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Writing For Joy: An Interview with Linda
Seger
So what did you want to be when you were growing
up? From the age of 10, I wanted to be a writer. My first dream was to write Nancy Drew mysteries and detective stories. You ‘n’ me both! I wrote short stories. I wrote poems. I wrote my first novel when I was 13. Pretty
impressive! Did you ever get it
published? No, never! It was about four sisters and was a direct rip-off of LITTLE WOMEN! I worked on it for three months every day after school. When I finished, I wrapped a blue ribbon around it and showed it to my best friend. She said she cried because one of the daughters in it died, which I presume meant it was really good. So how long was
this tome? It was 26 pages, handwritten, but to me it was still a real novel! So what came
next? I always saw myself as writing dramas but then I got into drama. In college, I began to direct plays and then I began teaching drama after graduate school. I’ve noticed that many of the people who are successful writers as adults began writing by the time they were teenagers. Maybe they didn’t specifically know what kind of writing to do but they knew they liked doing it. When did you
narrow the field yourself? When my first book came out at the end of 1987, I found my real calling was writing nonfiction. For all writers, at some point, you need to know what kind of writing you like to do. When we’re younger, we don’t really know. Do you think we
put limitations on ourselves as we get older? When you’re young, you really have to write for the joy of it. You need to write because you want to and need to. As a teenager, you shouldn’t be thinking about money but rather about learning your art and learning to do it well. How did you get
into the script consulting biz? I did my college dissertation on why a script works or doesn’t work and developed a method for analyzing its various components. Many people who were analyzing scripts were throwing solutions at the script rather than really analyzing the problems or helping improve the writer. When I began applying my method to a script, many writers would say to me, “I’ve been struggling with this for five years and, in one hour, you pinpointed exactly what the problem was and what to do about it.” What kind of fees did you charge? At first I worked for free just to get known. Then I put an ad in the paper and started to get regular clients. Enough to pay the rent? Eventually. But before that, I had about 14 years of instability. Fourteen? How did you hang in there? Mostly because I just kept thinking that it was going to change! What all of this affirms, though, is that every writer I’ve known has gone through a difficult time and managed to survive it. With screenwriters, you often hear that they wrote five scripts before anything was sold or optioned. Maybe it wasn’t until their eighth or tenth or maybe even they’re fifteenth before they got a big break. Most people, I think, would have given up by then. My theory is
that the ones who make it are simply the ones who outlast all the competition. Exactly! One of the best known screenwriters in television movies is Cynthia Whitcombe. I think it was her tenth script that finally made it for her. By the time that happened, she was probably the cheapest, most experienced writer that anyone could hire! She is now—and has been for at least the past 15, maybe even 20 years—one of the top television movie writers and mini-series writers. In the 20 years
that you’ve been a consultant, movies have certainly improved technologically.
Do you think the story content has kept pace? The structure has definitely gotten better. When I first started, I’d say that 85% of the scripts I worked on didn’t have much structure; for instance, the first turning point was on page 70! Nowadays, I’d say that 85% of the scripts seem to be fairly well structured and sometimes fairly well crafted. Now writers need to learn to be more original. Craft isn’t enough. You need art. Is that because
they’re relaying on special effects to carry the momentum? Certainly there are many films that rely too much on special effects, but too many scripts aren’t interesting or they look exactly like other films. They’re derivative, rather than original. Sometimes the story they want to tell is just too difficult for them to tell because it’s only their first or second script. Sometimes, of course, you write a difficult script because it’s a good learning script. However, it’s important that teenagers and writers writing their first screenplay are not concerned about marketing and being commercial. That comes later. But isn’t the
whole idea to sell the finished product? Eventually, yes. But when you’re young and new at this, what you need to do is write what you really care about and not just try to follow a commercial trend. Writing is also a combination of being creative and solving creative problems. Part of writing is evaluating your work, but if you do that too early in the process, you can stop the creative flow. Write what you love until the flow gets going and you’re really excited about what you’re doing and discovering how much remains to be learned. It’s also important that you always surround yourself with people who can nurture your writing. That means you have to have teachers and you have to have friends who will be enthused and happy about what you’re doing and encourage you to keep doing it even when you’re not selling anything. One of the books
you penned was “When Women Call the Shots.”
What are some of the advances you’ve seen for females in an industry
which is predominantly run by men? Actually I’ve seen very few advances with either women writers or women directors. During the first 25 years of the 20th century, there were plenty of women directors and then they pretty much disappeared for 50 years. Primarily it’s because the studio system took over and the studio system was a business that was run by men and for men. If you look at other kinds of writing, for instance— novels, non-fiction, poetry— it’s fairly equal between men and women. Not for screenwriting, however. Generally only about 15% of all screenwriters are women and that doesn’t change that much from year to year. You don’t see women writing any of the “big” movies like PEARL HARBOR. However, there has been progress with women becoming development executives at studios and production companies. There’s also a tendency for women to be slightly more open to hiring other women. So we might see more opportunities for women as more women move into hiring positions. Interestingly enough, film editing is one of the few areas where you can go back to the very beginning of film and find women editors; it’s probably the one field where they didn’t drop out. So what kind of
shelf-life can new writers expect to have, given the curse of ageism? It seems that it’s slightly longer in television—maybe 40-ish to 50. In movies, it tends to be around 35. Television has been just a little better for women, partly because of the demographics and programming slanted toward females. Ageism is a terrible problem, though. I know a lot of fabulous writers, for example, who will “get the meeting” and after the meeting, absolutely nothing happens. It’s unfair because they’re some of the best writers in the industry. As a result of this, a lot of them are now turning back to theater rather than writing screenplays for film. So it sounds as
if the strategy for a pitch session is to send in a front-person who is
twentysomething. It happens! A lot of older writers are pairing up with younger partners who do the pitching while they stay behind the scenes and do all the work. In my own line of work— the business of script consulting— it hasn’t hit as hard, primarily because the people who come to me are aware that experience does count. It also helps that I started this business from the ground up and set my own rules! So what do you
tell people who have dreams of Oscar-gold? When opportunities come, you need to follow them and, particularly early in your career, you should never put money first. The very worst thing someone can do on their first or second script is worry about how much they’re going to make from it. You want to try to make something happen, whether it means you sell a script or have it optioned, or even write a script for free for the experience. And once that
happens? Never put the brakes on! Maybe
you’ll only move forward by baby-steps or maybe it’ll happen by leaps and
bounds. Whatever way it happens,
though, you need to be ready for it. There’s
a quote I really like by Ray Bradbury who once said, “Pray that your success
does not come too soon.” There
are certainly many people who have had success dumped in their laps that they
didn’t have to earn and they blew it by losing their value system and their
appreciation for hard work. It’s
also easy to let your ego get out of hand in this industry and forget why you
got into it to begin with, which was because, once upon a time, you had the need
and the desire and the love to write. If
you’re lucky, it’s a gift and a love you’ll never lose. And it’s a gift
you can share with the world. Linda has consulted on over 2000
projects and 80 produced films and mesmerized students and clients on every
continent (except Antarctica!). Check
your local bookstore for her current titles: MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT:
CREATING UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS; THE ART OF ADAPTATION; FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN:
THE COLLABORATIVE ART OF FILMMAKING; WHEN WOMEN CALL THE SHOTS: THE DEVELOPING
POWER OF WOMEN IN TELEVISION AND FILM; and MAKING A GOOD WRITER GREAT: A
CREATIVITY WORKBOOK FOR SCREENWRITERS. BUY MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT BY CLICKING HERE.
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Author,
lecturer and screenwriting consultant Ms. Linda Seger knows what it takes to
make a good story great.
