1st Round Stormshifter Genre: Spy Subject: Privacy Character: An undercover cop	2nd Round Apples Genre: Horror Subject: A crime scene Character: A hotel doorman	3rd Round The Dancer Genre: Open Subject: A hidden door Character: A homeschooled child
	12 pages Logline: An undercover cop must discover the meaning of an old man's strange devices as they battle it out in a world of constant surveillence, where privacy is threatened not just by men but by the elements.	8 pages Logline: A beautiful summer backyard hides some nasty surprises for a boy who has just moved house.	5 pages Logline: As a precocious orphan girl in a besieged city tries to hide her secret from an oppressive regime, an unexpected hero enters her life.

One of many photos Paul took while walking through Singapore which inspired his horror screenplay, "Apples".

Congratulations on winning the 13th annual Screenwriting Challenge! It looks like this was your first NYC Midnight competition. How was your experience being forced to write assigned prompts under time constraints?

It was brilliant fun, deadlines seem to bring out the best in me. I found this out when I started writing music at The Gunnery. I’d been waffling around for years freelancing then all of a sudden I had furious deadlines, day after day. I had to learn to trust my instincts, have more confidence in myself.

I’ve only ever finished one other script, more than 10 years ago. I’ve studied a lot and I mess about with a couple of features now and then but to finish three in a few days? Wow. I have loads of stories on spreadsheets but I’ve been too scared to just start typing. I think that will change now.

l love the prompts, they save a whole lot of procrastinating and they level the field nicely. They also remind me that a good feature may explore every genre anyway. It’s great to stretch.


What was the most challenging aspect of the competition for you? What was the most enjoyable aspect?
I write in a pretty non-linear way, mostly with diagrams. I enjoy the way Stormshifter moves around but I realise a lot of readers will find it frustrating. The brief to myself for Stormshifter was 1 - “write a spy story that covers as much distance as possible” 2 - “try to be as cool and elusive as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and 3 - “write something that would be too expensive to make”. That was a good setup to have fun and escape a few personal dramas which were going on at the time.

Horror in round 2 was more challenging, I never watch horror films. I don’t mind writing nasty but only if it has a positive benefit. I started Apples by imagining one of the competition judges reading my story in their back yard on a lovely sunny afternoon. Then I tried to make the horror happen to the people around them while they were lost in the script. I know this is really evil and it makes me sound like a psychopath but I had immersed myself in horror for the whole first day so it didn’t seem so devious at the time. Anyway, the brief said horror so I went all-out horrid.

The brief to myself for the second round was to write something light, clean and clear. The opposite of my first round. I think this made the horror more inescapable.

I had deep sweaty fears about The Dancer in the closing hours. The hours are reversed in Singapore so I was winding up at dawn. I was worried about how people would interpret the political correctness of it. I had a scary experience in Australia years ago writing about indigenous issues there. The deeper I got the more I realised I knew nothing.

I had this terror that I may be offending people, but I also didn’t want to offend my Muslim friends by calling them up at 5am Sunday morning to read my draft! I trusted my original sentiments and the honest shape of my emotions and just powered through. My splendid friend Jason read a draft with a few hours to spare and put my mind to rest.

I think the thing that was most enjoyable was the new clarity and confidence in myself after the previous rounds. The three heat structure really helped me develop.

You were assigned the Spy genre in the 1st Round, the Horror genre in the 2nd Round, and chose to write in the Drama/Fantasy genres with your Open genre assignment in the Final Round. What genres do you typically prefer writing outside of competition? Which was your favorite to write during the competition and which was the most challenging?
To be honest I’ve never thought as much as I should about genre. I remember a last minute panic when I realised I hadn’t decided what genre The Dancer was.

I like to watch political thrillers, sci fi, anything that is a departure from my everyday life. Spy was definitely do-able. I love Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I heard a great podcast recently with the writer.

I don’t feel good about writing horror but I’m proud of Apples. It was a big leap for me in technique and perhaps it was the uncomfortable genre that forced it out of me. It’s actually more of a nasty old fashioned fairy tale. It’s a cautionary tale against temptation and an allegory for substance abuse. It seems to have freaked a lot of my friends out, my wife is too scared to read it.

