My Talk at MPH

I was invited to (and spoke) at this month's MPH Litblogger meeting and it went... okay-lah, I guess. I was nervous as heckleberry, but it didn't turn out too badly.

I actually prepared a speech and all, and sweatily gripped the roll of paper as I stood up to speak, but never actually read from it.

Raz also took the trouble to unbutton my top button, because (it seems) my neck is wide or something. I kept trying to button it up back, and I'm only marginally surprised she didn't just rip it off. In return, I kept referring to her as "the person you go to if you want to be a scriptwriter". Unfortunately, she wasn't inundated by psychos at the end of the talk.

Anyway, here is my written talk, which kind of matches my actual talk, but not really:

Hello. My name is Dzof Azmi, and I have been writing television scripts for about three years now. My resume includes shows such as Table for Two, Impian Illyana and Realiti (which has recently been nominated for best TV drama in the 2007 Anugerah Skrin Awards). I am currently working on two shows - one about a girl who is pesetered a ghost to find out how he died, and the other about a 13th Century Morrocan who travelled the world and left a string of wives wherever he went. It's not Drama Minggu Ini, but it'll have to make do.

I supppose the first question that needs to be answered is: What is screenwriting. Without trying to sound to immodest, screenwriting is power. Sure, it's also about sleepness nights, frustrating discussions, and if you're not careful, a way to lose touch with reality, but at the root of it, it's about the ability to wield power.

Think about it; with a few taps of the keyboard, you can determine everything that needs to be done in the months ahead. You determine what types of actors and actresses need to be hired; which KL roads need to be shut down and cleared for filming; what kinds of cars get to be driven down them; and - most importantly - what is done and what is said.

Of course, reality is maybe not quite as glamrous. What you really are going to produce is a ream of paper with ink on it. The strange thing about writing scripts is that although they are fairly important in the process, not a single viewer is expected to actually see it. There is an immense amount of trust involved that what you think you wrote will become what you hope you'll see. There was a script once where my producer had written: INT. HOTEL KITCHEN - NIGHT. THE TWO YOUNG LOVERS, BURN AND MELODY, BEGIN TO FOOL AROUND WITH EACH OTHER. He wasn't able to be at the shoot - something he later regretted when he found out the footage shot literally showed the two characters fooling around - playing the fool that is. I would have loved to have seen his face when he saw Burn with a pot on his head, while Melody drummed it with chopsticks.

This is something that I think a lot of writers would be frustrated with. The disconnect between your creative output and what eventually ends up on the screen. But for me, the magic is when it actually becomes better. Most of the changes actually are beneficial and you really have to have trust that everyone involved actually wants the best out of it. And when I know that people watch the show and they laugh, and they cry, and they do it when they're meant to do it - then it's worth it.

Okay, enough glitter and glam, let's get to the perspiration. What needs to be done to produce a script? Firstly, for television, you must understand that the producer is king. If you are a producer, then that's great. If you're me... you get the drift. But anyway, the first thing you need is a story. It can be a simple idea, or it can be quite a fully fleshed one. It can be the most original thing in the world, or it can just be something you've experienced in real life. But the truth is, there are very few original ideas out there, and even a truly original idea is useless if not properly handled.

The next thing you do is to break the story. "Breaking the story" means taking a single paragraph idea and turning it into ten pages. You do this because it gives both the producer and you a clearer idea of where the story is heading. There are many ways of telling the same story, and if you don't get it clear which way you want, then it ends up being a bouillabaisse. A planned one will be yummy, but an unplanned one - well there'll just be something fishy about it.

After the producer and you has agreed on what the story should be and how it will be told, then you have to go and write the script. This can either be extremely easy or excruciatingly painful, and there is no easy way to predict what will happen.

What I do like about this part of the process, is that I'm generally free to do it however I choose. I can go to an office and work on it from 9 to 5, or I can work in Arenas in 1 Utama with a teh tarik in front of me. Or, as my producer is fond of telling complete strangers - especially the attractive ones - I can sit naked at my desk with my cats milling around, either interposing themseves in the line-of-sight to the monitor, or balanced precariously on my thigh. Those of you with a strong visual sense may want to avoid thinking about this.

Writing a script itself usually takes a few days, but you normally have to turn in multiple drafts. Usually it's three, but there could be more or less, depending on the producer. Once the final draft has been turned in, the scriptwriter is not needed any more. You can now go on holiday, if you want. Or, maybe, you can attend table readings, rehearsals or even the actual shoot.

So, what makes writing a script so difficult? How is it harder than writing a novel, for example? Well, in one word, compromise. Television shows have a limited budget. In the US, this number can be as high as a few million dollars per episode. Most Malaysian shows will be lucky to have a budget of more than twenty or thirty thousand Ringgit per episode. This constraint means that you try to reuse locations, to reduce the number of speaking parts, and - please - don't ask to shut down Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman on a busy weekday, so you can have the actors act out a car chase scene in a pink Lambroghini Diablo. It will not happen.

The other source of compromise is censorship. We can't quite be as free we like to be sometimes with the screen. I think that censorship is necessary, but it can limit storylines and how the scenes are shot. I was recently trying to write a rape scene, and my producer and I argued about what was suitable for Malaysian TV and what wasn't. Part of the problem is that the rules are not always clear, and you don't want to waste money - there's that word again - shooting something that will get struck down. The censors can be strange sometimes. Once, we had an actress wearing an FCUK shirt, and the censorship board came back with a question - can use that word, ah?

Lastly, is the problem of the producer's vision. This is something that is inescapable. If you don't get along with the producer, there's no point writing something he won't like. He'll just cut it off. In fact, a large number of lines that finally get made are actually the producer's words, depending on the situation. Sometimes, you are lucky to have even one or two scenes left unmolested.

So, if despite all this, you still want to write, what can you do? Simply put, don't wait for a production house to ask you to write. Write a sample script first, and then use that to show off your ability. This, if you like, is your resume. In it it is crucial that you show that you understand how to tell a story. If possible, write an original story for an existing show. This will demonstrate that you know how to write in different styles, following a template created by somebody else. Do try to watch TV, although this is a double-edged sword in Malaysia. I truly believe that there are some shows out there that will actually make you a worse writer. Avoid them if you can.

And lastly, and most importantly: don't stop writing.