Writers often attend writing classes not to learn anything but because we hope that “deadlines” and “structure” will keep us writing.

I think that what we mean when we say that we need structure is human connection. We need the company of other writers.

Nobody needs a class to have structure or a deadline. You can decide to structure your writing life any time you wish: you can decide that every morning, at 7am, you’ll write for thirty minutes before you go to work. That’s structure. You can decide that you must finish a script by the Sundance lab deadline. But these structures and deadlines hardly ever work, and they certainly don’t work in terms of sustaining your efforts over time. My deadline for posting this tip was Friday. It's now Tuesday. So what!

This thing we call “structure” when we attend a class is really a euphemism for “friends”. We need people. We need allies. We need other brains who know what we’re writing about, and how it’s going, what we’re trying to figure out, or to just be there with us while we write. The reason I wrote this tip after missing the Friday deadline is not my feeling bad about missing a deadline. I managed to write this tip (by Wednesday) because I know that my friend Ekwa reads my tips every time I write one, and I have her in mind and write for her when I write something.

If you had a real ally who honestly cared about your work, who encouraged you, who didn’t criticize you in the guise of giving “useful feedback”, who got excited any time you made progress, who didn’t lose their patience with you – if you had an ally like that who simply sat with you while you wrote, you wouldn’t need any structure. You would take them up on the company any chance you got, scheduled or not, structured or not, deadline or no deadline, and you would make tremendous progress.

We can choose to be that for each other. We can each find a writer or a group of writers, set up some guidelines that will protect us from invalidation and remind us to encourage each other, and we can flourish by being that for one another. (I’ll write about how to set up a healthy writing group at some point.)

What makes writing so damn difficult is the isolation around it. If “structure” is what we need because we’re too embarrassed to say that we need friends, then heck, let’s call it that. (We’re all too embarrassed to say that we need friends.)

In my writing classes, I send people on “writing dates” with each other outside of class. Two writers meet somewhere to work together. This isn’t about collaborating; it’s about having company while you write. It’s amazing how much concentration and impetus you can get just from sitting down across from another person who is writing as well.

It doesn’t always work. You might still doodle and check your emails. But if you keep meeting over time, things will shift. You’ll begin to write again.

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT:

Call someone up, tell them that you’re working on a writing project (make one up if you aren’t really), and suggest that you set up a writing date. Meet at a Starbucks or a fancy hotel lobby (hotel lobbies are well lit, quiet, have no music playing, have couches, tables, outlets, and you don’t have to buy anything to sit there). Write together, each working on your own project, for an hour. See if you can set up another one. Now that you have some connection, you can introduce some structure to it: decide to meet every Monday evening or something like that.

If you have no idea what to write or how to even begin, read my article called “Writing exercises to help you write badly”. You may also want to read the article titled "How to Give and Receive Useful Feedback". This article will set you on a good path towards becoming a good ally to someone and training them to be a good ally to you.

Oh yes: and make sure you have no access to the internet while you write. If you need internet to “research”, do you research another time, and use your writing date to actually do the writing. Internet distractions are the death of writing dates.

Feel free, in the “comments” section below, to publicize your search for a writing date. See if there are any takers!

ON-GOING ASSIGNMENT:

I’m in search of a title!

I'm looking for a snazzier, catchier, more accurate title for these weekly tid-bits. I didn’t like “weekly tips” (they’re more than tips…?) and I don’t like “weekly lessons” (they’re not quite lessons…?) Plus, I don’t like the word “tips”, or the word “lesson”, or the word “weekly” for that matter.

And so: I'm putting the word out! If you have an idea, would you post it in the comments below? Or write me your idea? Shoot out to me any idea: the good, the bad, the ugly. A "bad idea" might spur another idea and lead me to the perfect title for this page!

I'm also very interested in hearing any other feedback or ideas regarding these weekly "messages". What type of tips would you want? Should it be a Q&A /advice-column type of thing? A space for folks to write specific questions? Or any particular topic/s you'd want me to write about?

Thanks for letting me know!

Love scenes are often the ones that fall. The lines feel hokey. The writer is lost at sea. She knows that the scene isn’t working but there’s no getting around it… the story calls for it. This is where the two characters must bond…

So what do we do? How do we create love scenes that actually work?

A few tips:

TIP #1:  Add conflict. The conflict can be entirely external to what is happening between your two love-birds. They could be happily making out but ouch! One of them has a toothache. Or ate something bad.  Or the phone keeps ringing. Or one of them has a deadline at work; file must be sent in by 2am. It’s 1:45am and we’ve only just begun… Any bit of external conflict can spruce up a love scene.

TIP #2:  Add conflict. There can be tremendous conflict between two people who totally love each other. In fact, the more they love, the bigger the conflict.  Conflict doesn’t mean “bad things happen”. Bad things can happen without there being any conflict. Like: my computer just crashed. Except I’m on the beach having a blast playing Frisbee. Who cares if my computer crashed.

Conflict means that someone wants something, but an obstacle is in the way of them getting it. If I have to turn in a report by midnight or I lose my job, the computer crash is definitely conflict.

How does this apply to our love birds? Give each lover a goal: something they want to achieve. Make it very concrete and measurable. No vague, immeasurable goals like: “I want him to approve of me”. Blugh. Give them each a measurable goal: meeting it is a yes or no answer. For example: “I want him to touch my hair”, or “I want him to ask me how I’m feeling”, “I want him to suggest that we get married.” These are measurable goals. Whether or not they are met is a yes or no question.

If each person in a love scene has a goal like, no matter how “lovey” the scene is, it will be filled with conflict and therefore: with entertainment. (More on that in your assignment below.)

TIP #3:  Add conflict. A third way to spruce up a soapy, campy love scene is to add conflict. That’s right. I said it again: conflict. Consider adding internal conflict. Not something environmental like a toothache, not something inter-personal like the other person’s cluelessness about what you want, but internal conflict: stuff inside the character’s brain that makes them reticent: feeling shy, insecure, worried about coming across as sleezy. Oh, the list goes on with all the noise that plagues our mind as we try and get close to another human being.

Add conflict. Add conflict. Add conflict. The greater the love, the greater the conflict.

And remember: people don’t bond by blabbing away and talking about their lives. People bond through action. Let’s see the two love-birds do something together (that adds opportunity for conflict!) rather than sit across the table and discuss their childhood.

Ready for your weekly assignment?

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT

In the spirit of this holiday that’s designed to make single people feel horrible about themselves:  write a romantic scene. For the purposes of this assignment: it’s a hetero couple. A guy. A gal.

Pick two characters. Could be two characters from a project you’re working on, or you can base two characters on two people you know from your life. They’ll become fictional as soon as you start writing them. The real-life people are just there to inspire and launch you off

Now let’s write that bonding scene. Pick and choose any or all of the following sources of conflict:

1) External conflict: the slumlord hasn’t fixed the heat. Whichever apartment they’re hanging out in is freezing cold. (the other apartment is far and snow makes it impossible to drive.) As you write the scene, remember that your characters are freeeeeezing!

2) Inside the guy’s head: he’s aware that he has a reputation as a “womanizer”, and that this woman may be leery of him for this reason. Therefore, to win her trust, he makes it a policy not to initiate any physical contact. He will not touch her unless she touches him first. His goal: to get her to initiate physical contact so he can be assured that she trusts him.

3) Inside her head: The woman is not sure if he’s attracted to her. On top of that, she’s self-conscious about a horrible hair-cut she got that day. She decides that she won’t make a fool of herself by initiating something. Only if he initiates contact, she’ll know that he’s attracted to her and take it from there. Her goal: your guessed it. Her goal is to get him to initiate contact so that she can be assured that he's attracted to her.

OK! Let’s get to work.

Remember that what is in their head never needs to be said, spoken, uttered, or even hinted at. People don’t share their thoughts.

Write this as an improvised scene and let’s see how these two live-birds duke it out, in the cold, on Valentine’s Day.

Happy writing!

Want to be a better writer, a more prolific writer, and actually enjoy writing rather than tackle it like it’s homework?

Take my screenwriting workshop! Next one is weekend of February 28-29.

