Much of the time, writing seems a nebulous business.  Anything goes on the page…or does it?  In doing some development work on someone’s short film project, I once again become aware of the kind of thinking I’ve evolved about what makes a script work. 

Partly, that perspective allows me to see things that would clearly be redundant.  In this case, a scene which too early and clearly establishes that a central character is due a come-uppance.  Also, having established that said character is a nasty piece of work, there’s no point in giving further examples of it if they don’t shed extra light on their personality and motivations.  Another page or more saved. 

That bad guy is too monotone in depiction for my tastes, so I suggest that he also be a new father.  Still a shit, but I like to throw something into the mix to make the picture more complex, more human.  The writer-director isn’t convinced, partly because he’s so sold on this guy being a baddy, also on a practical production note because he’s not sure where he can wrangle a baby.  I suggest that a recording of a crying baby will do the job just fine, which is a useful suggestion…but still not one in line with the creator’s concept of his villain.

An old standby comes in handy on this occasion: swap a character’s gender to see if it makes things more interesting.  On this occasion it does, and before now that suggestion has led to whole new stories being developed.  One director I worked with had a notion of a house being broken into, and when I suggested it was a woman breaking in, a whole new scenario opened up.  Who was she, what was she after?  It turned out to be a mother looking for evidence that her son was gay, a world away from the conventional situation the director had begun our session with.

I see my role as akin to that of coaching: I’m there not to pull apart someone’s story, but to help a creator realise the best possible version of their vision.  One client came to me having had her script shredded in a script report she’d paid lots of money for, with no suggestion of what could be done to improve it.  Between us, we went back to square one and discovered her motivation, and then rebuilt from there so that her script — or at least the next version of it she went on to write — would be in line with that vision.   From being despondent when she called me, we concluded our session with her in high spirits — not the job itself done, but in a much better position to tackle it.

It’s too easy to dismiss someone’s creativity, far more interesting to help them fulfil a project’s potential by getting them to think bigger and think differently.  In pursuit of that goal, I’ll use whatever methods seem appropriate at the time.  With one client, I got him to pretend to be Pi director Darren Aronofsky, and stride round the cafe we were meeting in declaiming how he’d work with the source material in question.  Hey, whatever works: the guy has come back to me for further consultations.

Bottom line is this: creativity is a state of consciousness, or a whole bunch of them, and my job is to help people to tune in to theirs.  If they’ve come for consultation on a project, clearly they’re not finding it easy to get there solo, so I’ll do whatever it takes to limber up or limbo down until the sparks are flying once again, and they’re coming up with solutions for whatever apparent problems they had.  It’s fun, especially if you can do it over mocha and a piece of pecan pie.  And it might not be what most people professionally involved in script development do, but hey…it works.  Check out the script doctoring section elsewhere on this site for more info.