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Alan Bennett the writer, famous among other things for his televised dramatic monologues, is sceptical of the value of advice and teaching to the creative writer. He does, however, maintain the importance of finding ‘the voice’. Do not see the voice of your writing as always being ‘your own voice’. Bennett is famous for a series of monologues called Talking Heads. Bennett maintains that each one was inspired by ‘a voice’ that expressed a character. He even says that one reason he has not written more is that he has had problems in hearing or finding more characters for further monologues - because he has difficulty creating a new voice for a new monologue. You can write in your own voice, but stand aside from it, and do not be afraid for the voice you write in to have that ‘fictional’ element.

 

 

How to write? I am one of those people who wants to write, probably knows the ins and outs of good writing; I can even advise other people how to write – but I struggle, especially with the story thing. Having established that I have had more failures than successes in the entertaining writing department, I have studied a lot of instructions and advice for writing for media markets. I have attended some expensive intensive writing courses, including the seminars taught by the Hollywood screenwriter, Robert McKee. So. What are my tips for successful and entertaining writing? Here goes.

 

Make sure you are well acquainted with what you are going to write – the ‘publication context’ - the audience and the type of text (genre). If you intend your work for publication and your writing depends on knowledge of a particular context, you need to have some idea about what has already been written on that subject – real writers do some research. And you must acknowledge your sources. Passing someone else’s work off as your own is a kind of fraud (known as plagiarism) and will have unpleasant consequences.

 

One of the first things I learned when writing commissioned materials was not to keep trying to write the opening paragraph over and over again before I had got into writing the first draft in its entirety. It’s no use staring at a blank page until your forehead bleeds. Often my first paragraph was best put in the bin – but after I had got started.

 

Interesting, entertaining writing for popular audiences needs to include the spoken voice. If you are writing an article, you will want to quote different authorities or points of view. You can find useful people who are prepared to be quoted and interview them to get ideas.

 

Ella Preece, a former journalist at the Sunderland Echo, says: ‘Get the style right. If the house style of the publication you are writing for often uses quotations and stuff, include that style. Writing an article for a popular context, such as a women’s magazine, means bringing in voices other than your own. It might be an expert on the subject or even just someone you’ve stopped in the corridor. Obviously, the person you choose to quote, must be saying something genuine, reasonably clear, and relevant to the point you are illustrating or making.’  

 

All entertaining writing has a storytelling aspect, if it is any good. If you are writing a story, then you need to go further than one liners, you need dialogue. Ideally, dialogue should ‘sound right’. John Scotney, a professional writer and an ex BBC producer, advises, ‘Not just moving the story forward. Dialogue that represents spontaneous speech should be messy, by which I mean informal and slightly ungrammatical. For example, in spontaneous speech you change your mind about your sentence structure like: “you will .. you would need a style model”. Linguists, I think, call these false starts. Verbless sentences, starting sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but’. Split infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions – they’re all absolutely fine. All the things you were probably told at school not to write. These things belong, indeed they are essential in dynamic, lively scripted speech. It’s a living thing.’ 

 

Most writers have some ideas about style models for good entertaining writing. Robert McKee is a well known author and teacher of screenwriting. So what is his style model for an effective screenplay and/or an effective story? He bases his famous screenwriting course on a number of films, but especially, Casablanca (1942) and Chinatown (1974).

 

Casablanca can teach any aspiring writer of dialogue a great deal. Like many Hollywood films of its time, a number of writers had a hand in the script. Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch received credit for the screenplay. The script is full of lines which have passed into movie mythology. For example, after the German commandant in the film has been shot, Renault, the police chief, utters the famous lines., and received credit for the screenplay. The script is full of lines which have passed into movie mythology. For example, after the German commandant in the film has been shot, Renault, the police chief, utters the famous lines.

 

Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.  

 

Like all great dramas, Casablanca depends on conflict. There are so many conflicts in the film. The film is set in Casablanca, Morocco, a French colonial possession at the time during the great 20^th century conflict – the Second World War. The Germans are in conflict with just about everyone else, and are pretty much the main villains in the film.

 

The film draws on many genres – musical, thriller, film noir, propaganda, war film. It even has a documentary style opening with a ‘voice over’.  But at its centre it is a romantic melodrama. The central characters, Rick, a bar owner, and Else, a Hungarian woman, are ‘the lovers’ but they are in riveting conflict. Else has married someone else. When Else walks back into Rick’s life his feelings are, to put it mildly, mixed.

 

 

Rick feels betrayed and is in conflict with himself – drowning his sorrows, bitter and cynical. But, in the end he redeems himself. It’s a classic of good storytelling. If you don’t know it, watch it!

 

Chinatown also fits into these schemata – it draws on the multiple genres of love story, detective thriller, film noir, melodrama with plenty of mood music. The script is by Robert Towne. The central female character, Mrs Mulwray, is in terrible conflict with her father, the detective she has employed to investigate the murder of her husband, and with herself.  The dialogue in Chinatown crackles with conflict.

 

In one of the climactic scenes Jake, the central detective character, confronts his client Mrs Mulwray. She has been stringing him along, has had an affair with him, and he is out to get the truth. If you have not watched the film you will probably want to skip from now on to the summary below, because this reveals one of the central mysteries that drives the film – the secret about her relationships with her corrupt crime lord father and the daughter she is so protective of.

 

 

This dialogue is a style model for good dialogue writing. The movement and body language is exploited well (given that this is a film script with other resources for telling the story). The audience is taken with the rhythms and turns of the dialogue. We also, like Jake, want to know ‘the truth’. The characters, both of whom the audience probably ‘care about’ are in classic complicated dramatic conflict. The dialogue moves the story on.

 

OK. We seem to have travelled quite a way from ‘voices’ and my premise that writing is about getting on with it. It’s time to summarise my main points of advice for writing to entertain and storytelling.

 

 

·         Create a variety of ‘voices’ in your work, not just your own.

·         Research and be sure of your publication context:

i.e. genre, audience, ‘house style’.

·         Learn from style models of good writing in your chosen genre.

·         When writing dialogue or even quoting other speakers include ‘mess’ (by which I mean features of spontaneous speech).

·         In storytelling, create and complicate conflict.

·         Dialogue should move action, scene and story on.

 

 

Bennett A 1987 Talking Heads, Chivers

 

Koch H 1973 Casablanca: Script and Legend, Overlook Press

 

McKee R 1998 Story, Methuen

 

Towne R 2000 Chinatown Screenplay, Faber & Faber