Re: Vision

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
--Joseph Joubert

Having previously pontificated on the necessity of plowing through a first draft, no matter how awful it may be, it seems only fair to look at how a good draft gets written, as opposed to a shitty one.  Here's a few thoughts born of personal experience.

1) Put it away first.

I don't know if you go through this, but I almost always encounter Last Night's Me.  Last Night's Me wrote something and went to bed thinking it was great.  This Morning's Me reads it over and can't believe that other guy was so deluded.  Given this natural evolution of ever-bettering me's, I find that the principle applies to draft completion.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a completely objective, marvelously shrewd and insightful version of you to go over the finished first draft and identify what needs to be fixed?  Well, that person can't possibly be the you who's just finished writing it.  You're way too close to the experience.  The smartest thing to do with a first draft is to bury it, literally or figuratively; put it away and don't look at it, for as long as you can possibly stand it.  A week is too short, so I recommend two weeks minimum, and really, a month is far better.  The longer you don't see it, the easier it will be for you to really see it.  The Future You, believe me, will be far less attached and more effectively tough than The You That Just Got Done.

2) Give it to readers you trust.

Hopefully you have friends or significant others who are willing to tell you the truth, without being mean-spirited about it.  I recommend giving it to an odd number, so you can get a consensus, since merely having one friend who loves it and one who hates it will only leave you stumped. Screenwriter Richard Curtis is fortunate enough to live with a woman who's really his collaborator in this regard, Emma Freud:

I give her this script... and she has a big red pen... and she marks it all up.  "CDB" is her favorite thing, which stands for "could do better" -- "CDB" and big crosses-out and "you must be joking."  We go through that process ten, fifteen, twenty times.  I'm very lucky like that.  I think that's an amazing thing, to have someone take that care with you even before it gets to other people.

"Even before it gets to other people" in Curtis's case is interesting, as he's famously spoken of having completed 17 entire drafts of Four Weddings and a Funeral (that's post-Emma drafts), for his director, various producers, actors, et al; Notting Hill he estimates took 20 -- and this was in order to realize an idea that he'd been carrying around and casually poking at, for years.

Anyway, in terms of that very first read -- I've written elsewhere on the art of receiving and comprehending notes, but I'll reiterate one suggestion here: Give your readers a specific task.  Let them know the kind of feedback you're most interested in.  "I want to know which parts felt slow" and "I'm curious to hear what you think of my villain" are statements more apt to yield helpful responses, and forestall your receiving a list of typos.  You'll get to the typos -- 17 rewrites and more to come.  Right?

3)  Prioritize your tasks.

The real work, and the real joy in rewriting -- generally I find it more exhilarating than torturous, though it can be that -- comes from knowing what you're after.  After you've collated your own responses and those of your trusted readers, make a list.  What's the most important thing that needs to be addressed?  Personally, I always start with character empathy.  Until I feel sure that the reader can identify with the protagonist, feel their feelings and track their logic, none of the other smaller matters really matter to me.  You may prefer to start with structure.  But whatever your main priority, it has to trump all others. Go after that first, and that alone. 

I've found there's nothing worse than trying to fix say, characterization and structure simultaneously.  You're bound to get bogged down and lost in the maze of possibilities.  There's something freeing about leaving a lot of the mess alone and simply grappling with a single issue that you've got a handle on.  In rewriting my novel, when I did one entire pass on one protagonist's dialogue, the clarity of focus really helped. 

And at some point in this process, you'll have to kill your proverbial darlings.  One of my all time favorite quotes on this matter comes from Samuel Johnson:

Read over your compositions, and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Paddy Chayefsky came at it from a more specific angle:

[Somerset Maugham] said, "If it should occur to you to cut, do so." If you're reading through and stop, something is wrong.  Cut it.  If something bothers you, then it's bad...  It's purifying.  It's refining.  Making it precise...  My own rules are very simple.  First, cut out all the wisdom; then cut out all the adjectives.

4) Be fearless and be flexible.

Musing on Johnson and Chayefsky's ruthlessness, I realized that the subtext corresponds to that "write a shitty draft" idea.  A few readers who commented on the last post decried this methodology, noting that a detailed outline or a rewrite-as-you-go approach worked better for them.  Fine!  My point, in that post and this one, is that judgment, second-guessing, and perfectionism, et al, are just the many masks of fear.

It's a process.  You'll get it wrong, have to write it better, again, differently.  You may, like Philip Roth did with one novel, write nearly 200 pages and then throw the whole thing away, having discovered what he really wanted to write. From working on movies at Universal, I can tell you that the ones that die in Development Hell are most often the ones where the writers are stubbornly unwilling to let their projects evolve.

Hand in hand with a certain kind of bravery -- the courage to do it, do it, do it until you're satisfied -- comes a willingness to accept change.  You have to allow the possibility that "what the story is about" may, and most probably will, shift.  The further you go, the more you find out about your characters and their conflicts, the more likely you are to reassess, re-conceive, re-vision your movie.

You start with a vision.  And as you try to realize it, if you're learning from your labors (as I hope you are), that vision will expand, deepen, become more strange and distinctly... yours.  You need to allow your story its room to grow.

When it's fully grown, of course, there'll be plenty of time to sweat the smaller stuff.  And then you'll really be in trouble.

Paris Review:  How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway:  It depends.  I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
Paris Review:  Was there some technical problem there?  What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway:  Getting the words right.

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Is there anyway I could get Richard Curtis to float me Emma Freud on loan?

I have 2 projects I could use her on right now, and should have a third ready by next weekend.

