t might be because one of my favorite books is The Education of Henry Adams, an autobiography written by the grandson and great-grandson of two presidents Adams—or just that I'm paying for college tuition—but schooling is on my mind these days.
I think back to my first years of scriptwriting, and how little I knew about the whole business. Whatever I managed to learn, it was on-the-job training. By example. By reading scripts by better writers. And, occasionally, by being yelled at by my bosses.
(One note: Scriptwriting is not about the format. Whenever I've been asked to teach classes in this subject, formatting seems to take up an inordinate amount of time. Here it is: SLUG LINES indicate scenes or shots. Description of action is in upper and lower case. Dialogue goes in narrower margins in the middle of the page under character names. All else is style.)
OK, maybe I've managed to learn a few things worth sharing.
Secrets from the sci-fi masters
The two basic lessons in storytelling—for page or for stage—came from reading Kurt Vonnegut, most recently codified in his collection of short stories titled Bagombo Snuff Box (1999). Vonnegut doesn't claim to have originated them, but they are useful. I call them Kurt's Kommands:
1. Each scene must advance your story.
2. Each line of dialogue must either show character or advance the story.
(I realize all this stuff is probably in Aristotle's Poetics, or possibly one of Michael Crichton's books. But my schooling in these matters was haphazard.)
Simple? No question. Unforgettable? Absolutely, once you've heard them. Easy to execute? Well, no.
Then you have techniques that are specific to writing science fiction, such as the Heinlein Hat Trick. From the publication of his first short stories in the 1940s, Heinlein was the most effective creator of believable future worlds. He would slip a word or image into a piece of prose like a chocolate kiss hidden in a scoop of ice cream.
"Hamilton Felix punched the door with a code combination, and awaited face check. It came promptly; the door dilated."
One of the charms of the first Star Wars was the way it did the same thing.
Arthur C. Clarke is famous for what I call the Clarkean Connection—a way of tying a fantastic, often futuristic event to someone or someplace in our day-to-day existence. It can be as simple as naming a 21st-century spacecraft after 20th-century cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
Then you have tricks that apply to series television, like this one: When writing a scene for your star, never write the words "CAMERA PUSHES IN ON" or "CLOSEUP." Your star will be in your office 10 minutes after the script reaches his or her trailer.
Not that stars dislike closeups. But the thought of them makes them start worrying about pores, pimples, hair color, lighting, their good side. You have to brief your director on this issue.
Another ... always give the star something to do in every scene: She must be able to answer the question, what did I learn from this scene?
In dialogue, you can try the Sorkin Swirl, best practiced by the scriptwriter of A Few Good Men and most often displayed on The West Wing. It was a rhetorical figure (to use a phrase that sounds suspiciously Aristotelian) in which a character would often repeat lines just delivered to him but with a different emotional register:
LEO (Chief of Staff)
Mr. President, the Russians are building a nuclear power plant for the Iranians. DOD is afraid there's nothing we can do about it.
PRES. BARTLETT
Leo, of course the Russians are building a nuclear plant for the Iranians. They're building them for anyone who will pay, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
Other tricks: the Serling Setup (how to save two expositional scenes by writing two paragraphs of voice-over narrative). The Whedon Tilt-A-Whirl (appealing to a smart demographic by having your stars comment on the story they are living).
As Vonnegut would say, and so on.
A break could make things better
I knew none of this. When writing fiction or a script, I was vaguely aware of satisfaction with a scene, or dissatisfaction. But for 10 years, 15 years, I couldn't have told you why something didn't work.
Sometimes I still don't know. Sometimes I think writers need periodic, formal refresher courses.
On the surface, it sounds like a ludicrous idea. Imagine Ron Moore stepping out of Galactica for a year to go back to school. J.J. Abrams turning Lost over to another executive producer for a season.
Yet ... during World War II, when the armed forces of the Soviet Union were battered almost beyond belief, suffering casualties that outnumbered those of Western armies by a factor of five, during the darkest days of all-out combat, Soviet Army officers would be pulled from front-line assignments and shipped off to school for six months or a year. Some of these educational rotations were for political indoctrination, but most were for technical or tactical training.
If the Soviet officer corps of the 1940s doesn't strike you as anything to emulate, consider this—a glimpse at the biography of any senior officer in today's American military will reveal a string of educational assignments: You don't qualify as an Air Force pilot at the age of 23 and spend the next 15 years in the cockpit. No, you go back to school after five years or so and get a master's. That's in addition to shorter, military-related programs like a squadron officer's school. You can't be promoted unless you do get more schooling. If you become a general officer, you will have taken at least two major educational detours.
There are areas of American professional life where the same practice applies: thousands of business executives will take time to get M.B.A. degrees. Others will go to law school. Teachers get refresher courses.
I'm not talking about television writers adding M.F.A. degrees to their resumes as they approach the end of their active scripting careers. I mean a mid-life return to the classroom, with people who can teach you things. ("How to Run a Series" by Dick Wolf would be incredibly useful.)
You could even create a degree—which, given that it will be earned by people who lie for a living, would have to be the M.B.S.
Michael Cassutt has written 60 scripts for television, from The Twilight Zone to The Dead Zone, in addition to short stories, novels and non-fiction. He is currently collaborating on a long-form project for the SCI FI Channel with David Kemper.
