REFLECTIONS: Creative Writing Notes
Generating Ideas:
- Research: Maybe from a film you've already seen, but you could end up repeating clishes...
- Brainstorm: Group up and exchange ideas, it's much better than generating ideas alone.
- Experiment: Develop ideas through ideas, don't always settle on the first draft
- As a writer you COMMUNICATE your MESSAGE to the READER/AUDIENCE. You are pitching your idea and style, but when you write a treatment think of all of your audience, and de-mistify some elements for possible collaborators or funders.
- You need to have a reasonable understanding of what you are trying to say.
- Consider all of the individual elements
Writing a screenplay:
- Idea
- Basic Story (one paragraph)
- Story Outline / Proposal (one page)
- Treatement (3-4 pages that describe the tone, style and contextualise the film)
- Scene Outline (script without dialogue that describes each scene, and its objective)
- Screenplay (Start from first draft... rewrite to eventual final draft!)
Building the structure:
- Beginning, Middle, End (though not necessarily in that order)
- There has to be some Conflict.
- You are probably going to set up some expectations
- And then you are going to confound those expectations
- Build in some ambiguity
- Don't resolve everything
- Denouement - whether to tie up the lose threads at the end? Or not? (are you going to end with a gratifying finale?)
Character Development
- Story is told through protagonist, naturally the film is about their struggles and dilemmas
- Backstory is important (even though his/her past may not be in the story, you should know it as a writer, because it will determine their motivations)
- Find what your characters and protagonist need, because it will drive the story.
- As soon as there are more than one characters, you immediately have conflict - something to write about.
- You could gradually reveal your characters throughout the film
- Don't stay locked in the head of one character, think about how all of them see the world (brainstorming might help with this)
Dialogue:
- Better to show than tell (use gestures, actions and looks and looks where possible). Films are mostly visual.
- Should be purposefull, to move the storyline forward. Could even fill in the backstory and the motivation.
- Know how the scene will end before writing dialogue, and know the character's motivation (use the scene breakdowns)
- Conflict creates best dialogue.
- A crafter representation of conversation?
- Overwrite, cut, condense, tighten. Don't add too much dialogue.
Classical VS. Counter
- Smooth story / seamless reality / a slice of life VS. Fragmented Narrative
- Identification with characters and story VS. Estrangement and distanciation
- Transparency of Form VS. Foregrounding of construction
- Coherent fictional world VS. Several disjointed worlds exist
- Closes with a rounded ending VS. Open-ended - allows various readings through open interpretation
- Pleasure - enjoyment through emotional involvement VS. Unpleasure - work on content, possible discomfort
- Fiction - mythical content VS. Reality - seeks to look for relations and reality behind the myth
"Burroughs' Cut Up"
- The premise: Language is a virus programmed in to the human biologic machine for the current purposes of Control
- A is always A, never not-A
- Cut-up is means to "subvert the film of our lives" running from A to B
- When A is not-A the film is displaced, shrivelling up in the harsh projected lies of Control
- No more dogma, bloated bureaucratic nonsense fold in on istelf.
- Discovered by Brion Hysin and made famous by William Burroughs - author of Naked Lunch
- Used by David Bowie to write his lyrics
Other methods of 'cut-up'
- Try using 'search and replace' of keywords of letters.
- Channel hopping on TV for alternative understanding of what's going on in the world - can record onto DVD
- Collect sound files and splice them together
- By breaking down understood meanings, we gain a different understanding of language and its purpose.
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