Booksquare

A Booksquare operative read this story on Robert McKee and immediately thought of us. We’re not sure what this says about her. Nor are we sure what it says about us. Unless it’s that his rants so closely mirror ours:

He was also not happy with the state of screenwriting — or fiction writing in general. “It’s a worldwide, cross-media crisis,” he said. He went off on politically correct language, sloppy structure, shallow characters and lazy work habits (and, over the course of the weekend, President Bush, the British Empire, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, “American self-deception,” car pools, Wonder bread and the lack of meaning in modern life).

No really, we can go off on carpools for days (we’re pro^*).

Many times we’ve considered subjecting ourself to a McKee seminar. All that inspiration. All those suffering faces (Socratic nightmare, indeed — does the man not realize that we’re writers because we’re incapable of a clever comeback in under three drafts?). All that pent-up energy releasing itself onto the page.

Actually, that sounds a bit messy. Since we haven’t worked a seminar into our busy schedule, we spend our time reading about such things. It’s practically the same thing. What could we learn anyway? It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been doing this for any length of time, but there is a formula to writing, well, just about anything. McKee lays it out very simply:

He offered step-by-step advice about constructing a script from the inside out and the outside in, advice that’s rigorous and helpful, but not necessarily — and he’d likely be the first to admit it — groundbreaking: Do research. Plan your story and characters in detail. Write dialogue last. Rewrite and rewrite again.

See that? Easy. All you have to do is, uh, that. Yeah, this is why we don’t waste three days locked in a room with our peers. Because we know what has to be done. It’s the doing that always seems to elude us. No, that’s not true, we’ve actually managed quite a of doing. Our problem is more along the lines of doing it successfully.

That and the fact that we rarely write dialogue last. It’s like eating dessert first, only more fun.

^{* – Except when we’re not.}

• Advice for the aspiring: ‘Write the truth’ – A dramatic weekend with screenwriting instructor Robert McKee
• Susan Gable