Kay Joss Whedon naman
Joss Whedon's Top 10 Writing Tips
Here's Joss Whedon's Top 10 Writing Tips, which was initially published in Channel 4's talent magazine by Catherine Bray, who has kindly given me permission to reproduce the article in full here. Thanks, Catherine!
(If you are visiting this blog solely via this article, you may want to check current posts & updates here; news & info about the UK scriptwriting scene).
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“Joss Whedon is most famous for creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its spin-off Angel and the short-lived but much-loved Firefly series. But the writer and director has also worked unseen as a script doctor on movies ranging from Speed to Toy Story. Here, he shares his tips on the art of screenwriting.
1. FINISH IT
Actually
finishing it is what I’m gonna put in as step one. You may laugh at
this, but it’s true. I have so many friends who have written two-thirds
of a screenplay, and then re-written it for about three years.
Finishing a screenplay is first of all truly difficult, and secondly
really liberating. Even if it’s not perfect, even if you know you’re
gonna have to go back into it, type to the end. You have to have a
little closure.
> Tama! Ansaya ng feeling pag nakatapos.
2. STRUCTURE
Structure means knowing where
you’re going; making sure you don’t meander about. Some great films
have been made by meandering people, like Terrence Malick and Robert
Altman, but it’s not as well done today and I don’t recommend it. I’m a
structure nut. I actually make charts. Where are the jokes? The
thrills? The romance? Who knows what, and when? You need these things
to happen at the right times, and that’s what you build your structure
around: the way you want your audience to feel. Charts, graphs,
coloured pens, anything that means you don’t go in blind is useful.
> OK, go try mo to. The way you want your audience to feel, huh. Challenging.
3. HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY
This
really should be number one. Even if you’re writing a Die Hard
rip-off, have something to say about Die Hard rip-offs. The number of
movies that are not about what they purport to be about is staggering.
It’s rare, especially in genres, to find a movie with an idea and not
just, ‘This’ll lead to many fine set-pieces’. The Island evolves into a car-chase movie, and the moments of joy are when they
have clone moments and you say, ‘What does it feel like to be those
guys?’
4. EVERYBODY HAS A REASON TO LIVE
Everybody has a
perspective. Everybody in your scene, including the thug flanking your
bad guy, has a reason. They have their own voice, their own identity,
their own history. If anyone speaks in such a way that they’re just
setting up the next person’s lines, then you don’t get dialogue: you get
soundbites. Not everybody has to be funny; not everybody has to be
cute; not everybody has to be delightful, and not everybody has to
speak, but if you don’t know who everybody is and why they’re there, why
they’re feeling what they’re feeling and why they’re doing what they’re
doing, then you’re in trouble.
> Uh oh. eto ata ang problema ko. I don't write dialogues pala, I write soundbites. :o Must avoid
5. CUT WHAT YOU LOVE
Here’s
one trick that I learned early on. If something isn’t working, if you
have a story that you’ve built and it’s blocked and you can’t figure it
out, take your favourite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and
cut it. It’s brutal, but sometimes inevitable. That thing may find
its way back in, but cutting it is usually an enormously freeing
exercise.
> Yes, like all cutting. Haha. Bye carillon scene?
6. LISTEN
When I’ve been hired as a script doctor,
it’s usually because someone else can’t get it through to the next
level. It’s true that writers are replaced when executives don’t know
what else to do, and that’s terrible, but the fact of the matter is that
for most of the screenplays I’ve worked on, I’ve been needed, whether
or not I’ve been allowed to do anything good. Often someone’s just got
locked, they’ve ossified, they’re so stuck in their heads that they
can’t see the people around them. It’s very important to know when to
stick to your guns, but it’s also very important to listen to absolutely
everybody. The stupidest person in the room might have the best idea.
7. TRACK THE AUDIENCE MOOD
You
have one goal: to connect with your audience. Therefore, you must
track what your audience is feeling at all times. One of the biggest
problems I face when watching other people’s movies is I’ll say, ‘This
part confuses me’, or whatever, and they’ll say, ‘What I’m intending to
say is this’, and they’ll go on about their intentions. None of this
has anything to do with my experience as an audience member. Think in
terms of what audiences think. They go to the theatre, and they either
notice that their butts are numb, or they don’t. If you’re doing your
job right, they don’t. People think of studio test screenings as
terrible, and that’s because a lot of studios are pretty stupid about
it. They panic and re-shoot, or they go, ‘Gee, Brazil can’t have an
unhappy ending,’ and that’s the horror story. But it can make a lot of
sense.
8. WRITE LIKE A MOVIE
Write the movie as much as you
can. If something is lush and extensive, you can describe it glowingly;
if something isn’t that important, just get past it tersely. Let the
read feel like the movie; it does a lot of the work for you, for the
director, and for the executives who go, ‘What will this be like when we
put it on its feet?’
> Hmm, magkaiba sila ni Aaron Sorkin ng approach no? But what is important is that it works. Also, i think that because Aaron is heavily involved in the whole production process anyway, mas keri niyang maging direct to the point.
9. DON’T LISTEN
Having given the advice
about listening, I have to give the opposite advice, because ultimately
the best work comes when somebody’s fucked the system; done the
unexpected and let their own personal voice into the machine that is
moviemaking. Choose your battles. You wouldn’t get Paul Thomas
Anderson, or Wes Anderson, or any of these guys if all moviemaking was
completely cookie-cutter. But the process drives you in that direction;
it’s a homogenising process, and you have to fight that a bit. There
was a point while we were making Firefly when I asked the network not to
pick it up: they’d started talking about a different show.
>Choose your battles. Great advice.
10. DON’T SELL OUT
The
first penny I ever earned, I saved. Then I made sure that I never had
to take a job just because I needed to. I still needed jobs of course,
but I was able to take ones that I loved. When I say that includes Waterworld, people scratch their heads, but it’s a wonderful idea for a movie. Anything can be good. Even Last Action Hero could’ve been good. There’s an idea somewhere in almost any movie: if
you can find something that you love, then you can do it. If you can’t,
it doesn’t matter how skilful you are: that’s called whoring.”
> Aw. Ayun naman e, pareho sila ni Aaron. At ng nanay ko, for that matter, haha. It all comes down to love. It never gets old.
from: http://dannystack.blogspot.com/2009/01/joss-whedons-top-10-writing-tips.html