One of the first screenwriting blogs I grew attached to was Scott Meyer's Go Into The Story. He updates many times a day and besides offering his opinions on what's going on in the film world he makes an effort to help any fledgling screenwriters that hop along his path by offering helpful hints. He teaches online courses for UCLA so it's a "thing" for him I guess, you know... being helpful.
Anyway, so one of the suggestions he makes is to read screenplays. Its a common thing students hear "If you want to write, read books, if you want to act, watch plays, if you want to do something else, engage as a spectator of someone else's something else." However, it's not only a tip people often ignore, with screenwriting maybe one decides watching movies is enough. Either way it's a common message.
Meyer goes farther than that though. He has what he calls 14 days of screenplays where he links to 14 screenplays of differing authors and styles. His hope, more or less, is that by reading a screenplay everyday for a time will force your brain into picking up something more quickly via osmosis. That, in reading many works in a short period, your brain will start playing connect-the-dots and see the patterns more clearly and quickly than it might otherwise. So I've been doing this.
So far I've read Back to the Future (an early draft -weird!), Witness, When Harry Met Sally, and Alien.
While I'm sure I've gleaned many valuable things already, something that made a big conscious impact on me was a tiny something I got from When Harry Met Sally.
In improvisation something that instructors try to grind into you is do something while you're talking. Not only do something, but do something unrelated to whatever is being said (don't even mention what you're doing) and not only will it make the scene more dynamic but it can inform where you can go from where you are. That is to say, from your doing you will perhaps open up your brain to where the scene at large can go; what you can talk about, what else you can do, what your relationship to the other people in the scene is, what you're feeling, who your character is.
In writing you're told the same thing, but with more emphasis on the depth and dynamics it can add, as well as how it can let your character shine through the actions. These are things I understood conceptually, something I knew I should do and knew was good instruction and advice but something that somehow never sunk in. I never "got it" I think, it didn't click into place somehow, until reading When Harry Met Sally.
It's a silly thing really, tiny, and the scene isn't a great example of the concept but it's what got through to me. Maybe because they weren't doing the action the whole time, it was used as a break in between bits, that I was able to see it. Or maybe it was because the script is almost ALL dialogue, especially compared to the other three I've read that are dripping with visual descriptions and direction. But either way, I'll share it with you - maybe you'll find something there too.
Harry is talking to his male friend Jess. They are in Shea Stadium at a baseball game. The scene is where Harry offers all this exposition about how his wife left him. It's a lot of dialogue, most of it with Harry alone doing the talking. The only action going on, besides the heavy, heavy topic being talked about is the wave gradually going around the stadium a couple times and people chattering in the background. They talk, Harry goes on and on, says "so I say, 'Don't you love me anymore?' and you know what she says? 'I don't know if I've ever loved you'" and then they do a wave. It goes on, more dialogue, and two more waves. See the script here on page 38 and 39 to read the scene.
When reading the scene it knocked me out. The character is clear through the dense dialogue and to keep the scene interesting you have them participating in the wave at Shea. Its unrelated to what's being said, they never say "oh we have to do the wave now," and it just offers a great juxtaposition, the actions and speech. Serious talk, serious talk, stadium wave. It may seem silly to you, how greatly it impacted me, but it finally made me see perfectly clearly how well that tool can work - dramatic dialogue against simple, sparse unrelated light action. After being told how it works many times and yeah, even though I've seen it in action before... it's this time I've truly learned the lesson.
This is the only clip of the scene I found on youtube, it's out of sync.
It can be hard to get out that much exposition and in improv it wouldn't be done this way of course, it's too much. But the lesson is still applicable.
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