Ideas, I Dos and I Don’ts

Why Collaboration between Writers Works

I live in Los Angeles, so of course I write screenplays. Doesn’t everyone?

I started in earnest in 1985 by reading about a dozen books on the subject from Syd Fields to William Goldman to Linda Seger and many others. I consumed mass quantities of scripts (100s) from every source I could think of. The UCLA archives, various libraries, used bookstores and so on. I wanted to acquire the ear for good dialogue that great screenwriters possessed. I wanted to know what sold and what didn’t. I wanted to be successful.

Every book I read, every class I took, every seminar I sat through, spoke of rules and formats and a seemingly endless array of hurdles that had to be overcome if you wanted to be successful in this town. But the two things I never fully appreciated after all of this education; heard about, but never got the true meaning of, were -

1. Rules sell books and seminars, good writing sells scripts, and

2. To say this environment is competitive, is to say that Hurricane Katrina, was a wee storm.

With everyone looking for a leg-up in this industry, it’s not surprising that there is always a serious shortage of legs. Writers share their contacts with other writers, like Aunt May shares her prize-winning recipe for peach cobbler with everyone in her knitting circle. Not.

As a result, and maybe in spite of it, there is still a tremendous amount of creative energy flowing through Hollywood. I just wonder, how much real creative power could be generated if the writers and producers actively sort to create the environment, they wished existed. In other words, hold the classes, orchestrate the seminars and actually teach writers what makes for a good screenplay without asking each of them to perform the equivalent of the 7 Labors of Hercules before they could get a script read and ultimately produced.

Collaboration

Writers write. They hone their craft. They take their knocks and learn their lessons and then return to their typewriters to do it all again. This is what drives them. To communicate, to entertain, to enlighten. But not everyone does everything well.

With screenplays, some writers are great with dialogue but weaker on plotting and sequencing of scenes, so they adapt and collaborate with someone with an opposite skillset or simply someone who helps make them a better writer. The results are movies like, Pirates of the Caribbean, Good Will Hunting, Matrix and others.

Collaboration can also mean, sharing the workload, if both writers are for all intents and purposes, equal partners. Not just with screenplays but with any form of writing.

Writing in teams or as a group can help every member learn and grow and become more confident with the tools of the trade.

I have written with others, mostly on screenplays, where I provided the bones of the story while the others, provided a comedic approach that I did not have at that time. So, I learned more about timing and rhythm while they learned about structure and plotting.

We shared and grew as writers.

In ILLUMINATION, we frequently have writers stepping up and offering prompts and playful suggestions on a topic. Not so much as a leg-up, but as a way of opening up that subject matter to the keen analytical eyes of other writers. The sharing of ideas and concepts, may go against the norm in some ways, but for many of us it’s a way to explore new genres and new ways of communicating an idea that may be better suited to a poem or short satirical piece, than say a straight-on non-fiction article.

Writing a poem may not compare in many ways to writing a screenplay, but the fundamentals of writing are universal and do apply across all genres. The editors are also here to ensure a seamless transition to our publication, while making sure that the standard guidelines and policies of Medium are adhered to regarding the use of photos and pictures, the inclusion of titles, subtitles and other points designed to make for a pleasant user experience.

One last point. In ILLUMINATION we encourage interaction. We want readers to interact with the writers. We want writers to know that there are interested readers, travelling across platforms to arrive at Medium and have a look at something they’ve written. To a writer this is golden. So share your experience.

We are very happy to see new writers showing up at ILLUMINATION every day. This bodes well for a future, filled with a wide variety of voices and ideas, written from unique perspectives cultivated from scores of countries around the world. The editors are here to help with this process as are the writers.

So, welcome!

Joe Luca is a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.