Film Courage: What makes a great storyteller?
Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): I think
what makes a great storyteller is someone who is open to the collaborative process.
Open to knowing that as we’re taught when we’re little two heads are better than one.
But for whatever reason we become adults and we want to do everything by ourselves.
So I think great storytellers understand their part of the process. They understand that
other people can bring stuff to the process. They are open to utilizing what is happening
in the world around them.
For example I traveled for a decade as a touring artist. I was always in different places so
that means I met different kinds of people, I saw different kinds of places and we never
really pay attention to the fact that because I was in that area or around those people
I probably picked up on some new information. So we are always told to write what we know
and that automatically becomes so narrow to us when we think about how can that be what
I know?
But it’s like if you consider the places that you’ve been, the people that you’ve
met, what your spouse may do for a living, what your parents may have done for a living,
what your friends may be doing, what they may be going through in your personal lives.
If you were a child and you watched how mom and dad X, Y & Z, all of these things are
things that you know and therefore things that you can write about. So you just have
to be open. Storytellers have to be open to notes. I think we all know as artists you
have to be to criticism but criticism is different from notes. A lot of the times writers aren’t
able to tell the difference. They are thinking the executives are coming in here to steal
my joy and to rain on my parade and really they are coming in with a totally different
part of the process. They are coming in from a totally different spectrum to look at your
script and nine times out of ten if they have a note, all that means is that there is a
problem here.
You can decide to fix it in any creative way sometimes they will tell you no this is the
way it has to be and that is usually because again they are coming from a different place.
They may know something about the location that you don’t know. They may know something
about permits that you don’t know. They may know something about the actors that you
don’t know. They may have information that again if they are pushing towards their brand
and whatever it is that you are writing now seems to be taking them out of that brand
then they are going to be saying nope alright let’s take this out, let’s do this or
do that.
But I think as creatives we will take that personally and think that’s criticism instead
of understanding they are doing their part on the team, you are doing your part on the
team so don’t take it personally or negatively just realize that they are coming into this
situation from a different perspective so storytellers have to be open to that too.
So as much as we have to respect the art, we also have to understand that there is a
business side of the art and a lot of times that means you may have to compromise your
art to the people who are paying for it which again goes back to that whole baby thing right?
Like the point of you writing is so that other people can see it unless you have your own
money because if someone else buys it. And once they buy it it is now theirs. So they
are the ones who get to say what direction to go into and what schools it’s going to
go to and all of these other things right where you consider your child.
So just being open to understanding as a storyteller there is an art side and there is a business
side I think that is really big.
Film Courage: Have you seen someone who has such amazing talent as a writer but the notes
process ruins their career because they were never able to be collaborative?
Shannan: Yes. But I think it probably happens more often than we really know. Being on a
writing staff means that A) you are on the staff right now but B) you have to see if
the show is going to get picked back up. If it does it doesn’t mean that you are automatically
picked back up. And one of the ways that you can automatically NOT get picked back up is
that you don’t take notes well.
So some people are often not getting picked back up on the next season simply because
they couldn’t take notes well and again (especially if you’re on a staff) you’re
here to write someone else’s baby.
So your opinion matters BUT you writing what you’re being asked to write matters more.
There are people who just need, it’s like a learning curve for them. I can’t necessarily
say that they never work again. Maybe they learn from that and they were able to work
again.
There also may have been times when people in authority are kind of mismanaging how they
are doing the writing but attaching themselves to someone else’s writing in that kind of
room process without realizing that the writer is doing the writing. Just because you’re
giving notes on the writing doesn’t make you a writer.
And so a lot of the times depending on where their producers or show runners or directors
or whatever it is that they are they may be getting confused in that part of the process
and now they attach themselves to the writing and I know there have been people who have
lost their jobs because of things like that as well simply because that is what their
job is and this is what your job is. Just because they work together doesn’t mean
that they are now teams or co-writers or co-whatever. So that can happen as well but that again
goes back to people not really understanding how that part of the industry works and some
people have to learn by trial and error and it happens that way.
Film Courage: Okay so I never would have thought of that. So it’s not just the writer possibly
getting hung up on these notes, it’s also the note giver not realizing their role as
well?
Shannon: Their role as well. It’s like you’re the note giver, that’s part of your responsibility,
that doesn’t make you writer because note givers may also give suggestions right? And
so now they are thinking well I gave X, Y & Z suggestions so now it’s you and I who
have written this thing. It’s like no, writers are the ones who are physically writing, right?
If you are a producer, a showrunner, or a director when it comes to features right you
may be adding possibly but if you’re not doing…and the WGA [Writers Guild of America]
has rules about if you didn’t do a particular percentage (I’m not going to try and figure
out and remember what the percentage was) but if you didn’t do a percent of the physical
writing, you cannot put your name on it as a writer.
Now in features things are going to be a little different anyway because the writer is taken
out so early in the process. So there could be other people who have come in and actually
done more writing and there is still a percentage of writing that they have to do before their
name gets attached but there is a different in how their name gets attached. It might
say if you see the word A-N-D then that means it was an extra person who got attached. If
you see the ampersand sign that means they are a team. That means they wrote it together.
Me and this person wrote this script together. If you see the word “and” it means they
wrote it and then somebody else came in and put their part and somebody else came in and
put their part. So you might see one person’s name and 50 other “ands.” Because all
of these other people came in and they put in enough of a percentage for them to be getting
credit.
Some people who are rewriters are simply ghost writers and they never get a credit but they
might have come in and done some writing.
But then once that writing process is over and now that script is in the hand of the
director, he or she is going to go in and change up all kinds of stuff. It doesn’t
make him or her the writer. So you are rarely going to see suddenly just because now that
the development is over and it’s in production and the director is now doing things with
the script, it’s not going to necessarily throw his or her name on there because he
or she is doing what he or she has to do in order to make the production happen and they
may be making a lot of different creative suggestions and creative changes. But it doesn’t
make them the writer.
Film Courage: So again, stay in your lane?
Shannan: Stay in your lane, that’s it! You’ve got to know what your lane is and stay in
it.