I attended an unusual
meeting a few nights ago. It was a film and filmmaking development group called
TRI-FI. Tri-Fi stands For the Tri-Cities Film International. It was a work development
group with the mission to help develop the motion picture industry here in
Washington State. The organization is quite well developed and hosts an annual international
film festival in the Tri-Cities. If I remember correctly, last year there were
140 films submitted from 40 countries. It seems we have quite a burgeoning film
industry in our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. It must be our clean
air and wide variety of landscapes that makes our area a ‘location of choice.’
I found out that the Washington State Governor’s Economic Development Council actively
supports this growing industry.
The group that met
the other night was only a small part of the larger membership. The participants
included a drone photographer, a sound designer, a production manager (he led the
discussion), an independent filmmaker, and a screenwriter (my host for the
night.) They topic of discussion was ‘pre-production planning.’ Everything from
what food to have during filming to equipment requirements to location and
time-of-day requirements. All the planning aimed at making the actual filming
days go as smoothly as possible. I had no idea how much time the crew spent on
pre-production planning.
While every aspect
of the discussion was fascinating to me (the film novice), the discussions
centered on the efforts of the screenwriter and the screenplay caught my
interest the most. I’m a novelist. I write in a certain style and format. The ‘screenplay’
is an unexplored foreign country to me. First, I got a couple of great ideas to
try at my next writer’s guild meeting. I also had an epiphany, of sorts. My
idea for the writer’s guild was simple. At writer’s guild, each author reads a
couple of page of his or her work aloud and then we all comment on everything
that we notice from grammar to character. My pages for the next meeting contain
a large measure of conversation between characters. My plan is to read the text
myself, but to ask a different participant to read each character’s lines. It’s
a different point of view. Just like reading text aloud will point out
different editing flaws than reading text silently. The screenplay reading
process may highlight different aspects of the written piece than I have
noticed before.
This brings me to my epiphany. Everyone at my
writer’s guild writes for the printed page. The members of the guild all have
the same target in mind, the printed page. Listening to the screenwriter discuss
the pre-production development of the screenplay, I realized that he focused on
the presentation of the lines on the big (visual) screen not on the (quiet
time) paper. I saw an extraordinary new way of expressing my written work.
I saw a potential ‘cross
training’ opportunity, if you will. Athletes cross train all the time, Football
linemen take ballet, and swimmers take boxing. I decided that I was going to ‘cross
train.’ I am going to explore ‘writer’s cross training.’ I’m going to learn
everything I can about the mindset that governs screenwriting. I don’t ever
intend to become a screenwriter. I write novels. I like writing novels. I’ll
let the screenwriters write screenplays.
However, I believe
that understanding the whole screenwriting experience will make me a better
writer of novels. Think of a famous writer who has had his books made into
movies. If that writer was involved at any level or even saw the finished
movie, the experience must have changed. I have no doubt that the novelist
incorporates some new skills into his writing. Maybe they write with an eye for
the scene. Maybe they picture the interaction of the characters better. I can’t
help but believe that the experience of participating in the conversion of a
book to a movie must have made some improvements in the writing process.
I will, of course,
write every day. It’s what I love. Writing relaxes me. It absorbs me. However,
I will also pursue a better understanding of the screenwriter’s mentality as an
exploration into ‘writers cross training.’
My name is Jeff Bailey.
I write nuclear thrillers for a reason, I’ve worked in nuclear related
industries, from nuclear weapons to nuclear research, for fifty years. Deer Hawk Publications released my
first book, The
Defect in June
of 2016. In The
Defect, I tell
the story of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant and why the government
covered it up. The
Defect is based
on true events. Deer Hawk
Publications is scheduled to release I’m
a Marine in May of 2017. I’m
a Marine is about a female aviation firefighter in the U.S. Marines who
witnesses the murder of two M.P.s. She decides that it is her duty to stop
them. Keep in mind that I write nuclear thrillers. The
Chilcoat Project, to be released in spring of 2018, is about the theft
of nuclear weapons secrets from a national laboratory. The
Chilcoat Project is also based on true events. My current project, Wine
Country, is based on the true story of the Radioactive Boy Scout, but
with a more sinister twist.
Welcome to my World
