A CLIFF NOTES VERSION OF:  WRITING GREAT SCENES

Hello, everyone. As you may know by now, I do everything possible to provide information about screenwriting that you wouldn’t normally receive in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class, or screenwriting workshop. Here is more of the same.

I want to keep this short, so here’s in a nutshell what there is to be learned about writing great scenes.

There needs to be lots of conflict. If you don’t have conflict in a scene, there really is not much to write about.

And therefore, the hardest scenes to write are people giving speeches, party scenes where nothing special is really happening, people talking in restaurants. Usually there’s not much conflict and there’s nothing visual that’s happening. That’s why the cliché restaurant scene has people playing footsie under the table. At least it’s a visual and there’s something a director can shoot rather than talking heads.

We want to surprise the audience with unusual twists of the story, revelations of character.

We certainly want to keep a scene moving visually. That doesn’t mean we want to write out each and every stage direction of what the characters are doing physically. We want to paint pictures.  A good definition of a screenplay is:  “A story told with pictures within the confines of a dramatic structure.” It’s not a story told with dialogue.

And we want the most interesting interaction of the characters to be captured. So we don’t necessarily start at the beginning of the scene. We can cut right into the middle of the scene if we prefer.

We’ll analyze a lot of great scenes from professional screenwriters in the future and talk a lot more about what makes for great screenwriting.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

As you’re all aware, I attempt in this blog to provide information you wouldn’t normally get in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop, or screenwriting course. This certainly fits that bill.

The short answer to the above question is yes, especially if you’re a beginning writer who’s trying to break into film or television.

Why is that so?  Because screenwriting in this sense is not that different from acting. Casting directors like to typecast. Jeff Kober is great if you want bad guys, Norman Reedus if you want alienated loners.

So if you’re a beginning screenwriter and if you’ve written a horror script that’s gotten you some attention, you don’t want to go out with your second script that’s a ditsy comedy.  You will totally confuse buyers, agents, and development people who are just getting to know you.

That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t try a thriller because that’s similar or maybe even an edgy drama.  But you want to stay close to the same genre that got you attention in the first place.

When you’re a producer and you’ve read a script that you admire but hard for you to sell, you might have a project that’s similar in genre to that script you liked, so you reach out to the screenwriter for a writing assignment. Now you as a screenwriter start to get a reputation for this genre – people in the industry find out you’re good with action or comedy or sci fi.  That’s how great careers are born.

Once you get become known for a certain genre and you’re established, then you can branch out and try something totally different.  But doing it at the start of your career will only confuse people.

It’s no different for directors as well.  John Carpenter and Wes Craven were the guys to go for if you wanted a great horror director.  The same with Rob Zombie and many others.  First establish yourself and then branch out.

We’ll talk more about smart moves to make for the beginning screenwriter.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. As you all know, I’m always striving to provide information that you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting workshop, screenwriting class or screenwriting course.  And now that Halloween is right around the corner, I can’t help thinking about horror and why this genre is so popular and will continue to be popular for as along as films will be made.

When I was a young screenwriter and wanted to break into the film business I asked myself this question: What genre should I pick to get my first screenplay produced? I was always a big fan of horror but it wasn’t necessarily something I thought about writing at that point. But I could see that writing a horror script would be a good commercial idea.

Why? For many reasons but the most obvious one is that it attracts the very audience the film studios desperately want to appeal to: the 17 to 29 year olds. They are the ones who go most frequently to movies. And they don’t just go to one movie a week but quite possibly 3 or 4 movies a week. That’s the audience the studios want. And they are big horror fans.

Horror doesn’t require stars. That’s another huge plus for producers and funding entities. They don’t need to spend 10 million dollars or more to get Ryan Gosling or somebody of that ilk. So it costs a heck of a lot less to make a horror movie than a standard thriller or sci fi project and the returns can be huge (look at Paranormal Activity for example). No stars, one location and it makes huge returns. Who wouldn’t like that?

I’m giving a webinar on Wednesday October 28 on Creating Great Horror Villains. You can watch it live or see it anytime as it’s archived for a year. If you love horror, are writing or thinking of writing a horror film, you will get lots of great tips about creating scares, developing truly terrifying, multi dimensional horror villains, learn about the many sub genres of horror and much, much more.

I do know a little bit about horror as I just published my first horror novel, INK (www.inkthenovel.com) had two horror films directed by Wes Craven and had “Scream” and “Event Horizon” written in my screenwriting workshops. Find out what I’ve learned.

http://bit.ly/CreatingGreatHorrorVillains

Share this:

As you all know by now, I attempt to provide information you wouldn’t normally receive in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting course.

I ask the above question for obvious reasons. We want to challenge ourselves to always be better, and there’s no more successful way than reading great movie scripts and seeing what they’re doing right. We don’t measure ourselves against all the horrible screenplays out there, we measure ourselves against the very best and never settle for mediocrity.

Let’s take a look again at THE PROPOSAL, written by Pete Chiarelli. It’s one of the better rom cons, loaded with high energy writing, scenes that consistently surprise us and reveal interesting characters with strong through lines.

In this scene, Margaret is played by Sandra Bullock, Richard is played by Ryan Reynolds. The scene crackles with electricity:

INT. BOB’S OFFICE

Margaret and Richard enter Bob’s office, which is decorated with beautiful antiques and first edition books. But unlike

Margaret’s office, this one isn’t in the corner. Margaret nods at Richard to shut the door. BOB (42) wears a prim bow tie, circular tortoise shell glasses, and the air of superiority.

MARGARET

Hey, Bob.

BOB

Ah. Our fearless leader and her liege.

Margaret smiles.

MARGARET

I’m lettin’ you go, Bob.

BOB

Pardon?

MARGARET

You’re fired.

BOB

What? What are you talking about?

MARGARET

This isn’t working out.

BOB

You can’t…

MARGARET

I asked you repeatedly to get Frank to do

publicity. You said it was impossible.

BOB

It is. He doesn’t do publicity.

MARGARET

I just talked to him. He’s in.

BOB

But…

MARGARET

No more buts, Bob. I’ve been chief for a

month and a half, and this is the third time

you’ve dropped the ball. You didn’t even

call to ask him. Now I’ll give you two months to

find a new job, and then you can say you resigned. I won’t tell a soul, my lips are sealed.

Margaret nods at Richard and he opens the door.

INT. ROYCE PUBLISHING

Margaret and Richard walk a few steps. Margaret looks straight

ahead and whispers to Richard.

MARGARET

What’s he doing?

Richard turns around and takes a peek. Bob gets out of his chair and comes to his door.

RICHARD

He’s up and about to pop.

MARGARET

Oh Bob, don’t do it…

BOB

YOU POISONOUS BITCH! YOU CAN’T FIRE ME!

The office stops. This is going to be good. Margaret turns around with a disappointed look on her face. She’s deadly calm.

MARGARET

What are you doing? I gave you a civilized way out of this.

BOB

This is because I’m your competition. Because I threaten you!

MARGARET

Oh, Bob. You could never threaten me. I’m firing you because you’re lazy, entitled and

incompetent. I’m firing you because you don’t work hard. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up, take off that

ridiculous bow tie, find a bar and get drunk. Because if you say one more word,

Richard here is going to call security and have you thrown out on your ass. Are we perfectly clear?

Bob nods.

MARGARET (cont’d)

Good. Now I’ve got work to do…

Margaret and Richard walk away and speak in hushed tones.

MARGARET (cont’d)

We need to call his authors and explain what happened. And get Frank’s publicity schedule figured out pronto.

RICHARD

No problem. I’ll just cancel my trip this weekend.

MARGARET

I gave you the weekend off?

RICHARD

It was my Grandma’s ninetieth birthday. But no big deal. You were right before, I need to stay focused. Professional.

Strong conflict is what makes this scene play so well and the steely revelation of Margaret’s character. This is a woman who will go to any lengths to get what she wants.

This scene reveals that determination, but she is not cold hearted and gives Bob a graceful way out which he refuses to take, until he faces the reality of who his new boss really is. Then he finally backs down.

The screenwriter does a great job of revealing Margaret’s ballsy attitude without making us dislike her. We admire her toughness. And of course it doesn’t hurt that she has a sense of humor and a sharp wit. That will practically redeem any character. Now that I’m thinking about this, the character Sandra Bullock plays here is really not that dissimilar to the character she plays in THE BLIND SIDE, is it?

Also notice the playfulness between Richard and Margaret. This will eventually blossom into a full blown love affair.

We’ll take a look at another scene from The Proposal next week.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. I’m always striving to provide information you don’t normally get in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting course or screenwriting workshop.

The question I’m asking in this post is something I constantly need to clarify with the screenwriters in my workshops and those with whom I do private consultations.

Your audience came to the movie theatre to get scared because they heard there was a good horror film out.  But what they got instead was a lot of clever dialogue and good characters but not much horror.

That is not to say we don’t want to have good dialogue and great characters in our horror films (i.e. Scream for example). But that’s not what they paid their money for.  They came to get good and bloody scared.

Have you given them what they want?  This doesn’t just go for horror but for any genre, whether it’s action, buddy comedies or romantic comedies, etc.

