Collaboration.

There are two kinds of collaboration in filmmaking - a huge team, headed by the director, the cinematographer, the editor and a whole crew - but first…a collaboration between pathways in your, the screenwriter’s, brain, while creating the screenplay.

I had just finished a screenplay and had to take a long flight and during the trip I found all the parallels to writing a screenplay. I wasn’t thinking about getting infected with the virus but about the pilot, and the wind and the instruments, and all the specificity that goes into flying an airplane. Into designing something that will stay up in the air. Aerodynamics, the exact degree of balance between one design element and another. Then of the pilot, who after extensive training and fulfilling all the hours required to qualify, has mastered the complicated instruments and who is now able to steer the plane through multiple air currents, weather conditions and turbulence that occur during flight. And well also, of birds… the way they fly in a V…and how much we have learned from them.

Writing a script is like a fight - first the ascent, then the duration of the flight, and then, the descent. When you touch down on the runway nice and smooth it is a good feeling.

There are very specific demands in writing a screenplay that a novel or short story doesn’t require. There’s are a hundred different artistic and technical calibrations. It’s like creating a little universe, where there is temperature, and there’s turmoil, and humans or other worldly characters, all of which - in a roughly two hour period with visuals and dialogue - LIVE out a story that holds…HOLDS…your attention. In other words keeps the plane up in the air. The plane, that you, the designer and pilot, and then the director and his team, deliver to an audience. I won’t carry the metaphor any further but I’m seriously suggesting that just as you can’t expect to fly a plane without all the necessary preparation and skill, you can’t expect to write a script that takes your audience on a journey worth their while..

How I miss the big screen. Do you? In my next blog I will give you a simple mini manual to keep you moving forward with your work. In these times we need all the help we can get. The world feels to me like a farm animal heavy and bloated in pregnancy, way past her due date and barely able to move. What a year! Even so it has been a productive one for writers I know and thankfully it has for me. I hope it has for you too.

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See you in November!