Hollywood pros like Paul Feig, Richard Linklater, and Diablo Cody give their best tips and insights for all you wannabe writers.
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
All aspiring writers have experienced the conception of a story, that little atom of an idea that explodes into a vision of a journey in a big bang "aha!" that rattles the brain. But the difference between the daydreamers and actual filmmakers starts right after that revelatory moment, when the disparate strands of an idea either begin to take shape — and, at some point, migrate over to Final Draft — or just fade away.
BuzzFeed spoke with some of the industry's top writers and directors to learn how they develop a tiny germ of an idea into award-winning screenplay. They discussed everything from how they get started, to how to sit down and write, and how to balance dialogue and structure.
Here's the roster of advisers: Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise trilogy, Dazed and Confused); Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, Bridesmaids, The Heat); Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult); Richard Curtis (Love Actually, About Time, Four Weddings and a Funeral); Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Please Give); Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter (500 Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now); David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models); Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick); Jeff Nichols (Mud, Take Shelter); Lake Bell (In A World); David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche, Pineapple Express); Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha); Mark and Jay Duplass (Jeff Who Lives At Home, Cyrus); Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants, The Way, Way Back); and Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Oceans Thirteen).
Richard Linklater: There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story. So I'm much more interested in narrative construction.
I have a lot of subjects I'm spinning around on that I like and I take notes and read books and have files of things that interest me, but it's like, What is the movie? How do you crack it? So I like that search.
I think you have to be forever intrigued with the subject matter, the character, or something you're digging into, you're rummaging around, something that fascinates you. That process can't really ever end. If that ends, the movie is over.
Jeff Nichols: I started thinking about Mud in college. [Nichols is now 34.] I'm a very slow writer, and the typing, which most people consider writing, that's a very last step for me. I heavily outline things. Even before I write anything down, I think about things for a really long time. It's like a tape ball that you just add detail to, and that's what happened in this case.
If you're a friend of mine in Austin, I'll grab you and take you to lunch and I'll just vomit this story at you. It's a really good way to start working the story out. You start talking to people about it, and in the moment, you start to figure out things that connect and make things work, because you have to, because you have to keep telling your story.
Paul Feig: I'm big into notes. I always try to keep a small pad of paper in my pocket and write down any idea that seems interesting. I also type notes into my phone and computer. I basically have ideas written down everywhere. I've spent my life reminding myself that, even though I always tell myself I'll never forget an idea when I think of it, I always forget it, sometimes a minute or two after I've thought of it. So, I always force myself to write any idea down. The downside is I have little notebooks scattered around the house and in storage boxes that I never think to look through. Not that any of the ideas in them are gold; most of them are pretty lame. But occasionally, I'll find a few that link up and create the basis for something worth thinking about.
Diablo Cody: I envy writers who have their shit together! You should see my computer desktop. It's like 9 million Final Draft documents, pictures of my kids, and photos of haircuts I wish I had.
Richard Curtis: One of my big rules, if I had any rules for screenwriting, would be to let things sit there and stew. Because the two times that I've written films, just thought of them and written them, have been the two times I've just put them in a drawer and never done anything with them again. So, on the whole, if you take About Time, I thought about the idea in one shape or form at the same time that I was deciding to do the Pirate Radio movie, and I needed a bit more time and a bit more wisdom. "About Time is a bit more serious, so I'll wait." So that one, I've waited five years.
I often think the fact that, as it were, I've written half the number of films I could have or should have done, has been to my advantage. Because I like to really live with an idea. A film is not a flirtation, it's a relationship. I said to my girlfriend the other day, "The difference between having a good idea for a movie and a finished movie is the same as seeing a pretty girl across the floor at a party and being there when she gives birth to your third child." It's a very long journey, and my first idea doesn't bear much relationship — there are lots of pretty girls at parties, but not many will be there when you have your third child.
David Gordon Green: I have a lot of journals of just notes of ideas or dreams or things like that I think would be movie-worthy. I try, every once in a while to go to my computer, and have a master file of strange things; that's where the title Prince Avalanche came from, this weird list of things that I dreamed about. It's more like a scrapbook kind of thing or I'll have a cutout of things I'll see in Sky Mall magazine or something that makes me think of something weird.
It's like my therapy. I use my profession as my own therapy. It's kind of sick, isn't it? I made this movie and I think certain people who know me very well will find, not only elements of me, but relationships with them, words they've said in conversations with me, strange things that are directed toward them and only them. And I think that for people who are close to me, to see something in a movie that a large audience is watching, and knowing something that is so specific that would only be for one person.
Nicole Holofcener: I guess I let it marinate a little bit, and then, if I'm afraid I'm going to forget it, I write down some notes. And usually, I'd say about 95% of the time, once I see the notes written down, I realize it's a bad idea, which is why I don't make movies frequently, because I can't come up with an idea that I think is good.
If I write it down and I don't hate it, or I feel inspired to take more notes, and I look at it again and again, day after day, and build on it, and if I'm not embarrassed by it — just even by myself — then I think maybe I should pursue it and maybe I can write this. And around the time I get sick of taking notes, I'll start typing the script up.
Mark and Jay Duplass: We have lots of story ideas. We keep an ongoing document full of story ideas, over 100 of them at this point. We don't have very many half-written scripts because we usually don't start writing something until we know exactly where it's going and what all the story beats are. The actual "writing" of our scripts is a quick spring once we've figured out the entire structure (which can take a long time).
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
No comments:
Post a Comment