Be a lifetime (film, television and media) learner.

If you’re struggling with an element, scene, sequence or act of a movie or show you’re writing, stop.  Quit writing briefly and look back a few years or decades to previous material.

Scorsese, Coppola, and other great filmmakers never stop learning.  Watch the DVD or BluRay extras for any of their films where they share their studies with the disc viewing audience.

Got a problem with a part of your story?  You abhor taking the simple way out using voice over or character dialogue.  Take in a Buster Keaton film from the 1930s.  I recommend The General, or Steamboat Bill Jr.  Familiarize yourself with the ways and means of the masters of the silent era.  Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, and others handled key components of their visual narratives before and during the advent of sound in motion pictures expertly.  Learn from the early greats.

Maybe you have problem with “on the nose” or unreal dialogue.  Watch a film, such as Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) where characters say one thing and generally act out the opposite.  Download a screenplay written by Nora Ephron, Diablo Cody, Callie Khoury, Susannah Grant, Diana Ossana, Alan Ball or Paul Haggis to name a few.  Read such a screenplay; study it. Notice techniques, styles, and methods.  What do these writer’s characters say with their mouths?  What do they mean in their hearts?  Learn from the greats you know and don’t yet know but have heard of.

Ok your problem is writing a genre piece.  Maybe you didn’t want to end up there but nevertheless there you are.  Now you’re falling into all the associated pitfalls and clichés of that genre.  It’s a mess and you’re ready to give up.  Don’t.  Look for films that have busted, redefined, remade, or just bettered their respective genre.  Take Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), science fiction thriller right?  How about futuristic film noir?  Or Christopher Nolan’s Inception, its surely a sci-fi thriller too.  Right?  Or is it a heist movie?  Find and watch movies that stretch your idea of a given genre.  How did they do it?  Did they embrace cliché?  Did they redefine recognized characteristics?  How did they accomplish that?  Challenge yourself to research and study your genre or an unrelated one.  Either way, apply what you’ve learned to your work.

Set your writing woes aside. Read and watch.  With your lessons learned, inform your writing and eradicate your problems.  If writing is rewriting, then learning is relearning.  Become a student of film again, or do so for the first time.

Best regards,

Jack Lucido, M.F.A.

Associate Professor of Communication

Undergraduate Film Studies Director

MFA Screenwriting Track Coordinator

Western State Colorado University

                              A FEW THOUGHTS ON SCREENWRITING

I can’t speak for Mayank, but personally I got into screenwriting for the parties. So far though, I haven’t been invited to any. Well, maybe a few.

Dinah Shore invited me over for a movie screening at her house once and it turned out she needed me to run the projector. Well, not exactly, but I did rethread the film for her. I worked on Dinah’s TV show in my youth, and not too many years later I was walking along Broad Beach in Malibu and I went right past her without recognizing her. She yelled out to me, “Bob, Bob, it’s me, Dinah.” Rather embarrassing for me, and possibly for her. I’m so bad at recognizing people, the same thing happened with Pierce Brosnan, not once but twice. And I’d spent a week with him on the set of a “Remington Steele” I’d written a few weeks earlier. It also once happened with model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill WHILE she was starring in a TV series I was producing!

I’d like to say I didn’t recognize any of them because I was so busy writing a script in my head. But actually, it’s a physiological condition. All these years I thought I was just bad at recognizing people and remembering names. Then I saw a piece on it on “60 Minutes” and it turns out there are people who don’t recognize their own spouse if he or she changes their hairstyle or glasses frames. I suspect there’s a movie lurking somewhere in that bit of information. But I may not remember it long enough to write it.

Mayank has written that movies are about structure. And I concur. In fact, I used to try to show my undergrad students how important structure is to screenwriting by playing a little trick on them. I’d say, “OK, get out of piece of paper and a pen, or open your computer, get ready, now…write something wonderful.” They’d sit there with empty faces and empty sheets of paper. I’d leave that way for a good 15 second before I said, “OK, that’s almost impossible. But now, instead, write a limerick.”

That completely changed the situation. Those students who understood the structure of a limerick could write one, often a good one, in a couple of minutes. I stopped doing this exercise, however, because I found a good many of my 18-21 year-old college students had no idea what the structure of a limerick was. And having to explain and demonstrate it to them took much of the fun out of it for me.

But the point remains the same. Structure is not the enemy of creativity, it is the cradle of it. I have a few writer-friends who poo-poo structure. Who think that Blake Snyder and the others who write books on screenwriting structure are selling a formula that leads to crappy, boring, predictable scripts. I agree that it does, but only in the case of crappy, boring, predictable writers.

I began to notice the structure of movies long before anyone, let alone Blake Snyder, had written a book on it. And I learned my first lesson from Alfred Hitchcock. I’d be at a theater watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie and something would happen. I’d feel it in my bones. A shot of adrenaline would course through my system. I’d look at my watch. And lo and behold, it was ALWAYS exactly 30 minutes from when the movie had begun.

