It’s the summer of Nolan. Inception rules the box office. It’s a blockbuster, for sure. But it’s nothing like what we have come to expect from traditional Hollywood summer fare.

I admit that I was overwhelmed, and my review is here.

Having thought about the film some more, I want to suggest that it’s got three traits that are worth pondering, and that illuminate problematic areas in much blockbuster screenwriting:

1 – Concept and consequence.
The world that Nolan creates in the film… The basic premise of the plot within this world, or rather worlds… There is so much setting up, and there is a seemingly endless potential for expansion. Indeed, the first hour of the film is dense with dialogue and set-ups, which need to be satisfactorily payed off in the second half of the film. Nolan elegantly by-passes stereotypical Hollywood storytelling in this area.

I’ve seen some comments here and there by people who were underwhelmed by the action sequences. But for me, the ultimate trick of the film is the expanding time frames in consecutive dream-worlds, and the way Nolan masterfully ties this concept to the very-slowly-falling van that drives off the bridge. The way time almost grinds to a halt here, at least in one layer of the story, and then the shock as the characters are plunged back into reality… I gasped more than once.

2 – Leaving the device alone.
The technology that enables the characters to travel between worlds is never properly explained. Thank God! It’s a given in the film’s story universe that all the characters are already familiar with it. Some will say this is chickening out from explaining the impossible. I would say that’s exactly the point, and Nolan is smart enough to understand that his audience would not accept any attempt at explanation, and trusts us enough to leave it alone and get on with the story.

3 – Character ambiguity.
A key point in the film. There is no real hero in Inception. DiCaprio’s character is a deeply flawed and often unsympathetic man. Nolan makes the best use of DiCaprio that I’ve seen in a long time. But added to this, Inception also lacks a villain. Ken Watanabe could be seen as the antagonist of the piece, but this assumption quickly falls apart. Thus, the film becomes something much more interesting than your common blockbuster, and provides a roller-coaster ride that is also deeply intelligent and emotionally complex.

The counter-point exists with Marion Cottilard’s very one-dimensional character. Which ties in perfectly with the intellectual concept of memories and dreams as the film unfolds.

I still think that Christopher Nolan is one of the three or four most interesting American filmmakers working today. David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky are others. And I still root for M. Night Shyamalan, although I have yet to see The Last Airbender…

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge (1872 – 1933)

Random thoughts after completing an enjoyable first draft:

A few years back, Pål and I wrote a couple of stageplays more or less on assignment, meaning that we pretty much wrote them for someone else to produce. Most writers will find themselves in this situation sooner or later. After all, we don’t usually get to write scripts for ourselves to produce. So whether it is writing a script for a producer, in collaboration with a director, for a theater troupe to produce, or in a workshop situation of any kind – be prepared for the job to quickly turn into a negative assignment.

Few people are good readers and responders. Most people naturally focus on what they don’t like or what they would have done different themselves, and forget that they are not the ones writing it. If production is imminent, fear can easily seep into the process too, with directors and actors more or less unwillingly focused on what they don’t want to do. I certainly know that I am capable of this behavior myself, and I’ve had to train myself not to act that way. And you can’t force anyone to understand this, you can only lead by example:

The bottom line is that you’re not going to get what you want by telling people what you don’t want.

But your readers are sometimes going to insist on exactly that. Pål once likened the experience of discussing a first draft to discussing kitchen utensils. It becomes really hard to deliver when your partner, boss or whoever tells you: “I don’t know what I want you to find, but it’s not a fork.”

You’re clearly on a negative assignment, and it’s draining your creative juices really quickly.

This sounds obvious and perhaps a little childish when I read it back to myself, but I think this negative approach is all too common, from amateur theater and all the way to professional filmmaking.

What to do?

With our current projects we decided that we needed to nurture ourselves a little, and thus agreed that we were going to be hardcore about what we would love to write. We were going to give ourselves a positive assignment. Our early meetings and discussions on the period scripts we’re now writing centered on what sort of visuals we would love to see, and what sort of themes we felt were resonating with us, without any thought of structure or practicality or indeed whatever anyone else might think about what we are attempting to do.

We then spent a few months writing a first draft that’s now done, where we joyfully threw anything we wanted to see into the mix. We ended up around 150 pages. Some good, some not so good, but at least there’s a surplus of pages and somewhere to go. And I believe the script communicates a positive approach to the storytelling.

We’re not going to lose that when we start revisions.

How many times have we seen scenes like this? Disaster movies are sure to have at least one “you need to see this” – some have close to a dozen. Is it just a harmless cliche? Or is it a sign of something worse: screenwriting advice mutated into dogma?