What you should be concentrating on is giving your audience those moments that make them want to come to your genre movie.  If it’s a romantic comedy, we want those heartbreaking romantic scenes where the hero and heroine just can’t seem to get it right together. Those moments that are awkward, touching, and full of romantic possibilities but never what they desire.

I can’t think of a better example of this than “While You Were Sleeping,” where the heroine pretends to be the fiancé of the guy who’s in a coma but actually has fallen in love with his brother.

In romantic comedy, misunderstandings and bad timing lead to an ability to connect with those we love.  Why does that appeal so much to audiences?  Because it’s funny and touching and we’ve all been there.

So when you do a genre film you need to ask yourself first and foremost, what does my audience want?  What are their expectations?  And you better deliver on those expectations or you will have an unhappy group of moviegoers.

In “Adventures in the Screen Trade” William Goldman wrote that if you have 7-8 great moments in your film you have a great screenplay. If you’re writing horror, 7-8 great scary moments. Romantic comedy?  Action?  Well, you do the math.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. As you know my great desire in this blog is to provide information you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop. This certainly fits that bill.

I pose this specific topic because hopefully it will zero in on what we do as screenwriters that is unique about the art form we’ve chosen.

As you may know, I’ve been a professional screenwriter for many years with seven produced screenplays, including two scripts I wrote for acclaimed horror directed Wes Craven.

When I was encouraged by our manager, Mary Louise Gemmill, to turn a screenplay into a book, I was a bit intimidated as you can imagine.  But she was convinced our story was better suited as a novel and with her encouragement, that’s what we did.  INK was the result.

The difference between these two art forms is enormous, as my writing partner, Dale Pitman, and I discovered. For one thing you have to decide who is telling the story.  Do you do it in the first person, the 3^rd person, an omniscient point of view?  This takes time and probably some failed attempts until you hopefully get it right.  We don’t have the problem in screenwriting.

But the great benefit of writing fiction is that you can delve much deeper into the characters you’re writing about.  You can expose their thoughts, something you don’t have the luxury of doing in film.  As a result, you really can under their skin and expose their characters in a very rich way.

The other great luxury you have in fiction is that you can delve into the characters’ backstories in a way you can’t in film and television.  We call this in screenwriting – exposition. And it is the hardest thing in the world to hide the exposition you’re trying to get in (i.e. what happened five years ago).  The reason for this is that a screen story really bogs down when you go into some long-winded explanation of the backstory of your characters.  You have to keep the story moving.

But in fiction you mostly don’t have that problem.  The reader is much more willing to let you write a chapter about what happened five years ago as long as it’s interesting and has conflict.  This  backstory can bring so much more dimension to the characters than you will ever achieve in film.

This is probably why most people don’t like films made about their favorite books.  It’s because the books were so much richer and had greater depth of character and texture than you can usually achieve in a film.

So we as screenwriters have the onerous task to go deeply into our characters simply by showing what the characters are doing and saying. But that doesn’t mean we can’t write in the narrative how a character is feeling, as long as the character can show that on screen.  For example, I just read a script where the screenwriter wrote: “She felt a hole where her heart used to be.”

This is a great line. Does it show what the character is feeling?  Yes. Can an actress play that on screen?  Absolutely.  So it’s legitimate.  Don’t be afraid to write lines like this.  Help us to feel as deeply as we can about your characters.

And check out INK and see how I made the transition:  www.inkthenovel.com

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. You all know I do this because I want to provide information that you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This post could not be germaine.

What do I mean by this title? The concept of your screenplay is something that will either elicit a following of fans, buyers and entertainment lovers – or it won’t. Hopefully, if you’re lucky, it will carve out its place in the marketplace and be a brand like Energizer batteries and that bunny that keeps going and going and going.

Think of “Alien” (an outer space killing machine let loose on a space ship) “Back To The Future,” (the chance to go back in time and make sure your parents fall in love so you’ll be born) or “Jaws” (the greatest killing machine in the ocean.

They all became brands,  but first they were simply great ideas that were lovingly nurtured for years on end until they were ready to be offered to the world.

This is why I tell my students to stay with one project you truly believe in.  Great brands aren’t created overnight. They are given the maximum time to mature and get clearer and clearer as to what you’re selling and what your brand is.

This clearly relates to why my writing partner and I spent over four years writing a novel based on a screenplay, “The Highwayman.” It won awards but never crossed the finishing line.

So how do we get this brand to flourish and find its audience? For one thing we retitle it to INK to sharpen its brand, turn it into a novel with striking visuals and slowly build our audience one reader at a time.

