The Art of Perfect Timing

Have you ever been told you had perfect timing?  Remember how glorious that brief moment felt when everything fell into place harmoniously, effortlessly?

How do you keep your story riveting from beginning to end? Like a good driver who knows when to put the pedal to the metal and when to slow down around the curves, a good writer is aware of a story's pace.  Every page of your script better be moving the story forward or it'll translate into one big yawn by the time it gets to the big screen.

One of the biggest surprises I experienced while working on the initial rough cut of my film, WATERCOLORS was how slowly the pace was moving.  I had two actors in a bedroom just talking for a large chunk of the first act.  I was fortunate enough to have worked with a great editor, who chopped off large chunks of dialog while still managing to keep the mood of the scene in tact.  An extra two or three weeks working on the script with particular attention to pacing may have eliminated costly days of shooting.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20.  But, I learned a valuable lesson about editing.  It's easier to do it on the page than in front of an expensive editing bay running the latest software, at a hefty hourly rate.  It's easier to crumble up a page and throw it in the garbage and start over than to rehearse a scene with actors, spend hours shooting it and start putting it together in the editing suite only to realize it's over written, slow and boring.

A screenplay is not prose fiction.  You can't delve into a character's inner thoughts.  That's the realm of the novel.  A screenplay is not an endless string of monologues.  Words thrive in the realm of the play.

There's a limited amount of time in a screenplay to get across a lot of information.  Keep in mind that a screenplay is merely a blueprint for actors and a production team to turn into a film.  Every word has to belong there.  Anything that can be cut will and should be cut during the process of making the film.  Start by being ruthless during the writing process.  Its an exercise in extreme minimalism.

One thing I advise writers to do is to start as late in the scene as possible.  If the murderer is about to kill his next victim, let's start with the action, the killer closing in with a machete!  Let's not start with what the victim had for breakfast or how motivated a saleswoman she was, or what a great single mother she was.  If those qualities are pertinent to the story, they'll emerge.   Start with a bang.  Perhaps not a huge bang as your opening sequence but in a sense each scene in your screenplay has its own beginning, middle and end.  Start every scene with an intriguing, rich opening of its own. Weave events together so you have a tapestry of rising action, rising stakes, rising tension.

It's said that each page is approximately one minute of screen time.  Make every moment in your script count.  Make sure if it's in there, it helps push your story forward.


This week's suggested website: The New Yorker Magazine (www.newyorker.com) has been in print since 1925.  It's my personal favorite.  Some of the best writers of the today publish fiction and essays here.  Well worth the price of a subscription.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Take a story you're currently working on and examine the opening scene.  Can you think of anything in your existing sequence that can be cut?  Is there anything slowing down your opening?  Spend five minutes reviewing your work for pacing.

Writing as Healing

Among other things, writing is a miraculous healing tool.  Whether we're on the receiving end of an eloquently delivered, thoughtfully prepared speech, or pouring our hearts out on the pages of a journal, writing is a powerful emotional tonic.  Writing offers us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to rewrite our personal histories.  Writing offers us catharsis.  And, the need for a cathartic experience is the reason an audience pays the price of admission in the first place.


Indeed, the very purpose of a story, whether it's on the page or on the screen, is to provoke an emotional response in the viewer/reader.  Oddly enough, all six and a half billion of us human beings seem to respond in predictable ways to the same things.  We all have hopes, dreams, fears, superstitions, etc.  In the end, the only thing frightening thing is how similar they all are.  No other work better explains the need of story telling and the importance of symbols and rituals throughout human evolution than Joseph Campbell's and Bill Moyer's conversation, "The Power of Myth."  I come back to this work again and again and always get a little something more from it with each reading.  I highly recommend you add it to your writer's bookshelf.



By all means it's great to exercise one's own demons, but to write for the entertainment industry requires more than bearing one's soul, however brave, honest and gut-wrenching that may be.  Industry professionals expect more from a writer than the shock value of exposing the dark side of human nature for the sake of grabbing the attention of a few readers or viewers.

A screenplay, first of all, has to be produceable.  It needs to stay within certain parameters (some creative, some financial, some just insane) that work to the advantage of many parties with different agendas and priorities (producers, agents, talent, backers, distributors, etc.)  Ultimately, a well written, engaging story that touches on universal themes and has something intelligent to say about the human condition will have a better chance of getting produced and distributed.

