Like so much written about screenwriting, the angle usually taken by people talking about why a screenwriter should blog is that a screenwriter's blog should be viewed as a marketing device. Writers are persuaded the main benefit of blogging is to establish a brand in the social network. I'm sure there are some benefits to being out there and being known, but I think this kind of approach leads to cynical blogging. The kind of blogging where all the writer cares about are the number of people who are reading each week. Personally, I think there are other more interesting reasons to knock out an article once a week. This week, I want to write about some of them.
Finding an audience is one of the better reasons to blog. But, I don't mean that in a wanky marketing way. The way one might put fish into a barrel for future shooting with some kind of exploitative product, (although that is fun too). I mean there are advantages to having a physical and possibly appreciative audience for at least part of the writing you do. That is a really good reason for a screenwriter to blog. Even a good screenwriter, one who is being read and optioned, is really only presenting their labour to a very small and uncommunicative audience. At best, a spec script's audience is going to consist of someone who woke up that morning with a sense of intense dread at the fresh hell to be presented to them on paper that day. Unless the writer is known and well loved, a script's appearance on a reader's desk isn't going to be cause for celebration. Even when a script is appreciated, its chances of making it from "Yes, we like this" to the screen and a real audience, is remote. If you write screenplays for long enough, eventually you will start to wonder what the point of it is, even if you're making a living from doing it. Simply because, if your reason for writing was to put your ideas in front of an audience, screenwriting remains on of the most frustrating ways to do that. Not so with your blog, these days you can sit there and actually watch the numbers of hits for each article as they creep ever upwards. Even if it's only a handful of readers, chances are your last blog article was read by more people, and appreciated more, than your last screenplay. I think that kind of appreciation is massively important for anyone who is intending to stay in screenwriting for the long haul... it's a cold, hard world out there for any writer hoping to keep some semblance of self-esteem and self-belief, whilst hurling spec scripts into the frigid, relentless void that is the entertainment industry.
There is also a lot to be said for the practise of writing sentences outside of the screenplay format. Using the blog as a place to work at the craft of writing, separate from the craft of screenwriting. Screenwriting is a bitch of an art-form: technical, proscriptive, terse and devoid of any literary grace. It's too complex a craft for a writer to be able to concentrate purely on the form of the actual words on the page. And yet, I think screenplays move up a level when the writer has a sense of the potential anatomies of a sentence. A pure understanding of the sentence can only really be acquired when the pressure is off, and the words on the page are less important. I guess prior to the blog, this was the role of the writer's notebook or diary. I believe a writer needs somewhere to do the equivalent of piano scales... the banging out of words. A place to play with sentences. A piece of writing that doesn't really matter. If nothing else, a blog can be that, especially if you don't take it too seriously. Which I think is yet another reason not to see the blog as a marketing device. It's hard to be indulgent, if you're constantly worried about the affect of each article on your numbers. Better, I think, it is just commit to writing some prose once a week and just enjoy the process of doing that.
If having a small audience for your writing and at the same time creating a space to play with words isn't enough, I have two more reasons that a screenwriter might blog. These are more personal to me, I guess. But the primary reason I blog, is because both screenwriting and the entertainment industries are difficult to comprehend, when you're an outsider. I've always found it difficult to keep a clear idea of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. This is because as a writer and as a producer I am constantly learning and revising what I know, based on what I've read and what I've experienced. I am not the same writer I was twelve years ago. Hell, I'm not even the same writer I was this time last year. The advantage to committing to a weekly, published article, is that it has forced me to focus on and distill what I'm thinking in any given week. Then I try to write about it, coherently if I'm lucky. The mere process of doing this week in, week out forces me to understand my own learning process. Basically, I understand myself as a writer much better than I used to do. Not only that, I can also skip back six months, or a year, and see what's changed... and more importantly, what are the constants. Blogging, and by that I mean the commitment to write an article every week, is the best way I know for a writer to keep their understanding of their craft and of the industry straight in their head.
The final reason I think screenwriter's should write a blog is to do with understanding my own voice. One of the real challenges of writing a screenplay is to find distinct voices for all the characters. It's a challenge that the vast majority of screenwriters fail to meet. My take on why that is, is that most screenwriters naturally default to their own voice when writing. In terms of dialogue, it's vital for a writer is to be able to recognise when their own natural speech pattern is being imposed on a character for whom it is inappropriate. I see this a lot. Scripts where all the characters have the same linguistic quirks and patterns. Where all the characters are speaking with one voice, the author's natural voice. One of the things that is interesting about writing articles is that it allows a writer to see their own voice. Like many writers, I write the way I talk. It think it's massively important for a writer to be able to recognise their own voice on the page. And, as articles are written with one voice, the voice of the author, they help the writer to see who they are when they speak. By doing that, it makes it easier to spot your own voice in the dialogue of your own screenplays.
There are, of course, many other good reasons for a screenwriter to blog: to form links in the screenwriting community, to make friends with other screenwriters and support each other, to help you draw up a revenge list for when you have real power (anyone who criticises you goes on that list)... and so that when people in the industry are interested in your scripts they have something to Google. If nothing else a writer should at least attempt to have their own IMBD page and their blog as the top two entries on a Google search of their name. To have anything else is reckless.
So, why should a screenwriter blog, well basically:
To write for an audience who say thank-you and who appreciate what you're doing (moral support)
To have a place to play with language away from screenplays (a place to play)
To help with our personal understanding of our own journey (keeping our heads straight)
To see our own natural writing style isolated on the page so we can avoid imposing it on our dialogue (not writing like a dick)
and
To have something for producers to read that we have control over (spin control)
All good reasons, I believe... so
keep blogging and viva la revolution
Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog
