Language Is Complicated - A Brief Defense of Twitter

There's a moment in the trailer for It's Complicated when Alec Baldwin says "OMG, I thought he'd never leave."

It made me laugh but my friend hunched their shoulders and said, "I hope OMG is added to this year's list of banned words."

I admit I had never heard of the list before and was intrigued to see that it's been around for a few years, with 24/7" (2000), "it is what it is" (2008), "happy camper" (1993), "LOL" (2004) and "state of the art" (1993) all making the list in years past.

This year, "tweet," "shovel ready" and "czar" are on the list.

My friend's reaction reminded me of the first time I heard someone dismiss Twitter as the "end of language."

Working in the English department of New York University, I am constantly meeting people who dismiss new technologies as bad for the English language and who expect me to share their opinion.

I do not.

Since the development of blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites, I have seen my students writing more often than ever before. Oh sure, it might just be a line about what they're doing at that moment but they are writing.

Also, having to stick to a predetermined number of characters has forced them to write with an economy that serves their longer pieces well. For the first time they write what they mean.

There will always be good writers and bad writers working in any and all of the mediums available to us. For every pithy Twitter post I have read, I have seen a dozen terrible books. And vice-versa.

I don't care if it takes a Kindle to get you reading or a blank 140-character box to get you writing, as long as you do.

Good luck and happy writing.

Get Started Right Away

The great Hebrew teacher Hillel wrote, "If not now, when?"

With this quote in mind, I invite you to make a list of 10 things you would love to do, and pick just one to commit to this year, then repeat the exercise for your main characters.

In When Harry Met Sally, Harry tells Sally that when you know who you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want to get started right away.

The top of my own list is to finish my various writing projects I am working on, followed by improving my tango and then, going to bed earlier.

My main character has resolved to find out who she is at any cost, so that she can move on in her life and be happy.

By considering what you and your character want/need to do right away, you'll be able to find out what's really important.

Happy New Year!

Once In A Blue Moon

Tonight partygoers in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Africa will be witness to a New Year's Eve blue moon.

It seems like a good set-up for a screenplay in any genre.

For example, my friend's idea of a romantic comedy based on two people who meet via an internet dating service, connect on New Year's Eve, but become estranged and reconnect on the next Blue Moon, 20 years later.

I invite you to come up with a one-paragraph plot for a screenplay based on the New Year's Eve Blue Moon idea and submit them to me via marilyn.horowitz@gmail.com. I will post my favorites.

Good luck and happy writing.

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

What does New Year's Eve mean to your hero or heroine, if anything, and what will he or she be doing? What about you, the writer? Is New Year's Eve going to be memorable?

One way I have always evaluated my own life is to look at what I am doing on New Year's Eve and with whom as the marker of progress.

This year I'm having a party for my mother who broke her hip on Thanksgiving. To me this is a sign of progress, because through this ordeal, she and I have really become friends and I am so appreciative of that. My wonderful assistant Chris and his wife Katie are attending, which pleases me to no end! There are other people coming, each of whom I care about deeply. Their presence will also symbolic of other successes during this past year. To end the year surrounded by the people you care most about is truly a blessing.

Middle School Movies pt. 2

In an earlier post, I discussed how I was asked to teach a group of middle school students about finding ideas for their stories. Their wonderful teacher, George Mayo, just finished the final edit of the class.

To view the edited version, please click here.

What is your main character's relationship to the world around them?

I was sent this funny clip about growing up Jewish during Christmastime.

The idea of religion and culture raises an interesting question for your main character:

Is my hero or heroine an insider or an outsider, and how will that affect how they react to my plot?

In An Education, David(Peter Sarsgaard) talks about being Jewish and where that places him in his world -- as an outsider.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout tells us her father, who is white, is defending a black man, making him a pariah, an outsider.

In Moscow On The Hudson, Robin Williams plays a Russian musician who defects in Bloomingdales, and is forced to adapt to his new culture. He starts as an outsider, and his journey is about finding a way to feel at home in a foreign culture.

