About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post on my script consulting page where I said I’d be offering my services as a script consultant for free. This was motivated by an episode of Scriptnotes I listened to where Craig Mazin bashed consultants for being opportunistic and charging too much for a service that wouldn’t help a writer get their script anywhere closer to optioned or bought.
For a while I shared this opinion. There are far more cost-effective and helpful ways to receive notes on a screenplay. You can attend a workshop or just sending your script through to your friends.
After studying creative writing through Whitireia and this past year earning an M.A. through the International Institute of Modern Letters, my opinion on this has changed somewhat.
About a week ago, I met with Ken Duncum, who runs the scriptwriting stream of the M.A. at IIML, but was away on a fellowship the year I attended. It was kind of a wrap-up on the year meeting and we discussed the thesis script I’d worked on for the year.
My thesis is a project I’m very proud of, and is a story I hold a personal connection to. Yet, throughout the year, I hadn’t completely discovered or articulated what was personal about the project to me, or how what was personal to me was also universally identifiable.
And within the first five minutes of discussing my script, Ken honed in on what I’d struggled all year as an M.A. student to identify. And, although he wasn’t my teacher, he spent the next hour critiquing my project and giving me a stronger sense of direction going forward into my rewrites.
I’d spoken to previous graduates of IIML who spoke highly of Ken, but I hadn’t really anticipated this. My brain was experiencing a flood of everything I was trying to achieve throughout the year suddenly falling into place and making sense. So, twenty minutes into our hour-long discussion of my project, I probably had a stupid, uncontrollable grin fixed to my face. Hopefully I didn’t. But I certainly felt like I did.
And I got to thinking; this is the skillset I sought to develop when I first set out to be a script consultant and started this blog two years ago. And they are the skills I felt I lacked when I wrote that post on my consulting page offering script notes for free.
Obviously, all consultants and tutors* in scriptwriting have an entirely different approach to their craft. In that moment, I was in awe of Ken’s ability to help writers identify and subsequently have authority in their own voice. But I’ve also had tutors and worked with consultants who’ve been equally strong in different approaches.
(*different roles, but for the sake of this I’m going to clump them together.)
I felt that Steve Barr, my tutor at Whitireia, approached workshopping with an unparalleled grasp of story structure and genre and enabled writers to write the kind of movie they want to write. Through taking Gavin McGibbon’s writing workshops through EAT, I learned to appreciate existing movies in a new way and aspired to utilise the same storytelling techniques those movies do. And Kelly Marshall, who took me through the M.A., strengthened my ability to generate ideas in the moment, improved my pitching, and highlighted the interconnectedness of every aspect of scriptwriting.
I aspire to follow in these mentors’ footsteps, and also establish my own unique approach to consulting and teaching.
I’ve been studying creative writing academically for the last three years. In that time, I’ve had many people ask if it’s possible to learn creativity. And while no, I don’t believe learning creativity is possible, I do believe one can be taught how to channel that creativity.
I think it’s possible to be taught craft. I think it’s possible to learn structure. I think studying creative writing academically can give you confidence in your writing and in your voice, and I also think the workshopping environment of most creative writing courses is an invaluable one. Giving and receiving feedback is as important a part of the writing process as the writing itself.
Since graduating from the IIML, I’ve had an opportunity to facilitate a workshop where the writers present all have a different level of experience. With the individuals who are newer to writing, I’ve been astounding by the originality of their ideas and voices. And by the strengths in dialogue, character, and narrative they already have, even if they don’t have as strong a grasp on other areas yet. And I’m humbled by the opportunity to help them bring these voices out, and to align those voices with their chosen storytelling medium – scriptwriting.
Although I’ve held a desire to be a script consultant for a while, my experience last week with Ken and my experience facilitating the workshop have inspired me to renew my focus on achieving this goal. My dream job is to be a tutor to emerging writers and a consultant on the projects of established writers.
When I wrote that post a year and a half ago, my decision to offer my services for free was also motivated by not feeling like I was enough of an authority in that field.
Since that time, I’ve worked closely with established producers on feature film projects, written countless coverages, earned a Masters’ degree, attended weekly writing workshops, and currently facilitate one of my own. And while I’m by no means at the level of the mentors I listed above, I feel I’ve had enough hands-on experience since then to dip my toes deeper into the script consulting well. I also feel, in order to reach the level they’ve achieved, I need to continue practicing my craft. In that pursuit, I have begun to update my consulting page. I will continue to do so in the coming days and weeks.
UPDATES:
While I don’t believe creativity can be taught, my experience has taught me that steps can be taken to bring a writer’s voice out and to strengthen their vision. And I seek to inspire other writers in the way that I have been inspired.
White Cloud Screenwriting 
Thanks for the kind words, Rene. It was a pleasure to work with you.
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