Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Ricardo “Ricky” Lee is sharing his tips on how to write and tell stories on iWant’s Trip to Quiapo, a five-part reality show/masterclass.

“All of us, writers or not, have the ability to tell stories. We’re just afraid,” Mr. Lee said in the trailer for the show.

Based on his book, Trip to Quiapo: Scriptwriting Manual, published in 1998, Trip to Quiapo the series is like a crash course masterclass on how to tell stories and how there’s no wrong way to tell them.

Quiapo, a district in Manila known for being a bustling commerce center and for the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene or Quiapo Church, is the symbol of Mr. Lee’s dreams as he used to read a lot about the place when he was a child.

“For a child like me, Quiapo was the pinnacle, that’s why when I was writing, Quiapo became the symbol of me achieving my dream of writing a great and successful script,” he explained in a press release.

In a testament to all his years as a writer, Mr. Lee pointed out that this generation’s writers have some sort of “restlessness.”

“They already want to break out and create screenplays and direct. There’s a certain impatience that I try my best to understand. And you can see it in their scripts, there’s a kind of rush and a rhythm of urgency,” he explained.

While he may dole out lessons on how to write, he stresses that there is no wrong way to write.

“There’s no wrong or right way to write, you just have to make it right. If that’s the nature of your time and who you are as a person, turn it around and make it work…They say a movie shouldn’t be too talkative but if that’s how you write, make me admire it,” Mr. Lee said in the vernacular during a media conference on Oct. 19 held over Zoom.

And the pandemic should not stop writers from writing. In fact, Mr. Lee said that writing is a way of “making sense of what is happening around us and with other people.”

Through his four decade-long career writing screenplays for some of the most celebrated Filipino films — Lino Brocka’s Jaguar (1979), Cain at Abel (1982), and Himala (1982), to name a very few — Mr. Lee reflected that he still continues to learn and uses his writing workshops, usually held in his basement, as a way to teach people and learn for himself.

“I’m only one person and sometimes my workshop class numbers 30 people, and I learn a lot from them,” he explained before adding that since he continues to learn and he continues to write, he doesn’t have any intention of retiring.

His workshops, which he started in 1982, have produced some of the country’s celebrated filmmakers including Lav Diaz, Jerry L. Sineneng, and Jeffrey Jeturian.

And now he’s bringing those workshops on screen with Trip to Quiapo, directed by Alberto “Treb” Monteras II, the director of Cinemalaya Best Picture Respeto (2017) and starring Enchong Dee as a struggling writer.

Trip to Quiapo is regarded by many screenwriters as the quintessential storytelling manual despite being published three decades ago, but the show, according to Mr. Lee, showed him a different perspective on Quiapo.

“I saw in a new and fresh perspective the manual I wrote so many years ago,” he said in both the conference and the show’s trailer.

“Have you tried having your friends read your work? Are they still friends with you?” he joked with a workshopper played by actor Arjo Atayde in the show’s trailer.

And in such a short sentence, Mr. Lee condensed what is probably the overarching lesson of his workshops: “There’s nothing else you need to do other than be brave, make your passion your inspiration, and start writing.”

“That’s why it’s called Trip to Quiapo, the journey is more important than Quiapo (the destination),” Mr. Lee explained.

Trip to Quiapo is now streaming for free on the iWant streaming platform. — Z.B. Chua

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