On Writing : What's the hardest skill to hone as a writer ? by Davin Gomez

Hi, Davin Gomez. Pacing can be tricky. Something I do is visualize a scene in my script to help with pacing. One of the hardest skills to hone as a writer is structure. It gets easier the more you write scripts, read scripts and screenwriting books, watch webinars, and watch movies and shows.

I kinda do the same thing. I draw a line of what I want to happen on a piece of paper and put point A and point B and everything inbewteen. Then it's a matter of telling in a compelling way how all those events connect. It's a visual reminder for myself

I like that, Davin Gomez! Thanks for the idea.

I work a little bit differently. I literally see the entire thing in my head from start to finish. I just write it down as I see it. I am definitely not an expert, just sharing how I do things.

Creating cliff hangers which appear true to life and not contrived to make a reader continue on.

Timing and pacing.

Making myself write when I don't want to. :)

For me, it's character development. Why do they have to be so developed? Like holy shit just let me tell a crazy story.

I'll give an example from a random idea I may or may not end up actually writing.

Premise: terrorists poison our animal's brains with drones, leading to the entire country being attacked by its own pets and wildlife.

Main character is a guy who owns an exotic animal farm. Yeah, bad time to own crazy looking monkeys and lions and shit, buddy. Maybe you should've went into landscaping.

Here's my thing. Why does he need a ton of development? That idea is enough to bring people to watch with effects and CGI right there. Why can't he just be the unluckiest guy in the world, a decent guy who just turned out to make an investment in a farm at the wrong time?

Just my opinion, but yeah, that piece has made it hard for me to break into screenwriting. I just want to tell crazy stories. Sometimes I have relatable characters, but most of the time they're just...there. I just wish that was ok because sometimes I honestly feel like taking five pages to explain that this guy has deep feelings about various, everyday shit is taking away from the explosive idea in my script, which could be focused on.

So, Danny,

You don't need to make him some fully fleshed out Rhodes Scholar with dreams of a Nobel Prize who has a kid with his high school sweetheart, and her new husband holds the lien on his property and... etc...

You just need to give him enough backstory that we CARE WHY when something happens. Even movies like Eight Legged Freaks (which sounds templated like this story) had character development so that we cared why the main characters did things and we had someone to root for.

You also don't need there to be some huge exposition dump to slow down the story while we learn the characters' entire history. You - AS THE WRITER, WHO DEVELOPED YOUR CHARACTERS BEFORE YOU WROTE THE STORY - can just know it, and write in little scenes here and there so that your "5 minutes of backstory" is actually 30 seconds of expository interactions here and there, every 6-10 pages across the first half of the script.

It also gives plausible reasons for things to happen. So, in my overly complicated example above... Let's just use that and I'll show you how developing a character informs the plot:

MAIN CHARACTER: GARY OLSON (you can make up whatever name you want...)

Has a kid who he only sees on her birthdays, and he forgets his visitation half the time, but not because he doesn't love her... it's because he always has something else to do to maintain and run his exotic animal farm... his staff quit because his high school sweetheart's new husband (the step-father of his daughter) owns the lease on his animal farm, and if his wife (Gary's ex) wasn't so insistent that he help Gary, he would have shut down the farm years ago. But instead, he just holds on to the lease and bullies Gary by making life hard for him and his staff by mandating certain restrictions that make it dangerous for the staff, not allowing park maintenance because he needs to sign forms aas sthe land owner, but keeps delaying it for... reasons... Gary and his ex drifted apart once he started spending all his time with the animals, who he really identifies with and cares for.

So, now...

Your plot has some key points you can hit in your script, and the character motivations will practically write the scenes for you.

So, we can open with his Exotic Animal Farm being a little run-down, and on the brink of failure. He needs new enclosures, as sometimes the animals get out (cue the mischievous monkey that likes to pull the guests' hair - who has a shining moment later when he breaks an annoying Karen Customer's neck by pulling too hard and wrenching her to death after being infected with the poison...)

THIS BREEDS TENSION, - ONCE WE KNOW THE PLOT, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT THESE ANIMALS WILL UNDOUBTEDLY AND EVENTUALLY GET OUT OF THEIR ENCLOSURES AND KILL PATRONS AND MAIN CHARACTERS

The tension is ramped up when Gary's "landlord" comes by to bully him. The animals react badly around him, and behave well around Gary.

