Write it and they will come | Mary Kate O’Flanagan

Though they may feel that way to us while we're experiencing them, no story springs out of nowhere. To create an imaginary world that we can actually believe in and get sucked into takes plenty of work - a feat of intellectual labour that is bound to be rife with frustration and trial-and-error and that can only be properly completed with a generous dollop of perseverance at your disposal.

That, and some helpful tips that will keep you anchored along the way. After all, another cliché that artists tend to negotiate throughout their careers is that you have to know the rules in order to break them.

Though this is arguably true of all forms of storytelling, how to structure - and 'sell' - your tale becomes an even keener concern in the field of cinema, where a script is only one part of a large collaborative project that involves plenty of people (not to mention resources).

In an attempt to mobilise local screenwriters and encourage them to polish up their scripts to an international standards, the Valletta 2018 Foundation recently organised 'Story Works', a series of seminars in which a trio of lecturers from the University of Southern California regaled screenwriters (and screenwriters-to-be) based in Malta with tutorials and useful tips on how to nip and tuck their own stories into concrete shape.

But this has nothing to do with forcing screenwriters to pen 'commercial' scripts, one of the lecturers, Mary Kate O'Flanagan, tells me. Rather, it simply means that screenwriters are encouraged to keep the audience in mind while they're writing.

"I tend to get the most resistance on this in central and Eastern Europe - places like Berlin, the Czech Republic and Romania," O'Flanagan says with a smile, and affects a gruff Eastern European accent to illustrate her point. "You want I should make Hollywood movie, I don't want to make Hollywood movie! - at which point I reassure them that, no, we don't want to force anyone to make a Hollywood movie, nor that we're working to any set-in-stone schema. All we're doing is asking the participants how the audience would perceive their script if it is written in a particular way."

"The fact is that putting together a screenplay is actually incredibly hard, and more often than not people come to us with great eagerness to get help and advice on how to whip their scripts into shape," O'Flanagan adds.

Though she stresses that there's no 'easy fix' or restrictive formula by which she and her colleagues work, there is a cardinal rule that she flags up when I ask her whether she can identify one key difference between films and other forms of narrative art.

"Cinema is absolutely driven by the forward pace of the narrative. Prose can linger on a scene or description for much longer, for example, but cinema doesn't have that luxury."

Again, O'Flanagan brings up the importance of keeping an eye out for the audience at all times.

"The way our workshops tend to unfold is that if out of six people three don't like a particular aspect of your screenplay, you're advised to listen. Of course there are certain screenwriters who refuse to budge, but that's up to them. When I teach, I often tell people who aren't all that concerned with the audience to maybe try out more 'solitary' forms of writing, like prose or poetry.

"Because at the end of the day, with a film you're trying to attract the attention of a large number of people... not to mention somebody else's money, too."

O'Flanagan - who was joined by her colleagues David Howard and Martin Daniels for 'Story Works' - is also confident that the 'authority' of screenwriting within the power-pyramid of the film world is not to be sniffed at. Though screenwriters traditionally don't get as much press as directors, O'Flanagan is convinced that this is really down to the fact that directors simply tend to have "bigger egos" and that by and large, screenwriters tend to want to be kept out of the limelight.

More pertinently however - particularly for the European film scenario in general, and Malta in particular - O'Flanagan is convinced that it's only good scripts that can guarantee good films.

This is good news for a country like Malta, which has no real indigenous film industry to speak of, because by its very nature, a good script doesn't take all that much money to produce.

"I'm going to tell you a secret, but you can publish it in your paper. There's a myth going around right now which suggests that it's incredibly hard to get money for films. But that's only because people are going around with weak-ass scripts. The funders are actually hungry for good scripts to produce."

Propping up the example of Denmark as a model - whose film and television scene flourished in recent years due to an increased concentration in creating high-quality scripts - O'Flanagan said that Malta doesn't need "big budgets", which wouldn't be viable for Malta anyway, but good scripts.

"It really won't be difficult for Malta to capitalise on it if these workshops continue to gather momentum."

The 'Story Works' workshops do in fact intend to continue on a twice-yearly basis over the next five years. But on a more immediate level, O'Flanagan - who is of Irish origin - has made an additional connection that could help the Valletta 2018 Foundation in its goal to foment a more active local film scene.

"I have met His Excellency Jim Hennessy, the Irish Ambassador to Malta.  With the Embassy's support, we hope to bring more Irish filmmakers to Malta to share their experience in co-production finance, which is a practical necessity for smaller countries. Hennessy wants to facilitate co-production and encourage cooperation between filmmakers who seek international partners," O'Flanagan says.