One of the first commandments of screenwriting goes “Show, Don’t Tell!” To be sure, that’s good, sound advice. Film is audiovisual storytelling, so your writing should be all about what can be seen and heard. But all advice must be combined with conscious thought. Otherwise you end up with insanely annoying characters that are incapable of telling each other anything. And all they can say is “I think you need to see this.”

Disaster movies are all about the spectacle. We don’t want to hear about the explosions. We need to see them. That doesn’t mean that every disaser movie has to be strictly formulaic in every scene. Sometimes a young officer can actually just tell the Colonel what’s up. It’s not always: Volcanoes = good, dialogue = bad.

An unthinking attitude to show, don’t tell, may lead to some problems:

1. Fragmentation. All scenes get steeped in spectacle, so the story ends up getting “loud”. May lead to your movie ending up as a string of explosive pearls.
2. Fear of dialogue.
3. Fear of monologue.
4. Characters behaving like cogwheels in a screenwriting machine.
5. Avoiding getting close to characters, and giving them depth.
6. Fear of ambiguity (what really happened?)

Keeping all this in mind, I still consider show, don’t tell, one of the best pieces of screenwriting advice you can get. You just have to remember that it’s not dogma to be followed blindly.

And that sometimes it’s really okay to tell, and don’t show.

The previous screenplay we wrote, Nidarholm, didn´t demand much research. It´s a horror/suspense story taking place in the present, and the setting was our home city. So apart from a few guided tours at Munkholmen, and reading up on autopsy procedures and the excorcism ritual, it was mostly about writing the scenes and getting the script done.

This time around, research is much more important. We´re writing a historical saga based on actual events and people  that lived a thousand years ago. I started out reading some introductory books on the subject, and quickly realized that I had to get structured and organized in my research. Here are some tips and thoughts on doing research for a screenplay.

1. Schedule it
The first thing you need to do is to actually commit to a research period. Just randomly reading some wikipedia articles for five minutes does not constitute serious research. As with all other writing processes I strongly recommend that you set up a deadline and make a plan, complete with goals. What do you need to achieve with your research? Write it all down, or else it doesn´t really exist.

2. Have a system
Every writing project should have a separate folder on your computer. Make a subfolder called Research, and if the subject is huge, make further subfolders to stay organized. Collect everything relevant in this folder: text documents, images from flickr or other sites, music, sounds, maps and so on. Paper is not obsolete yet, so keep a ring binder for hardcopies. Take notes and keep them tidy.

3. Keep track of the sources
Make sure that you note the sources of your information. That way you avoid being confused by your own notes later on. “Really? Where the hell did I find that weird claim? Damn it, I gotta start keeping track of my sources!” Also, gather all your sources alphabetically in a bibliography. You´ll regret it if you don´t.

4. Wikipedia is ok
Wikipedia is a great starting point, but is often useless as a primary source. Use the wikis to gather names and titles for further reading and research.

5. Ask the experts
See if you can find an expert in the field you´re researching in your area. Ask politely if you can meet up with them and ask them some questions, and chances are they´ll be very helpful. Be prepared with a list of good questions. Take notes, or tape your conversation, if that´s okay with your expert.

6. Search the web
A lot of good info can be found online, but in many ways this is more difficult than trawling books and interviewing experts. Firstly a good deal of what you find online is rubbish, so it´s harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. And secondly, how do you gather and organize the sites and articles you find? I recommend using two pieces of free software that are great for online research. The first is called Read It Later, and lets you quickly store links and articles so you can read them later. The other is called Zotero, and functions as an all-in-one research tool that can be used as a plugin for Firefox.

7. Use the library
I often look for a book that can be a starting point for my research. Then I just find out which shelf it´s on and trust that Dewey´s decimal system can find some further reading for me on the same shelf.

8. Know when it´s enough already
Your research is a tool to make your screenplay as good as it can be. The actual writing of the scenes, dialogue and characters is what really matters, and good research is just preparation for that.

I have spent much of the week desperately trying to plot a heroic journey across the North Atlantic, based on widely differing source materials. Memo to self: draw before you write.

And it is certainly better to deal with logistical challenges (who does what where and when?) early in the process, than saving them for the final draft, as me and Pål learned on our previous script Nidarholm.

You have all seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a sequence where Indiana Jones has lowered himself into the Map Room in the desert, and he has placed the staff of Ra in the right position. He’s waiting for the sun to align itself with the medallion at the staff’s head and show him the location of the Well of Souls, resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Harrison Ford’s face displays intense excitement and emotion as the sunbeam edges closer to the mark, and finally ignites the secret location. How did Steven Spielberg direct Ford in the scene? By music.

