Something you need to prepare for in screenwriting is getting notes on your script from a whole bunch of people.  The trick being to sift the useful feedback from what isn’t so helpful.  That works when it’s a project you’re in control of, but when you’re a hired hand the situation can be very different.

I’ve had that experience working for Doctors, and had the pleasure of working with intelligent and likeable script editors who presented me with a whittled down version of the notes they gathered from speaking to several sources, that we worked on so as to shape the scripts to a better next draft.  Likewise, when I wrote a trial script for The Bill, I was dealing with an astute script editor who knew the characters and world of the series better than I did, and helped me sharpen my work to better match the expectations of the series.

In film though, things are different.  There’s an urgency to get the right draft finalised just so, without the need for a prolonged development process that has to be paid for and means that production can’t start just yet.  And notes can come at you from all sides, a contradictory blur that you have to synthesise into a next draft that is as much concerned with keeping peoples’ egos in check as anything related to writing a quality script.

This reaches whole new levels of nonsense when you come across some of the people who purport to be producers and want to have an input into the development of what was once your brainchild.  Case in point: The Young Victoria.  Which reaches our screens thanks in part to HRH Sarah Ferguson.  Well, you could argue that she has regal credentials, if only by association.  And as the author of the Budgie the Helicopter books, it’s possible she knows something about stories.  Isn’t it?

What got me alarmed at the prospect of the former Duchess of York’s involvement in the world of film was this comment in today’s Mail on Sunday (a journal I follow scrupulously to keep up with former minor royals):

“(Victoria and Albert) loved each other totally, and uncovering that really was revelatory to me.  I couldn’t believe the love was so similar to my love for Andrew.  The love they had, I had.  I took the idea of making a film about this to Hollywood 15 years ago.  A group of people did pick it up and we went to script on it.  But when I saw the script I knew it was wrong.  It was very Hollywood and rather inappropriate. So, I said ‘No’.  I tore up the script.”

Imagine.  You slave away on a screenplay about the life of the young Victoria before she becomes queen.  And it’s ripped up by your producer because it doesn’t remind her of her own relationship with a royal.  Puts my anecdote about Jean Claude Van Damme turning down my cagefighting movie because his character dies in the third act into perspective. Presumably the version of the Victoria story that’s been brought to our screens gives life to Fergie’s penetrating insights, such as that the princess “loved to play charades”.

It has to be said that The Young Victoria is not at the top of my list of films to see.  Certainly not while there’s still Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino to be viewed, plus Bolt in 3D, and — albeit with many reservations — Watchmen.  And there’s something about Sarah Ferguson milking her royal connections that brings out the republican in me.  Which doubtless means I can scratch her off the list of potential producers for the projects I’m developing at the moment.  But at least my way I get to be retained as writer.

I’ve been aware of John Truby for a few years, since a director friend went on one of his courses.  I read the notes she’d made, and it seemed like Truby was another contender for the writing guru crown, the distinction being that instead of getting you to structure your story in 3 or even 5 acts, he got you to look at 22 factors.  22 is more than 7 times as big as 3, right?  So was Truby 7 times as good, or just 7 times more pedantically detailed?

It’s only now that I’m reading John Truby’s book The Anatomy of Story that I can really hope to answer that question.  And it has to be said that I’m very impressed.  What comes across clearly is the depth of Truby’s perceptions.  Not only that, but he’s captured his insights into a series of questions that you can apply in the development phase of your work, and by doing that he ensures you’re in the driving seat, rather than merely a spectator as he barks his version of wisdom at you, which is how I feel at times when I read McKee.

Truby has thought a great deal about what makes a story tick, in ways that help to cement the empathy of audiences.  His interest is in creating protagonists living in situations so fascinating that people are compelled to follow their journeys.  The emphasis is on shaping everything around that journey, so it resolves critical questions and doesn’t waste time delving into the irrelevant.

