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There is quite a strong online screenwriting community which seems to mainly consist of screenwriting hopefuls who will blog about every positive comment they have ever received from a professional in the film and television industry, and actual screenwriting professionals who complain about how poor, clichéd, and mistake ridden the scripts from screenwriting hopefuls are.

A blog I enjoyed reading was Screenwriting Tips...You Hack. It is written by a script reader called Xander Bennett and it basically consists of the don’ts of screenwriting. This blog is a collection of short, snide tips about screenwriting, originally in the form of Tweets. In this blog, there is a range of technical, plot, and character tips. Some examples are:

Screenwriting Tip #18
Don’t use “air quotes” when they’re “completely unwarranted”.

Screenwriting Tip #42
Don’t have your protagonist’s family members keel over dead in lieu of having an actual Act 2 Dark Point. Random events like this should be the icing on the cake of your protagonist’s misery, not the sum total of it.

This is quite a good point. There should not be coincidences in a screenplay in Act 2. Coincidences are anti-climatic. They are a cop-out and undermine the process of setting up and establishing the elements in Act 1. They are unsatisfying to read.

He also makes snarky comments about clichés in screenplays.

Screenwriting Tip #40
There shall be no characters climbing out of bathroom windows to escape bad dates, nor indeed bedroom windows to escape grounding. It’s shit. A gibbon with a typewriter could probably do better.

Screenwriting Tip #62
‘Ethnic Guy Who Swears Five Times In Every Sentence’ isn’t a character, it’s a bad SNL sketch. (And Apatow already did it better than you.)

Look at his blog for more tips.

Totally scripted! Part two.

A point I raised in part one of ‘Totally Scripted’ was that screenplays are generally filled with minimally worded and concise sentences. This is because each sentence in a script describes an image the camera will focus on. There is a mirroring relationship between the length of description of a object in a screenplay and the length of time the shot is shown in the film.

For example, if a screenplay simply said ‘apple’ it would be a one second shot of an apple. But if the screenplay said ‘a single green apple glistens in the sun’, it would be a five or six second shot of the apple. If the screenwriter simply wanted to have a longer shot of the apple, but with nothing special about it, they would write this:

Apple.

BEAT.

In theory, it should take the same amount of time for a reader to read the script as it should to watch the movie.

The often quoted adage “less is more” is very appropriate for screenwriting. Viewers are very familiar with film logic and do not need to have things spelt out or over explained. If there is a close-up on a knife, then the viewer will make the connection that the knife has some relevance. Maybe it is the murder weapon, or it is the key to unleashing a powerful warlock whose life mission is to wreck havoc onto the world. Chances are, unless it is a red herring, if it is written into a script than the image or object has some meaning or relevance to the outcome of the story. It would be cut out in the editing process if there was none. Screenplay audiences are assumed to be intelligent and adept at understanding film logics. Read screenplays if you enjoy not being treated like a person with a low IQ.

Totally Scripted! Part one.

As a reader, scripts can be very satisfying to read. Even as a standalone without having seen the film or with the intention of seeing it. The actual script is very visual as the purpose of a script is to show what the viewer sees, not what the director envisages. What is written in a script is exactly what is shown on the screen.

For example, if the screenwriter wanted to have a close up on a dagger dripping with blood, the script would say this:

Dagger drips with blood.

It would not say:

The camera does a close up on a dagger dripping with blood so that the viewer can see how gruesome the murderer was.

Putting what the writer wants the viewer/producer/director to feel in the script is pointless because this does not translate onto screen. There is no way for the writer to tell the viewer that they are meant to feel horrified by the gruesome murder, unless they see images on the screen that make them feel that way (or unless they are watching the directors commentary). The viewer cannot know that the murder was meant to be gruesome until the images they see on the screen evokes that sense of feeling in them.

Scripts are good to read because they use concise, minimal language. If as a reader, you get annoyed by texts bogged down by descriptions, and you do not like reading books that have the quality of a best-seller, you should read movie scripts. Hundreds of scripts can be downloaded for free on-line from IMSDb and other sites that offer a free script library.

The Dying Art of Poetry and Theatre?

In previous centuries, theatre and poetry were viewed as mainstream forms of entertainment. Their popularity could be partly due to the lower literacy rates (not everyone had the ability to read to themselves. Poetry and theatre are easy to be performed and therefore watched and enjoyed). Also, another reason could be the lack of other forms of mainstream entertainments that can be enjoyed in a group which are available today (like the television, cinema, or internet).

