{"id":921,"date":"2010-01-22T20:05:48","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T07:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=921"},"modified":"2010-01-22T20:05:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T07:05:48","slug":"i-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/i-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don’t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, I tried to google lyrics that had hardest words to say<\/i> or similar but got distracted. (I spotted Chicago<\/a> among the results and, having a sudden and intense urge to play their best-of CD – thanks, Stevo<\/b>! – did so, sang along with Peter Cetera to 25 or 6 to 4<\/i>, came back humming Happy Man<\/i>, and on returning to my desk, couldn’t remember for the life of me why I’d googled hardest words to say<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

So I’ll just come out with it: there are three words that worry my manager – I don’t know<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Y’know, I don’t know<\/i> as in —<\/p>\n

\n

WRITER bursts into MANAGER’s office:<\/p>\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

I got a writing gig!<\/p>\n

Writer starts victory moonwalking back and forth before Manager’s desk.<\/p>\n

MANAGER<\/p>\n

Excellent work! What are they paying you?<\/p>\n

Writer’s moonwalking stops as he looks at his Manager --<\/p>\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

(whisper)<\/p>\n

... I don’t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nOr like when your reader, having softened you up with nice noises about your latest draft, says they’ve got a few teeny questions, and you can answer the first few easy-peasy, but then the questions get more and more specific until your very limited dissembling skills quickly run out and you’re forced to confess —<\/p>\n

\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

... I don’t know.<\/p>\n

READER<\/p>\n

You don’t know why your villain doesn’t kill the hero even though they have the absolute drop on him.<\/p>\n

Writer screws up his face:<\/p>\n

WRITER<\/p>\n

To allow me a couple of extra pages so that the page count is ninety rather than eighty-eight?<\/p>\n

(off Reader)<\/p>\n

No. I don’t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe writer’s job is to answer as many of their readers’ (and audiences’) (and manager’s) questions up front.<\/p>\n

It’s not enough to write something like —<\/p>\n

\n

His eyes narrow for a beat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n— on page 13 just for some variety between the explosions and manly roars of exertion.<\/p>\n

There has to be a reason for the eyes narrowing. Does the Eye Narrower know something the audience will discover to their horror – yes, their HORROR – on page 78? Is it merely dust in their eyes at that moment? Were they channeling Clint Eastwood for kicks?<\/p>\n

If your Eye Narrower knows things, and you reveal them in an organic and well-paced fashion through pages 15-92, then your reader will reach your final FADE OUT and smile to themselves. They know now that the Eye Narrower needed some good strong reading glasses which, if they’d just swallowed their pride and bought them on page 2, the mistaken identity on page 13 would have been completely averted, and the script would have continued its Jane Austen meets “Sex in the City”<\/i> course rather than the Nouvelle Vague<\/i> Simpson & Bruckheimer reboot they have in their hands.<\/p>\n

It’s not enough to know the script by heart. You have to know the story<\/i> through and through.<\/p>\n

The less questions your reader – and your eventual audience – ask of the script, the better the writer you are. Because YOU. KNOW. EVERYTHING.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I tried to google lyrics that had hardest words to say or similar but got distracted. (I spotted Chicago among the results and, having a sudden and intense urge to play their best-of CD – thanks, Stevo! – did so, sang along with Peter Cetera to 25 or 6 to 4, came … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I Don’t Know”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","tag-chicago"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}