A Word on Words; 3730; Will Akers

fb he's been liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs ron johnson in all welcome once again to word on words my guest today it will acres a screenplay writer for twenty years will's had several scripts for

among them are destructive in the walls the world to chase ms tillman writing credits include low was important to today with is how to book your screenplay sox one hundred ways to make a great welcome will the world war one hundred ways to make a great i want again this by telling you that i'm so happy you're sitting in a chair i'm entering this program for thirty eight years and i would say that there have been not dozens but hundreds of people from time to time so you do this show you must know you're journalists i want to tell you all you wanna get this book your screenplays socks one hundred ways to make a great this is a book that tells you how to write and i congratulate you with having a head un office and

in the instructions on the right it's a great pleasure terry they're heavier now to tell the sordid it's all first off the phone book thank you had fun writing it and it ended and it's a it's a play in three acts man and men in each new act announces it with a billboard with patients actually and i thought we might begin by talking about china as you do in effect you're saying you know him best shot with write something you know about it you liked your western a western exact right western just address that issue john if you believe i have found that if you if you figure when you're good at which is hard to do right that means some people wonder for years in the woods last time for whatever screenplay or marble they should write and i thought i mean if you if you see that you really like

bank robbery movies like one of those if romantic comedies or what you find yourself running on netflix or going to a movie theater try and write that poker is writing is very difficult it's very hard to sit down and do it and so they're trying to do something that's a big stretch for you maybe my one transcendent a lot closer to home however the idea of write what you know being the only thing you should do i think that's terrible mistake because i heard howard no moral scientists use poor lard united states and he said he wrote what he knew it didn't take long and i think you're better off if you can write about your own emotions and what's important to you and i'm not a bank robber before i bought a bank robber yelled the research and found out about that but you always write about something that matters to you and john truett the he was a great screenwriting teacher he said write a screenplay will change your life if you don't sell it and we still change your life i think is pretty poignant it doesn't apply to every us is what i would have to

say as i read it and thought about but my conversation that you bought a book i was trying to write and still may be able to ride but i honestly think that many of the lessons in this book apply to fiction writing for the absolutely absolutely have had people who write novels that is a great book if you order on a marble well i don't think i would have to tell you as well when you talk about it familiar to do with religion on the issue of research there is a place in this book where you say beware erected a new currency it is a show but this gets us in there say do arts research center say dont do research which of these is correct an nra i think that maybe didn't make sense to the viewer but it will let them will tell you exactly what he

says the research is like weeks it will be and i've said this already wants writing is very difficult and researches farm and its great to go talk to helicopter pilot and prison guards in all kinds of people who were interesting and cool things to say about what it is you're trying to find out and it's fun for me anyway go hang out elaborate look stuff up the problem with research is if you do too much too early you know too much and you lose your story which is that your most important things in my suggestion is is to do a little bit of research to find out about what are your subject is to know something and they figure out your character's and figurative story and then write your movie do a draft and then you have the story on the page and then you can fix it but if you if you spend too much time in the library piling up stacks of books are making files of information you'll know too much in your story will get clogged and i'd had people had one woman coming once after the lecture and she had tears are ashes that i wish she had said this to me four years ago was i wasted four years to research and we just sat down to write i couldn't i could write and so i did a

screenplay about the fall of saigon and i read the new york times for a month a couple books and talked to people which took about a week and then i said then wrote the script and it was i got the story right in the character of wright and then as farce details then i gave it to people who knew about the subject and then they fix among crawls forty one and you suggest illinois that you get into a quick and intel was let the reader know where the reader is going i guess that raises the question in your fondue and as it has through without lines as well so the thing is is everybody's method is different whatever works for you to get the words on the page is the importance of ad like the tail pipe that once right from a detail pie that one thing you know like airlines don't write one jay mcinerney done right now and you just start writing other people write very detail allen's an income from their ahead of the

gas pump talk to my class who read the screenplay he hates to write c walked up and down the beach every day for three months thinking about a screenplay never wrote a word walk inside and one day a locked himself in a room for eight days and wrote the script and one must instill that's an interesting way to do it i didn't know you could do it at work so anyways found out like an outlier myself the vest or like to know where i'm headed some people like to fight it out as i go along anything that works for you is what works and and talk about that you need to i think to have an initial impetus for me to grab the view of the reader or the biggest mistake most beginning writers mike as they put the backstory in the first twenty thirty pages of their chagrin of the first fear for fourth of their book and we don't really care and that guy is and how he got there we want to be doing something in the simplest example is we need a gap he shaves he gets stressed he put a suitcase on car you drive to the tries that she doesn't take any gets on a try we found

out is that obama doesn't get cut all that stuff and so the guy get on the frying heat obama doesn't get it were interested and this is especially true in screenplays because you've got to grab people instantly or they're not going to really one of the problems i think with writers is they sit there alone and they write their thing and they don't understand how grotesque the competition is that their opinions and so they've got to write something that someone's gonna finish reading if not that may continue to at least get the finish and so you don't want to bore them on page one the six because that may be all you get but they deal yet from readers don't make a decision about what your own manuscript or what your life is going to survive and your writing something thats going to be made into a movie you're writing something there's always gonna read and give to their boss and then their boss would give it to their boss and then finally maybe we'll get to the person who can say yes because anybody can say no all along the line anyone is you work your way up and stop it and so you've got to do everything in your power to keep the

next to handing it out to the next person talk about character and character building and a lot of what they had to say about that was thursday and its own once again against the grain of what most people might might think you know and i have to give every aspect of a person's looks and personality oh gosh no comedy and you want an actor to be in your movie right now beats a tom cruise or somebody else tom hanks but you don't wanna make it so specific that if they turned it down you've got no place else to go and you want to try and give the reader let the reader create a character in his head to integration once a staff foot six and his blue eyes and this and this and this because the reader might like some actors have blonde hair and then you're in trouble with he said he had dark hair he writing for movies is as you quote of all of what it will be about oh right i was

about sean cullen i was in la and this happen to me i was in line at the green hills later there were two guys behind me twenty years old but it is defining forester and one guy said what's this movie about him again extreme said sean connery in your writing if you're writing a screenplay you're writing actor bite you want someone as an actor to commit to being your script and they will get my view can excite an actor to be in your movie it will not get made and this is true the movie cost a hundred million dollars or of your financing it with money raised from your dentist it's all the sign you've still got an actor to want to be in if you're payin them or if you're not first act is a storytelling and then you say to the vital ingredient is gone flip this bum and he has an interesting examples and anecdotes to document that was things you said was that in casablanca in great classic

<unk> they undergo guardian reporting the conflict the opponents really do satan is also a ripped opponent is also i never had thought about it until years when you could not talk about is the good guess in that love story and she's the one that he's fighting against to get to the end of the movie and they're the great thing about her as an opponent is he really loves are he really cares about and the hero is always big is who he's fighting with any story and so the opponent is incredibly important that you have a strong opponent for the road to be up against otherwise you you've got no no interest no story no conflict and they stop breathing and she because i think it's it's it's essentially a love story in there other opponents in the movie he's got straws of the german guy the island claude rains character who starts off as his in a maintenance up is his friend but the main thread of that whole story is his relationship with a

woman and so you know it's a love story he's a good gags she's the bad as you point out at a rat what comes our hero of rubble but you take him at the outset he's embittered with a bad guy that doesn't care about anybody and he says i stick my neck out for no one and in the movie he stuck his neck out for love and he's given up the one thing he wanted at the beginning the movie which was harder that's only thing he wanted the beginning was hard to be intimate he realizes that their love is less important in the war effort and so he gives up the only thing that's going to make him happy for more noble saying which means he's changed through the course of the story which is what you wanna try and cure now conflict opponent by the in the godfather in the mint bar the use you for now he can smile and

smart even frown you know he's the bad guy every time you we look at the little too slick gloriously great example but but unless you think about writing conflict you might miss that idea that he is always know the real me and malcolm which you can tell when you look at like that somebody that process by the president but but but but boy i think is a different case i think that's a great story and it's such a good movie mean one of things that i say is your movies to be about one thing if you can make your movie for years short story or a novel where play be about one idea and that story is about is a three hour movie but it's about michael wants to take revenge on the people who shot his father that's basically the whole plot that movie as a little bit more to it but they weren't seeing is the gap who wanted to kill him and so everything is about to board seniors and we don't even know for while he's a baguette