Being different can be a metaphor for the degree of belonging your character feels in his or her environment, so when writing, consider this aspect of your character's identity.

What would your character wish for?

What gift would your character give?

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is healthy, happy and writing during the holiday season.

As an exercise:
Think about what your character would give the person they love for Christmas. Would it be a giant teddy bear (Die Hard), a musical cue card presentation (Love Actually) or a VCR/towel (Scrooged).

By determining what your character can and will give the person they care about most, you will better understand the true nature of their nature and relationship.

What Is The Character's Dream?

I worked on two screenplays and two novels with private students today. In all four cases, the two biggest challenges for the writers were:

1) The stakes weren't high enough.

2) The main character was too passive.

To solve these problems, I suggested that they ask themselves the first of The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting:

What is the character's dream?

In Up In The Air, the answer might be to get 10 million flyer miles.

In An Education, it might be: To find out what I really want from life.

Now try it for your main character and see what you get.

Good luck and happy writing.

The Four Magic Questions of Storytelling

I've been asked to adapt my new writing system The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting for a grade school audience and thus The Four Magic Questions of Storytelling is on its way.

Because of this, I've spent the past week listening to storytellers tell their favorite stories to get a feel for the structure and rhythm. I'm happy to report that the best ones all fit The Four Magic Questions like a glove, proving my theory that a good story is a good story no matter how it's framed.

Consider the story below, as told by writer/comedian Thomas J. Kelly. I have included the answers to this particular story's Four Magic Questions below.




What is your character's dream? To make mom cry.

What is your character's nightmare? Mom dismisses the gift and doesn't cry.

Who or what would your character "die" for? Make a plate of the family decorating the tree.

Does your character realize the dream? No. But he embarks on a new adventure of making and remaking the plate every year.

As an exercise:
Think of your own story. Does it follow The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting? If not, which answer to which question is lacking? What part of your story needs "punching" up?

How determined is your hero or heroine to succeed?

There's a saying in Puerto Rico: "The bus always comes for those who wait."

I was reminded of the phrase reading this New York Times article.

Under a skylight in her tin-ceilinged loft near Union Square in Manhattan, the abstract painter Carmen Herrera, 94, nursed a flute of Champagne last week, sitting regally in the wheelchair she resents.

After six decades of very private painting, Ms. Herrera sold her first artwork five years ago, at 89.

As an exercise try to answer these questions:
How long would your character wait? Could answering these questions drastically improve your already good script? If your main character could achieve an artistic dream before dying what would it be?

This could be a whole new Act III you never thought of. Part of "The New Adventure" I talk about in The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting is to have your old act III become Act II part, 2, and extend the story into the next phase of their life.

Garden State is a favorite example of how this idea works in practice, as is the wonderful animated film, Up.

Middle School Movies

This morning I had the pleasure of teaching a class about finding ideas for your stories for a group of middle school students via Skype. They were an incredibly attentive class full of enthusiasm for making movies and telling stories.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the class.

CLICK HERE for more information about my middle school system.

One Man's Trash pt. 2

One of my private students read my earlier post about trash and was reminded of the work of Tim Nobel and Sue Webster... in a good way. Enjoy.

Last Night

Last night I went to a new club to dance tango. As I danced I was struck with how different my life is compared to the life of my main character. Rather than dancing, the main character of my latest story would be home studying the Kabbalah, eating pastries and drinking milky tea.

As an exercise:
Take 5 minutes and write down what you did last night. Make sure to include as many details as possible. Then, spend another five minutes writing what the main character of your story did. Don't be surprised if you come up with a number of new things to use in your script.

The Movie Of Your Life

I was reading an article that said the best question to ask someone you'd like to know better is: If your life were a movie, what would it be called, and who would play you?

I would add, "right now" to that. Our lives change dramatically from moment to moment and year to year and we are not starring in the same movie we were ten years ago.

As an exercise:
Consider what your main character would call the movie they're starring in. Who would play them? Now do the same for your villain and other characters.

