Magazine

Writing for the screen

Tim Firth, scriptwriter of Calendar Girls, Amy Jenkins who wrote the BBC TV series This Life and Christopher Hampton, who has seen 12 of his scripts turned into film, were joined on the panel of Masterclass experts by Deborah Moggach whose script for Pride and Prejudice brought this classic to the big screen in 2005. Each brought their perspective to the art and business of writing scripts.

The audience of around 200 writers had signed up for this Masterclass, which was organised by the Arvon Foundation. Tim Firth’s journey into scriptwriting began on an Arvon course which produced Macbeth the musical. Moving swiftly on, Tim emphasised the value of the stage as a training ground. The ability to interact with actors and make adjustments to the script provides a great opportunity to learn how the words work.

Tim Firth then spoke about the ‘ability to write less’. The joy of writing can be a danger for the script writer. With historical pieces there was a particular danger of putting the writer’s learning on display. His advice was to ‘take a story, rather than start with a blank page’. The key was the characters. But a writer of scripts needs to develop a ‘strong visual, not just an emotional, intelligence’ to turn a story into a script.

The tight schedules of TV meant that the words had to be served up ready for recording on the first take. Tim worked for 20 years writing for TV, including two series of the witty but underrated All Quiet on the Preston Front. Film work falls between stage and TV, providing some time to hone the script during the shoot.

Amy Jenkins has risen to the TV challenge with the successful series This Life, which she devised. She identified one challenge that differentiated television from film work - to ensure that the audience would return. ‘You have to make them want to be part of the world you are creating’. Every writer receives the advice to make sure that the first paragraphs of a book engage the reader and it’s the same with TV. Film, traditionally, has the luxury of building the characters and plot slowly.

After outlining the challenge, the opening scenes of This Life were shown which set the characters and conflicts that would provide the dramas and storylines for the series. This showed countless visual clues to engage the imagination of the audience in an analogous way to that adopted by a fiction writer.

Deborah Moggach was able to illustrate some of the challenges faced with adapting England’s most popular story, Pride and Prejudice, with selected scenes from the 2005 film. Competing with previous film and TV adaptations, plus several iconic performances, clearly did not daunt a writer whose cv includes 15 novels.

Deborah emphasised the importance of how each character is introduced. Because actors habitually do not read the stage instructions, she said that, when it was vital to make a point, she resorted to entering them in bold type. Her own route to scriptwriting had been through downloading and studying other scripts she admired. After that it was a matter of studying the book, watching the other versions, then writing the script, translating the book into scenes and dialogue to tell the story.

Christopher Hampton spoke about combining the role of writer and director. There was a great risk that the film would be self-indulgent, so this should only be undertaken by those who ‘no longer need to be right every time’. Criticism and consensus were important factors in creating a team product like a film.

He warned writers about dealing with directors. ‘They don’t know what they want, but can see what they don’t like’. So the writer has to take the lead and be prepared to re-write several times.

The theatre provided different challenges because of the artificiality of the setting. Film requires the scenes to flow into each other. So the script must work with this limit to create a credible, visual reality.

The panel advised writers to recognise the trend towards plots that are character, rather than event, driven. ‘Characters can be an exaggeration’ as long as their portrayal was intimate, so that the audience could recognise something of their real or aspirational selves in what they are watching.

As for getting started, the theatre, a good agent or a course such as those run by Arvon are places to start. The Masterclasses showed the way to become a screenwriter. The whole process was revealed as both slow and uncertain, not unlike book publishing. For a TV series, the lead writer would produce ‘the bible’ which the lead script editor would then use and maintain to keep the writing team working.

Getting started was not the only problem. In 2005, half the films made in the UK were first films. Film is an unforgiving business. Making the second film appears to be the problem facing writers, producers and directors. Christopher Hampton revealed that he had 20 scripts that were as yet unmade. ‘It is a bit like going to a casino. There is nothing to learn from rejection’. It took 17 years for his script for ‘Carrington’ to be made, so persistence pays.

All the writers agreed that a script must sell itself from the page. The words must flow so that potential producers want to read it. If the script was not fun to read, it would just join the pile of unperformed material. So instructions should be minimal, including just enough to allow the actors to become the written characters.

The need to develop the visual side and the dialogue together was a common theme of this Masterclass. There was no agreement on precisely how to communicate the visual component within the script. Some favoured detailed instructions while others recommended a preamble to set the scene that followed. A consensus emerged around stating what you, as the writer, want rather than detailing how the scene should be achieved.

An interesting difference emerged between working methods in the US and the UK industries. In the US, team working was the norm. Each script was the product of the team, which probably accounted for the longevity of many American TV series. The UK reliance on a single writer to produce each episode did not seem to provide a recipe for durability. The UK soaps met the challenge by introducing fresh writers with the same script editor still in charge.

There seemed to be no solution to how to protect a story. If you have an original story then make sure you have a good agent to protect you. Your ‘big break’ seems to come after lots of smaller breaks. All these ‘masters’ had a decade or more of other writing and smaller productions to their credit before undertaking a large commission. So the lesson is to start somewhere. Start anywhere to get to know the business and, of course, get known.

The proceedings were guided at a cracking pace by Mark Lawson, presenter of Front Row, the weekday arts programme on BBC Radio 4. He was able to contribute a little drama himself with his late but timely arrival. Trusting to his cab driver, he allowed himself to be taken to the previous venue for the London Book Fair in west London. He managed to reach its new home at the Excel centre, built in east London’s old Docklands, by offering to pay the speeding fine for a replacement taxi driver.

I had one trivia question to which I hoped find an answer. I wanted to know who said ‘this is known as the film business, not the script business’. The story may be apocryphal but these words were supposed to have been uttered by a director when dealing with a scriptwriter who was upset that their carefully crafted words were being changed. I didn’t get a chance to ask my question but the panel would all have accepted the sentiment expressed. The script provides the structure and the characters. Look upon the script as the steelwork and services for a skyscraper. The end product will depend on the actors and the visual creative, but the foundation needs to be a good script.

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