There’s a key lesson in here for writers of any sort, whether you’re doing journalism in Papers of News, writing one-act plays that begin and end with ten minutes of silence, or banging on the keyboard for the next Great American Novel, except you’re in New Zealand, and think the whole concept of the Great American Novel is sillypants.
Pam sums it up like this: “Less is more.”
She’s right. Also, bonus points for the assignment at the end of this video. Too funny.
P.S. Yes, I know the first trailer for THE BATMAN is out. No, I will not dissect it, because 94,230 superfans have already watched it, frame by frame, to look for specific pixels that might give them an easter egg or theory that nobody else thought about yet. But yeah, I liked it. Looking forward to seeing that, and other movies, in actual movie theaters next year with overpriced popcorn and sticky floors and all the things that I miss.
You need excitement and activity and danger and conflict. But piling it on subtracts from the tension and stress. More is less, and less is more. Contrast and texture FTW!
My library contains Every Book on Writing Known to Man or Woman–journalism, speechwriting, fiction, rhetoric, grammar, speechy journalism, ficitonal rhetoric, whatever–and honestly, they’re mostly good for kindling during the zombie apocalypse.
I’m only half kidding.
The secret to all writing is structure and editing, and the absolute best in the world at structure are these magical creatures called screenwriters.
This is why I hope readers of this silly blog watch the video above (yeah, you skipped it? watch the thing) and check out my sister’s new course, Plot Ninja.
Don’t do it because she’s my sister, or because she’s brilliant and funny.
Do it because writers of any sort need to steal everything they can from screenwriters.
Because all those different writing books in my library, and yours, are a lot like instruction manuals for plumbing, electrical wiring, drywall, cabinetry and painting. Yeah, that stuff is really important–but not at first.
Here’s the thing: writing anything is like building a house: sure, you can throw together a little shed made of two-by-fours and drywall, and it might hold up for bit, but try to build a house like that and it’ll fall down after the first rain.
None of it matters without a strong foundation and framing, and the only way to get that right is with strong blueprints.
Who actually knows the secrets of story blueprints?
Screenwriters.
Nobody is better. It’s not even close.
Not because they’re the most talented writers. Not because some of them get paid bazillions of dollars.
It’s because screenwriters focus, relentlessly, on the only thing you see in screenplays: the blueprints of a story.
Nobody else teaches the bones of storytelling like screenwriters.
Listen, I have a journalism degree and wrote thousands of newspaper stories. Have a background in rhetoric and have written thousands and thousands of speeches, then I write thrillers for fun. Somebody taught me the structures for journalism, speechwriting and fiction, right? Not in the way you think. A journalism degree with teach you the inverted pyramid and a lot about headlines and ethics and how to put together a newspaper or magazine. Structure and blueprints? Not really.
Same with speechwriting and fiction. You tend to get a lot more instruction about the fit and finish than the blueprints and foundation.
I find that backward, so when I teach folks, I always start with blueprints and foundations. Tools you can use for whatever you write.
And all the best stuff I’ve learned about strong blueprints came from screenwriting and Pam.
Get the whole toolbox, not a single template
You’ll see a lot of people saying, “Here’s how to write X or Y” and yeah, it’s one way to do it.
Screenwriters have the whole toolbox and use it.
They don’t say, “This is the only way” unless they’re hawking the hero’s journey, which is not the only story in town. There are all kinds of stories: comedies and tragedies, dramas and melodramas, tales of transformation and redemption.
Screenwriters have picked up every tool in the box and know all the ways of putting together stories.
And you can build them in all kinds of different ways. In fact, you have to. Try to plot a comedy in the same way as a drama, or a horror story, and it’ll flop.
Those hammers and drills and blueprints are useful for anything you write, whether it’s stories in newspapers and magazines or 200,000-word epics about an evil talking cat and his buddy, the seeing eye dog who’s seen too much, and what happens when they decide to go on a crime spree.
So I’ll try to post more of Pam’s videos about screenwriting every Wednesday, because they’re funny and useful.
And I hope you get as much out of them as I have.
Note: No, I’m not writing about that evil talking cat, his seeing eye dog and their crime spree, though it does sound like fun.
Notes: So my genius sister, Pam, won a Nicholl Fellowship and does this series on the YouTube, which is worth watching no matter what you write: screenplays, regular plays, novels, newspaper stories or speeches.
First, because we need to tear down the artificial walls between different disciplines of writing. Second, because screenwriters are the absolute best at structure, which is the secret to any sort of writing. And third, because she’s insanely good at cutting through the nonsense and getting at what really matters, which isn’t comma splices and the proper use of gerunds.