*** THIS NOW ESTABLISHES AN UNDERLYING MALEVOLENCE TOWARD GARY'S NEMESIS IN THE ANIMALS, BUIDING A CERTAIN SENSE OF DRAMATIC IRONY, FORCING THE AUDIENCE TO ANTICIPATE ANIMAL ATTACKS AGAINST HIM, WHILE HE ACTS WITH HUBRIS AROUND THESE "DUMB CREATURES".

When the plot finally hits, if you have found a way for Gary to get his Ex and Daughter to the Park with his Nemesis (who won't want them to go alone, because he is still jealous of Gary - Gary is a hunk of a man who any woman would find to be a prize, and his nemesis loves lording over the fact that HE is Gary's daughter's Father Figure...) Gary always forgets his daughter's Birthday, so in a slap-dash half-assed way to cover that he forgot, he gets them all into the park for free so she can play with the animals, which he knows she truly loves - which also gives us bonding moments with Gary and his daughter.

THIS NOW PUTS GARY INTO A PLACE WHERE HE CAN ACTIVELY BE THE HERO AS HE SAVES HIS DAUGHTER FROM REPEATED ANIMAL ATTACKS, SHOWING THAT HIS EX CAN TRUST HIM AS A PROTECTOR AND PROVIDER, AND REINFORCING HIS DAUGHTER'S LOVE FOR HIM

Then, Gary can even save his nemesis from animal attacks, which is the turning point for winning back his Ex... and then in a situation where Gary and his nemesis are cornered, the animals have an underlying relationship with Gary that trumps the poison, so when they choose who to attack, it's Gary's Nemesis, allowing Gary to get his family to safety...

THIS GIVES THE ANIMALS A REASON FOR THERE TO BE A "DEUS-EX-MACHINA" MOMENT THAT IS BELIEVABLE - THERE WAS NO WAY OUT FOR ANY OF THEM, EXCEPT THAT GARY LOVES HIS ANIMALS, AND THEY INHERENTLY KNOW THAT UNDERNEATH***

And so forth...

NOW THE REALITY OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:

You don't have to do a lot of slow, heavy setup in the script..

The Character Development is NOT for the audience. It is for YOU.

If you write up a simple backstory, like I outlined at the beginning of this post, you have developed Gary, His Ex, His Daughter and His Nemesis enough with that SIMPLE BIT OF RELATIONSHIP BUILDING that all of the scenes I just showcased above cary a lot of weight in making the audience FEEL something when a snow leopard eats someone's face. Especially if it's Gary's Nemesis. And it can even lead to a tragedy moment, where Gary's Ex is killed before they can counteract the poison, or it wears off, or whatever... where she can profess her true love to him, and he can get to be with his daughter permanently at the end because her other parents are both now dead.

But I hope you see how the CHARACTERS' MOTIVATIONS drove the scenes and they kind of wrote themselves... it wasn't just a bunch of stuff that happens. It was a bunch of stuff that HAPPENED FOR A REASON - AND HAPPENED THE WAY IT DID BECASUE OF THE WAY TEH CHARACTERS BEHAVED.

But without knowing why the characters will behave a certain way, this element is lost, making writing an engaging story far more difficult.

Once you develop all of this BEHIND THE SCENES, the dialogue in your script can pull bits and pieces of this backstory out IN THE MOMENTS WHERE IT COMPLICATES THE CONFLICT, making the conflict (escaping the escaped rampaging animals) even more tense because the main characters have VALID REASONS FOR NOT WORKING TOGETHER - which we know because their relationships develop as the script progresses - but you ALREADY KNEW how they would act because YOU DEVELOPED THE CHARACTERS BEFOREHAND.

But without having that background information IN YOUR HEAD as you write your scenes, your characters will behave inconsistently, they won't drive the tension or conflict, there will likely be distracting continuity errors, and your story won't carry any weight beyond being as entertaining as watching a YouTube compilation of animal attacks.