One Man's Trash

I passed these two chairs on the way home a few nights ago. They were from different furniture sets and I'm not even sure if they came from the same apartment but somehow I thought they had shared an interesting history together.

As an exercise:
Take note of what you see being thrown out by your neighbors and select one item. Write a brief history of where the item comes from and what it has seen. Has it passed from person to person and place to place like in The Red Violin or remained in one spot the whole time. What does the object "witness"?

Yuletide Log

We were discussing holiday traditions in the office today and Chris sent me this link for a Christmas skit produced by his friends a few years ago. Not only is it one of the funniest YouTube clips I've seen in a long time, it's also one of the best examples of what happens when you decide to live with a writer.

Happy Holidays!

It's A Wonderful Life (The Alternate Ending)

One of my favorite alternate endings for one of my favorite movies.

As an exercise:
What's your favorite holiday movie? How would you change the ending? Does Linus start his own ministry? Does Denis Leary's thief get caught in The Ref? Does Rudolph get revenge on the reindeer who originally snubbed him? Do the terrorists get away in Die Hard?

Spend 5 minutes writing (in paragraph form) an alternate ending for the Christmas classic of your choice. I'll feature my favorites on this blog.

Moving Pictures

My writing system was designed to help writers stop thinking of their scripts as the final product and consider it as nothing more than the blueprint for the movie they're making. This is, perhaps, why so many of my students have found success when it comes time for them to make the jump from page to screen.

Last night I taught my NYU students in a classroom of a high school. I loved the room because on one of the walls there were rough sketches done by the high school students of the characters in the books they were reading. It's so rare to see students at that level consider how words have the power to create pictures in one's head and it reminded me of the Creating Your Characters - Exercises in my own book How To Write a Screenplay in 10 Weeks.

As an exercise: Draw your character's family. Make sure you put your character in the drawing. Select a symbolic object for each member, such as a hat or a baseball bat for a little boy or a bone for the dog. This is not about drawing ability; it is to help you visualize better. Repeat for your other characters.

Whooshing

I taught the last class of the semester of my NYU screenwriting class last night. It's a mixed bag of emotions because on the one hand I no longer get to see my wonderful students each week but so happy they have their screenplays done. I've often thought that story ideas are like water banging against a dam and if you can just get that first story out of your head, the rest will whoosh out behind it.

Here's hoping they will continue to update me on all of their future whooshing.

Best Feature Horror/Thriller

Congratulations to my good friend Steven Arvanites (NYC Screenwriter) whose film I Killed You 'Cause I Had To won Best Feature Horror/Thriller at this year's Dark River Film Festival. Steven's a wonderful writer and teacher and I'm so happy to hear the great news.

Check out the film's trailer here.

R.I.P. Michael Philip Del Rio

This morning I heard that the actor Michael Philip Del Rio passed away at the age of 53. He was a wonderful actor and a very nice man who I had the pleasure of working with when I executive produced the film Caleb's Door.

My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

For information about his memorial service, please visit his nephew Jeremy's site.

Clustering Culture

This is an amazing diagram of Geek Culture created by the people at FastCompany.

I do a similar type cluster when building a history for the world arena of a script. Whether you're working on a story about lumberjacks or a script about Lesbian separatists, this is a terrific way to tackle a subject as an outsider when building an intricate social weave of a specialized culture.

For more detailed information about clustering and webbing, check out the Instant Character-Bio Technique found in How To Write a Screenplay in 10 Weeks.

Language

My friend Arla sent me an interesting article from the New York Times about a rabbi in Montana who is helping the local police force with their explosives dog who only understands Hebrew. It's one of those stories that would seem too far-fetched if you had invented it, yet it's true.

As an exercise:
What other language does your main character speak? Do they have some high school french? Did they pick up some spanish on their trip to Mexico? Did their family only speak italian at home?

Happy Hanukkah!

Hanukkah begins tonight at sundown.

According to Wikipedia:

From the Hebrew word for "dedication" or "consecration", Hanukkah marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by the forces of Antiochus IV and commemorates the "miracle of the container of oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil.

