Tyler Gibb - Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

Can I start writing the script yet? Oh, heavens… No.

In part one of this little story of my method I mentioned that my notes would start to form the story in broad strokes. The next step for me is then to beef things up into an outline while refining the details.

At this point there’s really no creative writing going on, per se. This was a big mental hurtle for me to overcome. When I used to write long or short form fiction I just kind of dove in. I guess I even did so in early screenwriting for my animated shorts. It was a little counter intuitive for me to treat a story as clinically as I do now. It’s truly the opposite of spontaneity and for a while it felt to me as the anathema to poetry. But I think that was really just me being lazy. Not seeing that there’s enormous creativity to be had in properly structuring things from the outset. It’s the creative process slowed down.

So the outline: A new text doc on the computer and it’s broken down into short paragraphs. Each paragraph starts with a location slug (INT./EXT. etc) and a short summary of each scene. This is no different than the old school cue card method or the new school old school cue card feature you’ll find in Final Draft. I like the simple text doc method because it’s easy on the forests and I can expand upon the paragraphs/scenes indefinitely.

But wait! There’s something slowing me down. The loose story is there but it’s hard to figure out how all the parts fit together; how to flesh out the details. Why? Because I don’t know who I’m writing about yet.

Who are my characters? For me the outlining process overlaps with my process for creating the characters.

This is where some psychology 101 classes can be really helpful. In the opinion of this humble writerly type guy, writing is all about psychology. Be it tapping into the psychology of the reader (or viewer) or the psychology of one character towards another. We’re really only concerned with the latter at this point:

For this reason, I write a detailed background for each principal character. A biography. I start with childhood and work my way right up to the point where my story begins. I include essential elements that would have impacted this character’s personality: Family life, social circle, upbringing, interests, etc. I usually include some anecdotes too. Experiences that this character has lived through that may mirror some of the experiences they will face in the actual story. The details of these biographies will never make it into the script. They are purely a way for me to design the character. They are a reference guide for later. They help me figure out what motivates the character and can even help me figure out details about their speech patterns when it comes time to write dialogue.

When I was getting set to shoot Refrain I actually found another use for these character profiles. I shared them with the actors. I wanted to give them background on their characters to help them find the motivation behind what was in the script.

So! With my character profiles written I can now plug away further on the outline. These two elements usually give and take from each other. Sometimes the outline may call for a character to an action to move the plot forward but maybe I haven’t crafted the motivation for that action into that character’s psyche profile - no problem, I can just modify that profile to make it fit. The important thing for me is to have a sound psychology for each character and a sound storyline.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of books on storytelling. Character arcs, plot points, the hero’s journey, all that stuff. My point here isn’t to go over all of that - it’s simply to describe my process of writing a screenplay. The glib version of everything you’re going to find in those books is this: You’ve got a character, she’s doing her thing, living her life, when something happens. It’s a conflict with her enjoyable day to day life. She is faced with handling this something. It looks like she may be able to cope when things suddenly get worse. Holy shit, she’s in trouble now and things just keep going downhill… Oh no, how is she ever going to get out of this situation? But then, she digs deep, finds something inside her that she didn’t know she had and triumphs. She is changed forever. Screen black.

You can also learn this secret to storytelling by watching any movie that makes it to cinemas.

I’ve got my outline (or treatment, at this point, depending on who you’re talking to and how you’ve formatted it) as well as my (secret) character profiles. I’ve added a skeleton to my story’s heart and circulatory system. Next up: Putting meat on the bones and a let’s not forget the packaging.

I’m really trying to stick to my plan for sharing my writing process on here but recently I’ve been quite distracted…

See, it’s the beginning of mushroom season! And that means (free) morels! O’ succulent morchella… It’s like Easter all month long. If you’ve never done it, I really recommend mushroom hunting. Perhaps that’s the first step in my writing process - even before the idea stage. The meditation of wandering the woods. But that’s a whole other blog altogether.

First, a little disclaimer:

When I started this weblog - in addition to providing news about my work - it was kind of a public FAQ reference to offset the number of emails I used to get asking me about my techniques. Back in the day those questions of technique mostly concerned animation production. These days, however, I tend to be talking writing with people more than anything else.

It’s getting harder for me to hide behind mere aspirant status in this field but none the less I delve into the following with some hesitation… I’m an autodidact. Which isn’t to say I haven’t spent my share of time reading blogs like this one, just that I have no formal training in this field. So as usual around here the tips I’m sharing are really just my personal process. I’ll leave the how-to guides to the professional educators and crackpots.

Okay, that said, let me jump in:

Whether it’s walking through the woods or driving down a lonely highway my stories begin with that initial spark. The idea.

