I tend to believe it's in our nature as humans to tell stories.
Whether it's telling someone how our day was, or telling someone about that one time Uncle Jeb spent a night in the drunk tank after being arrested for showing up pickled and porn-star naked at the local 24-hour grocer's at 2 a.m. in search of corn chips and Cocoa Puffs, we've all told a tale or two.
Maybe the same tale, forty different ways.
And maybe we get a reaction-- a few laughs, a few tears, wide eyes of surprise, or a shaken head of disbelief.
But we do it over coffee, a meal, or a beer, over a few minutes-- a few hundred words, if even.
We aren't holding court for half an hour, an hour, a couple of hours, or longer, making an audience ignore waiting texts and tweets, stiffening limbs, and the rising urge to pee because every last one of them needs to know just what the hell is going to happen next.
That's a different thing altogether, and it’s a thing I struggle with.
If you hand me a script somebody else has written, I can probably find a cool sequence of shots to tell that story with.
If you ask me to write the thing I'm boarding, however, and you're expecting it to be longer than the time it takes to reach the bottom of my coffee mug or whisky glass and still be even somewhat interesting, well... not so much. I'm possibly quite crap when it comes to writing something substantial out of nothing.
"But... didn't you, like, used to make your living writing, Damien?"
Well, yes, Hypothetical Person Asking, I did. But I was a newspaper reporter and when you write news, you're pretty much handed the "plot," the "characters," and the "dialogue," and your job is to find an engaging way to present what's already established, which sounds somewhat similar to, "If you hand me a script somebody else has written, I can probably find a cool sequence of shots to tell that story with," doesn't it?
Writing scripts for film and television is hard.
And it doesn't happen without some kind of underlying structure, even when you think it does.
This is... not at all a small topic, and I'm working this out in real-time, just as much to help myself as to help you, so we're going to come back to it for at least a few of these missives.
But this time, here are two tips I can claim absolutely zero credit for, but can stand behind for their effectiveness in, if nothing else, getting started in the battle against the blank page:
Work from big to small
That one cool beat that would make a great capper to the scene that probably won't pop up until the second half's third quarter maybe shouldn't be the priority at this early stage, even if-- like me-- such stray half-thoughts and incomplete visuals are what first got you thinking, "This could have legs." First, cover off the broadest of broad strokes-- figure out what your story is about, identify your desired and/or necessary characters, then break it all down from there into your acts, your scenes, your beats, etc.
Work in reverse
Figure out your ending before you worry about your beginning-- or anything else. If you know where it is you're going, you can suss out any number of paths to get there. If you don't, you might never get anywhere at all. Even if the previously mentioned stray half-thought or incomplete visual that launched you into writing this thing is the very first scene-- the most kick-assiest of kick-ass opening sequences-- playtest it by coming up with your ending and then seeing if you can connect A to B.
I like (and follow) these tips because both basically serve the purpose of keeping me from focusing too much on the "moments" of what may or may not be a story until there's something there to actually hang them on. Hey, meat goes on bones, right?
Cheers,
Damien