“Creating Characters with Corey Mandell”
Yesterday I attended a workshop with Corey Mandell called “Creating Characters People Want to Spend Time With.” Corey talked about some stuff that I had never thought of before nor had I really even considered. Coming from an art background with a bit of computer tech stuff thrown in the mix I found what he had to share very inspiring.
Yes this is rather vague but the point is not to tell you everything that Corey shared with us during the 4 hour workshop. Go take a class with him to learn, besides he can explain it way better than me because he was the one sharing his knowledge.
I guess the point that I want to make is very simple yet one you probably don’t want to hear.
THERE IS NO QUICK FIX TO SCREEN WRITING!
I’m sorry to burst your bubble and misconceptions of screenwriting, but it is true. As Corey shared in the workshop, “[can you go out at run a marathon without training?]” Of course not, same goes with screenwriting. The more you write, the more you learn and improve. But going out and attempting to run the marathon every outing isn’t going to help you achieve success very well. There is a good chance you wont ever complete a marathon or at least to the “world’s” preconceived idea of a quality standard.
You have to do conditioning.
Way back when I ran cross-country in high school our practices wasn’t to go out and run three miles every day, all we would accomplish would be to learn how to run three miles, but our objective was to run the three or sometimes four miles faster each time we went out. We were trying to raise the bar of excellence.
Our practice usually would start out with some warm ups, a few short laps around the field, some stretches and what not. Then we would go run about 3 miles, usually a route involving hills or extremely annoying inclines. The thing we hated most was when we arrived at the end of the run, usually within a few minutes of each other, we would be given maybe 1 minute rest before we would have to do about 20 50 yard sprints, as hard as we could.
The point being is our training involved a bunch of different exercises that when we went to go run the actually race we could pull from and use during the race.
Writing exercises work the same way, when doing these exercises appear to have nothing to do with what you think should be in your screenplay, just keep with it. If you’re searching for some good exercises check out my character development posts or go searching on The Script Lab’s website for ideas. Some books you might consider reading is The Artists Way, or you can take one of Corey Mandell’s class.
There is one last important thing you should remember. One of the things that made our Cross Country team work was that we were all running together, pushing each other and there to see if one of us wasn’t doing what we were supposed to (walking, stopping, not giving our all). You need a team or a partner to keep you accountable, someone who will keep you writing.
When running in a cross-country meet everything we slaved through in practice could be applied to the actually race. We always faced hills and were trained to not slow down on hills because most everyone else would and it was our chance to get in the lead. Seconded our races were usually shorter than our practice runs so we over trained which helped us build endurance. Lastly our sprints were the thing I remembered most, we finished every race knowing we still had energy left and would sprint as hard as we could the last quarter-mile or so and could always gain a few spots in that final stretch.
These writing exercises you do will give you added stamina that you never thought you had, but they take practice and they take actually DOING. Remember, there is only a shortcut to bad writing and if you want to improve and become better at your craft, then don’t take the shortcuts, put in the effort, do the work and you will see results.
Oh, that year I won the most improved athlete award for our cross-country team, granted I started the season with a broken collar-bone, but I ended up shaving nearly 5 minutes off my time and I have to say that the practice and exercise played a huge, huge role in getting me to that level.