Will it work? I sure hope so. See for yourself at www.inkthenovel.com

For the next month it’s available for download at a discounted price of $5.99.  That’s about as much as a cappuccino at Starbucks. Another great brand.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, Screenwriters. As you all know, I do this blog to provide information that you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting class. This post certainly is all about that.

I sent out a quote awhile back and it got me thinking.  How much talent do you actually need to be successful?  Here is the quote:

“People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. Most men succeed simply because they are determined to.” George Allen, football coach.

This quote is so true.  I know from personal experience that the students I’ve had had – like Melissa Rosenberg who became executive producer of “Dexter” and wrote the Twilight movies – and many other of my most successful students achieved what they did principally because they just wanted it so badly. That’s what really made the difference between them and the many hundreds of other writers I’ve mentored.

What it really about talent?  Not really.  And that’s not to say you don’t need a modicum of talent to succeed, but that’s not the crucial factor.

As for myself, I studied literature in college and read all the truly great writers like Shakespeare and Moliere and Ibsen and Dostoevsky.  I had no delusions that I was ever going to be as great as they were.

I had some talent but not to the degree that these great writers did.  Not even close.  But I had one thing going for me – I really wanted it badly.  There was no back-up plan.  I had to somehow create a career for myself and I was willing to sacrifice anything for that dream.

So it’s really a mind game, just like in sports or anything else worth striving for. It’s not the most talented that necessarily make it. It’s those that are willing to pay the price and willing to work as hard as it takes.

Succeeding in film or in fiction, it will demand everything you have and then it will demand some more. I’m learning that in having my first book published. INK has demanded all I’m capable of giving and then it demands some more. I hope you can read it and see if it was worth that cost:  http://www.amazon.com/Ink-Glenn-Benest/dp/0692336184

I’ll have more to say about this in the future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. I’m going to keep this post short as I’ve been working hard to promote our new novel and there’s only so many hours in the day.

If any of you were wondering about the reason I began writing INK four years ago – it happened like this. I’d written a screenplay with my writing partner Dale Pitman. We won several awards for that piece, then titled The Highwayman – but somehow couldn’t get it past the final hurdles of sale or option.

We had a industry friend – now our manager – at Writers Ascending – who encouraged us to write the project as a book, which would give the story greater exposure and make it more marketable for film and television (the same thing Kevin Costner encouraged his friend Michael Blake to do with Dances with Wolves, which started out as a screenplay).

I didn’t want to give up on this story so both Dale and agreed. It took four years but here we are – INK is now being enthusiastically reviewed and pre-sales have been strong. Will we sell it as a film or a television series – who knows – but I know it’s got a better chance than it once did.

It’s not something I would recommend for everyone but this is what it sometimes takes to go the distance when you really believe in something.

You go to the wall for that project, whatever it takes. I have many more stories about what hurdles I had to jump to get some of my screenplays produced, but that’s for another day.

Check us out at www.inkthenovel.com

If you purchase in the next week, shipping is free.

And of course I don’t need to tell you this but I will – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. As you are well aware, the purpose of this blog is to provide information you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop. This certainly fits that bill.

The reason I ask the above question (Are You As Hungry and Dedicated As An Olympic Athlete?)  is that you need to ask yourself just how badly you want this?

If you attempting to reach the Olympics there would be no question what you would sacrifice to attain your goal. You would train and train and train some more and there would be no sacrifice you would not be willing to make. In fact, you would embrace the sacrifice because that’s what would bring you that much closer to an Olympic medal.

If you want to be a dilettante and pretend to be doing something – there’s no need to read further. It’s a nice fantasy but that’s all it is.

Why would achieving success in this field be any different than winning a gold medal or being in the top 100 as pro tennis player? We ask you give everything you have and then some more and maybe some more after that. When wondering if you should go to the beach with your friends over the week-end or writing another 5 pages of your script – there really should be no hesitation. Would an Olympic athlete have a question about that? I don’t think so.

So here’s the rub. How badly do you really want this? Are you ready to truly sacrifice everything to reach your dreams? If not, you might want to consider another dream – one that doesn’t ask so much.

Do you hunger to read every great screenwriting book you can get your hands on? Participate in screenwriting webinars (like the one I have coming up on formatting), getting every great screenplay to study? Do you seek out working with the masters to hear their tough criticism and then be willing to go back and rewrite some more?

In other words, do you have to have this? Are you willing to forego a Plan B? It’s do or die and that’s the end of it. It’s not good enough to hear feedback from your doting girlfriend or bar buddy. You need to hear it from someone who’s actually had films made. Because that person will not accept something that is okay. It has to be great.

And that’s enough tough talk for today. Don’t bullshit yourself. Know what it takes and be willing to pay the piper. I can tell you – it’s worth it.

And as always – KEEP WRITING!

Share this: