Lessons from UCLA Film School
A WotH session on the secrets of screenwriting by Gary Sutton, a graduate of the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Following his graduation, Gary forged a career in Hollywood acquiring film, video and TV rights for the territory of South Korea before returning to mid-Sussex and taking up copywriting.
Some older mini-tips!
A First Draft
A top tip from Joshua Wolf Shenk
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Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.
Place and emotion
We had a great session on using analogies, metaphors and similes to bring settings to life.
Here is how Paula Hawkins goes about it towards the end of her thriller, ‘The Girl on the Train’
‘The beach is deserted, and it’s so cold I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth chattering. I walk quickly along the shingle, past the beach huts, so pretty in daylight but now sinister, each one of them a hiding place. When the wind picks up they come alive, their wooden boards creaking against each other, and under the sound of the sea there are murmurs of movement: someone or something coming closer. I turn back, I start to run.’
Frighteningly good, even if not strictly allegory, metaphor or simile.
Jilly Cooper
Hint 3
Desert Island Discs
July 2016
Any time that something funny happens write it down.
When you are 25, you quickly forget what it is like to be 24. The memory is very false.
Jilly Cooper
Hint 1
Desert Island Discs
July 2016
Remember the five senses
What do things feel like?
What do they look like?
What do they smell like?
It lifts the prose.
Jilly Cooper
Hint 2
Desert Island Discs
July 2016
Keep a diary
Otherwise you won’t remember ideas and details.
Jack London on Writing
A top writer's top tip...
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Edgar Allen Poe on Writing
A top writer's top tip...
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
Kurt Vonnegut on Creative Writing
A first lesson...
Kurt Vonnegut on Creative Writing
First rule: Do not use semicolons.
They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.
Ray Bradbury on Writing
A top writer's top tip...
Quantity produces quality.
If you only write a few things, you're doomed.
Stephen King on Writing
A top tip from a top writer...
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write.
Simple as that.
He also wrote a book about writing.
Pace
Throughout a story, a writer has to increase and slow the pace to gain the maximum effect.
You achieve it through a combination of emotive vocabulary and the length of sentences and words.
As a rule, short words and sentences denote:
• anger
• urgency
• fear
• pain
Longer words and sentences denote:
• romance
• contentment
• relaxation
• confidence
You can also use longer sentences to help build tension.
Analogy
A process of transferring information or meaning from one subject to another.
Analogies are used in many areas: Law, logic, mathematics, science, etc.
In writing we use analogies as a figure of speech.
Metaphors and similes are tools used to draw an analogy.
An analogy drawn by a simile
- The structure of an atom is like a solar system. The nucleus is the sun and electrons are the planets revolving around their sun.
The same analogy now drawn by a metaphor
- An atom is a solar system. Nucleus is the sun, with its electron planets revolving around it.
Lev Grossman on Writing
A top writer's top tip...