What’s the idea? Could be anything. Could be a concept, could be a character could simply be something indefinable that I have to start writing about just to explore further.

When I come about an idea that I can’t shake then my next step is fairly simple: I write it down. I open a text doc on the ol’ ‘puter and just write down exactly what the idea is. Sometimes these text docs sit around for years. If, however, I’m really hooked in by the idea then I flesh it out a bit in this note taking form. These are just plain speak, personal notes that would probably be incomprehensible to anybody else.

This is also customarily my research phase. If the idea takes me somewhere that I have little knowledge about - like satellites - then I do some background. This may seem a little like a no-brainer but I’m including everything here for the sake of thoroughness. Once upon a time I may have skipped the note taking stage. However, I’m getting older now and a little more afraid of letting anything incubate for too long in my head for fear of losing it to some burned out synapses.

The note taking process isn’t just good for recording purposes it also helps me start putting together the story’s circulatory system. In broad strokes I start figuring out the stories special moments… You know those moments.

The next thing I like to do once the notes are coming along is identify a theme. Distilled down to one phrase, maybe one word, what’s this story about? Friendship? Finding one’s place in the world? Jealousy? Good vs. evil? With Minushi, for example, my theme could have been summed up as “the meaning of family”. Granted Minushi has a lot of themes (political, literary, philosophical) but the theme that encapsulates the core of the story was “family”.

I put this theme phrase at the top of my notes doc. It serves as a reminder to me throughout the rest of the writing process not to stray from the heart of the story.

The idea opens up the floor to notes and research which allows me to figure out my theme. The heart of the story and its circulatory system are coming together (I guess I’m going for an anatomy type of metaphor on this one). Next up: The skeleton…

Been having a good back and forth with Godheval in the comments section of my last entry about writing. It’s got me thinking about process and over the next little while I’m going to try to post about my writing process. I’m always interested in hearing about the processes of others as well so don’t be shy.

But before I get to that, I’ll share a little bit about my latest experience in the prelude to my writing process: Research.

I do lot of research in the early part of just about any script. Most of that research I do online, as I’m sure many people do. Recently I was looking for information on satellite technology; more specifically Earth observation from orbit. Occasionally it’s sobering and often amusing to be reminded of the perils of this online research methodology. The following is a snippet of “information” I came across online:

“A spy satellite can monitor a person’s every movement, even when the “target” is indoors or deep in the interior of a building or traveling rapidly down the highway in a car […] Besides tracking a person’s every action and relaying the data to a computer screen on earth, amazing powers of satellites include reading a person’s mind, monitoring conversations, manipulating electronic instruments and physically assaulting someone with a laser beam.”

Wait, what?

Diversify.

My cautionary word of the day.

Works for investment bankers, works for me. I’ve stated previously that I’ve got enough scripts and script ideas that I’ll likely never be able to produce them all by myself in one lifetime. Despite the conclusion I reached in that previous post about these scripts spanning a gamut of genres, ultimately this diversity is a good thing. I recommend it.

And remember, you’re reading the thoughts of a man who once spent nearly four years invested in one project. Not something I recommend.

It seems like a pretty obvious bit of advice but it - like many little gems - bears repeating to ourselves every now and then. It’s not worth getting overly invested in one project. You have to have other things going on - and not just to have something else to jump to - but for the health of all your projects. When you’ve just got the one thing then it becomes an obsession (see, four years of your life in trade for a cartoon). And the obsessed tend to lack perspective on things. To put it differently, the more you put into one pot the harder it gets to lift off the stove. And what happens to something if you can’t get it off the stove? It burns and you go hungry.

Better to have a few pots on the cooker.

Not so long ago I participated in a government subsidized program in support of the film industry (Hi, I’m from Canada!). In the application paperwork there was a question among the usual informational fare that stuck with me. The question was: “What do you value most about being a writer?”

I was completely stumped.

I still am. Forget trying to analyze what they might be trying to glean about my personality from such a question, I was stuck on simply trying to comprehend the question itself. What do I value about being a writer? Could it be the low to non-existent income? The lack of having anything in common with anybody in my family or social circle? Or maybe what I value most is having the measure of my hard work gauged - in seconds and without any real pontification - by everybody.

Yeah, there’s lots to value about being a writer. So why do it? You know why. If you’re reading this, you know why. Because you don’t choose “the arts.” Who would? It’s a hereditary affliction and you live with it. That sounds worse than it is. It sounds like a resentful complaint, but it’s not. It’s just a statement of fact.

They gave me three lines to answer the question on the application form. Three things I value most about being a writer. In the end I could think of only one and I wrote:

“The ability to exorcise stories from my brain.”

And really, I don’t know what I’d do without it.