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beats, character, cliche, scene, writer's block - February 07, 2023

CHECK YOUR HEAD

Sometimes the script doesn’t want to cooperate. You stare at the page and nothing comes. The scenes you’ve written all seem tired and obvious. You’re forty pages into the script, and going further feels like a chore. What happens next? You don’t know. Nothing clicks. It’s the condition commonly known as writer’s block. There is no easy cure. But it’s just a part of the process. Everyone hits these odd corners of development, and solving for them is what makes writing an art and a craft. Each instance of block is its own beast, unique to the script, the writer,...

ON DIALOGUE

Dialogue is one of the trickier aspects of writing because, unlike elements like structure or format, there are no hard-and-fast rules to act as a guide. But we still know dialogue is good or bad when we hear it. Dialogue is one of the main lures for attracting name talent (i.e. movie stars) to a project. Given that financing is often contingent on name attachments, the level of dialogue can have a direct impact on a script getting traction toward production. One of the main things we want to achieve is to strike a balance between clarity and character. In...

Screenwriting in UNCUT GEMS

The screenwriting in UNCUT GEMS is easy to take for granted. The film uses a documentary/realist style that almost makes it feel like a story the filmmakers just happened to film, vs. a carefully-scripted production. But it was carefully scripted. In a recent podcast, “The Big Picture”, the Safdie brothers, the writer/directors of the film, revealed the script went through 160 drafts, over many years, and was re-shaped repeatedly for different actors. Here’s where we must get into SPOILERS. If you have not seen UNCUT GEMS, don’t keep reading. This is your SPOILER WARNING. The magic of the film, from...

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