Pauline Kiernan
Screenwriter, Script Consultant and Mentor

Becoming a screenwriter has been one of the greatest, most exciting challenges I've ever faced. Even after years of writing stage plays, working with actors and directors, and twenty exhilarating years in intimate company with the consummate master of dramatic writing as a Shakespeare scholar, turning my hand to writing feature screenplays was a revelation.

Straight away, I realised that here was a form of writing that took the contradictory impulses of all creative endeavours to an extreme. It's both liberating and yet requires strict disciplines. An imagination on fire with inspiration striking like lightning needs to be disciplined to be transformed into something meaningful.

It's the quality of that discipline that counts.

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The Screenwriter's Challenge

None of the really great screenwriters have allowed rules and formulas to get in the way of what they wanted to say and how to say it.

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and has consistently defied all the so-called screenwriting rules.

He's even satirized Robert McKee's 'Ten Commandments' in his startlingly original Adaptation, and the word is that his forhtcoming movie, Synecdoche New York is even more stunningly inventive.

Imagination and Discipline Working Together
- It's Tough

It's quite tough, this. Imagination and discipline need to work together. The shaping and controlling of the material has to be at the service of the creative source. Otherwise, that discipline is in danger of destroying what fired the writer up in the first place.

But staying true to your own voice can be hard when so much screenwriting advice seems to focus on getting the technicals right.

I realised just how important this is when I started to attend screenwriting classes (too many!), and bought 'How To' book after book, in the vain hope that I would find something that could offer me more than a set of rules which was designed for people who wanted to write blockbuster genre movies for Hollywood.

I did learn something from them, to be fair. Whatever the structure of your screenplay, that structure does have to be strong, and to some extent being forced to think about plot points and rising conflict and so on is useful at first.

But I learned a whole lot more by putting the books back on the shelf and writing draft after draft of my spec scripts, painstakingly trying to work out how to shape a screenplay so that story and characters developed organically from the original idea. I learnt that to stay at all true to the idea, a screenwriter can't just bolt on a structure, you can't just hang 'characteristics' like pegs onto a character.

It's so obvious this can't work out - if you do this, you're automatically treating your story and characters as A.N Other story, or A.N. Other character. How can they be credible human beings if the rules you use are promiscuously bestowed on everything? Characters have to be the totally individual people of your totally individual story.

Why Screenwriting Classes and Books Made Me Go Mad

I went back to my script and tried to write it the way the gurus were telling me to - if my inciting incident wasn't on the right page, or I had what looked like twenty five 'Plot Points' I nearly lost faith and thought, I'm no good as a screenwriter.

But I kept going to back to the movies that had moved and excited me and made me think, read the scripts, and watched the films to confirm what I had always thought. These screenwriters didn't sweat blood wondering how it should be done. They wrote on their own terms, didn't agonize that what they were doing might be 'wrong'.

As with any creative endeavour, if you're looking for inspiration, you might as well go to the great ones.

A First Commissioned Screenplay

This was something I discovered in my writings about Shakespeare's imagination and his dramatic impulses. Although it was an academic book my approach to writing it was creative. I realised that the academic discipline required turned out to be something I could use in an imaginative and creative way. When it came to writing the first commissioned screenplay which has more clearly defined parameters than you have for a spec script from an original idea, I was determined to find a way to keep my original voice, and tell the story in the way I wanted to.

Perhaps I was lucky with the particular producer, but I won nearly all the 'battles' to keep the script the way I thought best. And I like to think it's because I was able to show that in trying to express the themes and emotions of the characters as meaningfully as possible the script would have greater power.

I came to find how to make the discipline required for screenwriting a liberating force, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it really is the only way I want to write.

Being a Screenwriter is one of the
exciting and rewarding forms
of creative writing

I think I've probably bored you enough now with a few of my experiences as a screenwriter and what I've learned.But I hope you can see why I am so passionate about screenwriters finding their own voice - and making sure they keep it.

