Inspiration For Storytelling

I always wonder what goes through a storyteller’s mind when they are coming up with the initial thoughts of a story they wish to tell. I know my inspiration comes from a number of things including art, dreams, and occurrences in everyday life.

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ More often than not, art (including other stories) is a great inspiration to people. I once read about JK Rowling and the inspirations for her Harry Potter book series. She mentioned that she has no idea how her imagination works, that it just does. But if you look at the stories in that series, there are elements of others contained within. There are biblical themes and references throughout, and similarities in such works as The Iliad, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and The Sword in the Stone, to name a few.

Dreams can also be a great inspiration for ideas. Christopher Nolan’s idea for the movie Inception, about existing in, and manipulating the subconscious, is admitted to stem from Nolan’s fascination with dreams. In the movie, the main character is a spy who steals information from the subconscious directly from a dreaming individual. Fascinatingly enough, it has also been mentioned that Inception looks eerily similar to a Donald Duck comic book, entitled Uncle Scrooge in The Dream of A Lifetime…or vice versa. In the comic book, the Beagle Boys enter Scrooge’s mind while he is dreaming in order to steal the combination to his vault.

Storytellers also look for stories and characters in the world in which they live. Stan Lee, the man that arguably made Marvel Comics the powerhouse it is today, did this when creating some of his most beloved characters. Take Professor X and Magneto for example; the former is a peaceful advocate of mutant rights, while the latter uses a more aggressive and combative approach when it comes to mutant rights. Sound familiar, baby boomers? These characters were created in the midst of the civil rights movement in America in the 60’s and were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, respectively.

In his essay, The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde declared that, ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.’ Art, at some level, inspires pretty much any story that is ever created. It is often said that there are no original stories left to be told, just different ways of re-telling the ones that already exist. 

So next time you take in a story, and I say ‘take in’ because stories come in many different formats, try to imagine where the storyteller’s inspiration came from. Now think back to stories you’ve told, or are currently trying to tell. What has influenced you as a storyteller? Where do you turn when the need of inspiration arises?

Show, Don’t Tell

The Task at Hand

Someone I know recently asked me to read a screenplay that he had just started working on. Obviously, with my interest in screenwriting, and the movie-making process in general, I jumped at the chance to read it and give my feedback. Granted the script was only five pages long at the time, but it was something new for me. Now, I’ve read many screenplays, and have had people give me feedback on mine, but have never been asked for any type of feedback on anyone else’s.

I received the script in an email and opened it that night when I sat down at my computer. I read it straight through the first time and found the first five pages to be a pretty good read and the overall idea to be very interesting. The script was also in the correct format, which is always a good thing…especially because some of mine haven’t been, when I’ve given them to people to read in the past. One thing I did notice about the script, is that the writer ended up breaking one of the fundamental rules of screenwriting. (Though, to be fair, I also find myself doing this all the time.)

In short, the rule is: ‘Show, Don’t Tell’. When writing a script, you have to be very conscious of the fact that what you are writing will (hopefully) end up on the big screen. This means that your screenplay has to be ‘visual’ and that the reader has to be able to ‘see’ what is going on in the story. If the reader can’t visualize the action, then how is the director going to interpret your script? The way you craft a screenplay will be completely different than the way you would write a novel; the main difference being that the consumer (movie-viewer) will not have access to a character’s thoughts.

In a screenplay, the character’s actions are what propels the story forward, while the dialogue reinforces these actions. As it goes in life, you can’t see what a person is thinking or feeling without also observing their actions (demeanor, expressions, etc.) Simply think of the adage, ‘actions speak louder than words’. Someone can say “I love you” to you, but that doesn’t really mean anything unless that person shows you that they love you…by his or her actions.

Practice Makes Perfect

Here are two examples of what not to do when writing a screenplay (the format is not correct because text editing is pretty limited on wordpress):

Example 1.) ANDREW: “So, I went into the gas station today to pick up some milk. A person walked in after me and held up the guy at the register. I had my headphones on and didn’t hear what was going on, so I went up to the register to try to pay for my milk, when all of a sudden…”

BORING! Why would anyone want to sit through a movie where the characters simply explain their actions? This scene would be more powerful if we saw it played out in front of us. And if a scene doesn’t move the script forward, it doesn’t need to be there.

Example 2.) Luke is extremely nervous. He knows that the company has been laying off workers left and right. He picks up the phone and calls his friend a few cubicles down, to see if he has returned from the boss’s office.

There are numerous things wrong with this. Let’s break this one down, sentence by sentence.

