Younger Writers versus Older - Who Has More to Say?

I have seen my share of message board arguments about whether young writers have anything to say versus older writers. The young types point out that youth rules Hollywood and that older writers are by definition cobwebby and embittered. Older writers point out the average age of a WGA member is 40 and that young writers are all piss and vinegar but have nothing to say.

Rouge Wavers know that the Wave-inatrix reads an awful lot of scripts. By young and old. Male and female. (Oddly, mostly male but that’s another blog). And I have this to say: bullshit.

I believe everybody has something to bring to the table. I won’t even weigh in on the side of older writers because obviously more life experience imbues a writer with perspective that a younger writer just doesn’t have. But I do believe that older writers (and by older I mean over 40) need to get off their dusty high horses and understand that young writers have a whole lot to say too. Yes, they break the rules, yes, they imagine sometimes that which feels foreign or disturbing or totally crazy and I say – bring it. I love it.

The only time I see young writers fail miserably in scripts is when they highly overestimate their talent and grossly underestimate the work that goes into becoming a decent screenwriter. Youth being what it is, this is not an uncommon occurrence. But as far as age and lack of experience, young writers bring a bite, a passion and an imagination to the table that is formidable.

Younger writers have quite a bit to say. They have grown up living with the mistakes of the generation that came before them. Like the groundswell of a wave, younger writers create what is new in this world as a reaction to what came before.

When you are 25 years old, there is nothing you think you can’t do. And that, dear readers, is amazing. Younger writers have the world at their fingertips and their imaginations roam over a landscape of possibility that older writers begin to shut themselves off from.

I say that writers are writers and we need not have silly in-fighting about who has more to say. We have different things to say when we’re 45 versus 22. One does not obviate the other.

Each end of the spectrum has pitfalls and advantages. I encourage young writers to be aware that age 22 is a bit young to write a coming-of-age story; they haven’t quite come of age yet themselves. And I remind older writers to take risks in their writing but moreso – to respect and encourage young writers. You were there once too. So you thought you had the world by the tail and you were wrong. Get over it. Make room for the new.

In my opinion, that Hollywood is a youth culture is exaggerated. Hollywood is a money culture. You write a movie which will make money – you’re in like Flynn. Yes, the clubbers and celebrities are young but we don’t care about them. The only way an older writer can blow it in the room is to be pompous and out-of-touch; to judge today’s culture as somehow inferior to what was going on in “their day”. Yes, that will shut down your meeting rather quickly because what it says to an exec is that you have stopped growing.

Older writers can sometimes feel threatened; why haven’t they made it by now? Everybody has a unique path. You get there when you get there.

Younger writers want to be a sizzling hot, instant success. Newsflash: the instant success is a myth at any age. You get there when you get there.

It’s not a competition. Well, it is, but we should be inspired by our competition, we should draft off of each other and not in fight. Writers need to support other writers.

Young writers – I love you. You rock. But remember, as impatient and passionate and excited as you are, the writing life is a long and circuitous path. Your entire life does not ride on this one script. Slow down, take a deep breath and get out from behind the computer a bit more. Older writers, relax, the young un’s aren’t swiping your work or stealing your opportunities. If they write stories that shock or upset you – ask yourself why that is. You are good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you. Screw ‘em. You haven’t lived the life you’ve lived to get sidelined by some brilliant 25 year old. That kid might just inspire your next idea. Or marry your daughter but that’s another blog.

Nothing wrong with being young and needing to grow – but there is everything wrong with being older and having stopped. Stop worrying about age and get back to work.

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Fresh out of Ideas

It’s a terrible feeling when you’ve finally gotten that draft done and it occurs to you that you must quickly generate another script – but you have no ideas. None. Zero. Your brain feels like Death Valley; tumbleweed blows by at regular intervals and all you really want is a diet coke. Then your stomach growls.

Worse, it seems that other writers have tons of ideas. Great, inspired, vivid ideas. Other writers are literally Idea Machines. And each time they call and tell you gleefully of their great new idea you briefly consider strangling them and stealing it.

I have found over time that writers seem to be divided into two camps: the Idea Machines and the Ponderers. I’m a Ponderer. It is a special kind of hell for us Ponderers because most of the time, we got nothin’, just absolutely nothin’. But. There are sources of inspiration to turn to. It’s called the news.

Naysayers are quick to point out that scanning the newspaper for ideas is a dead-end road which ends at the Heart Break Hotel; if a story comes out in the Christian Science Monitor about a three-legged child from Atlanta who sued the Little League for the right to play, six weeks from now, eighteen specs will hit the market about just that. There is some truth to this possibility. Three or four months ago the Atlantic Monthly published a piece about the IRA and indeed, several established writers immediately set to putting together ideas and pitches. Sure enough a friend of a friend of mine found himself having dinner with David Benioff pitching an idea based on a particular paragraph of that article. He has since sold the pitch.

Of course this is a chance we take; when we all drink out of the same water hole, the source becomes muddy and overcrowded. The point I want to make is that reading various media outlets for ideas is the gift that keeps on giving. Writers who stay current not only on hard news but commentary, editorial and opinion pieces find themselves immersed in the sometimes brilliant, often controversial exchange of ideas that goes on between the great minds writing today. It prevents myopia from limiting your vision as a screenwriter.

Keep a file folder of clippings. Every time you see an article that tickles your fancy, cut it out and put it in the Idea File. Sometimes two clippings of seemingly disparate ideas may merge into one incredible premise. Sometimes the clippings will inspire simply a moment in a script you are already writing. Here are some clips I have saved because there was just something about the story that struck me as interesting:

*An elderly woman in the Midwest donated the recycling money she’d spent over thirty years saving – literally from Ensure and Dr. Pepper cans – and purchased a swimming pool for the population of the small town where she lived. In the clipping there is a photo of the elderly woman in a crazy 1920’s bathing suit cutting the ribbon in the modest city pool she’d purchased and stepping in as the first official swimmer. Thirty years she saved her recycling money. And what did she do with the money? She bought a pool because it was too damn hot.