Hollywood loves an uplifting, inspirational story with a happy ending.  We love to watch the underdog win in the end.  Watching our heroes and heroines overcome immense adversity is an essential part of our own growth.  Vicariously, we get to catch the bad guy, win the race, save the planet and gain a little personal glory.

This week's suggested website: Kickstarter.com (www.kickstarter.com).  A great concept that's actually working to get some artists some very valuable attention.  This site is designed to get creative projects of all types funded.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Let's focus on dialogue.  One way to look at dialog is to include what people say as well as what they hide. Write a one page confrontational scene between two characters using only dialog.  Drop some hints of what's to come in the story or what has already transpired with these two using only dialog.  Write for five minutes.  

Heroes and Masterpieces

It's an extraordinary feeling to be around great art.  It's transformative.  In a way, I was spoiled growing up in New York City with all it had to offer on a constant basis.  This week I visited The Houston Museum of Fine Arts to see an impressionist and post-impressionist exhibit.  Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Seurat, etc.  were all there in full force.  These were the masters, I thought.   Innovators that we can still marvel over.  I was struck by how bold they all were.  How outrageous the chances they took were.  The art world had never seen anything like it before.  They were treading new ground.  Over 150 years later, I'm feeling the same excitement as I looked at Van Gogh's bold lines and even bolder choice of colors.  I'm mesmerized by Seurat's ability to patiently paint one dot of color at a time until he vision was realized.  This need for boldness also exists in writing.

Also this week, I finished reading my first novel of the year.  I figured I would read this book since 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar.   The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna is witty, inventive and full of unexpected turns.  It's a quick read about a man and a wild hare who travel all over Finland on some crazy adventures.  Again, another creative expression of boldness!  I truly liked it.


I've always been attracted to the adventure story.  I get swept away in the plot driven antics of a Pippi Longstockings or Sinbad the Sailor.  The pattern is quite well worn.  It's the classic hero's journey.  The hero enters an unkown world, makes valuable realizations about himself and the world then returns to share the wisdom he's gained on his travels.  How much bolder does it get?

A writer also needs to be bold.  A writer must take daring chances to express something that may not translate to others.  In the end, what you write may not be commercially successful, it may not be widely read, it may not be reviewed well, it may lie unpublished.  That's what makes the act of writing all that much more courageous.  Writing is having the courage to open up a topic that may be painful and others would prefer never to discuss.  Writing is daring to make a fool of yourself and revealing your childhood playfulness.  Ultimately, you have to want to express something, you have to want to touch an audience.  The same freshness that the impressionists offered is what audiences are craving for today.  They want the unique, fresh YOU.  Bold, uninhibited and honest.

A great book on this topic is Eric Maisel's, "Coaching the Artist Within."  Dr. Maisel is an author of multiple books on the creative life.  But this one is like having someone who understands what you're going through in your corner when you need it most.    Be sure to add it to your writer's bookshelf.

 This week's suggested website: Writer's Digest.  (www.writersdigest.com) is a warehouse of great  material.  They publish books and articles on all aspects of writing.  They also offer online courses, moderate discussion forums, etc.  Their tips on getting published are probably the best out there.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Let's hone in on your interviewing skills.  This exercise is designed to help you get in the habit of asking penetrating questions.  Imagine that you have the opportunity to sit down with any figure in history, in any area of expertise for a private interview.  Go beyond what we already know about the person and find something that reveals character.  Did Teddy Roosevelt love the saxophone?  Did Shakespeare have a fear of mice?  Find that odd, unique or interesting detail about your historic figure that tells us, or better, shows us what kind of person he/she was.  Write for five minutes.  

Great Characters - Great Impact

We know that great writing provokes our thinking, widens our scope of the world. Some of us have even experienced great writing that motivates our actions. Years ago, I saw a play called "Jeffrey" in New York. In the play, one of the characters volunteers at an AIDS maternity ward feeding newborn babies. I was touched by the gesture and decided to look into it as something I would do myself. As it turned out the babies weren't separated in New York city maternity wards because their was little chance of spreading the HIV virus among newborns. Nice to know.

I spent the next few months feeding and changing babies. That experience taught me that if I wanted to adopt a child, I could handle it. A few years after that, I did adopt. Am I suggesting it was because of the character in Jeffrey? Probably not, but it sparked a flame that was already burning within me. And, I believe great writing can do that. A great character challenges us to behave in different ways than we ordinarily would, approach a situation differently or take action where we would never have thought to.

I stop now to think about all the characters that come to mind. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, Scarlett O'Hara each left a mark in me, each planted a seed of "emotional DNA" in my being. We each have a list of our own literary heroes. Now, stop for a moment and think about all the young writers your work can help illuminate in the future. The stories boiling up inside of you may very well mean the world to someone looking for their own voice in writing in the future. By devoting yourself to your craft now, you're helping to strengthen the writers of tomorrow. You may be the writer than someone looks up to and wants to emulate. Your words can potentially change the course of someone's life. Your characters can leave a mark on generations to come. Don't think for a moment that your creativity is not that important. It is, in fact it's critical!

But who'll write your stories if you don't?  No one has your particular view point of the world.  No one has your unique way of expressing things.  No one shares your exact powers of observation.  I've always said that five stolen moments during the day is better than nothing.  But the truth is writing anything requires getting through that first horrible draft.  Then it requires many rewrites.  When the time is right it will require feedback from people you trust.  But, writing like the greatest architecture, stands the test of time.  It lives on.  It breathes a life of its own and extends beyond you in ways you can never imagine.  Sometimes the most important thing to remember is just keep the pen moving across the page - keep the fingers dancing on the keyboard.  Like a muscle, writing gets easier the more you do it.

In general what we tend to remember most about great movies or novels is their characters.  A well written, three dimensional character is at the heart of every great story.  The audience needs to identify with your protagonist.  We need to know who we're rooting for.  Rich, unusual characters will lead you to the new comedic and dramatic territory.  Think for a moment of the people you remember most from your own life?  What was it about them that captured your attention?  Can you incorporate these traits into one of your own characters?  Can you take a foible or quirk from someone in real life and exaggerate it to good use in your own fiction?

I was recently working on a character who lives a life of seclusion in the Brazilian rainforest.  I liked what I had so far but when I added a surprise element the character took on a new life.  I think he's much more interesting and well-rounded now.  What I gave him was a great love of jazz.  Then to make that visual, I gave him a trumpet.  Now I have him bringing his trumpet to the jungle and taking it out to play at night.  Now the character has a "hook" that engages our interest.

Linda Seger, a sought after teacher and script consultant in Hollywood has written a great book on the subject, "Creating Unforgettable Characters."  I highly recommend putting it on your writer's shelf.


This week's suggested website: The Gotham Writer's Workshop  (www.writingclasses.com) is located in New York City (hence the name).  This group publishes some great books on fiction and screenwriting.  It also offers courses in-person and online in poetry writing, play writing and even memoir.




This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Using the first person point of view, have your main character tell us (the reader) an episode from his or her life.  Let your character describe a defining moment, an accomplishment, an epiphany or an embarrassment.  Be sure to let your character use his or her own vocabulary.  Let it be conversational, in his or her own voice.  Limit this exercise to one page.

Friends, Fragments and First Drafts

When it comes to writing, I never throw anything away.  Like mining for gold, writing is a process of excavation and sifting through sediment to get to "the good stuff."  You dig deep for the truth your characters want to embody.  You dig deep for themes that reveal something about the human condition.  The sediment that is disturbed comes in the form of many drafts.  Awful, incoherent, sometimes nonsensical drafts.  It's essential that you learn to keep these drafts so you can sift through them later and ascertain their true value at a time when you're not so emotionally attached to them and can reread them with a different perspective.

I have folder stuffed with early drafts.  Unfinished, fragmented, and raw.  Why do I keep them?  I feel that for a writer its okay to be a hoarder.  There's no way to know what nugget of dialogue will make it to a finished scene.  Sometimes months or years after writing something you stumble upon it and it sparkles a fresh stream of thinking or reignites the original fire behind it.  When you have forgotten even writing it, that's the best.

Another important thing to remember: Never show anything to anyone while its still in development.  It's unfair to all parties involved.  A kind word from a friend can easily distract you.  A tiny bit of criticism from a relative is enough to stall your efforts or worse, sabotage you completely.  Case in point, back in May of 2010 I was about 70 pages in to what I thought was a good story about a newly divorced woman in her senior years.  It came from the complaint I've heard repeatedly from actresses that there aren't any really good parts for women and certainly not women over forty.

