The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems (Dell Trade Paperback) - Softcover

Field, Syd

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440504910 ISBN 13: 9780440504917

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

All writing is rewriting. But what do you change, and how do you change it? All screenplays have problems. They happened to Die Hard: With a Vengeance and Broken Arrow-and didn't get fixed, leaving the films flawed. They nearly shelved Platoon-until Oliver Stone rewrote the first ten pages and created a classic. They happen to every screenwriter. But good writers see their problems as a springboard to creativity. Now bestselling author Syd Field, who works on over 1,000 screenplays a year, tells you step-by-step how to identify and fix common screenwriting problems, providing the professional secrets that make movies brilliant-secrets that can make your screenplay one headed for success...or even Cannes. Learn how to:

•Understand what makes great stories work
•Make your screenplay work in the first ten pages, using Thelma & Louise and Dances With Wolves as models
•Use a "dream assignment" to let your creative self break free overnight
•Make action build character, the way Quentin Tarantino does
•Recover when you hit the "wall"-and overcome writer's block forever

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Syd Field (1935–2013), the internationally renowned “guru of screenwriting,” was the author of eight bestselling books on the subject, including Screenplay, published in twenty-three languages and used in hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide and around the world. He was inducted into the Final Draft Hall of Fame in 2006 and was the first inductee into the Screenwriting Hall of Fame of the American Screenwriting Association. He was also a special consultant to the Film Preservation Project for the Getty Center.

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Now bestselling author Syd Field, who works on over 1,000 screenplays a year, tells you step-by-step how to identify and fix common screenwriting problems, providing the professional secrets that make movies brilliant - secrets that can make your screenplay one headed for success...or even Cannes. Learn how to understand what makes great stories work; make your screenplay work in the first ten pages, using Thelma & Louise and Dances With Wolves as models; use a "dream assignment" to let your creative self break free overnight; make action build character, the way Quentin Tarantino does; and recover when you hit the "wall" - and overcome writer's block forever.

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When I first started thinking about writing this book, I wanted to find some kind of tool that the screenwriter could use in order to recognize and define various problems of screenwriting.  But as I began writing, I became aware that I was really writing about the solutions to various problems, and not really identifying them.  It just didn't work.  So I began to rethink my approach.  To solve any kind of a problem means you have to be able to recognize it, identify it, and then define it; only in that way can any problem really be solved.

The more I began thinking about the "problem," the more it became clear that most screenwriters don't know exactly what the problem really is.  There's a vague and somewhat tenuous feeling somewhere that something is not working; either the plot is too thin or too thick; or the character is too strong or too  weak; or there's not enough action, or the character disappears off the page, or the story is told all in dialogue.

So I began analyzing the Problem-Solving process.  The only way I could  make this book work, I realized, was to recognize and define the various  symptoms of the problem, very much the way a medical doctor isolates the various symptoms of his patients before he can treat the disease.  When I approached the Problem-Solving process from this point  of view (and it is a process), I began to see that there's usually  not just one symptom, but many symptoms.  It soon became  clear that many of the problems in screenwriting share the same symptoms, but the problems themselves are different in kind; only when you analyze the context of the problem can a distinction be made, and it is those distinctions that lead us on the path of recognizing, defining, and solving.  For the truth is that you can't solve a problem until you know what it is.

With that in mind I began to understand that there are only three distinct categories of The Problem; when you're writing a screenplay, all problems spring either from Plot, Character, or Structure.

The art of Problem Solving is really the art of recognition.

You can look at any problem in two ways: the first is to accept the fact that a problem is something that doesn't work.  If that's the case,  you can avoid it, deny it, and pretend it doesn't exist.  That's the easy way.

But there's another way of approaching the problem, and that's to look at  any creative problem as a challenge, an opportunity for you to expand your screenwriting skills.

They are really both sides of the same coin.  How you look at it is up to you.

"The World is as you see it."  


The Art of Problem Solving

A few weeks ago, during one of my screenwriting workshops, a student turned in some pages from her screenplay with a somewhat worried and concerned expression on her face.  I didn't say anything, I simply took the pages and read them.

The scene she had written took place at the beginning of the Second Act, as the main character, a lawyer, is investigating the mysterious and unexpected death of her mother, who had died while recovering from a simple surgical procedure in the hospital.

Stunned and grieving, she is trying to find out why her mother had suddenly died, but no one has any answers, and no one is talking.  The doctors placate her, the nurses know nothing, and the hospital administrator is concerned and suggests she join a grieving group.  Her grief turns to anger, and she's determined to find out what happened.  Pursuing lead after lead, she manages to locate one of the nurses who had taken care of her mother right before she died.  The nurse had mysteriously quit the hospital a few days after the mother's death, had changed her address and literally disappeared.  But through her own persistence, and some lawyer friends, she manages to track the nurse down.  And now, she's going to talk to her.  This was the scene my student had just written.  As I read her pages, I began to get some insight into why she appeared to be concerned about it.  She had written the scene like an interrogation; the main character questions the nurse, who is reluctant to say anything about her mother's death.

This was an important scene, and it had to be handled in such a way that it both moved the story forward and revealed information about the main character.  She's tough, feisty, and smart, and she's not just going to accept what happened, but she's determined to find out why it happened.  And this scene is the first real clue the main character has which confirms her suspicion that some kind of cover-up is going on.  Somebody made a mistake here, and because of it, her mother is dead.

I waited until the people in the class had finished reading the pages, then I turned to the young woman who had written the scene, and asked, "What  do you think?"

She was very quick to answer.  "I think something's wrong," she said, "it just doesn't feel right."

She was right.  She had a problem.

Problems are common in screenwriting.  The old expression "Writing is  rewriting" is very true.  But in my experience there are two ways you can look at a problem:

The first is to say that a problem is something that doesn't work.  Very simple.

The second way is to say that a problem is an opportunity, a challenge that will allow you to ultimately improve your craft of screenwriting.  Two different points of view.  But any way you look at it is the same: a problem becomes the fuel of creativity.  You either view it as an  obstacle or an opportunity; either a problem is something that doesn't work, or an opportunity for you to move up to another level.

It's up to you.

For some people the simple knowledge that they have a problem in their script can create a panic attack; it's a horrible, much-to-be-dreaded experience.

I have traveled all over the world conducting screenwriting seminars and workshops, and I hear the same thing in country after country; screenwriters describe their scripts in terms of the problems they are encountering.  "Well," they say, "my problem is that my structure's not working," or "my character's weak," or "the dialogue's flat."

And I tell them there are no problems, there are only solutions.  They laugh at that, because they think I'm kidding.  But I'm not.

I think what scares most screenwriters, or anyone for that matter, is that most of the time they know there's a problem, they just don't know what it is.  They can't define or describe it.  It exists only as a vague sense of discomfort, an imprecise dissatisfaction, a knot in the gut or a lump in the throat.  My student knew, or felt, she had a problem with these pages, she just didn't know what it was.  The art of Problem Solving means being aware of those hazy and undefined feelings, and using them as some kind of a guide to lead you into an examination of the cause or source of the problem.  The art of problem solving is really the art of recognition.

In my student's case the main character, the lawyer, has knocked and entered, and she and the nurse have a dialogue scene.  The scene...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0440504910
• ISBN 13: 9780440504917
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Scooter-Deluxe GmbH; https://www.roller.com; ; Am Schürmannshütt 30; Moers; 47441; Deutschland