On Screen Writing by Eamonn Harrigan

I'd like to welcome guest blogger Eamonn Harrigan. Take it away Eamonn...

My name is Eamonn Harrigan and I live in Ireland. I'm 47 and for years made my living in management and accounts but always wrote short stories and even some poetry for fun. A few years ago I began to take this more seriously and went back to college to do a Masters in Screenwriting. Since then I work for myself as a management consultant but spend as little time as I can doing this and as much as I can trying to make paper refuse ink. Thankfully it doesn't very often. So, I've had a focus on screenwriting and have thus far written two feature length screenplays - Ozzy (an animation about a prepubescent ostrich trying to grow up agains the background of bushfires on the Savannah) and Juice (A thriller about a woman struggling to reach the top of a major league baseball club with a culture of performance enhancing drugs). I've also written several short films. I had an idea to write a script about the afterlife but this proved much more amenable to the novel format and the resultant novel "Where The Dead Go" was published recently by Solstice Publishing. I still harbour a notion that I will turn this into script format and am building myself up to this.

So that's me and I am interested in the difference between writing for screen and just plain old writing. Just so you know these are my thoughts on the subject, rather than any academic way of looking the the craft of screenwriting, or which there are many. I just want to highlight some of the key differences.

First, there is the fact that you can only really write what the viewer sees. So, if you want to show how a character is feeling you must write an action to demonstrate. Unlike a book where you can happily say how a character feels, you can take a wander through your protagonist's mind; this is not possible in screenwriting. So somebody who is frustrated must slam a door, throw a cellphone or something. There is nothing worse than bad exposition in screenwriting - yep it sometimes happens but when it does everyone in the theatre will know exactly what is happening and it just makes for a bad movie.

Second , screenwriting is sparse. Any redundant words have to be deleted. An industry professional once told me "we don't want any black sh** on the page". So take the beginning of American Beauty or Desperate Housewives or any of the numerous pieces which use a suburban street as their opening sequence. What a lovely challenge for a writer, in good form and with a glass of wine I could spend four or five pages on loving description right down to the colour of the paperboy's socks. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for scripts you get to use FIVE words - EXTERIOR. AMERICAN SUBURBAN STREET. DAYTIME. That's it, anything more will ensure your masterpiece ends up in the bin. But what a great discipline. When I read Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy or Raymond Carver I marvel at how they can say so much in so few words. I recall reading that Carver's editor told him never use ten words when you can use four. That is what screenwriting makes you do - in as few words as possible try to ensure the reader (director/viewer) conjures up a vivid image.

Third, screenwriting is more a craft than an art. Where in writing you can let your artistic side roam free, the rules are flexible, in screenwriting there is a widely accepted structure which is inculcated in all of us from the first time we see a movie as a kid. True the standard general rules, the three act structure, beginning, middle, end, apply to books as well as screenplays but within a screenplay certain things must happen at certain points. A page of screenplay is roughly a minute of screentime. So the average screenplay is around 100 pages long. Usually act 1 finishes around page 30, act 2 around page 80. Within the acts the audience expects certain things and if your screenplay doesn't deliver not only will you have a disgruntled audience but the likelihood is your masterpiece will never even make it on to the desk of a decision-maker in a production company.

These are just general observations on the differences between writing fiction and writing for the screen. If anyone is interested in finding out more there are many excellent works on the subject. I'd recommend Syd Fields "Screenplay" and Blake Snyders "Save The Cat".

 

 

Where The Dead Go is available on Amazon and of course from Solstice Publishing (links below). 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Where-the-Dead-Go-ebook/dp/B005G4G8EW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313194311&sr=8-1

http://www.solsticepublishing.com/products/Where-the-Dead-Go%252d%252dPDF-EBOOK.html

 

 

Thank you Eamonn for this informative post and...where do the dead go? I've always wanted to know...Jeanne