Screenwriting Tips from a TV legend
As fans of hindi cinema, it’s far too often that we find ourselves watching what could have been a good, even great film, but somehow its found a way to disapoint us. 99% of the time its due to poor scripting. And what a damn shame that is.
I’ve always believed that you don’t necessarily need a brilliant or even unique story to make a good film. It’s all in how you tell it. Many great films over the years haven’t had complex stories at all. What they had were believable, relatable characters, whose motivations were made clear and understandable. What they had were well thought out, well executed plots, giving us just the right amounts of details in the right spots. What they had were strong emotions, which would carry through and resonate with audiences.
Then there’s the issue of filmmakers lifting scripts from Hollywood and world cinema rather than taking time and effort to create a good story. The question is why? Why do we need to rip off a foreign film when our own diverse culture, especially in todays fast paced world, has so many gripping tales that can be told. Why are we afraid to be creative? Why don’t we have the confidence in ourselves to say “I don’t need to lift a foreign film because I’ve got my OWN stories to tell?” Why are we holding ourselves back?
Even if a filmmaker is so impressed with a foreign film that he feels moviegoers in India would love this story, why must he lift it outright? Why not take the theme/plot/story or whatever it is that is so inspiring and give it your own take? Make a conscience effort to tell that story in such a way that it becomes YOUR story. Wouldn’t there be so much more creative satisfaction in that? Wouldn’t that give audiences something fresh and innovative to watch? Wouldn’t the writer be proud just knowing that film could not have been made without his/her personal touch?
During a screenwriting workshop a man I consider to be a great writer had said that anyone who thinks they can write a good story CAN…but not all of them do. They let obstacles like fear of failure, writers block and sometimes the lack of drive and effort prevent us from telling good stories.
Then he taught us how to overcome those obstacles. He gave us the basic tools and tips to ensure that we had no excuses.
Today I thought I’d share some of the things I learnt about screenwriting from American TV Producer/Screenwriter/Novelist Stephen J. Cannel. This is the man behind popular, action-packed TV shows such as “The A-Team”, “Rockford Files”, “21 Jumpstreet” and many others.
He writes because he loves to tell good stories and tell them well. He is a self-professed entertainer, writing out and out commercial content with the sole intent to give his viewers, his readers, gripping, exciting and thrilling stories with compelling characters we will care about.
I had the privilage of attending a day long interactive screenwriting seminar with Mr. Cannel years ago, and am still influenced by many of his teachings. Character development, knowing where to place your major and minor plot twists, how to avoid writing linear, predictable scenes and add an “oblique” or edge which makes the same scene much less predictable yet delivers the same message, and most importantly how to use POV (point of view) to maximum effect, something that is lacking in many a hindi film.
A simplified, online version of his seminar can be found at the following link:
http://www.cannell.com/books.php
Some excepts:
“The challenge is not to write truth, but to write seductive BELIEVABILITY. (The art of verisimilitude.) One of the things I tried to do in Riding The Snake was to weave the facts I found in my research about Hong Kong Triads and illegal immigration in with my fictional tale so that even a sophisticated reader cannot tell where research leaves off, and fiction begins.”
* Definintion: verisimilitude = the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability: The play lacked verisimilitude.
“PREDICTABLE VS. TOO PREDICTABLE: Predictability can often lead to great suspense. The challenge is to walk the line of predictability. Which has more sustained tension? To walk down a corridor absolutely unaware that someone is going to jump out from behind a door, or knowing somebody is going to do just that? On the surface it might seem that the former is more unsettling, because the victim has no time to prepare.
However, the latter causes the audience to tighten, to tense, to flex every muscle in terrible anticipation of what is to come. And when it arrives, the effect is all the more shattering for its predictability. When a script is criticized as predictable, what the critic truly means is that it is TOO predictable.”
* I find this is a major issue with a lot of hindi film screenplays. They either hide too much information trying to be unpredictable or unconventional, and in the process lose the audiences interest, or they give away too much and thus make it too easy for the audience to know what’s going to happen.
The man knows what he’s talking about, and any writer could benefit from his advice. I highly recommend checking out the online seminar.
Times are changing for the better. Last year alone films like “Rang De Basanti”, “Dor”, “Khosla Ka Ghosla” and of course the Munnabhai series are bringing the creativity of our talented writers to the fore. A message is slowly spreading: We CAN and we WILL write better stories, and we don’t need foreign films to do either.
Tags: Dialogues, Direction, Teaching Film-making, Television
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Tony,
I agree with what you are saying about the importance of Predictability vs Non-predictability.
I did not go through the article you mentioned but honestly I feel that Rang De Basanti and Dor were not a very good example of good screenwriting.
rang de Basanti was too much obsessed with Bhagat Singh to the extent that the current events were not given justice.
I wish writer had just picked up enough material from Bhagat Singh’s era so as to make a point rather than wasting 1hr to 90 minutes of screen time showing what happened using yellow screen.
Dor, oh my god, the only good thing about Dor was Ayesha Takia. that is it.
The only good screenplay Kuknoor ever came up with was 3 Deewarein’s last 30 minutes. rest of the movie was a lullaby.
Honestly speaking there are no good screenwriters currently in Bollywood, except Vishal Bharadwaj and Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
omkara and Eklavya are last and this year’s great movies.
Thx a million for sharing this gem!
agree tony. N many of them cant write but they just got lucky. south mumbai kids..born to filmy parents,bought up in firang land and fed on popcorn. where will the stories of life come from ? BELIEVABILITY ?? for that u u need to see/live/experience life in various forms n ways. N then use your own thought process. othersiwe u end up writing KANK….cleaning the house wearing versace gowns!! why a director/writer tells one kind of story, from where he gets his idea n how he shapes it up…there is reason behind all this.
Magik – my pleasure :D
Phoenixnu – your absolutely right about a writer drawing for his/her own direct and indirect experiences. Going through something, having that life experience, feeling the emotions, the thought processes… that’s what it takes to really bring them to life.
Mind you many writers, Mr. Cannel included, are aware that they may not have the background/experiences/mindset which they want to portray through their characters. In that case, you go through the research route. You can gain invaluable knowledge, albeit indirect, from talking to people.
Just as a writer lives vicariously through their characters, they do through their observations of people and life around them as well. In fact, good writers/directors are some of the most observant people around. They draw on the experiences of others.
Anurag Kashyap is a great example. Having lived through the Bombay Blasts himself he had a certain perspective of the events. Yet his film was told from a completely different point of view. This is where his thorough research paid off. He’s not a cop, gangster or terrorist but he brought believability to those characters and their motivations.
Jateen – I believe India has good writers. Gulzar-saheb, Abbas Tyrelwala, Anurag Kashyap, Jaideep Saini, Shridhar Raghavan and many others.
I’m sure others on PFC can name lots more good screenwriters in India.
As for Rang De, I agree that too much time was spent on the Bhagat Singh flashbacks, they could have been edited down. But as far as Nagesh Kukunoor is concerned I think he’s done a good job with 3 Deewarein, Iqbal and Dor. I guess everyones got their own take, I respect that. I personally liked how Dor played out. It was meant to be a difficult emotional journey for both women and that came across. I know some will say that it was simply a remake of a South Indian film, but I heard that Kukunoor was actually inspired by a newspaper article (upon which the South film was also made) and gave the story his own take. Haven’t seen the other film so can’t say how different they were.
Tony,
I forgot completely about Iqbal. Yes, It is a great movie. I loved it.