Before I get to today’s blog…

Thinking about doing more with your writing? Why not join me in Paris June 2-7 for my Masterclass in Screenwriting? Come be part of a dynamic community of writers and literary agents to learn, to write, to network, to energize your literary goals—and just to have fun in the City of Light!

The Paris Writers Workshop is the longest running literary program of its kind. This program offers 6 masterclasses by renowned authors, each a specialist in their field—and I’ll be teaching the Screenwriting Masterclass—in English, of course.

The workshop will be held at Columbia University’s beautiful Reid Hall campus in the heart of literary Paris—Montparnasse.

Registration is now open: https://wice-paris.org/paris-writers- workshop

We’ll have a great time getting your story ideas off the ground!!

Trying too Hard

I just saw a film I hated last night—a big contender for awards this season, or so I’d read in the press. The name of the film isn’t important but when I asked myself why I wasn’t in the ‘I-love- this-film’ camp, there was just one reason—it tried too hard.

When a film tries to be stylish, tries to be hip, tries to be avant garde, tries to be meaningful, tries to surprise me, tries to be deep, well, I just notice the trying. I’m all for stylish, avant garde, deep films that are full of surprises, but they need to just BE stylish and full of those surprises… so that I experience them as I watch instead of noticing how hard the film is trying to make me have those responses.

Some of this can come from the direction. A director can linger on shots too long in an effort to showcase for the audience the importance of a moment. This is exactly how a film can be made more, well, full of itself. It’s as if the director is saying, “Hey, did you see this? Cool, huh? Notice how deep I am?” Seriously, directors who are full of themselves produce films that are ponderous and showy. I don’t want to see the direction in a film! I just want to experience the film. The director is there to serve the story but sometimes can get in the way of a story because he/she seems to have the need to preen.

But just as often, the fault of this lack of genuineness in a film comes from the writer. The writer can so easily stray into the ‘look at my great writing’ territory and try too hard to show his/her linguistic expertise instead of just writing a great script.

So what does this mean for writers? How do you avoid ending up with a script that tries too hard to be emotional, for example, instead of just being emotional?

One of the missteps a writer can make is to think too much about provoking a certain response from the audience. If you say to yourself, “OK, how can I make the audience squirm at this point in the story” we’ll see that in the film. We’ll SEE you trying to elicit that response from us. Instead, you as the writer need to get lost in the story so that the story makes you squirm as you write it. The story makes you squirm—you don’t impose squirming ON the story.

It’s a fine line, isn’t it? And how in the world do you do it???

I think it has to do with getting out of the way of your story. Let it take you over, don’t you take it over. Don’t be so sure of each exact story point that you write that you can’t be spontaneous as you write. This is one of the reasons I don’t like the ‘beat’ outline, where you put on paper every single story beat of your script—it leaves little room for serendipity as you write. And you know what? For me, those moments of serendipity are why I write—those moments of pure joy as you discover the story taking you in a direction you hadn’t even considered.

Think of it this way: if your story can elicit a particular emotion in you as you write, it’s got a good chance of eliciting the same emotion in me as I watch because, just like you, I didn’t see it coming. And that’s what you want—a film that doesn’t show off but just is.

Copyright © Diane Lake

22Jan17

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com