In the same way a parent is able to lift a car off their child, or a person survives when their chute doesn't open, the Hanukkah story represents a miracle of faith.

As writers, we sometimes dismiss our craft as something ordinary and unimportant even though we, like the prophets who first wrote down the bible stories, are doing our best to create the stories that will educate and inspire future generations.

Writing is not always easy or rewarding but when it goes right, it's a miracle. Keep the faith.

As an exercise:
Take a moment to consider which 8 things your character would want for Hanukkah. Are they wants or needs? Will they get what they ask for? Do they ask for things for themselves, or a gift they can share with others?

Melissa Rosenberg at MakingOf.com

Thank you to Andrea Manners for directing me to this interesting interview with Twilight writer Melissa Rosenberg. She also worked on The O.C. and Dexter. You can see more interviews with her at MakingOf.com.

Mother of Hens

Just came from the Muse Awards and it was as inspiring as usual. Loreen Arbus called New York Women In Film & Television (NYWIFT) a "mother of hens" and she's right. Looking around the room it's awesome how many women (and a few men!) have had their lives changed by this wonderful organization.

A highlight of the luncheon was seeing Chicken & Egg Pictures honored for their dedication to supporting women filmmakers who are as passionate about the craft of storytelling as they are about the social justice. They produced my good friend Daria's wonderful documentary Lioness and for what they're doing for filmmakers they deserve a truckload of awards. For more information about Chicken & Egg click here.

For more information about joining NYWIFT, feel free to visit www.nywift.org or contact my office at 212.600.1115.

2009 Muse Awards

I'm attending The 29th Annual Muse Awards for Vision and Achievement Gala Luncheon today. It's a glamorous luncheon, honoring prominent film and television personalities and a highlight of my year.

This year's honorees include:

America Ferrera, actor
Julianna Margulies, actor
Allison Silverman, writer/executive producer
Andrea Wong, President and CEO, Lifetime Networks

The Loreen Arbus Award for Those Who Take Action & Affect Change
Chicken & Egg Pictures

Congratulations to all of them!

News From Chaotic Sequence

Time For Thank Yous

This year has seen its share of wonder and heartbreak, disappointment and miracles. It's been anything but dull. We just want to thank everyone out there who's supported Chaotic Sequence. Shout-outs go to Ben Wolf, Adam Nadler, Bob Seigel, Marilyn Horowitz, Carl DiMaggio, Georgia Hilton, Charles Stransky, Rick Mowat, Penny Balfour, the rest of the brilliant cast and crew of Caleb's Door, and our distributor Around The Scenes, for helping make the film possible and getting it out there.

Other shout-outs: to Jose Antonio, organizer of the International Poetic Shorts Film Festival, who we assume didn't sleep for months while he sifted through shorts and programmed them. We've been to a few festivals, and have to say that this was one of the best fest experiences we've had.

There are far too many people to thank and sadly not enough space. So if we've skipped you please know that you are dear to our hearts and we hope you'll join us on the next adventure.


Marilyn Horowitz Offering A Discount on The Four Magic Questions System

Marilyn Horowitz is offering a special holiday discount on her screenwriting system, The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting. Designed for writers of all levels, this system includes an e-book, a set of DVDs, movie breakdowns, a monthly teleseminar and a 45-minute Q&A session with Marilyn herself. It's quite a great deal, and she's offering a holiday special price of $197 - that's a $100 discount on the regular price of $297!! Visit the website, www.fourmagicquestions.com for more information and to order. This offer will expire on December 24th!


Progress on Found In Time

Found In Time, our next feature film, has been coming along. We've been researching the exciting world of crowdfunding, alternative financing and distribution, and will be turning this research into action in the coming month. We'll email everyone when we launch our crowdfunding effort; in the meantime, hit up the film page for more details!


Exposed Wins Best Thriller at the NY Independent International Film and Video Festival

Exposed, produced by Shashi Balooja and Katherine Hinchey (and line produced by Arthur Vincie), was recently given its second award from the New York Independent International Film and Video Festival, winning Best Thriller! Congratulations to the terrific cast and crew!