I'm a big believer in developing technique and becoming super skilled at whatever craft you want to get good at.

In any given craft: writing, directing, photography, painting, there is so much to learn.

The key to flourishing, however, is to learn as much as possible, and then forget all about it when you are actually creating, when you are engaged in your craft.

I just taught my camera workshop this weekend and went through key concepts to strategic camera work as well as a library of tools for planning shots and compositions. Participants spread out throughout the day to exercise the variety of techniques.

What I told, them, however, is that once they're on set and looking at the monitor, they need to abandon being heady about it. Once you're on set, you forget everything you've learned and you immerse yourself in an intuitive and emotional experience. You look at the monitor and search for an emotional response to what you're looking at. If the shot moves you, it's working. If it doesn't move you, if it reflects this or that technique, it won't move your audience either.

I tell my writing students the same thing: know the craft better than anyone else in the world. But when you sit down to write, you put all that learning away. When you write, you're in your characters' shoes. Your character isn't thinking about outlines or archetypes or page numbers. Your character is jealous, or heartbroken, or excited or hopeful or angry. Once you sit down to write, forget the outline, forget structure, forget the craft.

Writing is an emotional experience. If you're having feelings as you write, your reader will as well. If you let your hair down and write what excites you, you'll inevitably write something fresh and original and unique and universal. If you're thinking structure, you'll be hitting one false note after another and end up with contrived dialogue and a paint-by-number screenplay.

I have a 24x30 drawing hanging on my wall that I made with a pack of crayons. There was no craft involved in covering this large piece of newsprint with color. It was entirely an intuitive and enjoyable experience. This drawing reminds me of how I want to work no matter what the medium is.

Every film is a piece of newsprint and a box of crayons. If I'm having fun, I know I'm on the right track.

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT:

That's right. You'll need a piece of paper (could be a post-it note, or whatever), and you'll need a writing instrument. A box of crayons would be awesome (can get them at Duane Reade), but if you want to do this right now, just grab a post-it and a pen off your desk and get to work.

Close your eyes and scribble. Some more.

Hang it up by your computer.

Someday your films will be that good.

This past weekend, I shot a 17-page short, replete with martial art fights, in just three days. We never went over-time. Here's another economical-camera trick that saves time and raises production value:

In the diagram below, I have an isolated shot of a girl at the kitchen sink. In addition to this shot, I needed a shot of the girl speaking to her mother at the kitchen table.

Rather than create three shots: one at the sink, one at the table, then a third master shot to establish the kitchen, I placed a single pan that followed the girl from the sink to the table. In other words: I began with a single shot of the girl at the sink, then panned over with her to the table, ending on a shot of the girl and her mother having their dialogue.

This simple pan reduced three camera set-ups into one, single shot and wham, I just saved at least 40 minutes of camera set-ups, allowed the actors to flow through an entire scene rather than chop it up, and I raised production value with an elegant and super easy camera movement.

The diagram below demonstrates: The shot begins with girl at the sink. We pan over with her as she walks to the table, revealing the mother sitting at the table, and covering that conversation in that same shot. This same, simple pan also established the space, stitching the sink and table together, giving us the special orientation we need to understand the kitchen they're in.

All that was left to do after this elegant pan was to punch in on each close-up, of the daughter and mother. I didn't really need the mother's close-up because this was the daughter's scene and I didn't think I would use it in the edit. But with all the oodles of time I ended up, given how economic the camera work was, I was able to easily get that close-up just to have it.

For a whole slew of these easy and elegant camera techniques, join me this weekend for a unique (and uniquely inexpensive) Directing Camera Workshop.

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT:

Come up with two shots that take place in a single scene, then stitch these two shots together into a single shot, using a simple pan. Like the kitchen scene diagramed below, Make the end of the pan reveal new information: such as a character in the room, or an object we didn't know was there until we panned to it.

Reveals can be quite humorous. For example, we can watch someone deliver a very touching and dramatic speech, then pan over to reveal that they are speaking to a stuffed animal.

(My apologies for Friday's lesson showing up on Tuesday. I was on a shoot.)