Top Tips - Screenwriting

24 October 09

Peter Morgan’s Top Screenwriting Tips

BAFTA / Liam Daniel1. Pick a subject matter and themes in the way you'd pick a travel destination or a place you'd choose to live. A fitting location for the mind. Writing is so all encompassing and it goes on for so long, you'd better be spending it in a place you feel comfortable.

2. Work on an outline. For as long as it takes. Work on the short form – the architecture – until the body of the screenplay bursts out of you.

3. Whenever possible – whenever you have the strength or the inspiration – write original material.

4. Work with people you like and who understand you. Writing is lonely enough without support or benign, entertaining fellow travellers.

5. Accept the fact that the power structure – and your role within that – changes on every project. Navigating that can be as difficult as the writing.

6. Don't assume that the smaller projects are either less remunerative or that they offer more freedom.

Good writing, like all art, remains uncomfortable – an act of insurgency.

7. If no one is offering you work, don't stop writing.

8. All any audience craves is something new and different.

9. Trust in the universality of the human condition and take risks with your characters. By and large any thought or emotion you can imagine (no matter how fair, foul or shocking) has recently been thought and felt by everyone out there. We'll get it.

10. Don't join any clubs or become part of any cosy establishment. Good writing, like all art, remains uncomfortable – an act of insurgency.

Four-time BAFTA winner Peter Morgan’s credits include: The Queen, The Last King Of Scotland, Frost/Nixon (from his own play), Longford, The Damned United and The Deal. The concluding chapter of Morgan’s ‘Blair Trilogy’, The Special Relationship, is now in post-production for release in 2010. He is currently writing the next Bond film.

Matt Greenhalgh’s Top Screenwriting Tips

BAFTA / Camera Press1. Drink lots of coffee. NO! Diet Coke.

2. If you're ready to write but have problems with flow, treat yourself, go abroad, book a cottage, get on the Central Line. Get away from normal stuff and enjoy being on your own, because that's where your mind has to be. Personally I love the sun, it makes my brain zone out and in. However I wrote my first screenplay in a cold caravan in Wales. The deal is though, you HAVE TO FINISH THE SCRIPT!

3. Don't talk about your ideas or your unfinished screenplay all the time. Just do it. Talkers of scripts aren't any good at writing them because they're probably too extroverted for the marathon turmoil of writing ... and should try acting instead. Producers will only employ writers who they feel can deliver the goods.

4. Find a person who will not only be honest about your work, but also knows what they are talking about. Other writers are too jealous/nice/cowards, producers are too vague/busy, directors too egotistical. Established script editors are gold dust.

Watch and learn from the things you want to write…

5. Don't be bullied by script notes you passionately think are wrong. At the same time, don't be obstinate. Try and be cool. If something hurts (and all notes hurt) take the pain, recoup and come back better, stronger, with a reasoned argument for why you've written what you have. But sometimes, believe it or not... the note is right!

6. Economise on the page. Shorter is always better. Too much stage direction belongs in the theatre. Learn to say what you want to say creatively and quickly. Reading is boring compared to watching films. Remember that.

7. Unless you want to write for soaps, don't watch them. Watch and learn from the things you want to write, and even better, study the scripts that go with them.

Matt Greenhalgh won the Carl Foreman Award in 2008 for his screenplay of Control. His credits also include Clocking Off, Legless and Cold Feet. His latest screenplay is for Sam Taylor Wood’s Nowhere Boy, which opens in December.

ADD TO DE.LI.CIOUS Digg it share on Facebook Stumble it
( What is this? ) Printable Version