The Blank Page : Part 3

The Screenwriter's Workbook
by Syd Field

(Page 3 of 5)

My student came to me, angry and confused. She didn't know what to do. She kept talking about needing a more active, cinematic opening and I kept telling her that wasn't the problem; she had to know, creatively, which story she was writing. When she first sat down to face the blank page she wanted to tell the mother's story. She ended up telling the story of the daughter overcoming the constraints of her relationship with her mother focusing on the issue of "the durable power of attorney."

She kept asking me what to do, and I kept telling her she had to make a creative decision about which story she was writing. I suggested that before she began to rewrite anything, she rethink her idea from the beginning in order to find the focus and direction of her story. Who and what was her story about?

It's important to know that there is no "right" or "wrong" in this situation, no judgments about good or bad. The only issue is whether it works or not. So, I met her one day at a nearby Coffee Bean and while we sipped our white chocolate dream lattes, I suggested that she fashion her story into the relationship between the mother and the daughter and set it against the dramatic backdrop of her mother's injury, showing how this brings them together with a stronger bond of love and understanding.

She shook her head and told me this was not the story she'd planned to write. The story was about the mother. That's fine, I said. But if she set out to write the story she wanted to write, she had to focus on that story and integrate it into the relationship with her daughter. Ultimately, she left the Coffee Bean the same way she came in; lost, confused, and uncertain. She picked away at the script for several months, didn't feel she was making any progress with it, and finally shelved the project.

It happens all the time; to you, to me, to anyone.

What's the point of the story? Creative problems are part of the landscape of screenwriting. Either it's an opportunity to expand the limits of your craft or a way to give in to the fact that "it's just not working." My student couldn't let go of her original concept and while she had a very good story, valid and meaningful, she really didn't know which story she wanted to tell. Her mind told her one thing, her creative Self told her another.

What could she have done to solve the problem? Look at The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar), a story that covers some of the same fertile, emotional, and thought-provoking ground. While the main character, Ramón (Javier Bardem) is confined to a hospital bed and room for some 30 years, fighting for his right to die, Amenábar opens up the smothering hospital room with soaring fantasies of Ramón walking and running, dreaming of love, so the story becomes a visual and eloquent testament of our imagination and how it can touch, move, and inspire others. It is possible that my student could have visually opened up her story in order to achieve her artistic intention, but didn't.

Most people would say Million Dollar Baby (Paul Haggis), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, is a story about a woman determined to become a professional boxer who realizes her dream, only to become critically injured during a title fight. Other people would say this is a story framed by the female boxer but is really the story about an individual's right to die and the moral and legal issues of euthanasia.

In the case of Million Dollar Baby, both are true. But in my mind, the "true" story, the real subject of the screenplay, is the relationship between Frankie (Clint Eastwood) and Maggie (Hilary Swank). All the elements that make up this relationship - Maggie's determination, Frankie training Maggie, Frankie and Scrap (Morgan Freeman) bickering-lead to the ultimate moral premise of the screenplay: Can Frankie, a tough, yet religious man, deliberately help another human being to die? Would that be labeled a criminal offense, or euthanasia? Is there a moral issue here? There are some who would call Frankie's act of injecting Maggie a murder and others an act of mercy. Call it what you will, it still is a story about the relationship between Frankie and Maggie.

Every screenplay is about something or someone and this subject becomes encased in the story you are telling. Can you define what you're writing about? Who are you writing about? There are approximately one hundred twenty sheets of blank paper to fill in a screenplay. As we all know, the blank page is intimidating, a tremendous and formidable challenge. When you first set out on this writing adventure, you'll probably only have a vague idea or an unformed notion about a character or incident running around in your head. You'll discover when you begin to formulate the idea into a workable description it may take several pages of free-association and terrible writing just to reduce your story into a general line of character and action. It may take several days of thinking and scribbling before you can even isolate the main components of your story. Don't worry about how long it takes. Just do it.

Before you can put one word on paper, you have to know what and who your story is about. What is the subject of your screenplay? For example: Your story may be about an attorney who meets and falls in love with a married woman, then kills her husband so they can be together. But he's been set up and ends up in prison, while the woman ends up with a fortune in a tropical paradise. That's the subject of Larry Kasdan's Body Heat. It could also be the subject of Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder's classic film noir. A Beautiful Mind (Akiva Goldsman) is the story of a physicist who loses touch with reality, overcomes his illness, and receives a Nobel prize for his scientific achievement. Action and character. The screenplay succeeds because there is a definite line of action.

The subject becomes a guideline for you to follow as you structure the action and the characters into a cohesive, dramatic story line. As a rule, you'll find that either the character drives the action or the action drives the character.

What's it about? is the most challenging question you'll ever be asked. In my experience, most aspiring writers seem to love the idea of writing a screenplay, but after talking with them I can tell they're unwilling to commit the time and effort to face the challenges they'll confront. Writing is hard work; make no mistake about it.

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.