As I’ve noted here, Richard Dutcher recommended the ZEN AND THE ART OF SCREENWRITING books to me.

I devoured the first book when it arrived (via Barnes and Noble order) and it’s been back on my bookshelf for some time now. Unfortunately I forgot some of its particulars of advice (which I’ll show), but the general advice I remember. I may skim back through it and post more detailed notes later.

The book interviews many very successful screenwriters, interspersed with short chapters of advice from the author, William (Bill) Froug, who founded and headed a reorganization of the screenwriting program at UCLA. It goes through the art and craft, and the business, and also morality, which encouraged me the most, and I’ll address it first.

The author makes some clear value statements about uplifting films vs. amoral, degrading ones. The book I’m reading now, HOLLYWOOD VS. AMERICA, expands on that a lot - and condemns a lot. Anyway, the president of the Hallmark card company for some time produced many clean-cut, uprightly moral movies and TV movies (and some high quality ones at that) that found a very devoted audience. Froug says that uprightly moral entertainment can have a more devoted audience, even if the audience may be smaller (myself I believe the audience would be huge if there were a lot of superb and moral films). But he doesn’t know any Mormons. That’s a comment on mormon tastes for amorality, not audience size, if I need to make that clear. Anyway.. This man’s work was cut from TV even when the ratings were climbing because producers didn’t respect his work. Nyaah to those bozos! When he shaves every morning he looks at a man in the mirror he respects. They don’t. Very many in Hollywood will publicly boast about reviews and money, but privately confide they aren’t very proud of the films they turn out. The Hallmark guy was put out of TV for many years but now he’s back with his own cable channel, putting out the very respectable TV movies he likes to make. Hooray for the Hallmark Channel. I don’t watch cable but I’ll put some attention there when I.. finally get it. If what I have seen on that channel has been high quality but not necessarily superlative, it is reliably clean-cut, and for that reason it will enjoy more of my support. It’s miles ahead of Feature Films for Families ;) if you’ll forgive my bluntness.

Now, on the book as a whole, it is excellent and has gotten me started further into writing. However, the people in and around this book and its school of thought contradict each other, and in the case of the author, himself, apparently unaware. Dutcher recommend this book along with urging me to write from the gut and not worry about structure. I’ll call that the intuitive, free-form school of thought. And the free-form school of thought is mostly what is given in this book (as I see it), by a former teacher at UCLA, yet at the LDS film festival I heard a graduate of the UCLA screenwriting Master’s program, Rodney Hensen, repeatedly emphasising an opposing school of thought: structure and story rules. Before I read ZEN, I wondered if Hensen was a rebel to what he was taught at UCLA. I also noted that Hensen is self-inconsistent: he in turns says to just let a story go where it does, which a strict focus on structure does not allow. After reading ZEN, I see that UCLA is as self-inconsistent. Also note that Hensen’s first film (SUITS ON THE LOOSE) flopped. Is there a connection to his philosophy? Myself I think so. I wish him success with his next film. Anyway, on UCLA’s inconsistency, Froug closes the book by advising that you see as many movies as you can in a year, in theaters, to get a feel for how the audience responds to things. He then says this is contrary to what one of the teachers he hired said in a new book, which teacher made the preposterous assertion that one need only be very well acquainted with his “Fabulous Five” films, one of them happening to be something he wrote, a mostly unheard-of TV movie - hello, arrogance!?

But as I said the author is himself self-inconsistent. He puts forward and is very sympathetic to interviewees who make what I think is the book’s overall main point, as I said, of writing from the gut without being overly analytical or duty-bound to rules or formula. However, the author in turns offers many apparently hard, fast rules, sometimes even in direct contradiction to things he said in earlier chapters, without noting the contradictions. For example he talks in one place about how the line of action of a film should relentlessly rise and become more intense. Elsewhere he hails recent independent filmmakers who break this rule and take things slow and let you absorb everything that is going on, as if at a flat pace of everyday life - but he doesn’t note that by praising this apparently more independent approach, he breaks with his own advice of relentlessly rising action. Also, he uses two different terms which his interviewees say they find repugnant, to which he seems sympathetic - until he totally forgets it and uses the terms himself. I don’t remember the other term, but the one was “Hollywood screenwriter.”

On overcoming fear: Froug says that the very first thing a new person, or even a continually developing writer should do, is get your hands on some books about screenplay form, study some screenplays, and then write an entire screenplay, strictly in screenplay format, of pure, unadulterated rubbish. He said to write your name a hundred times if you do nothing else. This is to overcome the raw, overpowering fear of THE BLANK PAGE. I skipped this step on my way to writing, because with all due respect to myself, I have no fear of the blank page. Hmm.. except for some fear when it comes to fiction :)
Froug gives great criteria for assessing whether a story idea is a great idea.

1)It will be something you have never seen before [I make exceptions to this, personally]..
2)You will be excited about it, and you will intuitively know the audience will be too.
3)It will have a strong, clear line of action.
4)You will write it more easily than other things - but it will not “write itself” - nothing ever does.

My exception to 1) is that no story is truly original - at least not in its underpinnings. All great stories descend from truth. The composition of the characters and the plot may be truly unique, but I believe buying into the idea that any story can be truly original is destructive because it will bypass things which may be very valuable as part of a story for having been “already done”. Unfortunately, the idea of absolute originality is widely bought, so an audience may balk at something you need to do, but.. whatever. There are many stories similar or alike to each other which are recieved very well by audiences.