Plus she’s funny. Thanks for doing these, sis. Hugs. 🙂
Notes: So my genius sister, Pam, won a Nicholl Fellowship and does this series on the YouTube, which is worth watching no matter what you write: screenplays, regular plays, novels, newspaper stories or speeches.
First, because we need to tear down the artificial walls between different disciplines of writing. Second, because screenwriters are the absolute best at structure, which is the secret to any sort of writing. And third, because she’s insanely good at cutting through the nonsense and getting at what really matters, which isn’t comma splices and the proper use of gerunds.
Plus she’s funny. Thanks for doing these, sis. Hugs. 🙂
Notes: So my genius sister, Pam, won a Nicholl Fellowship and does this series on the YouTube, which is worth watching no matter what you write: screenplays, regular plays, novels, newspaper stories or speeches.
First, because we need to tear down the artificial walls between different disciplines of writing. Second, because screenwriters are the absolute best at structure, which is the secret to any sort of writing. And third, because she’s insanely good at cutting through the nonsense and getting at what really matters, which isn’t comma splices and the proper use of gerunds.
Plus she’s funny. Thanks for doing these, sis. Hugs. 🙂
Notes: So my genius sister, Pam, won a Nicholl Fellowship and does this series on the YouTube, which is worth watching no matter what you write: screenplays, regular plays, novels, newspaper stories or speeches.
First, because we need to tear down the artificial walls between different disciplines of writing. Second, because screenwriters are the absolute best at structure, which is the secret to any sort of writing. And third, because she’s insanely good at cutting through the nonsense and getting at what really matters, which isn’t comma splices and the proper use of gerunds.
Plus she’s funny. Thanks for doing these, sis. Hugs. 🙂
There are always public stakes and private stakes.
Public stakes: If the villain wins, so what? How does that affect the public at large–you, me and the good people of Cleveland?
Private stakes: If the villain wins, how does that affect individuals, typically the main characters in the story?
Bad stories are often bad because they’re out of balance, entirely focused on private stakes (soap opera) or public stakes (disaster movie with cardboard characters).
So my genius sister, Pamela Kay, made a series of YouTube videos on how to write screenplays. She won a Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy and knows her stuff. Heed her words, even if you don’t write screenplays, because this field is crazy useful for any sort of writer.
Why? The secret to all writing is structure–and nobody is better at structure than screenwriters.
Not because they’re magical and amazing, though many are. It’s because you can hide bad structure with pretty words in a novel or feature story.
With screenplays, you can’t hide the bad bones of a story, because that’s all people see: the bones.
Writing today has far too many silos, mostly focused on little details, with few notions on structure at all:
Writing to inform: Journalists are stuck inside the inverted pyramid, a structure that’s inherently boring for anything of length, which is why journalists typically stink at novels
Writing to persuade: Speechwriters know the structure of rhetoric, but it’s not really meant for writing anything to inform or entertain
Writing to entertain: Novelists, playwrights, poets and screenwriters all have their own jargon and tricks, like they live on different planets
This reminds me of boxing, wrestling and martial arts before the days of MMA, with everybody doing their own little thing and swearing they’d whip the lesser disciplines. Except boxers got destroyed by the wrestlers, who got owned by the jujitsu people, who later on got wrecked by the boxers who learned how to sprawl. To be truly good fighters, fighters had to set aside their pride and train in every discipline.
I believe the same is true for writers today. There’s never been more content out there, with scads created every second all around the world, so there’s never been more competition to get read.
From having a toe in journalism, speechwriting and novels, I know you could slave away in one of these fields for years and still miss out on core fundamentals. Not learning from other disciplines is like building a house when all you know is drywall and plumbing–the thing is going to fall down.
Screenwriting is key because structure is why 99 percent of bad drafts are bad. Go look at a bad draft. Line by line, the words are plenty pretty. Structure is what vexes us all.
So: I hope this video gives you a taste of screenwriting and her series sparks something in you. Not so you can write LETHAL WEAPON 7: DANNY GLOVER AND MEL GIBSON BUST OUT OF THE SANTA MONICA NURSING HOME, but so you can learn how to pour the foundation of any sort of story, making it stands strong so you can move on to the wiring (dialogue), plumbing (setups and payoffs) and drywall (description).
Any sort of writing with strong bones will beat the stuffing out of the prettiest words with a weak foundation.
If you want more, here are two of the basic texts, the guide stars: STORY by Robert McKee is a deep dive on structure, while SAVE THE CAT by Blake Snyder is a breezy little look at genres, beat sheets and story, using movies we all know.
P.S. Pam did a ton of these videos, so I’ll try to post one every Tuesday as long as she keeps making them.
The Red Pen of Doom 