Film Courage: Can you talk us through how you make a beat sheet?
Larry Wilson, screenwriter BEETLEJUICE, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE ADDAMS FAMILY: I don’t.
I don’t. I will if contractually obliged doing a beat sheet or an outline I will do
it. And sometimes you are and what usually happens is you spend all this time on this
beat sheet and this outline and it’s the most bastardized thing in the world because
it’s not a script, it’s not a story, it’s this thing that exists halfway between a script
and a story. But I will do it if contractually obliged to, I’ll do an outline and I’ll
do a very detailed outline and I’ll do it always to the best of my abilities, I won’t
slum but I’ll do it and hand it in and the producers will go “We love this outline!
This is a great outline. Now go write the script.”
And you’ll go write the script and you’ll have your outline and you’ll say “Okay,
here’s what the outline is telling me and you start writing and it will immediately
start changing and better ideas will emerge and the next thing you know the outline is
completely out the window and you’ve written a script and you’ll turn it in and the producers
will go “We love this! This is just like the outline.” And everyone has forgotten
the outline and I know again, my beat sheet is obviously you kind of know the beginning.
You know you’re putting your characters and you feel these characters and you put
them in this situation that they are going to have to fight for their lives to get out
of.
I kind of know what the end is going to be (kind of sort of) and then it’s the great
unknown and to do that in a beat sheet to me it’s just taking all the fun out of it.
So don’t listen to me, listen to all the other people out there who say outline, beat
sheets. Please if that’s what you need to do and there’s great writers who do that,
of course they do that. And sometimes when you’re collaborating it becomes more necessary
because you’re sending stuff. But for me, they don’t work for me and any time I do
them everything starts changing anyways so much that they quickly become irrelevant.
Film Courage: Why don’t they work for you?
Larry: Because I’m a storyteller and the stories emerge from some place that is beat
sheet-proof. That’s just me. I don’t know what…they just come from somewhere else
and if I tell it all in a quote-unquote “beat sheet” it’s like why would I do that to
myself. Why would I take all the fun out of discovering it and putting it in this thing
that’s just kind of bullet points.
But that’s me and that’s the idiosyncratic part of me but I’m in good company Stephen
King, my favorite writer, ask him about beat sheets, help me with the writer who wrote
Game of Thrones (voice from off-camera “George R. R. Martin”) Thank you! He said it the
best of anyone he said there are…now you would think particularly if you’ve read
the Game of Thrones books that those things are outlined completely. They are so intricate
they are so full of plot and character and this needs to overlap and this needs to…you
know what I mean, that they are extremely intricate stories. He doesn’t outline and
what he says about it is and I think it’s such a great quote and I’m paraphrasing
a little bit but the essence of it is there are architects and there are gardeners. An
architect will need that blueprint to build what it is they are going to build. He said
I’m a gardener. I plant a seed and I tend it and nurse it and watch it grow. And there
are architects who will do that beat sheet and will do it brilliantly and so I’m not
knocking it and then there are gardeners and I’m a gardener. I just kind of let the idea
sit there and I tend it and I take good care of it and I make sure it gets all of the water
and Sun and I watch it grow.