Now You Get It, Now You Don't

            Although I hate to admit it, Keane lost me in chapters four and five of How to Write a Selling Screenplay. Initially, his idea about letting the characters drive the story on their own intrigued me, and in a bizarre way I understood how something you create could be separate from yourself, without suffering from schizophrenia. However, I couldn’t seem to follow him to point B as he developed this idea further.

            As chapter four focuses on building characters, Keane asks his readers to create detailed biographies for each of his or her main characters. His point: know your characters. Message received. Yet, I thought the rigid structure in which he asked us to “get to know” our characters seemed to contradict the flexibility he wanted us to have with them to begin with. In his detail-specific exercises, Keane poses questions like does your main character like his mother or his father better?, What were the most poignant moments in his or her adolescence?, and what does your main character have to hide from the world?. While I agree that these are important things to know about your character, answering these questions before you’ve even started writing feels like a lock-down drill, where your characters are unable to move without following your intricate instructions.

            Also, his emphasis of the importance of a logline seemed a bit aggressive to me, which is an odd feeling to get from a “how-to” book. At least to me, trying to come up with a phrase to sell a book that hasn’t even been written yet seems absurd. You can call me naïve, but I’d still like to believe that having a strong story is the most important element to selling a screenplay, and not how well you “peddle” it. With only the inklings of a script idea in mind, I don’t think Keane should let his readers get carried away just yet.

            However, these two chapters have not discredited the entire book for me, and I still value Keane’s opinion due to the insight he showed in the first thirty pages. And so, I trudge on, fingers crossed I find my way back.

            MOVIES WATCHED: 1

            SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 5

            NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 42

            PAGES LEFT IN ATONEMENT: 131

            PAGES LEFT IN HOW TO WRITE A SELLING
            SCREENPLAY: 238