In today’s society, poetry and theatre are often seen as being elitist. But there are many places where poetry and theatre can be found that are not considered high culture or mainstream. Music lyrics are a form of poetry that have a broad and diverse audience. In one form or another, music is enjoyed by most people. Music concerts have increased in popularity despite the falling number of record sales, and musicians and artists frequently use elements of theatre in their performance at live concerts. Exaggerating emotions helps the audience engage with the emotional facets of the music. Similarly, musicians enact or incorporate elements of the song’s story in their performance (for example, this could be clothing attire, backdrops, or dancers).

Poetry is also evidenced in advertising. Many products use slogans that have elements of poetry, like rhythm and rhyme. Their catchiness helps sell products as it makes the slogan stick in the viewers mind. Poetry is also found in community and Government announcements. The ad campaign for children and swimming safety had the slogan “kids alive, do the five”. An ad promoting fitness and exercise in Canberra has the slogan “don’t say one day, say Sunday”.

Many other art forms and texts also use elements of poetry and theatre.

To be spoken or not to be?

From high school through to University, teachers and lectures of English literature will say that poetry is intended to be performed- it is an oral form of literature.

Whether this is or is not just a flippant comment, I am unsure about the absoluteness of this statement. Without arguing about the semantics of the word ‘intended’-(for example, I could argue that the tofu, gherkin, and vegemite sandwich I made was intended to be tasty, but that doesn’t mean it was) -I want to explore the idea of poetry as an oral art form.

Entrenched in a lot of cultures and viewpoints is the idea that poetry needs to be spoken and therefore performed. This could be due to a number of reasons that aren’t completely incontestable. Historically, poetry is oral. Ballads were performed so they could be passed down from generation to generation. Rhythm, rhyme and repetition were important prompts in remembering the content of the story. Specific words were less important and even the content changed slightly overtime, with each telling. The actual words in ballads were more fluid as there was less emphasis on a concrete product that could be replicated due to the fact that there was no way to produce products for a mass audience. Now with a way to produce products for a mass audience, is the intended oral nature of poetry still essential as poetry is no longer such an intrinsic part of expressing our folklore?

Another reason often cited to why poetry is performed is the close link between poetry and music. Poetry relies on sounds, rhythms, rhymes, half-rhymes, assonance, consonance, beats, off beats. In languages which aren’t phonetic, like the English language, the written word does not visually replicate the beauty of these poetic techniques.

However, while the written word is only one facet of poetry, it is a myth to say that a poem needs to be read aloud to do the poetic techniques justice. For the physical body, there are many similarities between reading a poem in your head and reading it aloud. People sound the words out to themselves in both instances. Similarly, the body reacts in the same way to the words. The rhythms found in poetry do not need to be spoken to be present. It is a part of the body. It is present in the rhythmic pulses of the blood pumping around the body. People do not need to read poetry aloud to appreciate the rhythm of poetry. Therefore, is it still necessary to claim that poetry is an oral art form?

Stage versus Film? Is this an appropriate comparison? In

In her post titled “Theatre is life, Film is Art, and TV is Furniture”, Lauren Macready states that the reason she loves stage is because it is more rewarding for both the actors and the audience. The live element of stage means the story is unfolding in real time so that there is the ability for spontaneity and for each performance to have a uniqueness about it.

When asking the question of stage versus screen, Lauren refers to screen as being film. However, I would argue that this might not be the best medium to compare the ‘liveness’ of stage with. It is true, that unless the viewer decides to randomly choose which chapter order they watch their DVD in, there probably won’t be much interaction between the viewer and the text. And even this wouldn’t duplicate the same uniqueness or one-off experience that comes from stage as the order of chapter could be replicated by any amount of people. This would mean that it does not have the feeling of immediacy or liveness as if this is a once off moment that only the particular people in the immediate vicinity can experience.

You could argue that the live element of film is the experience that the viewer has while watching it. The actual film text doesn’t change, but every viewers experience will be different. People will miss certain words, they will not get certain allusions or inferences or they miss the importance of them, the viewer’s emotions will alter how they react to story lines, the location of where they view it and the medium will affect the experience (watching a film on your iphone is different from watching it in the cinema) and the people who they view it with. All these things inform the viewer’s experience.

I think the idea of spontaneity which Lauren mentions, refers to the interactivity of the audience and the cast members and the idea that the story of theatre unfurls in the moment. Rather than comparing this to film, if you wanted to make a comparison between stage and an electronic medium that allows interactivity and liveness, a possibility could be video games.