focus a lot so says lieutenant and he's together we have to fight against for a while then parties the ones lurking in the background is the big really bed bed get in there is that great scene at the view that fall within where where one of michael corleone so achievement and i'm from dover losers portly wasserman to meet with security and lonely own father's already tell that whoever comes to you that's gonna be the gap that deals with another thing you talk about nasty element of surprise vander need to have that element of it and as a great add to the drama the excitement and he gives an example of the team but they didn't have to talk about them the vital need for a surprise depending on what the story is legit you need to keep your audience interested and one way to do that is surprising them with new information as you go along the movie presumed innocent i think with harrison ford it's

got like twenty five different surprises as you go along as you as you read things happen and where things happen it getting bigger and more injury as a gay as you go along and one mistake when tara mad bad guess what the opponent is you need to kill your opponents off in the order of their badness you want to be you have to fight against the biggest gala last and beginning writer sometimes you wipe out the big at first when you've got nothing left but surprise was described to me as anything away about tom the man who ran the film writing program ucla he said that if you've got a bag of birds singing and you want to keep your audience there you could take your bag of birdseed and dump it on the ground and albers lead up in all leave at once they've given away all of your surprises but she just handed out one little birds at the time the birds will stay there all afternoon singing you're a surprise is a great weapon in your quiver as a writer he needed though about a little bit of time the lovin you're just joining us i'm talking with will acres about is both your screenplay socks and what fun it is to read a lot fun to talk about it

surprise the apartment may surprise that in them and shirley maclaine thinks jack lemmon the absolutely that talk about that saying they set that worked so well in the script is one of my all time favorite pieces of writing because early on the script and they tell you he had attempted suicide before they tell you he's got a colt forty five automatic and he shot himself in the knee when he tried to kill himself when he had tried to kill him so they establish early on in the story that there's a party next door and they will then there's a champagne bottle it comes into the apartment he says union champagne we need ice but the champagne bottle was there and so then finally when you go to shirley maclaine and her married boyfriend and she decides at the very intimate wishes i don't want this guy i want that guys like blows interface and she started running across town she runs up the steps to get to the man she loves even

as gunshot and in all those things happen on your manners about the gun and he tried to instill is on and she runs she bangs on the door to open door he's homeless for flowing bottle of champagne and you're surprised because you thought you heard a gunshot but in fact oh yeah now i know there's a bowl champagne in the lower courts however what's changing which you can do in a movie theater is they lack to you if you rewind it on dvd it is a gunshot in here are going to walk away new route thirty seconds later in the sea the bottle of champagne you think oh that must have been a gun but it wasn't that the set up of that the careful placing of those elements to make that thing work of interest as masterful and that leads me to another anecdote not a movie there is a friend to women one being raped in a parking lot in the other sunday that the thought of firsts right when she needs and she's got a gun is common ways galleries and you

wonder well but talk about a planet that they also says what you couldn't you don't miss it and they had the exposition is when you have to explain something dollars a piece the fact that they've gotten those cold exposition or try and had and so when they so when she needs the gun she's got the god that you cut to twenty minutes earlier in the movie she's kept put the gun in her purse will she picks it up bills while look at this great big pistol full pull itself put him up personnel so that will work so what she does she picks the gun up to hold like it's his dead fish that were going to drop that inner personal gets a laugh or be totally forget about it because you think the moment is about the laughs when in fact it's really about the government and about the moment tragedy in which to come to her when exactly thank you like you get to carnegie hall practice practice practice what's right but you know it comes together in this book in such a mean it is three x an art teacher and i'd do it

that's the thing i would teach you screenwriting available fifteen years and i've seen the city and students make a billion mistakes and what i learned was is all beginning writers make the same mistakes over and over and over again and so i thought and people pay me to critique their screenplays and they are making the same mistakes of the what i'll do is i'll give them a check with us which is what the book turned out to be doing these things to your script then send it to me in the upper teacher screenplay anyone have made those one hundred mistakes and we talk about character and plot and something really more interesting and please don't have character named rhyme one innocent and so i thought there is a reproduction only student paper with europe corrections and recommendations i take it that student been scored or were on that particular culture improve letter aha aha

