NOTES FROM HOLLYWOOD

THREE THINGS A FILMMAKER TAUGHT ME ABOUT WRITING BOOKS

I don’t do well with writing advice (or any advice, really), despite giving it myself, which isn’t a great indictment. What I do know is that I find directions from screenwriters much easier to stomach than musings on craft by other novelists.

I love the way screenwriting tips relate to fiction but at one remove, like speaking to your aunt not your mother. And since screenwriting is often a team effort, I think its tenets tend to be more widely applicable than a novelist’s individual process.

Ultimately, though, I love filmmaker’s diktats because when I’m writing a novel it’s much more like watching a film in my brain than reading a book. So it makes sense, to me, to learn how to make better brain films.

I realised this when I spoke to Hollywood producer Tatiana Kelly, while writing my novel So Good To See You. Tatiana has made over two dozen films and TV shows (watch the brilliant The Wristcutters and The Words if you can), with big names like Bradley Cooper, Ethan Hawke and Paul Rudd.

Initially I called her to fact check part of my plot, set in the film industry. But then, over our long conversation about development hell, flighty actors and cut-throat agents, she gave me three pearls of storytelling wisdom. I didn’t even need to write them down to know they would help me, which they did and still do.


WRITE SCENES AN ACTOR WOULD JUMP TO PLAY
By this, Tatiana didn’t just mean ‘Write a book that would make a good film’ so you can sell the rights. She urged me to get inside the head of a hypothetical, highly ambitious actor, and read my novel through their eyes. Does it contain scenes that this actor, who really wants an Oscar, would jump to play?

In other words, not just moments of high drama eg ‘a loving wife is widowed unexpectedly’, but complex, nuanced emotion. Like the moment in The Four Seasons when Anne (whose ex-husband has left her for a much younger woman) has to accommodate that young woman’s grief, when the ex dies in a car crash. Basically, actors have a good eye for tension and drama, so if you think / write like this you stand a good chance of riveting a reader.


YOUR OPENING IS FOR THE CRITICS, YOUR ENDING IS FOR THE PUBLIC
Filmmakers rely on critics to get an initial round of people into cinemas – via reviews, awards etc. But they rely on the public, too, to sell tickets via word of mouth. And according to Hollywood lore, these two audiences engage in opposite ways. The critics will remember the first five minutes, the audience will remember the last five.

More on endings below, but in order to get critics on side you need an arresting log-line and first scene. Of course this isn’t news, but I like the idea of the two distinct audiences – basically critical vs commercial. In a novelist’s case, the critics are the agents, editors and journalists who will receive your manuscript or proof, who you must win over in ten seconds. The cinema-goers are your Amazon reviewers. They’ll probably have read the whole book, and they’ll judge it by how the last page left them feeling. Which brings us to…

DON’T LEAVE YOUR AUDIENCE CONFUSED OR DEPRESSED
This isn’t to say that everything needs to be tied up with a happy bow. There’s a huge difference between leaving a story open ended, and confusing your audience. And poignancy, or realism, aren’t the same as despair. I think A Real Pain illustrates this point perfectly. The ending isn’t clear cut, or ‘happy ever after’. But you can have a good guess at what might happen next, and that ‘next’ doesn’t feel utterly hopeless.

I depressed a lot of readers (and some publishers who turned the book down) with the ending of my first novel, via a death that came too late in the story to pass this test. And I’d now agree that when you finish a film or book feeling baffled or despondent, it feels as if the director/writer hasn’t kept their side of the bargain. That said, you need a little melancholy and uncertainty (I think) to root everything in reality.

Lastly…. CREATE A TORTURE CHAMBER FOR YOUR CHARACTER

This is actually from Craig Mazin and John August, via the podcast Scriptnotes, and is one of my favourite pieces of screenwriting advice. It’s a better way of saying ‘there’s no story unless things go wrong’. How wrong they go is up to you. But generally, the wronger the better.