The Right-Brain Writer

Many writers, in common with the population at large, have two left feet. But using only the left side of the brain is not the best career move. Jurgen Wolff has long been opening our minds to greater possibilities than we were aware of. Here he shows how important it is to engage both sides of your brain if you are going to write more successfully.

When I went to Hollywood back in 1980, my first job was as a reader - or story analyst - for a production company. My function was to read scripts submitted to the company and write a synopsis and critique. My recommendation would not get a script produced, of course, but it would mean the next person up the ladder would read it. If I didn't like a script, that was the end of the line. It's part of the Hollywood paradox that the lowest-paid and least-qualified people in the chain can stop a script in its tracks.

What was unusual was that this company accepted scripts without requiring them to be submitted by an agent. This meant we received scripts from all over the country, in all types of formats, from all kinds of people. Some of these people obviously had never read a book on scriptwriting or even a script. As you might expect, many of the scripts were very bad indeed and few of them had any sense of structure. For example, a script might ramble on for thirty or forty pages before the story kicked in, or it might begin in an exciting manner and then stall for fifty or sixty pages.

What these scripts did have, though, was passion. Often one could tell that the writer really cared about the characters and the story, and sometimes it was very obvious there was a strong autobiographical element to the tale. For all their structural faults, many of the scripts had a vibrancy and an appealing uniqueness.

Around this same time, Syd Field's book, Screenplay, was really becoming popular. It echoed William Goldman's statement that the three most important aspects of screenwriting are structure, structure and structure. Syd interpreted the traditional three-act structure of drama and showed how it could be applied to film and wrote about it in an easy-to-read, breezy style. His book became the bible for aspiring script writers.

The age of the scriptwriting guru was upon us and although each teacher (McKee, Truby, Seger, Vogler, etc.) takes a somewhat different approach, they are united in stressing the importance of structure and aspiring writers have taken that message on board.

The result is that the majority of scripts these days are much better structurally than the ones I read when I was starting out. You can pick up just about any script now and spot the plot point at the end of Act I, the mid-script turning point, the Moment of Truth at the end of Act II, and so on. Unfortunately, what is missing in many cases is that sense of passion and uniqueness that I found in those messy, chaotic scripts I read years ago. Many of today's scripts seem mechanical: efficient, clean, shiny...but soulless.

CONT. in Issue 1.

© Jurgen Wolff 2001

Jurgen Wolff is based in London and writes for television and film (recently he has written eight episodes of the international series Relic Hunter). He also teaches writing and creativity workshops and edits Brainstorm, the creativity newsletter. He has produced a CD of visualisation exercises and has written and co-written books on scriptwriting. For more information email: BstormUK@aol.com or phone 020 7580 4997.