Sex and the screenplay... and the similarities

Delhi shines in the summers. I got home last week. The malevolent Delhi heat tends to do different things to different people depending on who has the air-conditioner and who doesn’t have the power back-up. Two days ago it was 44 degrees. By the time you are reading this it may have touched 45. At that temperature, out in the open, the head spins.

Technically, I am not in Delhi. I am across the border in Uttar Pradesh a.k.a Andher Nagri: the land of the cowboy. The part of Andher Nagri my parents live in is called Ghaziabad. There is not much to do in Andher Nagri and when I am not watching polythene bags flying in the air outside my window, I am mostly struggling with a screenplay.

Over the last one and a half years, ever since I decided to become a full-time writer, I have been struggling with screenplays. Writing scenes and trying to figure out what is going to make them work; arguing with fellow writers about structure and the hero’s journey, defending one kind of a scenario over another or simply typing out what the writing partner says.

When I first came to Bombay three years ago, I did not know the difference between a script and a screenplay. My struggle over the years has got a lot to do with trying to understand what a screenplay is and how does one write it well.

Writing a screenplay is different from writing a novel or a short story. It is less lonely for one. Most films either have one screenplay writer or a team of writers, but almost everyone — from the producer to the stars involved — wants to know what’s happening with the story and is often the most enthusiastic person in a story brain-storming session.

Secondly, there is a lot of hope floating around. There are many reasons why a screenplay writer with work could be depressed but no screenplay writer is ever depressed for want of attention. A number of people are interested in having the screenplay written, which is why they can tolerate a screenplay writer longer than any publisher would ever tolerate an unpublished essayist.

In the few years that I have been struggling in the film industry I have come to believe that writing a screenplay is a bit like having sex. Anyone can do it. No formal training is needed (or expected) and if one finds oneself confused between the sheets, all one needs is self-help: ‘How to write a good screenplay’ and ‘How to have hot sex’, both are now well accepted subgenres of the self-help genre.

Importantly, like with most things that most human beings are capable of doing simply on account of being human, some people are better than most people when it comes to having sex and writing a screenplay. No one knows if one is born with the skill, which is why popular myths contend that practice leads to mastery.

Plus, it’s all in the mind:  both activities rely heavily on fantasy and the act of fantasising. In the end, what happens in the real world is rarely what one had thought of in one’s mind. Good sex is rare, a good screenplay rarer!

Less dialogue helps both sex and screenplay. In the end, the actors can turn everything around; there is scope for improvisation. Like sex, a screenplay is often debased by definition and like sex, sometimes the worst thing about a screenplay is paying for it. Importantly, just like sex, if writing is the problem, writing is the solution as well!

Mayank Tewari is a writer
Emails: inbox@dnaindia.net & mayankis@gmail.com