11 Writing Quotes You Should Take Notice Of (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in a series on Writing Quotes.

6) A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

Non-linear storytelling is a difficult technique to pull off and it varies greatly. From Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which starts at an event and the rolls forward in flashback, to the insanely structured 1st season of Damages that pops in and out of timelines like a Whack-A-Mole.

Surely Memento which starts at the end and rolls backwards to the beginning must find a place in this category. Also, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead which has a structure like a Japanese sword blade which are folded over each other until the final tensile strength is accomplished.

Be aware, however, that this is a tough task to do and do well. So many writers dump in scenes out of sequence that have the effect of confusing the viewer, not illuminating. Confused is never a good look in any story.

Understand structure first to then subvert it.

7) I love movies with spectacle, but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn’t have to be a creature. ~ J.J. Abrams

Star Trek (all the reboots), Cloverfield, Super 8, Mission Impossible films and more – after creating spectacles galore a quote like this may seem strange from director/ writer J.J. Abrams. But like an earlier quote about story being important, movie moments are similarly important and they don’t rely on spectacle.

Take this amazing monologue in Hidden Figures written by Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder:

INT. NASA SPACE TASK GROUP – MOMENTS LATER

Katherine’s soaked like a wet rat. She walks back to her desk. Stafford’s staring at her. Ruth’s staring at her. The whole damn place seems to be staring at her.

AL HARRISON (O.S.)
Where the hell have you been? Everywhere I look you’re not where I need you to be. And it’s not my imagination.

Katherine turns, Harrison’s on the floor. Katherine freezes.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
Where the hell do you go everyday?

KATHERINE
(quietly)
The bathroom, sir.

AL HARRISON
The bathroom! The damn bathroom!

KATHERINE
Yes, sir. The bathroom.

AL HARRISON
For 40 minutes a day!? What do you do in there!? We are T-minus zero here. I put a lot of faith in you.

Katherine can barely speak. She whispers:

KATHERINE
There’s no bathroom for me here.

AL HARRISON
There’s no bathroom? What do you mean there’s no bathroom for you here?

Katherine can’t take it anymore. Her voice rises.

KATHERINE
There’s no bathroom here. There are no COLORED bathrooms in this building or ANY building outside the West Campus. Which is half a mile away! Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself! And I can’t take one of the handy bikes. Picture that, with my uniform: skirt below the knees and my heels. And don’t get me started about the “simple pearl necklace” I can’t afford. Lord knows you don’t pay “the coloreds enough for that. And I work like a dog day and night, living on coffee from a coffee pot half of you don’t want me to touch! So excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day!

You can hear a pin drop. Katherine takes her purse, personals and walks off. Leaving everyone’s jaw on the floor.

It stuns and leads to a massive change in the NASA complex which is part of the overall theme of this terrific film. Costner’s character takes the labels off the coffee pots and then uses a crowbar on a sign over the “coloreds” bathroom.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
There you have it! No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms. Just plain old toilets.

Harrison looks over. He sees Katherine.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
Go wherever you damn well please. Preferably closer to your desk.

Harrison snatches up the sign.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
At NASA we all…pee the same color!

Katherine nods approval.

Or this by Aaron Sorkin in the pilot of The Newsroom:

When asked what makes America the greatest country in the world, Jeff Daniels’ character out of frustration with the clichés spouted by the other panelists finally answers the question.

WILL MCAVOY
And, yeah, you, sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period. So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the f*** you’re talking about. Yosemite?

These movies are dramas without much special effects or spectacle but the writing is so strong, so memorable it anchors you to the story like Ramset concrete nails.

8) If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. ~ Toni Morrison

Amen to this. But let me take it a bit further. Chasing trends is a fools’ errand. By the time you see something like Stranger Things or Ray Donovan on the air, Hollywood has already cloned it. From the time something is read, purchased, produced, and released, it might have been twelve to eighteen months.  By that time, everyone who is in a position to make decisions has looked for something similar. You’re already too late.

So trying to write the next Game of Thrones just gets you frustrated.

Be yourself. Create the trends, don’t follow them.

Of course, some trends are macro-trends and bear scrutiny. Lately, it seems true crime-based series are having their moment. Whether it’s fiction or reality-based there seems to be a huge appetite for this genre so why not? At the least, it’ll serve as a good writing sample.

9) Make ‘em laugh. ~ Arthur Freed

Arthur Freed was a lyricist and legendary film producer who won awards for just about everything he touched. Take it as gospel that adding comedy to your work, where appropriate, aids any story. Unremittingly grim is one note and tedious. Even bad people laugh.

My Lady Jane, Deadpool & Wolverine, The Boys, The Gentlemen all use comedy in varying degrees to tell their stories to great effect.

Comedy can be situational, physical (slapstick), or verbal and using it in any form, like that old song Spoonful of Sugar, helps the ‘medicine’ go down.

10) You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. ~ James Baldwin

James Baldwin would know.

Long before the fantastic Dear White People (film or series) or The Help he was already accomplished and widely read.

Even though he was not a screenwriter per se, he was a writer, period. Intense, articulate, passionate. And his material was translated to film most recently by Barry Jenkins in If Beale Street Could Talk and his unfinished work reflected in the documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

This excerpt from his book Notes of a Native Son illuminates both he as writer and as a black man.

“From all available evidence no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came. I was told before arriving that I would probably be a “sight” for the village; I took this to mean that people of my complexion were rarely seen in Switzerland, and also that city people are always something of a “sight” outside of the city. It did not occur to me-possibly because I am an American that there could be people anywhere who had never seen a Negro.”

As a screenwriter it’s even more important that you be concise and precise with your words.

From Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash:

BLACK…

We hear a HIT. A drumstick against a drum head. Crisp, sharp.

Then a second hit. Then a third and a fourth. The hits

growing so fast they start to blur together. Like gunfire…

INT. NASSAU BAND REHEARSAL STUDIO – GEHRING HALL – NIGHT

A cavernous space. Sound-proofed walls. And in the center, a
DRUM SET. Seated at it, in a sweat-marked white T, eyes
zeroed on his single-stroke roll, is ANDREW NEIMAN.

He’s 19, slight, honors-student-skinny — except for his
arms, which have been built from years and years of drumming.

Suddenly — a MAN enters the practice room. Stopping, rising—

ANDREW
Sorry… I’m — I’m sorry—

MAN
It’s ok. Stay there.

The MAN steps forward, removes his coat. He’s tall. Late
fifties. Black T-shirt, black slacks, black shoes. We’ll know
him as FLETCHER.

The room is silent now. And then, softly, as he’s one of
those people whose whisper can scare the crap out of you—

That’s about a half a page to introduce two characters, get their physical description, skills, tone, and understand their placement in the story and to each other.

Chazelle spends a lot of time on his scripts and it shows. Lean, clean, and mean.

11) Don’t be ‘a writer.’ Be writing. ~ William Faulkner

Last bit of advice from a legendary writer is just to be a writer. Set aside the leather patches, beanies, berets, and Starbucks card and treat writing as what it is – a job. Study it, practice it. Learn from it. It’s a great, glorious, painful, wonderful, ugly, and frustrating job…

And one that I happen to love.