TomMannino.com

I’m sitting here, really enjoying chopping up and smoothing over my resume and it just dawned on me: I actually really do enjoy working on this document.  I’ve not had to do it often, but after some thought I realize now why I enjoy it so much.

Building a resume is very similar to developing a character for a story or a game.  Very, very similar to building a character for a tabletop pen-and-paper RPG.  Obviously, you aren’t (or shouldn’t be) fabricating aspects of yourself, but my mind wanders and finds many correlations.

Screenwriters and ‘professional storytellers’ often use character-defining exercises like writing back stories for their characters to help flesh them out and seem more real.  They define the character’s idiosyncrasies, like what their favorite color or food is, what their parents names are, where they were born.  Some/most of this information never sees the light of day, so to speak, but it helps the author see through the eyes of the character and help make more realistic decisions.

Character sheets for games serve many purposes.  One of them is to allow the player to show the ‘game master’ what they want to do or be.  If put points into strength, I want to be strong.  What super powers I choose in this game dictates the tools I have at my disposal.  It also serves as a record; once you establish the character, begin playing, and aquire experience and ‘grow,’ the sheet helps keep track of that growth and progress.

When working on a resume, it’s important to fine-tune it so that it represent the aspects of your ‘character’ that you think are relevant for the job you are trying to get.  While I am very proud of my tenure as a professional baseball mascot, that may not help my chances landing a sweet job as a mercenary.  You put your best, most relevant foot forward.

As I sit here and work on my resume, I can’t help but think, “Ok, I wonder what a stranger looking at this will think of me?” which is probably a good thing to think.  In many cases, I have to hold back.  I have a lot I would love to share and think to be totally appropiate, but I can’t fit it on a page or two.  I understand that ultimately that’s what the interview is for, but still it makes me antsy.

For as formal, and sometimes archaic a process that the resume represents, it’s lucidly clear to me why it’s a ritual that’s stayed fairly simple since … however long resumes have been around for…

A friend asked me where I learned screenwriting from, and that he was interested in doing so himself, and my response got a bit carried away, so I will share it with the world.

I say that I effectively minored in screenwriting at college. I took 4-5 classes total, one of which was a workshop where I wrote a (bad) 120 page screenplay. We didn’t really have a screenwriting major or minor but I took enough classes in it to claim I did.

The best thing to do first is to use a word processing program that does the formatting for you. I posted about it previously but make an account on this site and fool around with it for a bit:

http://www.zhura.com/

This is actually a good start for learning about proper formatting:
http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Formatting/formatting.html

Keeping in mind that the only hard-and-fast ‘rules’ are what types of things go where, (i.e. actions, headings, character names, dialog, parentheticals). Once you get that down, you learn the all the tips for writing good screenplays.

Off the top of my head, there’s some basic rules to keep in mind. One of the most important ones drilled in my head is that when writing a screenplay, you need to remember what you AREN’T doing. You’re not directing actors, you’re not planning shots, you’re not pacing dramatic moments. A good way to learn this basically is reading actual scripts for ‘real’ plays, and then comparing them to screenplays written about the actual plays. (Top of my head, Glengarry and Glen Ross, in fact any of Mamets plays-turned-movies.)

It may be obvious but reminding yourself you’re writing a play that will end up on screen is sometimes important. Save the acting to the actors, the directing to the directors, and the cinematography for the cinematographer.

This manifests in many different ways, one of which being things like giving a character an accent. That is not your job, that is the actors job. Type the words in English and let them come up with the accents and pidgin words. The rare exception to this is if you have someone with a thick accent being misinterpreted, but then you usually explain that in the actions surrounding the incident. It’s sometimes acceptable to make a Note: within the script but it should be used sparingly.

And of course the last one is, if you’re writing a screenplay for your eyes only, for one of your own projects, you can break or bend any of these rules.

I’m more then happy to show you the basics and/or critique any work do, either formatting critique or content critique.