You have to have a reason why people will WANT to see YOUR compilation of animal attacks IN A THEATER, and if the current state of movies is any indication, CGI animals and high-action set pieces is not always the draw you may think it would be, especially for new IP...

If you build characters with arcs people will want to see play out, and they will be more inclined to choose YOUR story over others.

Hope that helps.

Also, for me, the hardest part as a screenwriter is writing believable dialogue in characters without my background - like, say, women, or teens, or hip-hop gangsters, or immigrants in the US from another country, or military, etc...

Stuart Haag That was a great explanation! And I did read it all.

What I was saying didn't really come down to right and wrong, though. It's more opinionated. To me, it is extremely boring to know Gary's relationship history. He's far from the first guy to experience it. He is, though, the first person in the history of humanity to own the biggest exotic animal farm in the world while it was attacked by domestic terrorists.

I guess my response it simple. I see where you're coming from. But I am not making this story for me. I am making this story for my audience.

Some of them care about Gary, but those are people like you who understand film in depth. My audience of millions of people, they do not. They do not care about Gary. They want to see the wild animal show. They did not take film classes. They did not pay to see a guy's relationship and family involvement with the massacre; they came to see the massacre.

If they didn't come to see it, I could just write a story about Gary, and it would sell easy. But it wouldn't. People come to see him maybe get killed because it's something that hasn't happened, but might, and that gives people a rush.

I am writing to entertain other people--some of whom don't know about writing at all and just love movies. I am not here to appease to the writing audience.

Cool monkey reference though that was funny and creative and yeah, I guess I'm just saying I want to summarize those things as quickly as possible to enhance what's really happening because not everyone is educated in film, but they're still allowed to love film. Those people need simple samples.

I am just speaking from experience of hanging out with the audience and being a part of it my entire life.

Lots of people that watch movies (or used to...) aren't from New York, LA, familiar with the writing scene. They are from everywhere. They love the story. They love to be entertained and Gary is just a guy with some normal problems to them. They remember him getting his face bit off vividly, but they couldn't rehearse his lines with his wife to save their lives.

At last I've found one thing positive about being a member of the older generation. Writing characters is fun, I love getting inside their imaginary brain and bringing them to life.

In my long life I've travelled the world, met so many different types of people from so many different cultures, races, religions and life styles. I've worked with babies, toddlers, primary school, teenagers and adults. Worked in many occupations caring for drug and alcohol users, a variety of forces service personnel and every medical specialty known to man (not literarily man, women too). I've ridden a number of different vehicles and animals including elephants.

Despite this added bonus, I don't recommend anyone rushing towards it folks because along with age comes pain from every organ and every joint that exists in the human body. Plus, a reduction in the senses too - except pain that of course increases.

Stuart Haag Also, I grew up in the ghetto so feel free to message me when you want to develop those Hip Hop Gangsters or a crazy Italian person since you said you can't relate. I, myself, can.

Brilliant Danny. I reckon we have enough knowledge and experience on this thread alone to knock characters out the park.

Carol M. Salter Lmao! You're alright in my book then. Let me know when your movies come out I'll be first in line at the theater.

I wish, in my dreams. I've already had someone say one of my novels would make a great film/series. LOL I will continue dreaming.

Danny, a LOT of the average moviegoers ive talked to about this exact thing who pay to see the CGI-fest movies for their premise go for what I call the "Die Hard" experience. They are going to see "if I were trapped in a building with terrorists, how would I beat them?"

This thought experiment only works for the audience members if they or someone they know has something in common with one of the characters in your story... and like I showed... it does not need to be IN-DEPTH... but it certainly can't be UNDEVELOPED.

Stuart Haag Agree to disagree on certain things, no problem. What I really agree with that I may have understated is they can't be a blank character. Definitely can't be underdeveloped! I just feel like some people are trying to make me super-develop a character and it's just my opinion that I don't think it's necessary--in certain cases.

Carol M. Salter Dreams are the starting point of all brilliant careers.

Danny Range - on that last point I fully agree. Develop your characters enough to inform your script. Unless it's a character driven story, that should be enough, as I kind of illustrated in my rough examples above... The rest of the character development is on an as-needed basis.

Otherwise, you're very right - Michael Bay never won an Oscar for his rich and well-developed characters. But none of them were blanks, either.