Well, it's that time of the year again - but then, isn't it always? But this that time of the year I decided to write a screenplay. Ooooh, etc.
Now, I've written short stories, I've written novels, I've written music and even an opera. I know - my poor pencil! But those were all different, finished works. Here, the show ain't over 'til the fat lady yells cut and print for the final time, and even then there's a mountain of post production, interviews and legal wrangling going down before I start counting the profits...
But before that final, primal scream, what goes on paper is mutable based on the capabilities of the actors, for a start, and the budget constraints and the geopolitical situation - for instance, my protagonists' main base is somewhere near London, unless Chalfont St Giles starts a war with Tonbridge Wells, placing London in no-man's-land and effectively shifting production to, I don't know, Gloucestershire. Failing that, however, there are still the streams and rivulets of circumstance which can turn the best "send reinforcements, we're going to advance" into "send reinforcements, we're going to a dance".
The way it seems to me, therefore, is that a screenplay is fairly fluid - a roadmap of where you want things to end up, and the points of interest along the way. It is best, I think, not to be too precious about your words, as if hewn from solid rock, because an actor worth her salt will have her own ideas about treatment and, given that she is a professional auteuse and not an automaton, it would be wise to listen - especially when she is the one who embodies, gives life to your character.
The director - or rather the directing team - also have things to say, as they are putting all the cogs together to make sure the thing runs smoothly. Her experience of what works and what doesn't also mean scenes may have to be shaken down and may be given in evidence.
At the end of the day, what matters is not what you do first, but what you do that lasts. And for that you don't just keep your hat on, but your hair too x
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"It is best, I think, not to be too precious about your words..." You're right, Agatha Hergest. I've learned that by working with producers, directors, and other writers. What's important is doing what's best for the project, and sometimes that means our words get changed. And once someone buys a script, it's most likely going to be changed.
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What a delightfully insightful meditation on the fluid nature of screenwriting! Your comparison between your various creative endeavors captures something essential about the screenplay form that many writers struggle to embrace.
Your experience crafting novels, short stories, music, and even opera gives you a unique perspective on how screenwriting differs fundamentally from these more "finished" art forms. The screenplay as "roadmap rather than monument" is perhaps the healthiest outlook a writer can adopt in this collaborative medium.
The geopolitical Chalfont St Giles/Tonbridge Wells scenario made me smile while perfectly illustrating how external factors reshape even the most carefully crafted scripts. This understanding that screenplays exist in conversation with reality's constraints rather than in opposition to them often distinguishes writers who thrive in the industry from those who struggle.
Your point about actors as co-creators rather than "automatons" is particularly valuable. The most successful writer-actor relationships I've observed through Stage 32 involve exactly this dance of mutual respect – where the writer provides the foundation while recognizing that embodiment brings its own wisdom. The screenplay offers invitation rather than prescription.
The screenplay's mutability can be liberating once embraced. Rather than seeing changes as compromises to your vision, they become opportunities for your story to evolve beyond what any single creative mind could conceive. The collaborative alchemy of filmmaking often produces magic precisely in those moments of adaptation and spontaneity.
As you embark on this screenwriting journey, I'd love to hear which aspects of your previous writing experiences you find most transferable to this new form, and which have required the most adjustment in your approach.
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Thank you Pat, darling, for that thoughtful and remarkably precise "second draft" of my little monograph. Tis really refreshing to know I'm communicating effectively - something with which I'm sure many of us struggle, so involved, oftentimes is the receiver of the message with their own experiences.
It is, perhaps, this investment of the audience that, surprisingly enough, makes the operatic side of things the most transferrable - but then only, possibly, because I have written book, libretto and score. Even if my efforts in this regard were somewhat stymied by the lack of real resources (where can I get the funds to get a 50-piece orchestra, let alone the means to negotiate their frankly Bolshevik union rules?), the essence of it still remains because, fundamentally, we are communicators. People take in and process information differently - whiles some are hanging on every word the scriptwriter feeds them, some take their cues from the incidental music,, and yet more from the colour of the second-chorus-girl-on-the-right's eyes. I think the broadest-ranging scavenge of people's attentions gives the basis for the jus that is the successful script, without it becoming so bland and uninteresting that it becomes filed under B.
That said, the operatic aspect is also the one which most needs to curtailed. You see, an opera is basically the telling of a tale through the medium of music in a melodramatic and, often, over-sensationalist fashion. It gets the point across, of course, but more often than not people are more moved by subtlety than having it blasted so forcefully in their ears that it meets in the middle and blows their brains up. Thus the jus, the essence, is - well - essential. It's the spirit of everything that forms the je-ne-sais-quoi of specialness, the Brian May red special of Queen, the unique language of Dylan Thomas, the fine hyper-realism of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
Of course, I am not the Goddess - I may well be a goddess, but that's down to individual taste. In my own mind, I derive the greatest satisfaction through service: - and in my limited understanding service is better when I can show people where they are possibilities of things which may be. It also helps, of course, If I can enthuse the actors to the vision, too - and of course all the crew as well, but the cast are ultimately the ones to whom the audience are going to relate.
But then, if the third runner's left shoelace brings out the sparkle in the second-chorus-girl-on-the-right's eyes, then... ahem... everyone's a winner x
Of course,, we are primarily entertainers, but it occurs to me that the best way to entertain is through understanding.
For sure, it's good to take people on a thrilling (or comedic, or romantic or what-have-you?) journey, but like the Hobbit says, there, and back again. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that the place from which one goes there has to be familiar, nor that the place one goes back to is the place one started. Indeed, to what extent is it possible to go back to where one started? Even a block of granite gets weathered!
But it's generally better for an audience to have something to launch their adventure from - an idea they can get their head around which can then be morphed into something spectacular. Even the most abstruse abstract artist needs to start somewhere, lest their audience consist of just one person - themselves x