A Writer's Process: Tips in Scriptwriting from Quentin Tarantino

           

Quentin Tarantino

If you haven’t seen Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Django Unchained, you better get yourself on the next bus to the theatre and cough up the admission price because it is certainly worth every penny. It is a fantastic modern Western movie with a great mixture of action and humour. Quentin Tarantino has been writing movies for over twenty years now and every single one has been a grand slam. A hole in one. Whatever the hell you want to call them, they’re great films, all right? Go see them. Go see them all.

            In his earlier films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino used a non-linear storyline to tell his stories and intrigue viewers. But, what he is best known for is his interesting use of dialogue among his diverse and fascinating characters. However, he almost feels like he is taking credit for something that isn’t even his.

            Tarantino has stated that when he writes dialogue, it isn’t him that’s talking and writing, it is his characters that are doing the talking and he is simply jotting their own ideas down. That is a very introspective thought. To write great dialogue, one must completely immerse one’s self into the characters that they are writing. That isn’t to say that you can’t include your own thoughts; Tarantino has said that his characters sometimes go off on tangents about random things like Madonna or Amsterdam, similar to his conversations in real life with his friends.

            Another important aspect of writing great scripts for Tarantino is to write it with pen and paper first. Every time he starts writing a new film, he goes out and buys a notebook and pens and knows that "this is the notebook I'm going to write Kill Bill on" or "this is the notebook that I'm going to write Inglourious Basterds on". I don’t know about anyone else, but I also find it personally rewarding to write on paper. It’s easier to get a flow going between characters when you are actually making it with something in your hand, not pressing buttons.

          At times, Tarantino is worried that his dialogue will become old hat, but to keep things fresh, he sometimes co-writes scripts with other writers and adapts novels, such as his collaboration with Robert Rodriguez on Grindhouse (Death Proof and Planet Terror) and his adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch, Jackie Brown.

              As a last little glimpse of his genius, here are two clips of the man himself sharing his views on writing a great script. He explains that when writing scripts, perhaps it is better to have an overabundance of ideas or scenes and dialogue and to simply cut some when actually piecing together the film (or play or any other sort of production).