In video games, the audience has a direct influence on the outcome of the story (the audience is responsible for whether Mario lives or dies and how his journey plays out). Like stage, video games have a skeleton for which the storyline hangs, however each performance is unique. Like stage, there is a uniquenss in video games in that a story will never be exactly the same. It is a live, once-off performance.

A novel way to use screenwriting.

Most screenplays use positive and negative story beats. Alternating story beats aids the progression of the story, creates and resolves tension so that the viewer is not in a continual state of depression or euphoria, and keeps the viewer interested by adding different emotional elements to the story.

Positive and negative story beats basically mean that something good will happen and then something bad will happen. If the storyline is depressing, like the main characters are being tortured in a POW camp on a Pacific Island that is about to be flooded due to rising sea levels, humour is often used as a positive beat to ease the tension that the negative story beats have created. A script cannot be completely positive or completely negative as there would be nothing to drive the story and the viewer would not want to keep watching. A story like this would not be satisfying to watch as there are no odds that are overcome or questions that are answered (even if the answer is that there cannot be anyway to know for sure).

While this is part of screenwriting convention, it can also be used in fiction novels. ‘A Spot of Bother’ by Mark Haddon is a good example of a novel that uses positive and negative story beats. Haddon is a screenwriter and author of the acclaimed novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”.

Another book I have read recently that uses positive and negative story beats is “Confessions of a Shopaholic” by Sophie Kinsella. If the story was just about the protagonist spiralling into debt and buying more clothing and accessories, and drowning her financial sorrows in alcohol because she is unsatisfied with her career as a financial journalist, the reader would stop reading as they would feel an overwhelming sense of despair and boredom. While her situation becomes fairly dire, humour plays a big part in dissolving tension and alternately creating tension to counteract the negative story beats.

In this book, when something bad happens, it gets worse and then it gets worse and then it gets worse again. The protagonist, Becky Bloomwood takes on casual employment working in a clothing store to make some extra cash to pay off the debt she has accrued. On her first shift, she spots a pair of jeans that she must have on sale. Unfortunately for her, a customer is going on a boyfriend sponsored spending spree and wants to buy these jeans. Becky decides The jeans are the most important thing to her, so when the girl takes them to the changing rooms to try on, Becky uses her power as a shop assistant and proclaims that the girl has too many items so she is not allowed to take the jeans into the changing rooms. Becky hides the jeans, and when the girl gets out she demands to try them on, but Becky refuses. The girl makes a scene, which attracts the manager’s attention. Becky is fired from this job, only after working there one day. When she is walking home she finds out her next door neighbour’s son, who her neighbours believe she fancies, is the boyfriend of the girl trying on the jeans in the shop.

If humour was not present in this situation, aiding the positive and negative story beats, this novel would not be enjoyable and satisfying to read.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Writing Multiple Storylines.

Ann Brashares, author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, uses multiple storylines in her young adult novels. The Traveling Pants books switch perspectives between the four main characters - Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen - in short two to three page sections. Generally, each chapter focuses on two “sisters” switching between their storylines. But Brashares also includes about one or two sections from the other two girls who the chapter does not focus on. This means that the reader does not forget or get too involved in the other characters.

Often when stories are told using multiple storylines readers can become attached to one character and dislike the others so they start skipping parts of the story and jumping ahead to the character that they like reading. Even when there is only a slight preference for one character, reading the other character’s stories becomes a chore because it does not provide the same enjoyment as reading the other sections. This is a problem and a challenge for the author. For advice about writing multiple storylines to create suspense in genres such as thriller, crime or mystery look at this blog post .

However, using multiple storylines when the storyline in character driven and not driven by theme. Multiple storylines where the reader does not have a preference for a particular character are really difficult to write and I would argue that in the Travelling Pants series Brashares has done this. I think the factors that contribute to this are numerous. Having short snippets from each characters perspective is good because it does not allow the reader to become too attached to a character for too long a period of time. This is also helped by having soap-operaish storylines for each character so that the reader actually wants to continue reading to find out the latest installment.

Brashares maintains the same voice and style throughout the novels, no matter which character is speaking. This continuity enables the reader’s ease in switching between different storylines. I think another big part of this, is the character’s likeability. All the girls personalities are type-cast and fairly rigid, but they are also non-descript in that they are equally as likeable and as unlikeable as each other. One thing I have always found fascinating about this series is how the girls like each other equally despite being so different. From an astrological point of view, I have always thought of them as elemental characters; Tibby is earth because she doesn’t like change; Carmen is fire because she is passionate and firey; Lena is water because she is a romantic and emotional; and Bridget is air because she is detached and unemotional. This makes the fact that they get on so well with each other intriguing.

