SHOOTING PEOPLE - UK SCREENWRITERS NETWORK
Supported by The Script Factory

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From: Nico Rilla
Subject: Research

"Also, do you think it is important for a writer to research heavily into an idea they're working on, or do you think this could have an adverse affect? By researching too much into an idea, it's possible that your idea could end up as something else, something that you hadn't intended that might not be as good."

Research is the difference between a boring, derivative screenplay that just doesn't ring true at all and a fresh and insightful screenplay that keeps you turning the pages.

If there are only seven plots and 36 dramatic conflicts, a deep knowledge of the world in which you set your story - be it Sci-Fi, social realism, action movie, war movie, detective thriller, slapstick gross-out comedy etc. - is the only way your story will be elevated into something out of the ordinary.

No screenplay has ever under any circumstances been hampered by too much research. Writers who don't research their material are just lazy.

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From: Andrea Sanders-Reece
Subject: Re: Research, research, research

It is absolutely vital that a writer researches heavily into an idea. You need to know it inside out, upside down, back to front, standing on your head, whatever it takes and from every single angle. It is extremely difficult to create a screen world that an audience will believe in without intimate knowledge of what you are writing about. And, it is more likely that your idea will be greatly improved by your research. You need to know the rules to break them, and in the same way you need to know your subject to look at it from a fresh, new and interesting angle.

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From: Richard John Purves
Subject: Research

Mind you, I think there is the danger of researching too much. One problem is ... you don't get any writing done! The other danger seems to me that you get too familiar with your subject matter and automatically assume that everyone else knows as much as you do.

Something to think about perhaps ...

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From: Derek Boyes
Subject: Through the back door!

I am convinced that you can write a script about anything, in any genre, in the U.K. and it can get sold. You simply have to right it well, be at the right place at the right time and stop daydreaming.

Scriptwriting is not just about writing, you have to know the business too, which means knowing what is happening internally in these U.K. production companies.

They are all constantly expanding, reshuffling and negotiating new deals with bigger companies with bigger funds available to them (Miramax, Pathé etc.). But the bigger the deal they strike, the more diverse their productions are expected to be and the more pressure that is put on them.

If you continually churn out romantic comedies for example, with the same writers and directors, they are going to become stale ­ For example, 4 weddings, Notting Hill & Bridget Jones all used pretty much the same formula, but they became less and less enjoyable to watch.

U.K. Producers are starting to understand that in order to survive, they need to produce bigger, better and more diverse films. The only problem for a lot of us is of course, we donšt have an agent and thus they will not read our scripts.... Or will they?

My tip for all you agent-less scriptwriters out there, is to consider taking a short break, work on a feature film making tea, be friendly to your bosses and talk to as many people as possible.

I have worked in the film industry for the last four years and I know that when I am ready, I can send my script to at least 10 producers / production companies and they will all read it. Why? Because they remember me as the friendly guy who used to smile and make them coffee all the time.

The fact is a lot of the U.K. based production companies are gagging for new commercial projects that are not period dramas, romantic comedies or gangster films. But they are far too scared to hire new unknown writers with no professional credits.

However, if you are passing coffee around a production meeting one day and you suddenly hold up your hand and say 'excuse me Mr/Mrs/Miss Producer, but would you like to have a look at this?' The next minute you could have sold your first script, got a professional screenwriter's credit and no doubt a good agent will follow.

The key word here my friend is 'Who you know'!

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From: Andrew Oldham
Subject: When writers fail

I agree with email from Pete Jarvis. Writers spend too much time bitching at each other, fearful that ideas and jobs will be stolen from out of their hands, it's foolish, as this list proves, there is strength in numbers. After all, ask yourself: if someone does steal your idea will they do it better than you? If so, the idea was rubbish and you should let it go and if another writer gets hired for a post and you don't it isn't personal, unless you exposed yourself during meetings, that writer just falls into their remit. I'd like to write that its been easy to become a full-time writer and still is an easy job, it's taken me seven years to earn a decent and regular wage, and I know there's other writers out there still struggling...all I know after many rejections is that you have to believe in yourself and keep on believing in yourself, forget that and you're dead and bitter in the water. One final question to ask, who really wants to work alongside a bitter and twisted person?

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From: John Rooney
Subject: Conspiracy Theories

To read some of the postings you'd think there was some kind of industry-wide conspiracy to prevent new screenwriters from getting a break.

The simple truth is most of those bitching and complaining about the system just aren't good enough and, sadly, never will be no matter how much time and energy they put into their writing. The many books and courses on the subject merely perpetuate the myth that screenwriting can be taught. It can't. If you don't believe me ask yourself this - How many screenplays can you name that have been written by screenwriting 'guru' Robert McKee? That's not to say that the principals can't be taught. Of course they can. But at the end of the day screenwriting is a creative art and creativity most definitely cannot be taught.