• a.) Luke is extremely nervous. We need to see that the character is nervous (i.e.: Luke repeatedly taps his pencil on the desk. His eyes dart back and forth to the people moving about the office…to his computer screen…to the clock on the wall.)
• b.) He knows that the company has been laying off workers left and right. This should have already been explained shown in previous scenes, and should be cut from this section of the script. As a reader, we should probably already know why Luke is nervous. If not, the screenwriter has failed at his or her job.
• c.) He picks up the phone and calls his friend a few cubicles down, to see if he has returned from the boss’s office. So he picks up the phone, but how do we know who he is calling and why? Sure, we read it in the script, but the director has to film the sequence…and the audience doesn’t have the benefit of reading the script. I would also totally re-write this part. (i.e.: Luke dials a number on his desk phone. We hear another phone ringing close-by. Clutching his phone to his ear, Luke stands up slowly, peering over the cubicle wall toward the corner office door on which black stenciled letters read, ‘Manager.’ Shadows move behind the frosted glass windows of the office. Luke turns his gaze toward a cubicle, a few rows down from his. He stands on tip toes, to get a better view of who may be there, but a ficus obscures his view. The nearby phone still rings. Dejected, Luke sits back down at his desk, hangs up his phone and looks at an instant message on his computer screen from Todd Johnson. It reads, ‘Uh oh. Called into the boss’ office. Wish me luck!‘ Luke rolls the cursor over Todd’s name, and we see that he has been idle for 25 minutes. Luke sits back in his chair and swallows hard.)

The Lesson

I’m such a nerd that when the screenplay was emailed to me, I read it and promptly sent it back that same night with all my notes/feedback. The harshest criticism I had: ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ I guess sometimes we all still have to be reminded of that, whether we’re writing a script…or in life in general. I know I do.

“We’re Gonna Need A Montage”

…as goes the musical parody in the movie Team America (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQvNu8LoTo0).

When you think of the word “Montage”, what comes to mind? For me, and I’m sure 95% of people, Rocky comes to mind. How can you NOT think of Rocky running through the streets of Philly, punching slabs of beef in a packing plant and ultimately running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to thrust his hands toward the sky in triumph? Add the Rocky Theme (“Gonna Fly Now”) to it, and now you’ve got a classic montage…and movie as well. Anyways, before I get off topic…

In all the books I’ve read about screenwriting, none of them properly instruct on how to write a montage into a screenplay. Though they usually mention it, we’re told that a montage in a screenplay is cliche and that you run the risk of coming off as an amateur if your masterpiece contains one. Your script will undoubtedly be tossed in the trash. Of course, I never cared about the lack of information available on writing a montage in any of my books. After all, I don’t want to peg myself as an amateur, and it’s not really my style, so why even bother knowing about a montage anyway?

Naturally, I am in the process of writing a short and am having trouble putting the story down on paper without having it go on for far too long. The best solution, I’ve concluded, is to add a montage. Yes! It’s that easy! But wait…now I see why adding a montage is considered to be “amateur-ish”. It’s too damn easy and it’s pure laziness. You condense a whole lot of information into a small snippet of the script. In most cases it just comes off as cheesy, but in Rocky’s case it actually works. Who wants to actually watch Rocky train in “real time”? That would be the worst movie ever, and I can guarantee it would have not been a hit and that you would have never had the chance to wait in line to see “Rocky in Space”. Um….that was one of them, right? The point is, a montage is lame if put in a feature length film. Where do you see these sequences now? Mainly in comedies, because they have the potential to be really corny, and sometimes (rarely) that’s a good thing.

So, what did I learn? Do not write a montage into your feature length screenplay. A short film however, is a different beast, and I will tackle mine how I wish. Plus, I plan to direct and edit my film, so ultimately I will have the final say. But who knows? Maybe I’ll bring the montage back into pop culture again someday!

The rest of this blog post is devoted to how I went about writing my montage after a 10 minute Google search on the topic. People have many different methods of writing montages, so I went through a bunch of them and picked the best one, in my opinion. It comes from John August, who wrote Go, Big Fish and also co-wrote Charlie’s Angels, among others. The format is as follows:

EXT/INT. VARIOUS LOCATIONS – DAY/NIGHT



(MONTAGE)

Rocky runs down the streets of Philly while bystanders hurl insults at him, along with rotten eggs.

Not really knowing how the process works, Rocky tries to tenderize frozen beef with his fists in a meat locker.

Rocky runs up some stairs and celebrates a major victory, having just successfully completed the p90x program.

(END MONTAGE)

There are a few main points here that I’ve gathered. The scene heading needs to let us know where the shots are going to be filmed and when. If this were to all happen in Rocky’s kitchen, through the hall and up the stairs to the bedroom the scene heading might look something like this:

INT. ROCKY’S HOUSE/VARIOUS ROOMS – NIGHT

Putting the words MONTAGE, and END MONTAGE, just lets the reader know simply when it begins and ends. (Maybe it’s also so they know when to stop whistling the Rocky theme.) Also, each scene within the montage should be written a line down from the last. This way the reader knows, in this instance, that Rocky is not beating the meat on top of some stairs with a bunch of onlookers cheering him on.

On that note, that is all I have to say about montages…for now. Time for me to jump on Netflix and see if I can stream “Rocky XXVII: The War On Terror”. You know…the one where Rocky fights bin Laden.