One piece of advice on Twitter is: “don’t compare your draft to someone’s final product”. This advice helps to emphasize the idea that a project should go through a development process and got me thinking about how writing compares to the steps of shooting a movie. How the various stages of the production sync with the writing process as a whole.
Pre-production
After the studio green-lights a movie, producers have a lot of footwork to do to get everything ready. These activities range from scouting locations to casting calls for actors to planning out budgets and schedules. Authors in a research phase define the roles of their characters along with how they act, feel, and look. Research can include designing settings and even sketching out how these locations look in our minds (or on paper). Along with historical accuracy or background information on technology or weapons. For authors, this phase can take a day or years, depending on the subject matter. But research for both films and authors acts to smooth the creative process.
Production
The filming process is most akin to the actual daily writing for an author. This is where the bulk of the creative endeavor comes to fruition. Without research and storyboarding it is easy for a film or book to lose its way. As a storyboard shows how the frames of a movie should look so too can an outline or roadmap for an author. However, as in both, these are only guiding documents that allow for deviation as the project takes on a life of its own. Dailies allow a director to see issues with scenes shot that day and decide if any reshoots are necessary. In this way, authors can review the previous day’s work to make tweaks before moving on. As the actors interact in the setting and establish their motives the director’s job is to get a good performance from them. Authors in a similar way coach their characters to reveal the truth in each scene and often are surprised with the nuances that bring characters to life in new ways. Production is also where schedules and deadlines can be missed and where it is easy to lose momentum. Think Coppola during the filming of Apocalypse Now. Coppola was writing the film on the fly and ended up leaving the crew to fend for themselves for long periods during the shoot because there was no clear path forward.
The Rough Cut
Once shooting has wrapped the editor splices the pile of footage together into the rough cut. This is akin to the first draft of a complete work. There is a story in there somewhere, but a lot of polishing needs to occur. The first read-through of a manuscript will point out many glaring issues that somehow got overlooked in the writing process.Similarly, a rough cut will show issues with transitions or where b-roll must be shot. In its basic form, the rough cut acts to get the arc of the story together and shows where music, special effects, and reshoots are all necessary. Needless to say, the first cut functions to get the pieces of the story into a working, coherent order.
Like in the editing suite the author can switch whole chapters or cut out scenes or entire characters. Anything that doesn’t add to the central vision of the work is suspect. It is here that themes and motifs emerge and like in a film the author can send characters out for “reshoots” to get a scene perfect.First ScreeningWith the rough cut done the director will screen it for a select group of trusted friends and colleagues (think George Lucas screening Star Wars for Spielberg). In this screening, they can get critical feedback from those outside the project helping to relieve myopia that can occur when people work on a project for too long. This is similar to how an author can bring in a group of alpha or beta readers to go through a second or third draft to help spot issues such as pacing or plot holes.Some of this advice aids the editing process where authors and film markers can continue to tweak scenes and rearrange until the plot is right. If there are obvious spelling or grammatical errors those can and should be cleaned up, but the pure focus doesn’t have to be on the writing. There is time in the process to clean everything up.Final EditingFor authors, this stage can go on for an indefinite period of time if they are not on deadline with a publisher. Multiple rounds of beta readers can ascertain if specific plot beats are hitting the right tones and identify new issues cropping up in drafts. These multiple cycles of readers are similar to focus groups whose reactions gauge the effect of the movie and offer feedback on any glaring inconsistencies. As the story solidifies and the pacing evens out the author can shift focus to smoothing out dialogue, buffing up descriptions, and removing extemporaneous information. Any of these issues are different for each writer, but I tend to leave my weaknesses for last not wanting to face them until the final drafts. Filmmakers in this stage are recording sound effects, improving timing, and finally adding in special effects at the last moment. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard on when to stop the editing process is: stop when the edits you’re making are no longer enhancing or clarifying the plot.
The Final Cut
The time comes when the director (or more often the studio) pulls the trigger declaring the film ready to hit theaters. For an author, especially amateurs like myself, it seems like this day will never come. There is always another chapter to edit or another scene to go over. However, no matter how much editing is done, there must be a point where you stop and query the manuscript (if that was the goal). Thinking about the writing process as similar to filming movies releases me of the fear of having to write perfectly from the start. I know there is time to work out the issues during multiple drafts and with the help of beta readers. As long as I put the daily or weekly work in, there will eventually be a rough draft that I can hone into a final product. It also reminds me, like in films, that I can focus on one aspect of the work at a time. One round can concentrate on dialogue to ensure each character has a unique voice. And then the next round can dive into descriptions or adverbs. If I break it down into manageable goals, then a path forward is always possible.