David Mamet on Writing

I've been watching a ton of masterclasses (from masterclass.com). For example, I loved Aaron Sorkin's, James Patterson's and Annie Leibovitz's. Finally, I decided to try David Mamet. I knew of him, of course, as everyone has. I've seen all his movies, some multiple times, read his script for The Verdict, and one of his books. My firm opinion was I didn't like him. Watching his masterclass gave me a chance to recall all the strong opinions he holds on matters which I disagree with. There are a lot. Still, I found myself enjoying the wisdom of his writing lessons, communicated in his frank, sometimes dogmatic, and even bombastic, style. At the end, I said "God damn it!" They are that good. I'm watching them a second time right now.

These are not precise quotes, but are fairly accurate representations of his ideas.

• Writers are like beavers, A beaver chews down trees because his teeth itch. He has to chew in order to keep his teeth from driving him crazy. A writer writes to get his/her conscience to shut up for awhile. Give it a problem it likes and it will shut up - writing does that.
  
• Myth is a form of unverifiable reality. Drama is a form of myth. It is not false (or true) but merely unverifiable.
  
• Cause and effect is how we perceive reality, even if there is no real correlation. Drama, like life, is a narrative of cause and effect. But don’t investigate reason via drama. The purpose of good drama, like a good joke, is not to teach but to entertain. To help the audience member forget their stress-filled burden of everyday life. Done right, drama brings us closer to God. If you write drama, do your job.
  
• Your job is to tell a story with a hero who wants one thing. The story begins with a precipitating event. It has to be told simply, so you can mislead your audience. The story ends when the hero achieves or fails to get what they want. Everything in the middle must be a progression, using cause and effect, from beginning (the precipitating event) to the end.
  
• On character, 1: A drama is the story of a character, the protagonist, who wants one thing.
  
  1. What does a character want?
     
  2. Why does he/she want it?
     
  3. What happens if she doesn't get it?
     
  4. Why now?
     
• On character, 2: Aristotle says character is simply habitual action. Character doesn't really exist as we naturally conceive of it. There is no more to a character other than what they do in the script. As a corollary: if you have a character "in your head" but haven't described a character attribute using action lines you've written, don't think the audience can guess this aspect of your character's behavior. For example, say Sally is your protagonist and you think of her as honest and decent. If you haven't given her actions to indicate this, the audience won't know.
  
• A story is told in the closing lesson which I really liked. It emphasizes a dictum that Mamet repeats over and over in his lectures: if you decide to be a writer, take it seriously - to the same level of seriousness that you take a marriage. Mamet tells his viewers "thank you for your attention" before giving his final message. This is taken from a scene in scifi writer Alfred Bester's Hugo award-winning novel "The Demolished Man": People have discovered that (1) certain people can read minds (that is, are telepaths), (2) there is a time warp that allows people to travel very long distances. However, only the mind-readers can communicate with those who have traveled this way across the galaxy, so the mind-readers are revered in this future society. Everyone wants to be a mind-reader, so the mind-readers set up a school and people showed up at the school to apply to be a mind-reader. The crowd of applicants are in these long lines filling out the application forms. The mind-readers look at these lines of people filling out forms, waiting to be tested, and the mind-readers think "If you can hear my thoughts, I want you to go to the door on your left marked 'No Admittance' and I want you to go through that door." At this point, David Mamet simply looks at the camera says "thank you" and leaves.
  

  What a great class!