Forty Questions for Screenwriters
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Irish writer Gubnit Ni Dhúinn reached out with a piece on a list of 40 questions she likes to ask herself as she works on a new project and, after you answer them, some lists of your own you might wish to write.
Forty Questions for Screenwriters
by Gubnit Ni Dhúinn
Writing can be a mysterious process. There is no one way to do it. One writer may tell you to do “this,” and another writer may see you doing “this” and furiously call you a fastidious fool fast approaching failure.
This second writer does not seem a particularly kind fellow. Let’s pay him no mind. Let’s focus on the empty page before you. The only thing you can foresee are the thousands of avenues you may take to reaching a million different potential endings of your story. And that freedom can freeze you in place, unable to produce a word, let alone a paragraph or a page.
To keep myself from the perils of paralysis, I like to play a game of forty questions. Whether writing a teleplay, screenplay, or short script, these analytical stepping stones towards creating content, with breadth and depth, these questions offer clear guidance for this gamut of a process.
In order to plot your course with precision, below runs my blunt questionnaire structured to get you started on filling that blank page and addressing any revisions you may need to eventually make. This tried and tested means of buttressing your path from pitfalls can only proffer pointers. It is for you to master the helm and pour in the molten content.
Each writer, ultimately, needs to find a creative process that works for them. There is no one way write, one guide to follow. It is as the existentialist Fredrich Nietzche said: “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
THE FORTY QUESTIONS:
What is the basic idea, theme, premise of your script?
What is the main conflict of the script?
Who is your protagonist and what do they want more than anything else?
Why do they want what they want?
If they don’t know why they want this, what does this tell you about them?
Who or what opposes them?
Why?
What steps will the protagonist take to reach or achieve this want?
What counter-steps will this lead their opponent to make?
Do these steps and counter-steps enmesh the opponent in an epic battle?
Or do these steps and counter-steps only enmesh the opponent in a mediocre struggle?
Does this conflict or struggle dramatize the theme of the script?
Have you considered including a MacGuffin, à la Hitchcock?
Is the conflict an inner conflict?
Why?
Is it a person-to-person conflict?
Why?
Is the action ignited by the “want” of the protagonist?
Is the “want” a subordinate one?
Is it clearly and early established for whom the audience should root?
Why should the audience root for them?
What does the “sympathetic character” have at stake?
Is the potentiality of conflict established early in the script?
Does all the action, conflict, and struggle dramatize the theme of the script?
Is the exposition at the beginning woven into the narrative or laid dead on the stage?
Does the exposition come out in the action, conflict or disagreement?
How have you excited curiosity and created suspense?
What is the attack of the script?
Do the scenes grow out of one another?
Or do the scenes simply follow one another?
Does the central character undergo change?
How does the central character undergo change?
Why does the central character undergo change?
Does each scene, by and large, move from disagreement, through discussion, to a decision which leads to action?
Does the dialogue meander?
Does the dialogue carry forward the story?
Does the dialogue represent an aimless, if engaging, conversation?
Does dialogue develop and carry forward the story?
Does the script mount in tension?
Is each situation more crucial, dangerous, or suspenseful than the previous one?
Answering these questions will indeed help clarify your intentions, but there is another exercise you can try to help guide your process: making a list of your own.
Perhaps this one won’t be a list of questions to ask yourself, though. You could compile a list of your favorite books, short stories, novels, novellas, stage plays, screenplays, teleplays, video games, and musicals, and from that list discern a deeper clarity and understanding of yourself as to what styles, genres and subjects appeal to you the most as a writer or you want to use as an influence on the piece you are currently writing. In a 1984 interview with Warrior Magazine, the English comics writer and novelist Alan Moore describes creating such a list as he began working on the seminal V for Vendetta. The list included everyone from Orwell and Huxley and Thomas Pynchon to Batman, The Shadow, and David Bowie.
Repeat this process with colors, places, edible ingredients, cuisine, cultures, paintings, architecture, sculpture, gardens, songs, et cetera.
This is, in a sense, meditation. As Amit Ray describes it: “Meditation is a journey to know yourself. Knowing yourself has many layers. Start knowing your bodily discomforts. Know your success, know your failures. Know your fears. Know your irritations. Know your pleasures, joy and happiness. Know your mental wounds. Go deeper and examine every feeling you have.”
As in any of your pursuits, it’s also important to:
~ Eat well, adequately, and in a timely fashion.
~ Get fresh air, exercise, and sleep.
~ Establish a productive routine that accords with your circadian rhythm.
~ To the degree that you need people, whether extrovert or introvert, spend quality time with those from whom a mutual benefit can accrue.
~ Beware of ‘prana suckers’ and those who pour scorn on your creativity.
~ Live by your own highly-attuned instincts.
But whatever your highly attuned instincts may tell you, whatever encouragement or discouragement you may feel in the midst of your process, always remember to breathe and, as a slightly more optimistic existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard, once said: “don’t forget to love yourself.”
Gubnit Ni Dhúinn holds degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford University, England. After a decade of lecturing on James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde and G.B. Shaw, she pivoted to working as an editor and translator, thence to the documentary field -- specifically Human Rights -- where her particular panoply of skills has proven in demand. She has been a literary editor at New Dramatists' off-Broadway, and has had theater pieces performed at the Young Vic Theatre and Royal Court Theatre in London.