Resources Worth Checking Out and A Half-Baked Summary of the Year

Thanksgiving and various other distractions has kept us from adding a new "how-to" blog entry in a while. So we decided to compile a list of cool web resources that you should check out, for your film and life education and entertainment! Also included is a more personal rant about the good, the bad, and the ugly things that have happened in 2009.

We hope that this special time of year finds everyone happy and safe. Good luck and be well!


RSS Feed: http://www.chaoticsequence.com/rss.php.

Testing For Teaching

On Friday (December 11) I will be teaching a class of middle school students about how to find ideas and write great scenes. The students live in Maryland so I will be teaching the class over Skype. It's amazing to think how, because of advances in technology, this generation is able to not only learn about film-making in middle school but apply what they've learned immediately and get their movies made.

For more information about their amazing teacher and all of their wonderful films, visit mrmayo.org.

Up In The Air

Over the weekend, I went to see Up In The Air. It's an amazingly timely movie, though not cheerful holiday fare.

The film as far as it goes is absolutely riveting revealing the price of living a life free from the emotional connections and demands of others, and asks whether or not anything really matters.

George Clooney gives a wonderful performance and there are a number of terrific scenes. But without giving anything else away, I will say this: The film's missing a third act.

Maybe it's because I'm a script consultant and writer myself but I find myself always analyzing movies after I have seen them, usually with the people I have dragged along with me.

So, after seeing this movie, my pals (also writers) and I retired to a local wine bar and we each laid out a new third act --- one where each of the characters are able to resolve their issues and apply what they have learned. I was particularly excited to see that many of our third acts involved the "new adventure" that I discuss in The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting.

As an exercise:
Take a movie you saw recently and try writing an expanded or different ending that would satisfy you better. Do you change a happy ending to a sad ending? Do you have different characters end up together? Do your characters embark on a new journey?

Imagine

Today markes the 29th anniversary of John Lennon's death. I have spent almost my entire life living on the Upper West Side and take a daily walk through Strawberry Fields so December 8th always feels significant.

Regular readers of this blog know that my mother slipped and fell on Thanksgiving, breaking her hip in three places. She is slowly recovering (baby steps... literally) but I have found myself often sitting in Strawberry Fields to clear my head and think clearly.

A few days ago, while sitting there, watching the tourists snap pictures and the singers strum their guitars, I noticed a discarded magazine lying on the bench next to me. It was an issue of New York magazine opened to an interview with Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. The fact that I was in Strawberry Fields and the issue was slightly outdated made it seem all the more amazing.

The article focused on a series of duets that Yoko and Sean had recently recorded and I was immediately reminded of the song "La Vie En Rose" because my own mother had taught it to me as a child.

As an exercise:
Imagine your main character and their mother must sing a duet. What song would they choose? What kind of song is it? A ballad? A punk song? A rap? Why that song? What do the lyrics say about their relationship? Would they enjoy the process or hate having to rehearse together?

In Five Years, Will This Matter?

One of my private students forwarded me a chain email entitled "Lessons Life Taught Me." According to the email, it was written by a 90-year-old woman for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. My favorite was No. 25: Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"

As an exercise, take each of these optimistic suggestions and reverse them. How would this cause conflict for the characters in your story? What if your character doesn't pay off their credit cards, or spends their day hating someone, or never uses the good candles?

Good luck and happy writing!


Lessons Life Taught Me.

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ''In five years, will this matter?".
26. Always choose life.
27. Forgive everyone everything.
28. What other people think of you is none of your business.
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
31. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
32. Believe in miracles.
33. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
34. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
35. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
36. Your children get only one childhood.
37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
38. Get outside every day.. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
41. The best is yet to come.
42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
43. Yield.
44. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

How To Write A Shared Back Story

If the story you are telling involves two people with a shared history (men who had been in a war, or a divorced couple who have a child together, etc.), it's important to remember that each character will have their own version of the events.

For example, in the 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate, both men are captured and brainwashed but they remember and react very differently.

As an exercise:

1. Make up a shared memory for two of your characters, such as going to a ball game, shopping for a prom dress, or driving across country.

