release and surrender control to the horse and let
the horse go wherever the horse wants to go and don't control it and don't even
judge it it's almost like you just get off the horse and this you know for this
day the horse can do whatever it wants and so training people and this this is
the hardest part of the training and it can take weeks it can take a month or
two but it's literally learning how to just get a prompt and just immediately
start writing without any ideas of story without any control without any editing
it's just letting that intuitive instinct take over and just go wherever
it goes and it's like it's like a dream in that it doesn't have to be logical it
doesn't have to be interesting it's just has to be authentic and real and really
stressed non-performance writing no one's gonna read this so to warm up
by people do journaling they'll journal for fifteen or twenty minutes because
when we're journaling especially if no one reads our journals what do we
navigate toward we're not trying to be a good writer or interesting writer we're
just trying to navigate towards the truth you know trying to find our truth
or exploring a topic or just trying to maybe just writing about how we feel and
that's non-performance writing you know as opposed to when we fire up final
draft or whatever software we use it's like I'm gonna write something and
people are gonna read it and they're gonna judge it and they're by by default
they're gonna judge me or certainly it feels that way
so this first level of training is learning how to turn off the conceptual
brain and literally it's like trance-like writing you you eventually
get to the place where you could do this for 20 minutes 30 minutes 45 minutes and
when you're done you don't even remember what you wrote it's just completely
authentic intuitive lead writing so that's the first step I mean that's not
getting you to great characters in dialogue but that's the first step on
the journey would to use another metaphor I would say it's like if I was
teaching someone yoga but they couldn't they were so non limber that
get down to the floor this first phase is just getting down to the floor it's
not actual yoga but it's getting some ones they can get down to the floor so
that's the first phase and it's the hardest phase for most writers so when
they can get to a point where they can write no judging no editing completely
intuitive surrender control of the horse and just trance-like writing then we go
to the second phase and the second phase is I'm going to teach them how to write
from a really really provocative emotional feeling an autobiographical
event like the best most one you know when their child was born or when their
father died I mean we're talking like primal moments and I'm gonna train them
how to write in a way where they let the feeling that they're feeling this
emotion leave the writing and they're gonna do it to the point and keep
practicing until myself or someone else when they read these pages they can feel
what the writer felt so they can they can it's a now and energy transference
and emotional transference to be able to really engage us with characters and
dialogue you're gonna have to be able to do this now there are people listening
to this who don't need any training to do this they are very deep intuitive's
they they absolutely can do this right now without any training but there are
people that need structured training to get to this point where they can let go
of their control ego-mind work from a pure intuitive space and write in a way
where people can feel what they feel then we go to phase 3 and in phase 3
there's techniques to start to discover actual characters and you interview
these characters you spend time with these characters and there's a bunch of
play exercises till the character will take over and will happen is you can
start writing and you put the character in some situation and they just do what
they would do and they just say what they would say and they are driving it
you're not you have no agenda now maybe what the character is doing or saying
isn't particularly interesting might not make for
story but the character is doing what they do insane what they would say then
the next phase is learning how to write where what the character is feeling the
reader can feel so now we can emotionally bond and connect with the
character we can feel what they're feeling that's really powerful and again
some writers naturally do this and some writers naturally don't do anything
close this but through this training they can get there then the next phase
is we will find another character that they spend time do this training with so
they'll eventually have two characters that they always know what that
character would do they always know what that character would say and they have
they have surrender control to the characters we'll put the characters in a
certain situation a certain basic conflict and they very slowly will go
back and forth writing it from inside each character so this character would
do that what with this character do whoa a dis character is a response and now
the characters are creating what happens now again maybe what's happening is
really compelling and riveting maybe it's not maybe it's really boring it
doesn't matter it's the characters doing what the characters would do in
interaction with each other and so ultimately and here's something that
someone can do right now if they want to test their ability this is where I would
say someone comes out the other end earning their intuitive merit badge so
to speak which is so ultimately where we want to get to is organic story