I want to create a character and situation people want to see but Hollywood (in its mad rush to make a gazillion dollars) just isn't listening.  I made the mistake of showing my infant script to someone close to me for feedback.  In hindsight, I ask myself, how could I have been so stupid?  Feedback on what?  I wasn't even close to finished yet.  None of my characters were fleshed out enough to evoke any sense of compassion in the reader.  Plot points were still loosely conceived, scenes were out of place or incomplete.  It was still in that messy "first draft on paper" stage.  The reaction wasn't good and worse still, I let it sit on the back burner for months, feeling dejected.  What a set up!  But that's what we writers do to ourselves.  Learn to keep your creative process to yourself until the right time.  Rewriting and editing will come later.  It's a distinct process.  A wonderful book on the editing process is The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lemer.

There is a time for criticism, feedback and polish and there's a time for free-association, wild abandon and creative exploration.  Mixing the two approaches can have hazardous consequences.  The need to create something perfect may keep you from creating anything at all.  Perfectionism is another way of keeping yourself blocked.  It sounds so reasonable, so admirable: "I'm a perfectionist."  But, the truth is if you wait to write something perfect, it'll never happen.  You'll never write anything.  Perfect doesn't exist.  No one writes a pretty first draft.

Give yourself permission to excavate the depths of your psyche.  What may come up initially isn't pretty but like that crusty sedimentary earth that covers gold, our first drafts are valuable layers of raw elements that with time and care may bear or reveal unexpected fruit.



This week's suggested website: (www.finaldraft.com) Final Draft is a screenwriting program available for both Windows and Mac.  It's easy to use and recognized as the industry standard.

This week's writing prompt:


Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Imagine a specific locale.  It can be a cabin in the wilderness, a corner office in a skyscraper or any other location from a script or novel you're working on.  Close your eyes and try to capture every detail.  Be sure to include your sense of smell, taste and touch to describe the environment as well.   Write for five minutes.

Screenwriting: 101 (Where Do I Start?)

I've always enjoyed being at the beginning of things: a new job, the first day of school, a brand new project.  I remember being filled with excitement at the possibility that something unexpected might happen whenever a new situation presented itself.  For many people, being at the beginning of a long journey or complicated process can be intimidating and scary.  But, if we move beyond our fears, doubts and distractions "beginnings" can offer unexpected magical power, wondrous surprises and foster our creative intelligence.

When working on a new project, I look forward to the prep time, the planning stages where everything is still possible and you're only limited by your imagination.  Before criticism and logic sets in.  It's a magic time when the world is your canvas!  If you like jumping off into the unknown, writing may be the perfect vehicle because it requires a certain amount of fearlessness.  Few things are as intimidating as the blank page. 

Recently, I have been traveling the country on the festival circuit promoting my film, WATERCOLORS.   Almost everywhere I go someone asks me,  "How did you get started?"  The simple answer is:  I just started.

If you've decided that writing for the screen is something you must do, and are willing to dedicate yourself to the many lonely hours ahead then training and practice will determine the measure of your success.  The practice is all up to you but for the training, there's help out there and lots of it.

The amount of literature available on writing for the screen (most of it very good) is exhausting to contemplate.  In fact there  is an entire industry devoted to teaching people of all ages to write for film and TV.  College degrees, workshops, online certifications, lectures, podcasts, books, etc. keep pumping out more and more content to supply the insatiable demand of aspiring writers.  And with all the new media being developed the hunger for content has never been greater!  This was not always the case.

I came upon the work of Syd Field early on in my career while studying communications and theatre in college during the early '80s.  Syd Field was the first to define and explain the foundations of screenwriting in a manner that was accessible not only to the seasoned professional but to anyone who ever had a great idea and dreamt of writing a movie.  His first book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting is still the book I keep coming back to after all these years.  His thoughts on character, plot, structure and the daunting task of crossing the desert that is Act II stand out in my mind today as clearly as they did thirty years ago.  It's a great place to begin.

In my view, Syd's book laid down the groundwork.  Over the years, professors, editors, writers, story analysts, network and studio development executives all contributed to the now massive canon of literature on the art of writing the screenplay.  My bookshelves are filled with them.  It's great fun reading them all and I absolutely believe that much valuable knowledge can be gleamed from them.  A few of the best I've sampled are Robert McKee, John Truby, Michael Hauge, Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, David Howard, Pilar Alessandra, and the late Blake Snyder.