Five years ago I gave up my 20k a year job as an advertising copywriter to pursue a career as a screenwriter. I have since earned a grand total of 15k less my agent's 10% (plus VAT) - a pittance by anyone's standards. The most disheartening aspect of this statistic is that, during this period, I have had three features and a series optioned, two plays produced, a screenplay selected for the Moonstone Screenwriter's Labs and a 25 minute short produced which will premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival and later be broadcast on regional ITV. My point, if you haven't already guessed, is that, even if you have the talent, the patience and the determination, the majority of screenwriters are barely scraping a living. If you have none of the above, forget it unless, like me, you write, first and foremost, for the love of it.

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From: Nigel Sizer, Really Intelligent Productions Ltd
Subject: Sending off writing

A few tips here for sending out scripts:

1) Find out if the person you are sending the script to wants an unsolicited script first:

This may seem an obvious one but it always amazes me. Timing can be crucial, they may be too busy at that time... some time later may get a more favourable read. Some are contractually unable to read unsolicited work. Make friends with X's assistant and ask first. This also helps you to get a flavour for the organisation you are sending to and will flag your piece in X's assistant's mind when it turns up.

2) Never send out unfinished or first draft unless specifically being asked to:

Think of the reader the other end. If it is badly laid out, full of plot holes, it will not inspire them to write a glowing report about it.

3) Make sure it is spilt correktly:

That includes the name of the recipient...another reason to ring and ask first!

4) Be very clear about versions:

If you send two different versions to the same person within a short time-scale, they may assume they have already read it. It does no harm to use the system of coloured paper for scenes that have been rewritten to distinguish them from the earlier version.

5) With broadcasters who have said no ask to see a copy of the readers report:

Even if they have crucified your work it's worth knowing why.

6) Cost your time writing and selling it.

Allocate a paper budget to selling each script. Spend this and no more ...then shelve it and move on.

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From: Hugo Heppell
Subject: bubbles & toil

So... my next topic is genre.

When was the last half-decent British thriller? For my money I can't think of anything that special since Edge of Darkness. Horror? Practically nothing since The Wicker Man. Action-adventure? (apart from Bond) War...?

The only British film to break the comedy mould has been Lock, Stock, and as I recall that was a huge hit here, but passed relatively unnoticed across the American firmament.

We still haven't learned how to do genre well. Yet it is the staple of Hollywood. What's our problem?

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From: Derek Boyes
Subject: Learning, learning and more learning.

I've kept relatively quiet since this screenwriter's thing kicked off and I try and read most of the daily posts. Over all I have found it more tedious than helpful in that the same subjects get bounced around over and over again. We all seem far too concerned with arguing about who knows the best way to write, what the best books are, who the more respected authors are, who can read the oldest theories on storytelling and that ridiculous three act debate - It is tiresome! I'm not suggesting that they are not important, but it's the way everyone gets so defensive with each other and feels obliged to answer back because someone else has a different theory or opinion.

I'm no expert scriptwriter. I've been working on a feature length screenplay for the past year and I still feel that my script is pretty weak. It soon became apparent that the learning process was never ending, there is no wrong or right way to write, there is only your way and weather that way takes ten years to write a good screenplay, or six months, the process should be enjoyable irrelevant of how many mistakes you make, all of it is valuable experience!

Finally, here are some of my scriptwriting tips for anyone writing a first time feature:

1. Let films and books inspire you but not influence you

2. Take your influences from living in the real world. Go out and experience as much as you can!

3. If you're faced with a decision, take the harder one.

4. No one knows what will be a success, but understanding how film producers work, will tell you what will be a guaranteed failure.

5. Don't just write, understand about your business! Have a look at 'How To Make Money Screenwriting' by Julian Freedman - it opened my eyes.

6 If you are writing from your own experience, keep the emotions but change the facts.

7. Don't rush your story, be patient and wait for that perfect draft.

There are so many bad bad scripts flying around the industry, if you work hard, you will stand out from the rest.

8. Don't stay put in your seat, act out the scene you are writing, leap over that sofa, grab the banana and point it at your dog. It'll make your writing more believable.... and the dog will enjoy it too!

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From: Laika
Subject: The Rules of Writing

"Too many writers seem to be concerned more about telling a story their way than writing a good movie, probably because we have so few full-time screenwriters here who've learnt what works and what doesn't."

You have a choice. Write according to the rules about what works, or write your own way and try and make it work. Follow the tarmac through the jungle or hack your way through with a machete.

The first way is a piece of P. It's bricklaying; it's painting by numbers. Everybody would be doing it, if it wasn't for the fact that most people looking for a life as a writer want more than this. Your friends who don't listen to what the producers are telling them are both very right (because the producers probably don't know as well as they do what they're trying to achieve) and very wrong (because the producers probably know better than they do what will work, can be funded, etc.)

