David Mamet on How to Write for Television

Interested in getting better at writing? I always am. If you are as well this letter/memo written by Mamet to his writing team for the television show, The Unit delivers the goods. Ostensibly "Made for Television" but anyone interested in improving their writing for any medium would do well to mine it for nuggets of gold. Particularly appealing to me is this injunction:

"The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama."

If I were a tattooing sort of guy, I'd have this tattooed on the back of both of my hands and set it to flash in flaming subliminal letters on my monitor three times a minute.

It is the Talmud to the Torah of:

"THOU SHALT NOT BE BORING."

That's a commandment to remember when writing on the various subjects, arguments, concepts and commentary that arise in the current struggle henceforth to be known as "The Thermonuclear Phase of the Culture Wars."

Long ago, a friend of mine quipped, "Better ideas require better arguments," and while that's true it is also dated. As they wind their way

through the infinite warp and woof of the Web the proposition that many readers come for the "facts" and the "reasons" is true enough, but that's why God created hyperlinks. While some may say they come for "the substance" and without it shall depart forevermore, many more stay and return for the drama. Of those some may complain and forever depart (except for the lurking back-peek) if your flames burn too hot and bright, but it is an adamantine Rule of the Net that "Flame wars are good for business." (As I was at some pains to point out in my now ancient book from 1996. )

"Flames are good for business/traffic." Learn it, love it, live it. In this brave new world that is being thrust up the fundament of freedom like a five-pronged parsnip with every passing day, it's no longer enough to say, "I believe you need to learn a few of the actual facts about this issue which you seem to have overlooked." That is the old-school approach and it don't butter no parsnip.

Instead take a page from David Mamet and write it:

"Listen up, you prolapsed blathering rectum recycling dinosaur dung from your hovel in the downtown trailerpark of Upper Babboon's Asshole, California, I believe you need to learn a few of the actual facts about this issue which you seem to have overlooked because you are a flaming fascist piece of junk that I wouldn't shit on if you were the last wheat seed in the known universe. But I digress...."

There. Much more satisfactory. It is in many ways the 12th step of writing to win. Now having had a spiritual awakening as the result of this step, we must try to carry this evangel to Obamaholics, and to PUNCH UP THE VOLUME in all our postings.

But before you go, take a close look at the Mamet principle of "The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama" in its full context. There lots of gold still to be mined.

To the writers of the unit

Greetings.

As we learn how to write this show, a recurring problem becomes clear.

The problem is this: to differentiate between *drama* and non-drama. Let me break-it-down-now.

Everyone in creation is screaming at us to make the show clear. We are tasked with, it seems, cramming a shitload of *information* into a little bit of time.

Our friends. The penguins, think that we, therefore, are employed to communicate *information* — and, so, at times, it seems to us.

But note: the audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, i wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama.

Question:what is drama? Drama, again, is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, *acute* goal.

So: we, the writers, must ask ourselves *of every scene* these three questions.

1) who wants what?
2) what happens if her don’t get it?
3) why now?

The answers to these questions are litmus paper. Apply them, and their answer will tell you if the scene is dramatic or not.

If the scene is not dramatically written, it will not be dramatically acted.

There is no magic fairy dust which will make a boring, useless, redundant, or merely informative scene after it leaves your typewriter. *you* the writers, are in charge of making sure *every* scene is dramatic.

This means all the “little” expositional scenes of two people talking about a third. This bushwah (and we all tend to write it on the first draft) is less than useless, should it finally, god forbid, get filmed.

If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it *will* bore the actors, and will, then, bore the audience, and we’re all going to be back in the breadline.

Someone has to make the scene dramatic. It is not the actors job (the actors job is to be truthful). It is not the directors job. His or her job is to film it straightforwardly and remind the actors to talk fast. It is *your* job.

Every scene must be dramatic. That means: the main character must have a simple, straightforward, pressing need which impels him or her to show up in the scene.

This need is why they *came*. It is what the scene is about. Their attempt to get this need met *will* lead, at the end of the scene,to *failure* – this is how the scene is *over*. It, this failure, will, then, of necessity, propel us into the *next* scene.

All these attempts, taken together, will, over the course of the episode, constitute the *plot*.

Any scene, thus, which does not both advance the plot, and standalone (that is, dramatically, by itself, on its own merits) is either superfluous, or incorrectly written.

Yes but yes but yes but, you say: what about the necessity of writing in all that “information?”

And i respond “*figure it out*” any dickhead with a bluesuit can be (and is) taught to say “make it clearer”, and “i want to know more *about* him”.

When you’ve made it so clear that even this bluesuited penguin is happy, both you and he or she *will* be out of a job.

The job of the dramatist is to make the audience wonder what happens next. *not* to explain to them what just happened, or to*suggest* to them what happens next.

Any dickhead, as above, can write, “but, jim, if we don’t assassinate the prime minister in the next scene, all europe will be engulfed in flame”

We are not getting paid to *realize* that the audience needs this information to understand the next scene, but to figure out how to write the scene before us such that the audience will be interested in what happens next.

Yes but, yes but yes *but* you reiterate.

And i respond *figure it out*.

*how* does one strike the balance between withholding and vouchsafing information? *that* is the essential task of the dramatist. And the ability to *do* that is what separates you fromthe lesser species in their blue suits.

Figure it out.

Start, every time, with this inviolable rule: the *scene must be dramatic*. It must start because the hero has a problem, and it must culminate with the hero finding him or herself either thwarted or educated that another way exists.

Look at your log lines. Any logline reading “bob and sue discuss…” is not describing a dramatic scene.

Please note that our outlines are, generally, spectacular. The drama flows out between the outline and the first draft.

Think like a filmmaker rather than a functionary, because, intruth, *you* are making the film. What you write, they will shoot.

Here are the danger signals. Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of shit.

Any time any character is saying to another “as you know”, that is, telling another character what you, the writer, need the audience to know, the scene is a crock of shit.

Do *not* write a crock of shit. Write a ripping three, four, seven minute scene which moves the story along, and you can, very soon, buy a house in bel air *and* hire someone to live there for you.

Remember you are writing for a visual medium. *most* television writing, ours included, sounds like *radio*. The *camera* can do the explaining for you. *let* it. What are the characters *doing* -*literally*. What are they handling, what are they reading. What are they watching on television, what are they *seeing*.

If you pretend the characters cant speak, and write a silent movie, you will be writing great drama.

If you deprive yourself of the crutch of narration, exposition,indeed, of *speech*. You will be forged to work in a new medium - telling the story in pictures (also known as screenwriting)

This is a new skill. No one does it naturally. You can train yourselves to do it, but you need to *start*.

I close with the one thought: look at the *scene* and ask yourself “is it dramatic? Is it *essential*? Does it advance the plot?

Answer truthfully.

If the answer is “no” write it again or throw it out. If you’ve got any questions, call me up.

Love, dave mamet
Santa monica 19 octo 05

(it is *not* your responsibility to know the answers, but it is your, and my, responsibility to know and to *ask the right questions* over and over. Until it becomes second nature. I believe they are listed above.)

Posted by Vanderleun at March 27, 2010 12:31 PM