One area in which Truby is particularly strong is in exploring a character’s moral behaviour, which in this context concerns the way they interact with others.  Specifically he suggests that a protagonist should be morally flawed at the outset of the story, that is have them acting in such a way that they are seen to hurt at least one other person at some level.  This sense of morality as an observable trait that can thus be seen to change over the course of a story is one I find fascinating and convincing.

By removing morality from the realms of the abstract and exploring it as something manifest in behaviour, and hence filmable, it gives another dimension to the process of story development.  Many myths are fundamentally stories about morality, and Truby’s steer in this regard is a valuable aid in giving your story a mythic dimension.  Plus, a lot of commercially successful movies work at that level, and I’d be interested to discover how my own morality changes when I’m exposed to tremendous wealth.

Where Truby excels is in creating templates to explore different aspects of story.  He makes sensible propositions about premise, structure, character design and so on, and then gives you the questions that will help you determine the answers to those issues for your own story.  In effect, he’s done the intellectual heavy lifting for you, and leaves you to benefit from his analysis.  So far I’ve yet to find his approach less than useful, and utility is the measuring stick by which I judge books on screenwriting.

I thoroughly recommend The Anatomy of Story, which at this point is only available in hardback: and has considerably nicer paper than the cheap coarse grain stuff used in my hardback copy of McKee’s Story.  Of such trivialities are sentiments made.  I’m still reading the book, and continue to benefit from what I’m coming across: this is an excellent text whether you’re embarking on a screenplay, novel, or pitch for a comic series.

It’s not that there’s much wrong with The International.  More that there’s not much right about it either.  It’s a perfectly competent thriller of a sort that you’ll have seen many times before, with a few interesting differences.  Like, despite its American tone it’s set in Europe.  And its direction is far superior to its script, which hits some of the right notes you’d expect in a conspiracy yarn, but doesn’t really get the blood racing.

Directed by Tom Twyker, the creative force behind Run Lola Run, it’s Twyker’s choices and instincts that separate the film from so many other contenders.  Pity about Eric Singer’s screenplay, which didn’t really do much for me.  There’s lots of perfunctory stuff about a global banking conspiracy involved in assassinations, and the bad guys send their team out to hunt goodies Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.

He’s an intrepid Interpol agent, she’s a New York district attorney: together, they fight crime.  And to give them credit, they do their best with a lacklustre script that Twyker does a fine job with, considering.  There are some lovely touches: Watts gets hit by a car, and rather than bounce back straight away, she’s actually hurt by it, and you get to see the bruising later.  A world away from the Bourne style antics I suspect someone involved in commissioning this movie had in mind.

There’s a general sense that the locations are lived in, and not just there to be used for set pieces.  People act in credible ways when violence erupts in their midst.  In the seconds following an assassination, the police faff around in shock before responding: just the sort of human detail that brings the film to life intermittently.

The problem is, bluntly, who cares?  It’s not news that bankers can be an unpleasant bunch, but rather than giving the story a topical resonance it just hangs there in the background, while the protagonists chase from one country to another being followed by identikit gunmen.  Along the way there are some effective set pieces, such as when Clive Owen looks in a traffic jam for the car that contains his pursuer, only to discover that the driver has abandoned it amid the gridlock.

The corporate thriller certainly can work, as Michael Clayton proved admirably the other year.  There was a sense then though, that the writer knew and understood the world of corporate law he was writing about, and created characters that inhabited it awkwardly, credibly, humanely.  By contrast, The International comes across like an A level student who has just discovered that global economics is, like, a bad thing, and wants to edjumacate you about it, even though she’s yet to experience the world of work.

Fingers crossed, Tom Twyker will go on to make the successful mainstream thriller that he’s clearly angling for here.  He’s got talent in abundance: what he doesn’t have is an interesting script.  I can only speculate about how this project came into being: was it Twyker’s baby all along, or was he assigned to it by Paramount?  Whatever the truth, I hope he delivers the goods next time more compellingly than he did in this mediocre outing.