On art, craft, and process: You know what? While this book gave some great advice, I think that If You Want to Write gave better advice. I need to skim that again and gather notes on it. Anyway and again, Froug and these screenwriters say to write from your gut and do not prohibit yourself from honestly exploring wherever your writing takes you, neither compel yourself necessarily by any rules or idea of structure to go in any forced direction either. Don’t obsess or necessarily even think on rules of what should go where or happen when, or how you should be writing your story. However, I would say that the rule not to have rules self-contradicts, because it is a rule: the muses, passions and intuitions have their own reasons, and if your awareness tells you to follow some guideline or rule you know, for a strong reason, follow that guide. That said however, the book asserts that such alone is nothing, and that the prattling story structuralists and gurus have produced very little actually good screenplays or films from their theories.

Then some flexible rules, or even ones to ignore if intuition says so: Avoid the obvious. Keep something back from the audience in each scene: keep them wondering what is going on or what will happen next. Keep the line of action always rising. I hate this rule - myself I say forget it unless it happens or needs to happen. I hate the insane bent in Hollywood for heightening and increasingly raising the level of action. There are films where it works, but too dang many of them do this too dang much. Something I got from the LDS film festival that this book has affinity with: forget the studio or limitations of imagination or budget and write whatever you want. Even if it can’t be made into a film for five years, or ten, or I would say even your lifetime. Write it. If a studio or production company asks you to rewrite it, forget them and look elsewhere. Unless it’s really reasonable what they ask. You judge.

Many writers outline and can’t write without outlining, and will generally stick to the outline. Some write scene labels on index cards and arrange and rearrange them to find what’s best. Almost nobody sticks with just what they outline and writing always goes where you don’t expect. Well-realized characters will be ones that you follow on their course letting them do their thing as if you are doing some investigative journalism. They will tell you what they say next and what happens next. Some writers just write the story out from beginning to end without needing to outline. Some writers start at the end or middle and work back to the beginning. A screenwriter in this book said he often works backwards from an ending he knows he wants and figures out how the story got there, and then writes up to it. But he seemed a much more logical, methodical writer than I (he writes military/government thrillers - which isn’t to say there is necessarily logic in politics!), though I may limit myself in saying that. I often have a dilemma of having an ending or important scene of a story clearly in mind, but not knowing all the details of how those characters got there; I have to work backwards through the series of responses and events that got them there. I think that’s harder to pull off effectively for my generally more intuitive, emotional ideas. As opposed to logical - for example, take a look at my life. Just take a look at this. What is the logic in this?

In my view, the most powerful stories are not necessarily conceived plots so much as characters, and what those characters do.

Many directors have zero respect for the writer and will even make a point of modifying a script to suit what they see. Or if they don’t do that, their interpretation of the script may be drastically different from what the writer intended, and the book offers many tragic cases of this. Many of the most successful films were close collaborations between the writer and director with the director consulting the writer on changes. The script on almost every film changes in production. Many producers, directors, and actors have their favorite writers that they bring on to rewrite their own dialogue. Democratic free-for-all re-writes can seriously muck up a project.

The auteur theory is garbage.

At the time the book was written, and I don’t know whether this has changed, no one in the book including the very well-networked author know of anyone who has ever seen a penny of their “percentage points” from film proceeds or royalties: all the studios count distribution expenses against those royalties, which screws the writer, is arguably simply wrong, and is unheard of in any other publishing business.

I have a story idea right now that I’m slowly fleshing out, but the funny thing is if I told you what the idea is, I flatter myself that I’d have to kill you, even though the prospect of any buyers, if there is any prospect, may be years away. Here’s why. The very first scene I wrote for it reminded me of Richard Dutcher. I emailed him and asked if he’d like to read it or wait (I flatter and promise myself) for the movie. This was his response which echoed advice I read in this book, and forgot:

My recommendation to you regarding your screenplay is to keep it fairly close to your vest until you have a complete draft. I generally don’t even let my wife read anything until I have a good solid draft. (And then she’s always the first reader). Everyone naturally feels the need to respond, and to try to shape the film into what they want it to be. And this is before you’ve even had the chance to find out what it is going to be. Also, storytellers often tend to lose enthusiasm for their stories if they’ve already succeeded in telling them in some form (even verbally to a small audience). I think it’s best to keep the story in your head and in your heart and to funnel all the desire to tell the story into the actual writing of it. In my experience, even talking about it dissipates some of the creative drive. But maybe that’s just me.

Good luck!

Richard

I’ve found this to be true - when I related to my wife the first scene which came to me (a scene near the center of the story I think), it made her laugh, and I lost interest in writing it down. Before this, I had been not relating outline ideas to her, and just writing them down. But when she laughed, my storytelling impulse was satisfied (the scene was approved and did its work), and my interest in writing it left.

I think writers can be so flipping lonely for approval of what they write that they’ll be content with an audience of one (two if you count the writer), even while every writer deserves the largest audience they can get.

There are writers who collaborate all along, deriving the benefit of knowing someone else’s mind before they pen anything. This can work very well if they work well together.

That’s that. If I find more notes from my skim re-reading, I’ll post them here.