How screenwriting helped me be a better writer

Screenwriting-
It can help you be a better writer. Really!by Kitty Griffin

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Not too long ago someone asked me what I felt helped me most with writing.

Getting an MFA was good. But ...

     If I were to say what helped me to become a good writer I would say learning to write a screenplay. Had I not taken a screenwriting class I don't think I'd be published.

Why? Because screenwriting teaches two things, a three-act structure and, how to write an electric scene. How to write a scene so that the reader can "see" it. 

The book Arthur is looking at is "Goodnight Gorilla." There are no words. But he gets it. He understands the scenes.

The pictures took him on a journey and he followed it.

That's just what you need to do whether you are writing a picture book or a novel. You want to create scenes that the reader can follow.

When I first started out I heard all the time from editors, "Gee, you're a good writer, but you move so fast I couldn't keep up."

The story was running away from me.

If you ever watched the television series, "Lost" I really think that was a show where the story ran away from the writers. They got lost in their own creativity.

What can you do as a writer? You can take a class at your Community College. You can get books on screenwriting, try Viki King's book, "How to Write a Movie in 21 Days". Also the book, "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder is a good one.

One of the best conferences I ever attended was the Austin Film Festival. I heard the Cohen Brothers talk about structure. I took a class with Gary Ross, the writer/director of Pleasantville and many more feature films. I stood in line just behind Sandra Bullock (she's tiny!) and I had the absolute time of my life. There were 900 men and maybe 50 women. There was so much testosterone in the air even I felt aggressive. 

It is such a different world from writing for children, but I'm glad I dove in. (I didn't stick with it, although my one screenplay that I wrote took first place in the Moondance Film Festival. )

As I finish up my newest novel, I am going to spend the next few days looking at it from a screenwriter's perspective. What it taught me to do was to look at my scenes carefully, to make sure they help build the story. I want to make sure each chapter has a rise to it. Most of all, I want to make sure that my readers won't get lost.

There Must Be More To Life

A figure as towering as Maurice Sendak in the field of children’s literature deserves not one but a multitude of tributes, so I add my my own to Carol’s wonderful sentiments in Wednesday’s post.

I didn’t discover Maurice Sendak’s book Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life till my late 30s, but count it among my favorites.  Published in 1967 and dedicated to Sendak’s sealyham terrier, Jennie, Higglety Pigglety Pop! chronicles the adventures of Jennie the dog, who leaves home because “there must be more to life.”

            I re-read the book last night and was surprised to remember how terrifying it is.  Jennie becomes nurse to Baby, who refuses to eat.  A nurse gets just one chance to feed Baby, and if she fails, the nurse is eaten up by the downstairs lion.  Jennie calls Baby’s parents, who left Baby behind when they moved to Castle Yonder.  Baby’s mother explains, “[W]ith all the hustling and bustling we forgot our old address and phone number and just didn’t know how to get in touch.”  Jennie asks how she should send Baby back to her parents:

“By lion,” said the lady.  “There is one in the cellar and he knows the way.”

Jennie shivered.  “Did you know that lion has eaten up six nurses and I don’t know how many babies?”

“Tell him Baby’s name and he won’t dare eat her.”

“What is Baby’s name?  And what about me?”

There was no answer.

“Hello?  Hello?”

It was no use.  The lady had hung up.

What a horrifying rendition of childhood.  Not only have Baby’s parents abandoned her, but they hardly seemed to notice she was gone.  Baby’s Nurse is a hungry terrier who ate all the breakfast.  And the only way for Baby to get back to her parents is by lion.  Her mom and dad can’t even be bothered to give the nurse proper instructions to make sure Baby isn’t eaten on the way home.  And this is not the cordial, pretty lion of Pierre, Who Didn’t Care – who is scary enough in his own right – but a fanged, ferocious beast.

When I nibble my two-year-old daughter’s foot, she giggles and scolds, “No, don’t eat me.”  Re-reading Higglety, it dawns on me that she understands this game in a very different way than I do.  I just like to hold her in my arms and make her squeal.  But she is seeking daily confirmation that I am not, in fact, going to eat her.  If I nibble her foot with my teeth, she admonishes, “No, pretend!”  When I nibble with my lips, she relaxes, “That’s better.”  So for her there are levels of pretending.  Teeth are “real” pretending, and too scary.  Lips are pretend pretending, and safer.  “My God,” I think.  “I gnashed my terrible teeth.”  Sure enough, my daughter said, “Be still!”

Sendak had a direct access to the deepest fears of childhood and a gift for translating them to stories in a way that makes profound emotional sense to children.  In many ways, these fears transcend childhood to echo through our adult lives, for they are not merely children’s fears, but human fears.  In one way or another, don’t we all fear being devoured?  In her New York Times obituary for Sendak, Margalit Fox captured Sendak’s knack for trusting children’s perspectives, noting his respect for “the essential rightness of children’s perceptions of the world around them.”  How I love and admire that trust and aspire to let it guide my own work.