Once I was sensitized to it, I’d experience it in other directors’ films. And lo and behold, it was always 30 minutes in. Something had changed. I’d experienced some sort of, you should pardon the expression, climax. In a completely non-sexual sense. Years later I would learn, that’s called the turning point of Act One.

Every movie has that. And like it or not, it happens 30 minutes in whether the writer, the director and the editor of the film are consciously aware of it or not. Whether they set out to do it or not. It’s in their bones just like it’s in mine. And yours. Try it when you go to the movies. Or watch a DVD. You have to do it with a feature film, and it can’t be interrupted by commercials. I bet it’ll happen for you too.

And it’ll be an emotional, physical lesson in movie structure.

-          Bob Shayne

SCREENWRITERS: The Architects of the Film world

"I am the Architect. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant."
 - The Architect (THE MATRIX RELOADED)

Screenwriting is often considered the more glamorous of the various writing forms. I'm the first one to admit that writing for "the movies" or "television" has its charms, and does present itself as a rather alluring endeavor. But that's also precisely the most common misconception about the world of screenwriting. The actual writing process is anything but glamorous. 

Writing a screenplay for a film is akin to drawing up the blueprints for a building. Screenwriters are often considered the architects of a movie. They have to originate the design (the concept), make sure the foundation is steady (bearing in mind the three-act structure), track the progress of the entire process (character arc and protagonist's journey) and finally, pick out all the key raw materials that will be needed to finish the building (scenes, sequences, beats, dialogue etc.)

But more importantly, and something for screenwriters to learn early in the process, is the fact that we're only drawing up the master plans. We want to make the foundation as structurally-sound as possible. We want to make sure that we've thought through every choice and decision, not leaving any plot-holes or logical fallacies on the page, for someone else to figure out. Because we're handing the plans over to the builders, and they most likely won't care about those pesky things (continuity, tracking character journeys) - at least, not as much as you will.

Films are made by directors. When you work with good ones, you can feel them taking your blueprints, and making a far better building out of it than you could have ever imagined. They elevate your material. Because in the process of making a movie, they are helped by their cinematographer, production designer, costume designer, editor, sound designer, composer, and most importantly, actors. All those collaborators are at the top of their game, and bring a wealth of experience and talent to the various aspects of a production. 

A good screenwriter is someone who understands this. You're only one part of the equation, and the more work you can put in, without being obtrusive to the process, the better job you'll do towards servicing the movie.

Being a writer myself, I don't mean to suggest that the role of the writer is insignificant or inconsequential (despite what most of Hollywood believes). Not at all. In fact, I feel the screenplay is one of the most important facets that determine the quality of a film. But it's not necessarily a direct correlation. I've seen many a terrific scripts turned into terrible movies, and the opposite is true as well. 

The main point I'm trying to make, I suppose, is that screenwriting is a means to an end. We are not creating literary work that is supposed to be read. At best, we're writing a suggestion of a story that will be told in the visual medium. 

You might ask... Is it frustrating at times, having spent years of your time working on a project, with no ownership on it whatsoever? Yes. But when you get to see your words up on the silver screen, with a talented actress or actor saying them with conviction you could have never even mustered in your greatest dreams (say, Meryl Streep delivering a monologue in a costumed period-piece, or Will Smith battling Aliens in a sci-fi epic -- scenarios you created while sitting at your dining table eating Cheerios). 

That feeling is utterly magical.

And that is why we enter the field of Screenwriting. Not for the parties, or for the money, and certainly not for the recognition (which is little to none). It's the satisfaction of seeing your words morphed into everlasting images, living on forever in celluloid (or should I say, zeros and ones, since everything's going digital now).

- Prof. JS Mayank

Welcome to WSCU's MFA in Screenwriting Blog site!

There is no other form quite like screenwriting. More than a talent. More than a career. Writing for the screen is a calling. It's not merely what you do - it's who you are - a storyteller, defined by your passion for language, by your belief in the power of the image, and by your dedication to the unique art of the screen.

The MFA in Screenwriting concentration at Western State Colorado University immerses students in the study of writing for film. Our low student:faculty ratio stands as a testament to our belief in the importance of an individualized program of study, and an intimate, supportive community to your growth as a writer.

As a student, you can expect to study with renowned instructors and mentors all of whom are active writers with years of experience not only as successful screenwriters and producers, but as teachers of their craft.

You master the forms and structures of television and film as you cultivate your own voice and vision. You receive instruction in writing the visual narrative, three-act structure, and four-act structure, character development, thematic development, genre, story arc, dialogue and voice-over. You study and analyze the history of classical and contemporary screenwriting texts and the resulting films.

But we intend this forum to serve not just our own students but also the wider circle of writers interested in the world of feature film and television.

We hope this site will allow you to discover a supportive, intimate community dedicated to your passions and ambitions.

-- Dr. Mark Todd, MFA program director