The winning screenplay you wrote for the final round, The Dancer, had no dialogue. Do you prefer showing rather than telling in your screenwriting through vivid descriptions or did you feel it would work better for this particular story? Are there any films that have influenced your writing style?
I think I realised early on that I was onto something with The Dancer. I’d been quite depressed about the news from that part of the world over the past year and I felt that this was something that could actually make a bit of a difference. I decided to make it silent so that anybody in the world could watch it and totally get it. It also helped to highlight the loneliness of the character’s situation.

Descriptions are fun for me and perhaps I have a slightly different approach because I studied architecture. I love the almost technical nature of good screenwriting. Similarly, architects make these cool clean technical drawings that a layman can barely read. But when the architect looks he can see the setting sun warming the walls and dripping off the tiles.

I think I’m influenced more by novels than by film, particularly Haruki Murakami. His novels have such a strange and beautiful effect on me. They feel like dreams I had that I never remembered. I‘m a gushing fan.

You wrote a great blog post on SaveTheCat.com about your experience in the final round. Was Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder the most influential book on screenwriting for you and if so, what were some of the most important elements you took from it? Were there any other books on writing or screenwriting that have heavily influenced your writing over the years?
Save the Cat was definitely my favorite. It’s immediately satisfying but it also goes deep. His technique involves a kind of checklist called a beat sheet which was a great tool under pressure. I prefer really simple tools in my writing and music. His books are full of practical problem solving techniques, rather than scriptures to follow.

I also enjoyed Christopher Vogler and “Writing the Character-centered Screenplay” by Andrew Horton. I’d love to go deeper, I know there are some huge books to get through but I have so much music to study as well! Joseph campbell is next.

My Aussie friend Karel Segers has a nice site at http://thestorydepartment.com which focuses on classic story structure.

I wish I could study more but I think I learn better from my mistakes, I need to just bang my head against the wall and see what falls out. Lucky I’m not a surgeon.


Do you feel that being a professional sound designer and composer have helped you to become a better screenwriter? If so, in what ways?
For sure! Anything that can help trick a reader out of their reality is worth pursuing. I’m pretty seriously into photography and videography too. I took the scary photos scattered about this page wandering about my home here in Singapore, trying to find the mood for my horror story.

Music, like film, ticks away like a time bomb. You have to be so aware of the audience’s attention span. Especially these days when we’re surrounded by almost infinite content. Musical structure isn’t so far removed from screenwriting, you can check my blog over here for some examples of that. https://medium.com/@paulsearles

With music you can do so much with just one syllable and some careful vibrations. Good screenplays are clean too, like musical scores. A few careful marks on a page.


Now that you can write your own films in addition to sound design and music composition, have you given any thought to directing? Are there any roles in the filmmaking process you want to attempt? Are there any you would like to avoid and if so, why?
My first screenplay won me a small director scholarship back in Australia. I had no idea about films, I just had a demo copy of some screenwriting software and wrote something one morning to impress a girl, beginner’s luck. I still like the script but I was totally out of my depth. I’ve been too scared to even think about directing until recently. Over the past few years I’ve been making little documentaries on my 5D. I do everything on those, shoot, cut, colour etc. It’s great to study how each element contributes to the story, it really helps my writing. Now that I’ve learnt the basics of everything, I know I will be much more confident if I’m ever lucky enough to have a professional crew around.

To be honest, writing is my favourite. The story is everything. From what I understand it’s harder to make a living out of it these days but I’m certainly going to treat it a bit more seriously after this result.

Do you have any plans for your screenplays or any other interesting projects coming up?
First up I have a solo album to finish. I hope to have that up on Bandcamp soon. Over my xmas break I’m going to stop messing about and finish a Shakespeare adaptation which I’ve been tinkering with for a few years, set in Singapore. After that I hope to resurrect an old multimedia opera, a juicy colonial story set in the bushland where I grew up. It’s a huge project that will hopefully combine everything that I’ve learnt.

This competition has been excellent, it’s been great to find out what I can do in a few days if I really put my mind to it!


Will you be back to defend your title in the Screenwriting Challenge 2017?
Definitely!

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Paul Searles is an award winning music producer and composer working at The Gunnery in Singapore, one of Asia’s leading audio houses. He writes film scripts and makes small films for fun.