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[karen from mentor]

Billy, I just told Stephen Jay Schwartz this over at Murderati. He was asking about who edits our stuff and asked who our best or hardest critic is....
(lazy me, I just cut and pasted my answer to him here for you for your edification)[but I was thinking about YOU the whole time, I swear]

I recently had five readers of my WIP. I got feedback, really great feedback from all five of them. The first four said that they loved it and that it was a great read and a page turner,(and the only guy said the same things plus that he had to take a cold shower)
Each had some small thing to offer that I hadn't thought of.

I went back through with an eye to the comments of the first four and found a lot of things that I could make better, clearer, stronger.

The fifth said that after 1/2 hour of reading that she was out of her comfort zone and stopped reading. (I'm assuming it was the sex, I didn't ask)

I told her to put the mss back into an envelope and mail it back to me and not think another thing about it. And LET IT GO.

That told me more than anything else that I have learned so far as a writer. That I can accept criticism of my work, use what I can from it, and not obsess about what I can't change.

So I seem ready to face the harder challenge of publishing houses and the myriad rejections that I will inevevitably receive.

The fruit of my womb is my hardest critic. She WOKE ME UP recently to tell me that one of my characters couldn't be a forensic pathologist because he was two years too young to have had enough schooling. That was GREAT. That she cared that much to research a detail like that......oh, and by the way? She's impatiently waiting for the rewrite. The crowd says AWWWWWWWWWWW
But as a P.S. I DID have to staple two pages of a six page sex scene together and ask her not to read it until either A)I'm dead, or B) she's the same age I am now.
(she's 20)
Great post today sir, I always learn something new.
Karen :)

PPS..I sent you an email...check your inbox.

[Eric C]

Another great post. To me, writing is more like sculpture, or old style painters who painted and repainted the canvas until it was perfect. I love that Hemingway quote.

Also, I can't stand when people give feedback on typos in an early draft. I'm going to re-read the thing a million times before it is finished, I want to know structure, character and understandability issues in the beginning.

[Chris]

This reminds me of Michael Chabon's experience before writing Wonder Boys. It was his second novel and he felt an overwhelming pressure to write something that wouldn't let down what everyone was saying about him, that he was this great new author on the scene.

I'm pretty sure the whole story is in the intro to Wonder Boys so check it out. Yeah, helpful, I know.

[Christian H]

Great follow-up. I always agreed that getting through a draft is hard and you should do it anyway if you're stuck just to get to the end.

I just don't recommend that after a few FADE OUTs though because you should be studying what you did and what you were thinking and as you said "trying to achieve."

At that point you know that "blockage happens" and sometimes it's better to let it rest and work on something else. Or better yet, re-"view" your outline, trying to visualize it. I just changed a location that was blocking the thriller I'm working on.

Even though I've had a few reads I haven't made any money yet but I can say that I use readers to get a consensus of issues. I have learned to direct my requests as I know what I want to see, I just need to know if I pulled it off.

I can honestly say though that I won't change anything individually noted unless the person is paying for the service.

I only say that because if you change it before it gets to the "money" you will more than likely have to change it again. I just don't want to change something that I read as good - after the requisite cooling off period - because someone saw something else.

A good example is a script I got reviewed on TriggerStreet. It actually hearkened back to a post you made about studio notes where the exec said "it's a comedy not a look at the human condition." Hell I wrapped the protag, antag and support together pretty neatly, but all in all it was just meant to be funny. I have a set piece at McDonald's with a kidnap victim - which is ludicrously funny (unless you've been trapped in a van on a stakeout all day) - and let me get in some really funny lines. (Happy Meal? I don't want no stinking Happy Meal - you know the badges, the badges).

And by good I mean that appeals to the viewer in me. I've read many a script that were "reader" scripts (read:unique wording that has no bearing on the filming) and I only write "viewer" scripts.

And hey I've stolen stuff from the best movies out there.

Forgive my total rant but I just love talking about this. (I could probably start a riot with my Sex in Cinema post).

I just hate it when people think this can't be cataloged, directed and - well a technical profession.

That's why I come here - well blogs like this. I've had some serious discourse and it has improved my writing. Though admittedly I tried to start out with just good characters in a "small" situation (not:stakes but breadth).

Now since I'm on what I consider my Master's thesis script, I look for ways to twist the story, double-cross the audience (not too much), etc.

Well back to the day job.

Kudos!

[Judith Duncan]

Hey Billy,
As usual I loved the posts,always so relevant especially at the moment.I recently entered two scripts I have written into a competition.I worked them both up in a class,the second one in 10 weeks.The first one I wrote and re-wrote and even hired a script analyst to help me whip it into shape.With the second one I had time for a second draft but no money left for the analyst.

I found out last week that the second one got into the quarter finals but the first one,the one I spent so much time on didn't.

Is it Murphy's Law?The arbitrary nature of the business and screenwriting competitions?

I'm so bloody confused.???????

[mernitman]

EC: Dude, get in line.

Karen, I'm looking for something to cut and paste to reply with.

Eric C: The Typo People. Sounds like a bad disco band in a Samuel J. Arkoff movie.

Actually yes: helpful, Chris - gives me an excuse to go back and look at a book I loved.

Master on, Christian.

Judith: No. It's just the "anything's possible" of it all in the biz.

[thesis writing]

Extremely long but very useful and informative article. How i wish i can do all of that in a short period of time. But for sure doing those will produce results. I will try to spread your words through my blog and link it back to you. Thanks a lot for those tips.

[Ben]

Definitely. Last night's me is a horrible writer that this morning's me thinks is a jerk. "Hand in hand with a certain kind of bravery -- the courage to do it, do it, do it until you're satisfied -- comes a willingness to accept change." That line was really insightful. I liked it a lot.