structure which is a it's a term that's used a lot but not often really
understood so the way I would define it is organic means everything the
characters do it feels like they would really do it everything the character
says feels like they would really say it there's never a moment where you see the
hand of the writer there's never a moment where fills in organics there's
never a moment where a character is doing a preordained plot point or a
character's doing something or saying something because the writer wanted them
to do they're saying this to drive the story forward a certain way that's
organic story structure means everything that's
happening is the most compelling choice from a story point of view and the story
keeps getting more and more interesting it's really hard for writers to do both
to do organic story structure because in the best scripts the the scripts that
can change or writers life you read the script and you never see a hand never
see the hand the writer it never feels inorganic it just feels like these
characters these are real people they'll have a unique voice they're all saying
what they would say they're all doing what they would do and it's never boring
it is just captivating ly interesting it gets more and more interesting that's
the Holy Grail when a writer can do that they are the needle in the haystack that
the industry is looking for everyone will want to meet that writer and work
with that writer so the first step I would tell people and this is what we're
talking about this question is the organic so let's take story structure
off the table excuse me so with organic what I would tell someone is this is how
we know you've successfully come you successfully come through the end of
this training or sometimes writers will come to me and I'm like you seem like
you really strong intuitive skill sets maybe you don't need to do this training
let's test where you're at so this is what I would have them do I would have
them take two or three characters that they know they love these characters
these characters have unique voices they know exactly what these characters would
do or say and we're gonna put them into a conflict a situation and they're gonna
write it doesn't it's not going to be a full scripts not going to be a whole
pilot or a future we don't need to do that let's say 25 pages and what I tasks
the writer with doing is just let the characters do whatever they would do and
say whatever they would say don't worry if it's interesting don't worry about
you know context and it being funny or dramatic it could be boring it just has
to be completely organic and when you're done we're gonna take these 25 pages and
we're gonna give it to five or six people that you trust and you're gonna
give each of them a red marker and you're going to explain what you did
you're gonna say I know this sounds crazy but I don't care if what you're
reading is interesting I don't care if it's boring I don't care if it's
illogical all I care about is it 100% organic do all the characters speak with
the unique voice do the characters all the time feel like they're doing what
they would really do saying what they would really say if there's ever a
moment where you're like I'm not sure I believe the character would have said
that I don't know if the character was motivated to say that or felt little
force that they did that or felt like you were controlling or any of that
market circle with red put a red mark on it it's okay again it's completely
boring we're going for organic and if you get the seven drops back without any
red lines you have your intuitive merit badge which means you are capable of
organic now you're not going to take those 25 pages and go out to the
marketplace with it but you can do organic then and this is this would be a
longer conversation for another day then you have to train yourself on story
structure and then it's a matter of putting the two together to have organic
story structure but in terms of character and dialogue going through
those stages and coming out where you can be fully organic is a huge move
forward because now when someone reads your script they're gonna feel like
these are real people and the dialogue is gonna feel real and these characters
are going to have emotional in our lives and we're going to believe each of the
characters that's the first part then when you can do that integrated with
story design with story structure then you get to those magical scripts where
everything is organic and authentic and it the story is absolutely grabs our
attention holds our attention and delivers us somewhere that exceeds our
expectations and I have seen the challenge that a lot of people make as
they try to learn to do all of that at once and it's really difficult it's like
you know trying to Bowl when you have that 10 4 split the two pins are as far
apart and if you try to with one ball knocked both pins down usually do so
what I trained people to do is just focus on
organic just be able to nail that then sort of the peek in how I trained
writers and the workshops will also train people to just do story structure
with like puppets it can be inorganic where you know how to design the most
compelling story even if it's completely inorganic and feels like you're
controlling the characters that's ok we're not going to take that and show it
to anyone in the industry this is all training but then when you can do story
structure and then you can do organic or you can do organic and then you can do
story structure then I can teach you how to put the two together where they
integrate so I always teach these separately
you