Spielberg often used a boom blaster to direct scenes in this movie. In the case of the Map Room he had selected a piece of classical music that composer John Williams would later mimic in his original score. The piece articulated the emotional experience Spielberg wanted the character and the audience to have at that point, so he simply told Ford to react to the music and not think about it.

Other directors are known to use music on set. Peter Weir certainly comes to mind. It can help the performances, and lessen the need for rationalizing characters and action. But it can also be a useful tool in writing. Personally, I rarely write without music. The challenge is to find background music that fits the story, the characters, and maybe in particular the emotional experience you hope to create for the reader/viewer.

When Pål and I worked on the latest draft of Nidarholm (Norwegian pdf available in the downloads section), I found help in Elliot Goldenthal’s score for Alien3. On our current project I am still trying to figure out what might spur me on, although I often return to John Williams and Vangelis.

The quest continues.

Challenges are always fun. And writing under pressure can really feed your creativity. So how about trying to write a 100-page screenplay in one month?

This is the challenge extended by the people behind Script Frenzy. There are no prizes or awards other than feeling good, and getting a lot of writing done. The fun of it is in registering on the site, keeping track of your page count and participating on the Script Frenzy forums.

The whole idea is of course just having fun. The odds of any of the participants coming up with the script for the next Oscar-winner or Spielberg´s next blockbuster are slim to none. But that doesn´t matter. Writing lots of material in a short burst is a great way to kick up your productivity – you´ll learn and grow as a writer.

The challenge starts April 1st, and all the details plus a nice library of writer´s resources can be found on the Script Frenzy site. Am I participating? Sadly, no. I´ll be polishing my short documentary opening on April 15th. But I´m seriously considering going into a writing frenzy on my own come May or June.

And if you don´t have a story to write, no worries, just check out Script Frenzy´s own Plot Machine. My randomly generated plot came out like this:

After waiting in line for a Wii

the cast of Riverdance

tries to break into pro Sumo wrestling

Me and Pål are currently working on the first draft of a new project. We’re excited about the concept, the story and the characters, and thus the writing becomes very pleasant. We’re also getting ready to start a treatment or first draft for a second project. You see, we don’t want to stop writing…

In my experience, it is very easy to stumble into the trap: Whether you write on your own or with a partner, life throws you any number of curveballs, and it’s easy to get sidetracked. When a project looses momentum, months and months may go by without any work being done. We think that we have come up with a potential safeguard:

Always have 2 projects going!

That doesn’t mean you’re writing 2 scripts at the exact same time. But it does mean that you can spend two or three months doing a first draft on project A, and then put it in a drawer. The next couple of months you spend on project B, doing a draft. When that’s done, you place it in the drawer and take out the first project for a second draft.

Advantages: 1) Getting your distance to a draft before reworking it, without spending two months picking lint out of your belly button. You’re constantly working. 2) You stand a much better chance of actually doing two screenplays a year. 3) You have that good feeling inside, a sense of intellectual and artistic surplus, because there is always another project you’re excited about getting to, and it’s waiting for you in the drawer.

Have you ever heard a riddle or puzzle that you couldn’t figure out right away? I’m sure you have. Some of the best riddles leave you completely mystified, and all the logical power you can muster up can’t point you to the solution. Finally, reluctantly, you force yourself to forget it. You move on and think of other things. Then, suddenly, while you’re doing something else, hours, maybe days later: the solution just reveals itself to you. Seemingly without effort, and with no use of logic.

This is called incubation. And it can play a pretty important role in writing as well.

Have you ever heard this children’s riddle?

Would you rather have a tiger eat you or a lion?

You have no control over when so-called inspiration strikes, or when that golden idea hits you over the head. What you can do is increase the odds by making certain your story is incubating in your mind.

This is useful in all stages of a writing project, but especially in working your initial ideas into a first draft. I like to do research and spice it with short bursts of free association writing. I set my timer to 15 minutes and I write whatever comes to mind concering my subject or story. Each session results in about an A4 page of text, which I then save to the project folder on my computer. And then I forget about it. At least consciously.

But what happens after a few weeks of research and free association writing is that certain elements start to crystallize in my mind. They are incubating. What I’m left with is a nice bunch of ideas, characters, settings, actions that I would like to explore in scene format.

When you allow your ideas to incubate you open yourself to the possibility of writing something extraordinary. Structure is of course important. But structure is merely a tool to shape and deliver your story, and if that story is boring and ordinary, structure won’t save your ass. In fact, too much structure can do violence to your ideas. If you focus narrowly on hitting plot points on the page number that Syd Fields tells you to, your story becomes a slave to structure. Syd Fields will be happy – you won’t. And your audience will say: “There’s some good potential here. I just wish that damn writer would have the courage to let his ideas incubate!”

And the answer to the riddle? I’d rather have the tiger eat the lion.