Ready to roll

Like a jock before the game, I'm resting and getting myself together for the ordeal of meeting with students from 10 to 4 with only one short break. By 430, I'll be ready to watch the movie I'm showing them.

But I've learned these one-on-one required conferences early on can stop many students from making the same mistakes over and over again, despite my notes on their work. The major problems with beginning screenwriting students are over-writing (they write as if they're writing a novel), poor economy at all levels, and poor focus (usually because they have a situation but not a story, so they don't know what to focus on). The economy of a good film, and the screenplay from which it is built, is poetic; surely no narrative form is more efficient in its storytelling. This is why studying screenwriting can benefit all writers. I've had many a novelist in my classes who came out a much better storyteller, even if they never wrote another screenplay.