2. Set your timer for 5 minutes and write the memory from one character's point of view.

3. Repeat step 2 for the other character.

Based on how they each remembered the event, what did you learn about each character? Does one person have a more accurate memory?

We're A Lot Alike

Often in movies, the villain will tell the hero: We’re a lot alike.

They are not, really, but rather they are both passionate about the same issue.

In this week’s New Yorker, I happened upon a gallery of photographs of powerful men (and a few women!) entitled “Portraits of Power.”

The most remarkable aspect of the collection is just how similar they all look. Without the captions and knowledge of their character, it would be almost impossible to determine who’s good and who’s bad from just the picture.

In the print edition of the magazine, the photographs are grouped together, and looking at these leaders, side by side, the similarities are even more striking in facial expression and intensity.

There’s a confident Ahmadinejad next to an equally confident Obama.

A smiling Berlusconi and a beaming Fernandez.

Netanyahu and Abbas both unimpressed.

The gallery reminded me of the recent ad campaign they’ve been running for HSBC bank, in which three identical photographs are shown with a different caption under each.

The most compelling ad in the series is the one that features the same bald head three times, each accompanied by one word: STYLE, SOLDIER, and SURVIVOR.

Everything means something different to everyone.

As an exercise:
Imagine two of your characters that feel they have nothing in common (your hero and villain or any other two) meet-up to discuss their differences in a neutral place. Where do they meet? Is it a coffee shop like in Heat or the bathroom in Runaway Jury or maybe the backroom in Caddyshack? What do they talk about? What do they have in common? What is the subtext of their relationship? Can they resolve their issues? Or do they agree to disagree?

Once you are able to get past the good and evil labels in your writing and realize that each of your characters has their own wants and needs, you’ll be able to write more interesting, three-dimensional characters.

Troubadour21.com

My good friend Jonathan Stark had a wonderful short story entitled "The Funeral" featured at Troubadour21.com.

Please take a moment to enjoy it here.

Reading Between The Lines

To help the jaded New Yorkers who live on the Upper West Side get into the holiday spirit, last night Lincoln Center sponsored a winter festival that included a market, choirs and a wonderful drum line (clip below).

It was quite popular and there were long lines of people waiting to participate in the different activities.

As an exercise:
Think about what type of line we might find your character in. Do they have the skill and coordination to play in a drum line (Drumline), or the patience to wait in a line for a table at a busy restaurant (Seinfeld), or the sense of humor to pull Marshall McLuhan into frame while waiting for a movie (Annie Hall)?

By deciding what your character is willing to wait for, you can learn important things about what they really want and need.

How To Write Your Movie Memoir

An Education is indeed an education for us screenwriters. The film, adapted from an article in Grana by Lynn Barber, was written by Nick Hornby, the author of High Fidelity and About A Boy.

The development process fiction allows is evident in the screenplay of this excellent movie. The writing is layered, bittersweet -- and funny. Is this a drama or a comedy? A bit of both, but most importantly, it has an organic inevitability as if the writer were reading/watching his own story for the first time. To me, this is one of the goals of any good writer -- that the reader, and then the viewer of the film of the screenplay feel as if he or she is watching actual life unfold. In the same way great theater actors can perform the same story over and over again and make it seem fresh, we writers must find a way to "forget" what happens next as we write and rewrite our screenplays. How to do this?

Watch the film, read the screenplay -- and learn. Whether or not you think it's a great film, the screenplay is almost perfect -- And try the following exercise, which is not for the faint of heart:

1. Set a timer for 1/2 hour.

2. In the voice of your character write the story of your current screenplay in the first person, past tense in as much detail as possible, using thoughts and feelings to describe how your character reacted to the events that unfolded. Use metaphors and similes and make it as much like a literary short story as you can.

3. Put it away for a day.

4. Reread it as if someone else had written it, and see if the script you've written or are working on can be improved by the insights you glean from this "memoir."

This is a trick that will make your story seem like a memory, and it's much easier to remember the past than to make things up.