*An entrepreneur purchased land in Virginia, near a Civil War battleground and is in the process of using the land for the first Civil War themed cemetery. That’s right. There will be a Union side and a Confederate side. Those who purchase a plot will, upon their deaths receive a funeral with full “military honors” with period costumes and the pomp and ritual fitting for either the Wah-uh of North’n Aggression or the War Between the States – depending which side of the cemetery you choose to be buried in.

*A small town in Texas went bankrupt when the local factory had to shut its doors. Desperate to keep the tiny town afloat economically, the townsfolk took a vote and decided to turn their little town into a permanent Oktoberfest-style Austrian village. They bought lederhosen, they revamped the main street complete with pointy-roofed facades and cuckoo clocks and they opened a restaurant which serves dark beer, sausage, blood pudding and pfeffernusse. Business is booming.

*A small town in the south is overrun by squirrels. Like, BEN overrun. The town council takes a vote and decides that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday citizens may shoot squirrels between twelve noon and two p.m. So three days a week for two hours each afternoon, the town erupts in gunfire. As of the date of the article, progress had been made.

Are any of these little clips particularly good ideas? Obviously not. Maybe they are just funny little moments doomed to languish in the Idea File forever. Or maybe one day a couple of them will coalesce to become the story of a town called Oberheffenhaffen where a character played by Jim Carrey blows into town one day, buys a sausage on a stick, shoots a squirrel and starts selling plots in the Confederate side of the cemetery. It's THE MUSIC MAN meets HAPPY TEXAS.

My point is this: if you feel like a dry well when it comes to ideas, if searching for them makes you feel desiccated artistically rather than inspired, turn to the world around you. Here are some of my favorite sources:

The Sunday New York Times
Vanity Fair*
The Atlantic Monthly
Defamer
Slate
Salon
The New Yorker
The Utne Reader
NPR (all of it, but This American Life in particular)

*did anybody read the article in VF 2 months ago about the wealthy scion whose yacht ran aground in a national preserve off the Florida Keys? That is a story waiting to be written.

Reading these types of publications will do more than gift you with ideas. It will widen your horizons and save you from the becoming a single-minded, slightly dull-eyed screenwriter with no interest in what’s happening in the world outside of Hollywood. All Hollywood and no world makes Jack a dull boy.

You will also be exposed to some terrific writers, controversial and otherwise; in Vanity Fair alone, regular contributors include Sebastian Junger, Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott. The New Yorker of course features the brilliantly acerbic movie critic Anthony Lane (if you don’t own his collected reviews and essays “Nobody’s Perfect” run, do not walk to the bookstore), Jeffrey Toobin, Tad Friend, Hilton Als and occasional visits by Steve Martin. The Utne reader is a bi-monthly publication which features the best of the alternative press; it is rich with progressive and alternative points of view and a publication very dear to my heart.

I’m sure readers can contribute many other excellent sources for idea shopping. Do it for fun, do it for edification and do it to suss out the stories, large and small that are happening all around us. Because nothing is as strange as real life and nothing is more frustrating than staring at it right in the face and coming up bone dry.

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Life, Love, Truth – and Distance

I often read scripts by young writers that are, ironically enough, coming-of-age stories. These scripts are passionate, epic and generally involve an overbearing father who wishes the main character would go into the family business. The main character usually victoriously tells dad off in the end and goes his merry way, barefoot and with his banjo, free at last to truly be himself. Such sturm und drang from a writer just over the legal drinking age. And as I read such material, I really do feel the intensity of feeling which wrought the work; it’s just that it’s not generally matched by a skill set or perspective to pull it off. Younger writers tend, very often, to write a thinly veiled version of their own experiences because these experiences have been recent and painful. Just as often, inexperienced writers write thinly veiled fantasy versions of their lives in which their ex-girlfriend bears a striking resemblance to Angelina Jolie and their boss at the Dairy Freeze is shredded by the razor sharp claws of the monster living in the dumpster.

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against young or inexperienced writers. I love the new, fresh voices and perspectives that they contribute to the world. But writers, like fine wine, need to age just a little before they take on the personal stuff. A synergy of life experience and the cultivation of voice imbues a writer with the ability to look back with clarity and write something that is personal – yet universal. It’s not about me, it’s about we.

Some time ago, I went through a bad break up. I had ever so many feelings about it, most of them homicidal, and nowhere to put them. So I decided to write a bleakly black comedy about the experience. Two weeks after the breakup, my writing group stared at me kindly, the way you would a doubled-over old lady in a parking lot, as I pitched them my idea. It was all over the map, it was ridiculous and it was most certainly not a movie. Suddenly I became aware of the embarrassed silence in the room. And it is a testament to the integrity of my writing group that a volunteer stepped forward and softly said: I think it’s too soon.

Naturally writers must be passionate about their subject. But our emotions need to be indirect; embedded in theme or character, not overt. Studio readers can attest to the painful experience of reading you-had-to-be-there comedy. No matter the genre or really, the venue, fiction is universally resonant precisely because it is specific and non-specific at the same time.

My advice to writers young and old is that if you feel a strong urge to write about your life – don’t. Resist the temptation. Let it sit for a few months or even years. Trust me, when it is time to tell that story, it will emerge from you with an elegance, hilarity, poignancy or razor-sharp anger which takes a story into the realm of a STORY. Take the time to allow the experience which shaped you to become an experience that will shape us – collectively.

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