but then you know it's not hamlet a dollar when he comes in to be or not to be a tears as you don't move own home good to be here as if it was it fun is is that well got a thing until my website to the seven deadly sins of screenwriting and to be is one of them and if you go there's also paid in there were circled every version also be on one page like fifteen times the state of music and edges shout i'm not paying attention to my writing because people are read screenplays the legend is all they read as the dialog and that's not the case they read the same description in the dialogue and they can they can tell on page one if you know how to tell a story that they can tell if you don't i write a sentence and that's kind of scary sweeney to calm him down and clean up your writing and make the pros relief low and it's gonna be clear because what you're thinking in your head is not necessarily what they're going to get off the page and it's very difficult to make

what's on the page bit what you wanted to me to someone who is reading it and that's something i think is very very important in that that's a motherly figure a lot of these are lots of that so i do this myself among right now right way to me that's as i arrived and you can do apple l for control of this go for your poster can get rid of that since it only about eighty percent of that do you need anything for joining us senator there's a definition a letter i can clean up the pros pretty well but i always give my work to my friends people critic critics about like who have been using for years the remote work and say you know well this is a terrible thing you don't you kill it you're on page one and he never comes back and i'll go oh gee that's a good idea so yes it's all act as always get my work done the people to read to give me advice on what i can do to fix it then you're talking here i take it about storytelling about about john a lot about plot and just gone back to jon for a minute here

you are was uncommon and you don't have any but the system is safe and then do something that you know you do you know mold infested years how do you focus on job i try i mean i'd try and write something i think someone's going to bat i don't wanna just amuse myself if i want any of myself or write a poem or a short story and read it now think that's great the screenplay and the novel you're not writing for for your writing so i'll sell secret to pick a subject that someone new hope is gonna buy so you want to pick a subject that is they lease for mobley commercial so that's kind of where i begin just cannot write something someone's gonna wanna pay ten bucks for on friday night the second act is a little writing that's where this is the unit that an are you clear in what you write and i have never seen another book that goes into the believable

detail but this one goes about how to write a sentence because it really matters that what you want to communicate is on the page and people write sentences or write paragraphs that they think they know what it means when in fact the guy reading it gets a completely different impression so there's a lot of tedious it's the most boring part of the book but it's a lot of tedious examples of bad writing and how to fix it it's very very important to ed body who read your work that they get what you mean and you're not there to say oh faggot really what i mean they got to get it off the page and the third act of what now know what you do when you finish it which is really the hard part about writing is the easy part in some ways because one thing that people don't consider when they sit down to sail of a writer is there also a salesman you're writing something that you gotta sell it and writing it as part of a budget for a way to find some way to get the hollywood and sell it and you and you've got to understand how hard it is for them two one by your work the competition is enormous

so you're it's got to be in age and if you don't have to have a manager but you have to work your way through the system and get your thing made or my baby's advice is forget the system write a screenplay they can take place in a house and raise fifteen thousand dollars to make the move yourself when you're a filmmaker that were in the works for armed cameras nine the john from memphis in my little bit in libya now and it really well and he's made three or four feature films for big budgets they started small and with the new technology it's not that difficult to make your own russia now nina cause i mean that everybody's got a camera lying around who has a friend who has a camera get a good good sound equipment and make sure it sounds right you need good actors but it's cheap to make a feature film out because of the cost of entry used to be expensive age of thirty five millimeter film and processing not just take and there's a time in your story that just because it's cheap to make a movie still have to spend all the time on your script as the scripts no good the movie will be any good and just because you convince someone to give you ten

thousand dollars to make the movie doesn't mean you need to start shooting today he needed it to more dresser script to make sure it's as good as it possibly can be and then shoot if you were to advise the person who really want to write from and i mean would you suggest that they write the character i'm like gene hackman word dr sean connery or not shirley maclaine lessons an aging dowager but what's so what's the direction you most suggest for success write something to the entrance of the new data right that can keep your chair in yourself in the chair the entire time i think a character is a great way to go because if you write a fascinating character and aging actors can a sigh oh i've never seen one like this let's do that but it's all wrapped together it was the character in the plot are tied together in the stories got to work the

main thing is write something you enjoy doing while you're doing it because if it doesn't sell at least you'll have a good time that's great advice i thank you so much for the bank you very much and all of you out there thank him as well will lakers johnson indoor for word on words reading