Interviews with Screenwriters: Paul Haggis

There are a series of brilliant interviews with writers slotted all over the internet.

Here is a short interview that I recommend viewing for would be screenwriters. Paul Haggis wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby. He has also written commercial screenplays such as Quantum of Solace.

Watch, listen, learn and take the best you can from his nuggets of wisdom...




ZHZ.

On Rejection

That's you, just floating above these word scratches. You're that perfect writer, the genius, the one who just penned the Great Novel.

So why haven't you sent it?

Too busy, huh?

Come on, you're scared of the big R word. Rejection.

Listen. Just listen. Hear that sound? That's your heart beat. If you're really still you can hear it in your ears. Can you feel the pulse in your head. Can you feel it your chest?

Are you relaxed now?

So you're waiting for the right moment to send your manuscript? Yes, I know it's literary gold and it will sell for a million and mummies will name their kids after you, yada yada yada, but...you haven't sent it, have you?

Perhaps I should tell you a tale, or perhaps many tales:

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding was originally turned down by twenty publishers
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham was rejected by sixteen agents
• Watership Down by Richard Adams was rejected by thirteen publishers
• G P Taylor, author of Shadowmancer, self-published before clinching a deal with Faber
• And last but not least J K 'Billionaire' Rowling was rejected by a dozen publishers

How's the coffee?

You've smelled it, haven't you?

If you want to be published expect rejection.

That's how you know you're onto a winner. Agents get it wrong. Publishers get it wrong.

Please, give them a chance not to live it it down.

So dust off your manuscript. Yes, I know it's brilliant. Just send it. And while you're waiting, keep writing.

Another coffee?

ZHZ.

Metaphor: The Heart of Poetry

Long before the typewriter, philosophers had charted the realm of poetry.

Over two thousand years ago Aristotle wrote:

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance."

Aristotle, De Poetica, 322 B.C.

It is true that a poem can come to life without a single metaphor, but with it...from the tiny serifs of letters, wings can sprout.

It's so simple to create metaphors, that it is a tragedy that so many can't. Yet, it is so difficult that it takes veritable genius to do it. But children see them everywhere.

How confusing, how contradictory.

A few weeks ago, I spent hours rifling through the pages of poetry manuals. I discovered that few chapters, nay few paragraphs, explained how to master metaphor. Was Aristotle right, that you can't learn how to give life to a new metaphor? That you either have it or you don't?

I think Aristotle was wrong.

You eyes are narrowing. You're asking me: "Oh yeah? How do you create metaphors then?"

You want to know how to crack open your the Pandora's Box that nestles in your head?
You want to fill the world with new creations?
Then come with me.
All you have to do is-

-Look.

Look and keep looking until the object reminds you of...something else. And keep looking until you see...something else. And don't stop...keep looking until the world blurs and the object becomes a Stereogram. Not everyone has the knack of seeming them pesky things, but they're there alright, there at the edge of the world.

I tell you that those untouched, unknown, magnificent metaphors exist.

Dive, I say dive...go deep and keep going until you reach the solid and infinite home of imagination and grab hard- and come up fast, real fast before the blighters escape you and yank them out and let them breathe and when they do your metaphors will wail and they will keep wailing until they become cliches...

I promise.

ZHZ.

The Origin of Poetry

Poetry is potent.

The rhythmic gush of a poet's mellifluous syllables stir the embers of our frail hearts. In human history, poetry's invisible beat has spurred us into action and we have discovered the far and distant shores of enduring self-revelation.

But why? Why does poetry have this grip we cannot see, but holds us helplessly in its narrative? Whether with iambic pentameter or free verse, words, sometimes arcane, sometimes modern, fall into the depths of us and each time they hit they crack against something hard.

Why? Why does poetry shake us in this way?

The reason lies in the beginning, before we were born.

It was when we were nestled in the black of our mother's womb and the slow systole diastole of her heart comforted us in warmth. And that was all we had before we could speak: that muffled rhythmic thud of sound.

And sound. And sound. And sound.

That's why we can't help, but be ensnared in loops of sounds made words and each time we hear the beat of poetry our soul swells as it remembers the first thud that comforted us in the dark and we know, we just know, that we're finally coming home.

ZHZ.

(c) Zahid Hussain

That Which Separates

I have often found that two things separate would-be writers from taking wing into the sky of words that they dream of.

They read little.
They write little.

Yet they expect an instant masterpiece to appear out of the nib of their favourite fountain pen.

I encounter such writers so often that I have fallen into the habit of asking them "who" they read and then I ask them "what" they are writing.

And the usual answer?

Hmmm.
Well.
Cough.
Ahem.

And then the million dollar phrase: "but X said that my writing was really good".

Enough.

This is all you have to do - and yes, you have to keep doing it.

1. Read.
2. Write.

Who said life wasn't simple? :-)

ZHZ

Descriptive Writing

How do you describe an object, an animal or person and using the alchemy of word transform it into something utterly real in the mind of another?

Use the precise word.
Use the apt word.
Use the senses: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory...
Use verbs of motion - even for something static...

And take your time. Look, really look. Wait, really wait. Observe and catch your observations on cool white paper cut with clean black lines of Indian ink...

And your words will rise form the page, organic and pulsating with the clenching tension of life. And then you'll sit back in your chair and gasp at your creation and wonder how you did it, how you spun letters onto a flat sheet of A4 and made the words...live.

ZHZ.

A Writer's Life: 9th March 2009

I've completed the final draft of my current novel.

I shall rejoice for a heartbeat and then I will plunge back into its dark deep depths. To polish it.

Over the last few months I've read an enormous amount about the craft of forging fiction. I've learned some hard lessons along the way and I pause for a moment to tell you where I'm at so that it might help you too.

I hit a wall in December. The novel, T.S., is technically a difficult one and I was unhappy with the draft. I withdrew for a period and read as much as I could about fiction. I scrutinised the different opinions and then I removed the scum from the top.

And then I rewrote huge swathes of the novel to ensure the conflict was constantly rising and that the stakes grew from chapter to chapter. I wrote every day. I took my laptop everywhere, I plugged in my headphones and kept tapping away on the keyboard.

In the final draft I deleted almost 35,000 words. I currently have 75,000.

The scenes are lined up, the prose is good - but not perfect - and now comes the scalpel and the magnifying glass and the reading the text aloud. This is when I will polish it, shine it so bright they'll be able to see it from the moon.

And of course, what I hope to do is to create the 'uninterupted fictional dream'. Will it be easy to do? The question doesn't even matter to me.

ZHZ.