But the best writing is about going your own way and very often breaks the rules. (Psycho was mentioned on this list recently; Pulp Fiction; some of Altman's stuff; Woody Allen's, just to stick with the broad main stream...) But very often you find it adheres not to the accepted methods but to more timeless and less easily definable patterns. (Pulp Fiction is in one sense a straight three act-er, but most certainly not the kind that would conform to the sort of strictures peddled by the likes of, say, Raindance - over whom we should draw a discreet veil.)

It's about finding your voice. It's about not following the rules, but understanding them, why they are there, what they mean, why things work one way and not another. Components of plots have been the subject of a lot of academic analysis - the psychological, social or structural significance of one kind of role or plot development. I'm not referring to this, but to feeling the power of dramatic devices from one's own psychology, society or communal/domestic structures.

A great story is not the same thing as a great plot. It's a hell of a lot easier (I'm just discovering) to write prose fiction than a tight dramatic plot. There are loads of scripts out there that are great stories, original and alive, but whose basic dramatic structure stinks. Most of the scripts that get made contain a pedestrian level of basic craft, but are derivative and synthetic. Occasionally you get a film like ExistenZ, which contains no spark nor craft nor anything else.

It seems extraordinary to me that screenwriters, or budding screenwriters, are complaining that the problem is the industry doesn't allow enough drafts. It is *our* job as screenwriters to make sure we've done enough drafts. No matter how good you are, your last draft of your masterpiece is not good enough. Even if you just read it and you couldn't believe how finished it was, it's not good enough. Even if you can kid yourself every producer's going to die for it, it's *still* not good enough. Even if a producer's taken it, and you've signed contracts, and you've got a shooting schedule, it's **still** not good enough. You have to leave long enough between drafts so that when you re-read it, you're coming to it nearly fresh. You have to be prepared to reconceive much or all of it. You have to assume that you'll need at least nine *major* drafts plus several minor drafts for each major, if you're seriously going to turn the *absolute chaos* of an original and alive first draft into something which functions dramatically.

Or you can follow the books, and do something in two drafts, maybe three.

You choose.

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From: Tom Hickmore
Subject: The Rules of Writing

Technique (pejoratively called "rules") is great - because adherence to it allows you to write directly from the unconscious. Your conscious mind is engaged with the technique allowing stuff to flow directly from your deeper brain. If you don't use technique the conscious mind becomes too involved in the content and it becomes boring and cliché'd.

Even the KLF say as much in their famous book about how to get a number one hit titled "The Manual".

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From: Jonathan Hall
Subject: re: The Rules of Writing

"Technique (pejoratively called "rules") is great - because adherence to it allows you to write directly from the unconscious" writes Tom Hickmore, and I like the cut of his jib. His comment brings to mind that section in Robert McKee's 'Story' about writing from the inside out rather than the outside in.

My own feeling about 'rules' is that they are best used diagnostically.

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From: Robert Moss
Subject: the rules

"I think the only rule in screenwriting is that there are no rules."

I can't remember who said it - someone wiser than me - but, "The only rule of screenwriting is that there are no rules. But you have to know the rules before you can break them."

I may have paraphrased, but you get the gist.

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From: Diane G Paul

I read scripts for a living and I pick up a lot of gripes in these newsletters from thwarted writers. I wish someone would come up with an original idea. Every script I read is another take on something that has been flogged to death before. It's as though would-be writers have created a little boundary around their imagination and they work within that, picking out bits from successful screenplays. Token gays, surprise lesbians, let's poke fun at old folk, coke sniffers in the loo, unfunny slapstick comedy, foul language, girls behaving badly and chortling about the size of men's willies, flat sharing TV sitcoms, more foul language...and they wonder why nobody wants their pitches. We have a beautiful language, which is underused and overlooked, as writers with limited vocabulary and even less vision prefer to express themselves with a string of eff words in a cliché'd plot. Whatever happened to lateral thinking and literacy skills?

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From: Jim Bibby
Subject: Production companies

In answer, the fact that a company has kept your script for over a month without replying means nothing. I've known scripts to sit with companies for over a year without reply. The record is held by a lady at LWT, to whom Humphrey Barclay advised me to send a half-hour sitcom. I waited a couple of months, then phoned her. She hadn't read it, but promised she would. I phoned twice more, each time I got the same answer. So I took her hint and waited for her to read it. So far I've waited four and a half years.

Some companies are very good and get back to you quickly (I've always found the Beeb to be good). Some are hopeless. Personally, I'd wait another month and then phone to see what's happening. Sure, your script could have attracted attention, but they would probably have contacted you. Sadly, it's more likely to be sitting in the middle of a stack of other scripts, waiting to be read.

I hope I'm wrong.

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