Ultimately, beginning a screenplay or novel just boils down to just a few simple things.  Firstly, taking the time to nurture and honor your creativity.  Even if you have to steal five minutes a day for your writing practice, make sure it's your five minutes, your privacy must be sacrosanct.  Secondly, you must sum up the courage to face the blank page and let yourself go. 

This week's suggested website:  The Writers Store (writersstore.com) The one stop shop for books, DVDs and everything on writing for the film and TV industry.

This week's writing prompt:

Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Imagine your main character (or one your still developing) has just won a $10,000 shopping spree.  What would your character buy?  What stores who he/she visit?  (This may help you undercover some personal tastes and/or needs your character may not have "revealed" in the last exercise. )  Let your character indulge in any secret or illicit pleasures with the money too!  Write for five minutes.

Writing Under The Influence

I think having a profound desire to write and live the "writer's life" in all likelihood stems from a deep love of reading.


Like just about all writers, I'm a ravenous reader.  It started when I was young.  My mother was a school teacher and I lived in a household that encouraged learning.  I was surrounded by books.  I can still remember the blue and yellow hardcover Hardy Boys mysteries lying about my room, dog eared and well worn.  I particularly loved adventure stories and the home spun frontier stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I was fascinated with the wilderness.  It was a world far removed from my own reality.


The ability to create a believable world and share it with others is clearly an ancient and universally human need.  It's a desire that transcends cultures and religions.  Throughout the ages human beings have weaved and shared all kinds of stories.  It's a deep rooted need.   After all, even the early cave paintings were stories.  


In my family, a good storyteller was always well regarded.  But storytelling was already a vanishing art form among us when I was a kid.  Some of the old timers still could do it.  My grandfather, probably the  best of them all,  could do it for hours and keep everyone entertained, usually around the holidays.  My grandfather's vivid descriptions and uncanny comic delivery  were far more entertaining than the stories he told.  In a sense, he was just a good performer that made the best out of his mediocre material.  Around this time in my life I noticed that good writers created fresh new worlds, filled with interesting people all the time. 


I can remember the exact moment when I knew I wanted to be a writer.  I had just finished reading John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."  I was nine years old.  The story transported me to another time and place in the same way that Alexandre Dumas or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle transported me with their great stories.  But Steinbeck struck a unique chord with me.  He had created something I considered visceral.  His use of words stimulated my senses of hearing and smell, sight and sound.  I was deeply involved in the story and its outcome.  Lenny and George are still vividly real in my mind's eye, as if it were an experience I lived through and not just read about.  I knew then that I wanted to wield the magic wand like Steinbeck had.  I wanted to create new experiences, new landscapes and populate them with great characters.


Most of my reading these days is limited to scripts or my favorite weekly magazine, The New Yorker.  But I recognize the need to fit more reading into my routine.  Writers especially should make it a habit to read as many books in as many subjects as possible.  Reading flavors and influences your own writing in direct and sometimes surprising and unconscious ways as well.  One can never read too much.  I was never one of those lightning fast readers who could consume novels seemingly at will like a fire.  A novel is a considerable commitment of time on my part.  But I feel that even I should manage at least 6 novels a year.  


Let's agree to allow ourselves to be drunk with good writing and good reading.  Let's be willing to keep our minds open to everything.  Approach every moment with a sense of curiosity and wonder like we instinctively do as children.  Inspiration can come from anywhere and the truth is we live under the influence of all the great writers that moved us when we were young and those that continue to move us now.  


Make time to read every day and open your world up to all the new adventures and possibilities that are out there.

This week's suggested website:  Trigger Street (www.triggerstreet.com) an online community of writers sharing their work and providing each other valuable feedback.  


This week's writing prompt: 


An Exclusive Interview with....  

Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Now put your story, novel or screenplay's main character in the spotlight.  Imagine him/her sitting with Charlie Rose, Oprah Winfrey or Larry King about to give an exclusive interview.  Let yourself have fun with it.  If you like, cast a famous figure from the past like Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow in the role of journalist.  Imagine this host asking your character deep penetrating questions the kind that can sometimes be embarrassing or incriminating.  Write for five minutes.