Reflecting on Sendak’s gift for channeling children’s fears helps remind me why we do this, why we devote ourselves to writing for children, why Saturday night at the Metz house looks like this:

Bruno Bettelheim wrote that for a story to enrich a child’s life, it must “stimulate his imagination; help him to develop his intellect and clarify his emotions; be attuned to his anxieties and aspirations; give full recognition to his difficulties, while at the same time suggesting solutions to the problems which perturb him…giving full credence to the seriousness of the child’s predicament.”

What could be more a more serious predicament than being abandoned by your parents and left in the cellar, staring into a lion’s gaping jaws?  Maurice Sendak was deftly attuned to children’s anxieties and treated them with the respect and seriousness and imagination they deserve.

In Higglety Pigglety Pop!, Sendak’s dog Jennie mused that there must be more to life than having everything or having nothing.  There is.  There is the possibility, however fleeting, of enriching one another’s lives, through writing or drawing or cooking or laughing or talking or, like Pierre, simply caring.

Thank you, Mr. Sendak, for enriching all of our lives.

Love to Write for Children? Spread the Love – to Them

Year-end is a good time to stop and think about why we do what we do. Why do many of us chose to write for children? Why does Andrea spend hours agonizing over the perfect rhyming word? Why does Miss Kitty unleash her popcorn brain on the youth of America?

            Speaking for myself, I spend hours on YA stories because I like young people. Good books provide not only knowledge and information for children and teens, but also provide a safe escape from their rapidly changing, sometimes angst-driven lives. We should encourage children's love of reading – and writing. Writing's an important life skill – and if students are cheered on, maybe they’ll grow to love the process as much as the Route 19 Writers!

The school district where I live thankfully has a strong writing program. Focus on writing starts early, in grade school, and continues through graduation and all those hair-pulling college essays. In 6th, 7th & 8th grades, the writing labs in our two middle schools offer an extra special component – interested adults are invited to attend a training session, and then come in throughout the school year and help students by giving an "adult conference" for their writing assignments. After more than six years of helping, student papers can still make me burst out laughing and, sometimes, struggle to hold back tears.

The goal of this volunteer program is two-fold: to help students with their writing assignments and enthusiastically encourage their efforts.

As you probably well know, there's a right way and a wrong way to work with children. As my gift to our readers, I’d like to share the following time-tested guidelines for working with student writers. The guidelines were developed by some pretty terrific educators at our writing labs (plus some tweaks from me).

Conferencing Guidelines

(some of these might sound odd or even bossy, but bear with me)

·        Review the paper’s guidelines beforehand, and make sure you understand what the teacher is looking for in this assignment. Trust the teacher!  Each assignment is building different skills and you’re just seeing one tiny slice of what's planned for the year.  (You may think the concluding paragraph is a mess, but the teacher may not care – that may be a lesson she hasn't focused on yet)

·        Introduce yourself to the child and greet the writer by name. ( Hi Sam, I'm Mrs. Ramaley, I love your jersey. Are you a hockey fan? a little something to break the ice helps). Sit side by side with the paper on a table in front of you.

·        Make sure the writer has a pencil and holds it ready to write. Feel free to jot notes on a spare sheet or the student’s “conference” sheet provided by the teacher, but YOU should NEVER write on the student’s paper.  If you write on the paper, you are “taking ownership”. Not good.

·        Ask the writer to read his or her entire paper out loud. You’ll be amazed at how often a writer will self-correct when they read out loud. Encourage them to make notes/corrections right away when they stumble on an error so they don't forget to fix it.

·        First, find something in the writing to Praise (wow, you’ve done a really great job in finding 2 strong quotes), then Question an item that needs improving (hmm, the teacher wants 3 events to support your topic sentence, but you’ve only got 2. Can you think of a 3rd example you could add?). If a student seems stuck, Suggest something that may jog the writer's thoughts. This can be tricky; it’s their paper and you don’t want to rob them of the chance to come up with an idea, but sometimes they need a nudge. (You haven’t mentioned the best friend in the story. Could you use something that happens with Jeremy for your 3rd event?). Your mom/dad/auntie/grandpap/wise adult intuition comes in handy during a conference.

Here’s a few Questions you can use:

o   What do you think is the strongest part of your paper? The weakest?

o   Is there anything you’d like me to pay attention to?

o   Can you tell me more about  . . . ?

o   What would happen if . . . ?

·        Focus on a few areas for revision; DON’T overwhelm the student with too many changes – trust me, their eyes will glaze over. For a strong writer, maybe 3 suggestions. For a child who is struggling, maybe just one - if you can help them improve one thing and make them feel good about it – that’s something to be proud of. You're not there to “fix” the writer’s paper or to get the writer an A. You’re there to encourage the student and help him or her meet the assignment requirements. Be especially wary of not trying to do too much with your OWN CHILD.

·        Recommend a second adult conference, if needed.

·        Alert the teacher if you see a problem you can’t solve. Be discrete, and keep your experience confidential. (No blabbing to another adult that you just conferenced with that Ramaley kid and boy, did she need help – no no no no no!)

·        Always remember that you have no idea what kind of day a child is having – maybe her best friend just yelled at her, or maybe her dog died this morning. A friendly word and praises and a few minutes of interested attention can do more good than your realize.

Happy Holidays to you and yours! And may the New Year bring some Happy Conferencing!