Screenwriting is one of the most exciting and rewarding forms of creative writing. The screenwriting gurus may be well-intentioned, but too often, it seems to me, they can turn a gloriously exhilarating activity into a boring, dull chore, to make a screenwriter who's got great potential talent into tame, timid slaves to formulas.

If you're still interested - you can scroll down and find some more about me.

Pauline Kiernan Screenwriter
Some Biog. Details

She has been commissioned to write two screenplays by an independent Hollywood producer, the first, an historical epic set in 19th century Turkmenistan, is now in development, and she is currently writing a commissioned script set in contemporary Africa for a young English production company, and working on a film about a famous composer for a distinguished UK producer.

Two of her spec priginal feature screenplays have been optioned by a Candian film company.

She has worked as a freelance script reader for several major UK film companies, including Workng Title and Skreba Films and has provided script coverage services to individual screenwriters for five years.

Pauline acts as consultant on Shakespeare film and stage productions and is currently a consultant for the veteran distinguished director Joe Strick.

She is a visiting screenwriting tutor at the University of Oxford.

She has an MA and Doctorate in English from the University of Oxford, where she taught Shakespeare and Drama courses for several years, and was appointed the Leverhulme Research Fellow, working with directors and actors at Shakespeare’s Globe in its first five years.

She has published books on Shakespeare, including the acclaimed Shakespeare’s Theory of Drama, Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe, Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns, and lectured widely in Europe and the States.

She gained an MA in Playwriting on the prestigious University of Birmingham, UK course where she was taught by the playwrights Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and F***ing)), April de Angeles and David Edgar.

She won Special Prize in the Royal Exchange Manchester Playwriting Competition for her stage play ‘ACTORS!’, which was performed at Finborough Theatre, London, directed by Steve Philmott. Her most recent book on Shakespeare was an Observer Book of the Year.

Pauline is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, The Society of Authors, and on the Committee of Writers in Oxford.

Commissioned Feature Screenplays

Gozel. Historical war epic set in 19th century Turkmenistan, commissioned by indie Hollywood producer, now in development.

Yet to be Titled. Contemporary war drama set in Africa commissioned by independent UK film company.

Optioned Spec Feature Screenplays include:

Manic. Contemporary Drama. One US industry insider described it as ‘Remarkable… takes the genre to the limit and then some’.

Sedition Period Political Drama.

Blood Orange Drama about the politics of present-day war reporting.

The Glamor Gene a light gay-themed Comedy (co-write).

‘A cleverly realised, highly original piece of writing that I commend you on...A wonderfully ambitious project’. Heyman Films Producer of Dangerous Liaisons.

'Beautifully written... a real page-turner'.
Producer, The Edge of Love.

‘A beautiful and engaging script’.
Recorded Picture Company. Producers, Cronenberg's Crash, Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto.

‘A rich and witty sparring match of a script – vividly characterised and deftly structured'.
Company Pictures, Producers, Shane Meadows' A Room for Romeo Brass, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar

‘I want to congratulate you on writing an exciting, fluid and well realised script... fresh and captivating... you have managed to give us a different insight which feels amazingly modern and very intriguing.'
Neal Street Productions, Producers, Susanne Bier's Things We Lost In The Fire, Sam Mendes' Jarhead, and his forthcoming eagerly awaited Revolutionary Road.

Script Consultancy Feedback from Industry and Individual Screenwriters

‘This is excellent. You’ve hit all the right buttons.’
Working Title Films.

‘An intelligent and incisive appraisal.’
Skreba Films.

‘Thank you for such valuable comments and insights’. I.F, Kent, UK.

‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is to get such guidance after getting through a ton of screenwriting books that made me feel I was being crushed into a blob.’ C.H. New York.

‘Thank you for your report on my screenplay. I found it very informative and I can see I have a lot of work to do. I will be in touch again when I have reviewed the script and made some of the much needed changes.’ K.W. UK

‘Thank you for your insights regarding my script . Needless to say, I have taken your advice to heart and have began tuning the characters and pacing issues.’ P.B. Ireland.

‘Thank you for making me believe I could do it.’ N.M. Italy.

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