The Blank Page

The Screenwriter's Workbook
by Syd Field

At last! The classic screenwriting workbook - now completely revised and updated - from the celebrated lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author, Syd Field: "the most sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world"

No one knows more about screenwriting than Syd Field - and now the ultimate Hollywood insider shares his secrets and expertise, completely updating his bestselling workbook for a new generation of screenwriters. Filled with new material - including fresh insights and anecdotes from the author and analyses of films from Pulp Fiction to Brokeback Mountain - The Screenwriter's Workbook is your very own hands-on workshop, the book that allows you to participate in the processes that have made Syd Field's workshops invaluable to beginners and working professionals alike. Follow this workbook through to the finish, and you'll end up with a complete and salable script!

Learn how to:

• Define the idea on which your script will be built
• Create the model - the paradigm - that professionals use
• Bring your characters to life
• Write dialogue like a pro
• Structure your screenplay for success from the crucial first pages to the final act

Here are systematic instructions, easy-to-follow exercises, a clear explanation of screenwriting basics, and expert advice at every turn - all the moment-to-moment, line-by-line help you need to transform your initial idea into a professional screenplay that's earmarked for success.

Chapter 1

The hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write.

A short time ago, I was having dinner with a group of friends, and as is so often the case, the subject turned to movies. We talked about films we had seen, films we liked, films we didn't like, and what we liked or disliked about them, which covered a broad spectrum ranging from the acting performances to the editing and photography to the music, special effects, and so on. We talked about some of the great moments in films, lines of dialogue that still reside in our awareness, and while the conversation was intriguing and stimulating, what I really found so interesting was that nobody made any mention of the screenplay. It was as if the script didn't exist. When I mentioned that fact, the only response I got was, "Oh yeah, it was a great script," and that's about as far as it went.

I immediately noticed a short pause in the conversation, and then one of the other guests, an actress and television talk show host, mentioned she had written a book and several of her friends wanted her to turn it into a screenplay. She confessed she felt she needed a "partner" to help her take her novel, her own story, and write it as a screenplay.

When I asked why, she explained she was frightened of "confronting" the blank sheet of paper. But she had already written the novel, I replied, so how could she be frightened about turning it into a screenplay? Was it the form that challenged her? Or the visual description of images, the sparseness of dialogue, or the structure that frightened her? We discussed it for a while and as she was trying to explain her feelings, I realized many people have that same fear. Even though she was a published author, she was afraid of dealing with the blank page. She didn't know exactly what to do or how to go about doing it.

This is not such an unusual scenario. Many people have great ideas for a screenplay but when they actually sit down to write it they are seized by fear and insecurity because they don't know how to go about actually doing it.

Screenwriting is such a specific craft that unless you know where you're going, it's very easy to get lost within the maze of the blank page. The hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write. If you don't know what your story is about, who does? Throughout my many years of teaching screenwriting, both here and abroad, people approach me all the time and tell me they want to write a screenplay. They say they have a great idea, or a brilliant opening scene, or a fantastic ending, but when I ask them what their story is about, their eyes glaze over, they stare off into the distance and tell me it'll all come out in the story. Just like Miles when he tries to describe what his novel is about to Maya in Sideways. Great.

When you sit down and tell yourself that you're going to write a screenplay, where do you begin? With the dream of a heroic action like the Max Fischer character (Jason Schwartzman) in Rushmore (Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson)? With still photographs that show us the era in which your story takes place, like the Great Depression in Seabiscuit (Gary Ross)? In a darkened bedroom, with a clock ticking loudly and two people moaning in sexual passion, like Shampoo (Robert Towne and Warren Beatty)?

If you tell yourself you want to write a screenplay and then vow to commit weeks, months, or even years writing it, how do you confront the blank page? Where does the writer begin? It's a question I hear at workshops and seminars all the time.

Does the writer begin with a person, location, title, situation, or theme? Should he/she write a treatment, outline it, or write the book first and then the screenplay? Questions, questions, questions. All those questions really reflect the question: How do you take an unformed idea, a vague notion, or a gut feeling and transfer that into the roughly 120 pages of words and pictures that make up a screenplay?

Writing a screenplay is a process - an organic, ever-changing, evolving stage of growth and development. Screenwriting is a craft that occasionally rises to the level of art. Like all literary arts, whether fiction or nonfiction, plays or short stories, there are definite stages a writer works through while fleshing out an idea. The creative process is the same no matter what you're writing.

When you sit down to write a screenplay and confront the blank page, you have to know what story you're writing. You only have one hundred twenty pages to tell your story, and when you begin writing it's apparent very quickly that you don't have much room to work with. A screenplay is more like a poem than a novel or play in which you can feel your way through the story.

James Joyce, the great Irish writer, once wrote that the writing experience is like climbing a mountain. When you're scaling a mountain, all you can see is the rock directly in front of you and the rock directly behind you. You can't see where you're going or where you've come from. The same principle holds true when you're writing a screenplay; when you're writing all you can see is what's in front of you, that is, the page you're writing and the pages you've written. You can't see anything beyond that.

What do you want to write about? You know you have a great idea that will make an awesome movie, so where do you begin? Are you writing a challenging character study? Are you writing about a personal experience that impacted your life? Maybe you read a great magazine or newspaper article that you know will make a great movie.

One of my students in a recent screenwriting workshop was a published novelist and former editor of a major book publisher. She had never written a screenplay before and shared with me that she was somewhat nervous and insecure about writing the script.

When I asked why, she replied that she didn't know if her story was visual enough. She wanted to write a script about an active middle-aged woman who suffers a life-changing traumatic injury, and had doubts about the main character's confinement to a hospital bed during most of the second act. This raised another concern: would the main character be too passive? Could the interest in the character's plight be sustained with this limited sense of visual action? These were all valid, major considerations, requiring significant creative decisions.

Copyright © 2006 by Syd Field.

About the Author

Syd Field is a screenwriter, producer, teacher, international lecturer, and author of the bestselling books Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, Selling a Screenplay, and Four Screenplays. Published in 1982, Screenplay has been translated into sixteen languages, and is used in more than 250 colleges and universities across the country. At present he is creative consultant to the governments of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Austria, and South Africa, and has been a script consultant for Roland Jaffe's film production company, for Alfonso Arau and Laura Esquivel on Like Water for Chocolate, and for Tri-Star Pictures. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.