The rule of thumb for beginning screenwriters has become a cliché:
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.
And in a lot of important ways, this phrase makes sense. If you’re just digging into your first or second screenplay, you may not want to take on a story about Pakistani teens rebelling against their orthodox culture if you’re an Irish Catholic living in Orange County. Writing what you’re familiar with makes drafting characters and filling in the details of their world a much easier task. And there are some amazing examples of people who wrote what they knew, and TOTALLY hit it out of the ballpark. Just look at David Simon’s super-awesome TV series The Wire, or Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and you’ll see the potential of the “write what you know” theory.
But let’s face it—if everyone only wrote exactly what they knew and nothing else, we’d have a whole helluva lot of movies and TV shows about mid-30s struggling writers from Los Angeles. Yuck. NOBODY wants to see THAT movie.
“Write what you know” is a misleading statement, and should really be rearranged to read: “find what you know in what you write.” Seriously—THAT’S the trick, folks. Every year, great movies are released on subjects ranging from world wars, to dead historical figures and alien invasions. And come on—who really KNOWS about the emotional capacity of extra terrestrials? Or what it felt like to be John Addams?
NOBODY.
What the writers of these films are able to do, however, is to delve into unfamiliar territory, but to fill the worlds they create with events, characters and situations that they DO know, and CAN write for. You may not know what it felt like to be Napolean, but many of us know what it’s like to be short—and understand some of the feelings of inadequacy that may be inspired by this physicality. You may not know what it was like to be a soldier in the civil war, but many writers can certainly identify with the feelings of isolation and stress that may arise in this situation, and can then SHAPE their script to focus on these areas of familiarity.
By focusing on people or experiences with SIMILARITIES to people or experiences in your own life, you’ll be surprised by how quickly you’re able to move into unchartered waters, and to undertake screenplays about things YOU DO NOT KNOW.
Well. That… Plus a WHOLE LOTTA RESEARCH.
Yes, I lied.
Focusing on the familiar will open doorways into foreign worlds, but to REALLY sell it, you’re also gonna need to hit the books.
Seriously. Get on Amazon, go to your library, or shack up with gramma for a couple weeks… Whatever your methodology, collecting and digesting source material on the time period, circumstances, and people you are writing about is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.
A few months ago, I started researching a new script that takes place in Afghanistan during the 1980s. This was a script I dreamt up a year ago, but shelved for fear of how difficult the research process would be. And I was totally right. It WAS difficult. Especially during the first couple of weeks, I felt totally overwhelmed by everything I didn’t know. But I gotta say—after a full month of reading, re-reading, watching documentaries on the region, and tracking down a couple of Afghanis who lived through it, my script now feels totally doable.
Of course—I’ve also drafted an outline for this script that includes a double-crossing love affair, characters with parental insecurities, and a healthy fear of the U.S. government—all things with which I’m somewhat familiar in my own life. And it’s this balance—between finding what I know in what I write and learning as much as possible about an unknown world—that is allowing me to write about a place and a culture to which I am a born outsider.
So, there you have it. Don’t be afraid to expand beyond the realm of what you know. But be smart about it—utilize details from your life, and do your homework—and in no time at all, you’ll be wrapping up the next great galaxy-hopping pre-teen alien adventure movie!
(Wait—was there a first one?)
(Oh, yes... Who could forget Explorers?!)
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.
And in a lot of important ways, this phrase makes sense. If you’re just digging into your first or second screenplay, you may not want to take on a story about Pakistani teens rebelling against their orthodox culture if you’re an Irish Catholic living in Orange County. Writing what you’re familiar with makes drafting characters and filling in the details of their world a much easier task. And there are some amazing examples of people who wrote what they knew, and TOTALLY hit it out of the ballpark. Just look at David Simon’s super-awesome TV series The Wire, or Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and you’ll see the potential of the “write what you know” theory.
But let’s face it—if everyone only wrote exactly what they knew and nothing else, we’d have a whole helluva lot of movies and TV shows about mid-30s struggling writers from Los Angeles. Yuck. NOBODY wants to see THAT movie.
“Write what you know” is a misleading statement, and should really be rearranged to read: “find what you know in what you write.” Seriously—THAT’S the trick, folks. Every year, great movies are released on subjects ranging from world wars, to dead historical figures and alien invasions. And come on—who really KNOWS about the emotional capacity of extra terrestrials? Or what it felt like to be John Addams?
NOBODY.
What the writers of these films are able to do, however, is to delve into unfamiliar territory, but to fill the worlds they create with events, characters and situations that they DO know, and CAN write for. You may not know what it felt like to be Napolean, but many of us know what it’s like to be short—and understand some of the feelings of inadequacy that may be inspired by this physicality. You may not know what it was like to be a soldier in the civil war, but many writers can certainly identify with the feelings of isolation and stress that may arise in this situation, and can then SHAPE their script to focus on these areas of familiarity.
By focusing on people or experiences with SIMILARITIES to people or experiences in your own life, you’ll be surprised by how quickly you’re able to move into unchartered waters, and to undertake screenplays about things YOU DO NOT KNOW.
Well. That… Plus a WHOLE LOTTA RESEARCH.
Yes, I lied.
Focusing on the familiar will open doorways into foreign worlds, but to REALLY sell it, you’re also gonna need to hit the books.
Seriously. Get on Amazon, go to your library, or shack up with gramma for a couple weeks… Whatever your methodology, collecting and digesting source material on the time period, circumstances, and people you are writing about is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.
A few months ago, I started researching a new script that takes place in Afghanistan during the 1980s. This was a script I dreamt up a year ago, but shelved for fear of how difficult the research process would be. And I was totally right. It WAS difficult. Especially during the first couple of weeks, I felt totally overwhelmed by everything I didn’t know. But I gotta say—after a full month of reading, re-reading, watching documentaries on the region, and tracking down a couple of Afghanis who lived through it, my script now feels totally doable.
Of course—I’ve also drafted an outline for this script that includes a double-crossing love affair, characters with parental insecurities, and a healthy fear of the U.S. government—all things with which I’m somewhat familiar in my own life. And it’s this balance—between finding what I know in what I write and learning as much as possible about an unknown world—that is allowing me to write about a place and a culture to which I am a born outsider.
So, there you have it. Don’t be afraid to expand beyond the realm of what you know. But be smart about it—utilize details from your life, and do your homework—and in no time at all, you’ll be wrapping up the next great galaxy-hopping pre-teen alien adventure movie!
(Wait—was there a first one?)
(Oh, yes... Who could forget Explorers?!)
