A surprising way to become a Great Writer
21 Wednesday Jul 2010
Written by Charles Harris in Psychology
Tags
character, cinema, drama, film, movie, novel, premise, screenplay, Screenwriting, scriptwriting, story, structure, theme, TV, writing
What is it that makes a great writer become a great writer?
What can we learn from them and hope to emulate?
Humility
What? What’s he on? Humility? I thought the top 1 attribute was a massive ego.
Maybe, and then again maybe not. What I admire in the greatest artists of all kinds – screenwriters, novelists, poets and also directors, painters, sculptors, composers, singer-songwriters, street jugglers – is their lack of ego.
I mean, yes, when you get them on chat shows they can sound off to save England, but when they get to engage with their material, that’s when the humility shows.
It’s when you’re face to face with the story, the characters, the situation, that’s when you have to put aside all your grand designs and your clever metaphors and your award-winning structural games and be totally and utterly – yes, humbly – at the service of your craft.
I learned this first and foremost in the cutting rooms – starting as a lowly and menial assistant editor, whose main job was to make coffee and log every shot in the rushes.
What I learned from watching hours of footage as it came in to be logged is that it doesn’t matter what you wanted to shoot, what you intended to shoot and what you thought you had shot.
All that matters is what you actually shot.
(And how good the coffee is).
Look at the material in front of you with an open mind and you find it tells you what to do.
That, and not the clever ideas that you are sure will win you the Oscar/BAFTA/Booker/Orange Prize, is what actually wins the audience – and if you’re lucky the awards that follow.
The fact is that it’s your story and your characters that ultimately dictate the shape of the structure (three acts or five acts or thirty-two episodes), the tone of the dialogue, the development of the theme, all that.
In fact, it’s your original premise that first dictates the development of your story and characters. And who knows where the premise comes from?
Schubert used to say he didn’t invent songs, he found them in the air and wrote them down. Stephen King writes about the process of writing (in On Writing
This is the humility of the craftsman.
6 Comments
July 22, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Charles,
interesting. I wonder if it also means those with humility are able to hear and learn from criticism or what other people like.
I can’t begin to guess at number 9.
regards,
Wayne
July 22, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Woah! I don’t know if I’d go as far as that. You know what I’m like for taking criticism… 😉
Seriously, I do believe that the best writers know the value they get from honest input from collaborators – from agents and editors to directors and producers – assuming these collaborators know what they are talking about.
The good people get good at assessing the qualities of the people around them.
An example that shows both sides: Dennis Potter was a great TV writer – when he allowed his work to be directed by directors who weren’t yes-men and held him to his own highest standards, directors such as Piers Haggard (Pennies From Heaven – the TV series). When he got more powerful, he got less strong-minded directors, and his work at the end was nothing like his best.
July 23, 2010 at 8:31 am
interesting. I think I see parallels in a famous series that started with a slim well written, focussed and pacey story but by the time the author was very famous and very, very rich, I personally felt that the last book in the series was bloated, it had lost its pace and it was not such a good read.
I find the biggest problem is finding good people with the time to review your work and give the honest advice.
July 23, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I wonder which series you mean. Maybe the answer will come to me, by magic.
December 26, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Really enjoy your tips about writing very usefull. I feel inspired to get back to finishing my Books.