Another thing I like about Brashares is that she doesn’t use the technique of multiple storylines primarily to switch perspectives on the same situation and continually rehash what the reader already knows. In one sense I think this technique is a cop-out, much like the surprise ending, it allows the author to capitalize on the readers surprise and humor if there are contrasting views about the storyline. It shifts the reader’s attention from the essence of the storyline. Brashares effectively uses multiple storylines to connect the four main characters so that they appear as a cohesive sisterhood.

Using Translation.

All languages have particular rhythms, accents, and ways to structure sentences. Often when reading texts that have been translated into English, it is possible to tell whether a text is a translation without knowing anything about the author or the background of the text. This is due to the writing being not quite fluid.
For example, this is an abstract from The Lover by the French author Marguerite Duras, translated into English by Barbara Bray:

We go back to the apartment. We are lovers. We can’t stop loving each other.

This is poetic prose. There is rhyme between ‘lovers’ and ‘other’ however the lack of flow and disjointedness makes it seem like there is something missing. There is a sense of absence in these words that comes from how the sentences sound. Maybe if it had been written first in English it might sound something like this:
We go back to his apartment because we are lovers. No matter how hard I try, we can’t stop loving each other.

I think there are three main factors that contribute to differentiating a translation from something written in English to begin with, none of which are entirely tangible. The first is the rhythm of the words. The second is the somewhat opaque feeling of telling and not showing. And finally, the third is a feeling of absence the text generates, as if the reader is disconnected from the text and looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. This combination of all three creates an aura of dissonance- of something being slightly odd or unnaturalised about the rhythms, sounds, and words used. These three factors are mainly what I try to imitate if I want to use “translation” or “faux-translation” in my work.

The first factor I referred to (rhythm) makes the texts feel sparse and pared down. The story feels spacious because the rhythm is suppressed or deadened. When written firstly in English, most sentences naturally have a beat/off-beat rhythm that is acquired effortlessly when speaking English fluently. In a translation, rhythm is often secondary (unless it is poetry) as translators are firstly concerned with conveying meaning accurately.

The second factor I have noticed in translation is contrary to the advice of first year creative writing lecturers- to show and not tell. Translations often tell and don’t show. They have an explicitness in their sentences and a focus on conveying tangible messages. This factor and rhythm informs the third factor of translations I mentioned-a sense of absence.

A sense of absence is created be sparse sentences and a suppressed rhythm. Although telling without showing expresses clarity (eg. Rudolph is angry. Her bedroom smelt strange.) I would argue it evokes a sense of absence because it is not descriptive. There are many things that are left out.

When writing, sometimes I use these ideas about translation in my work. All three of these elements, if used well can be effective and liberating in helping you find a different voice, bring a sense of absence to your work, and write using different styles.

Translation vs Romanticisation of the original.

In one of my classes at Uni, my James Joyce obsessed poetry lecturer commented enthusiastically on an English translation of a Russian poem by saying that if the language was this beautiful after it had been translated, what would it have been like before translation.

For some time I have been interested in the concept of translation. In particular, texts that have been translated into English after being written in a language other than English. I only speak and understand English, so I can only look at this from an Anglo-centric perspective with the limitations (but I would also argue benefits) of having a singular and unchallenged view of the English language. I only understand the text as a product in itself and not as a variation of the original.

My problems with my poetry lectures assertion is the fetishisation of the original, particularly from the perspective that English is not as beautiful as other languages because it is not a Romantic language.

If you can’t read the original, no matter how highly praised or celebrated it is, it means nothing to you. If the text is inaccessible to you, than it is worthless. How can you comment that a poem would be more beautiful in the language it was first written in if you can’t read that language. It doesn’t matter how beautiful it supposedly is if you can’t read and understand it.

A translation should be viewed as a cohesive product in itself as it is problematic to perceive translations as being inferior simply by default. There are several different methods of translation. Poetry, in particular, is not translated word for word, but by imagery and meanings. There are many elements of poetry, like rhythm and rhyme that would get lost in translation if the translator didn’t take into account these elements and try to replicate their essence when remaking the text into their own language.

Essentially a translation is a completely new text. It should only be praised if it is a good text in itself and not as being a complimentary or referential text to the original. My poetry lecturer’s inference that the original text is automatically superior is simplistic and completely devalues the role a translator plays and the ability for a translated work to have merit in its own right.