A bad mystery is when your characters stand around asking the same question over and over (“Why does Old Man Stevens never leave his house?”; “What is the Maltese Falcon made of anyway?”). A good mystery is when you ask the question once, then get on with slowly revealing the answer.
Recently, at the Black List Blogs, we asked the question:
“What’s the one thing you would change about movies?”
And you had answers for us — clever, funny, daring and passionate answers. It was extremely hard to narrow the field down to five winners, but we’ve finally done it. The following answers represent the most interesting and entertaining responses, as judged by Scott, Franklin and myself. Some of them are practical; some wildly impractical. I don’t even happen to agree with all of them. But that’s what makes them so interesting!
You don’t need to write every day. Don’t beat yourself up because of some arbitrary schedule. What you need is to finish the draft. If that means a three-day writing frenzy followed by a week of non-writing recovery, then so be it.
Try writing short films — or, hell, even short stories — between larger projects to cleanse your mental palate. Also, finishing things tends to boost confidence.
Every failed pitch, every screenplay that doesn’t sell, is an opportunity to figure out what went wrong and never do it again.
Avoid meaningless generalities in your loglines, e.g. “a tale of love and fate”, ”but it’s not going to be easy”, “unintended consequences”, “hilarious results”, and ”may change their lives forever”.
If you try to write by the “rules” and find the rules don’t work for you, feel free to break them. But at least try them before you denounce them.
Mould your world and setting elements to fit your characters’ arcs, not the other way around.
If you find yourself reaching for the perfect turn of phrase, stop reaching. You’re not writing the Great American Novel — you just need to be clear and precise. Save contacting your Muse for the second draft.
When searching for something to cut, start looking in Act One. All that setup you thought you needed? Just training wheels. If you’re giving the audience the same information later, then you don’t need it at the start.
Study the patterns of your own mind. If, for example, you keep writing stories about shell-shocked veterans, or haunted hotels, or doomed love triangles, stop and think about that. Ask yourself why these things matter to you. Then follow them to their ultimate conclusion.
You don’t need to have been to a place in order to write about it. You just need to see that place clearly in your head, and make the reader believe that you see it.
At the top of every scene, ask yourself: “What does the protagonist want, and why can’t she get it?”. From that one question, everything else in the scene will flow.
In highly kinetic sequences, you can use overlapping dialogue and intercutting between scenes to give a sense of constant forward momentum.
Instead of just throwing characters into arguments, try thinking about their goals for the scene. Who’s trying to achieve their goal, who’s blocking someone else’s goal, and whose goal changes halfway through?
