Quentin Tarantino film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. Talks about his process for writing anything that he is working on in a video that I have found, before he decides on a specific idea of what he is going to do he thinks about the ideas he's previously had for example "A Book he's always wanted to turn into a movie" So he'll go back to his notes and look over what he thought about with that specific idea and explore some different thoughts he has so he can decide what stage the idea is at, he does this at any given time especially when he's looking for something to inspire him, he describes it "like falling in love, you talk to a lot of people, you flirt with a lot of people, everything is going great and then you find the right one" and as soon as he finds that he starts to think about music choices, and gets him to start writing.
But there can be a point, where he'll lose interest and decide that it isn't what he wants to do, Quentin says that it doesn't help him much thinking past the middle of the story because primarily he writes genre pieces so he'll have an idea what the third act will be, and genre movie you'll know what direction you'll going and what you want the idea to end up like, but writing in his style he generally focuses on getting to the middle.
He'll sometimes describes writing as having a checklist ticking things off as your going along adding things, removing things and deciding on whether or not it's a good or bad idea, or maybe use ideas on the checklist for another idea. But by the time you get to the middle of the film you know everything about you characters where they want to be, what they need to be doing, who everyone is, what the direction the story is going into for the 2nd half of it, and you have to trust that you'll be at that point by the time you get there.
The methodology behind script writing you have to know everything about the limitations of the film, because it doesn't matter what the audience knows, they need to realise that the writer knows what he's doing. It's also about knowing not the whole movie but page by page, knowing that you've written a good page, he wants to progress with his writing so much that he doesn't want to stop, there's things in the script that will never make it to film, but makes the idea better, so it's a better read, and more emotionally satisfying.
Quentin goes onto say that a story is "something that unfolds, it's not a quick left turn or a quick right turn it's something that unfolds" screenplays are blueprints to the movie but the writer is the narrator reading the script to the audience, in the reading off the script it doesn't matter if certain characters will make it or if certain scenes will happen, it's the fact that in the reading of the script it was important, after a certain point it's the characters which tell the story in certain films he describes that certain instances the film will be written so that the scriptwriter doesn't know what happens till he's written it all, and doesn't want to know just so it adds surprise to the writer too.
Writing characters that can trust each other by what they say, and making events happen by seeing them adds a whole different element when you add mystery because then the writer makes you doubt who really is telling you the truth and wants you to watch more.
Writers seem to be result orientated as Quentin describes because if they taught like they wrote pieces then they would be ridiculed, because actors aren't result orientated because the actor wants everything to be perfect and make them look good, and the writer wants the same, but novelists and writers aren't result orientated, it's the process of getting there and doing it, it's the journey that makes the destination worth while.
As long as the writer doesn't make things predictable then the end result of the written piece will be rewarding to the actors, writers and the audience all in their own way.
Here is the video below:
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