One of the most important parts of writing is receiving notes. You work so hard on a script and become so immersed in it, that for a while, it is all you can see. Getting those drafts read by other people whose opinions you value (people who don't jut pat you on the back and congratulate you on your accomplishment, but actually critique the work) becomes integral to developing, writing, and completing an industry-worthy script. That entire notion is why, years ago, we formed The League.
Last week, we held our monthly meeting. Though I hadn't submitted for a while, my 30 Day Screenplay Challenge script, a demon thriller, was subject of the meeting. Like dutiful group members that they all are, the Leaguers read the material and gave me feedback. Sometimes, I go into these meetings with specific notes for the group. This time, though, I only had a general notion of wanting to know whether or not the script was working, if it was slow or confusing at any point, if anything was missing, or if the rules of the world lacked clarity.
On the whole, the group provided some very useful feedback. They told me what was working, what was falling short, and what they liked. For the most part, though, with the exception of the introductory scene, they didn't target specific portions of the script as needing a lot of attention. That makes my job both easier and harder. On the one hand, the rewrite becomes about an overall finessing of the script, which means that I can add, subtract, and edit as need be. On the other, there's nothing in particular to concentrate on now, which could make focusing on a start point for the revisions easier.
Either way, it's great to have notes again and to be able to dive back into a rewrite.
You probably know that I've been working on a sci-fi spec with a collaborator since about February. Let's call my writing partner W.A. He's a known actor/writer/director whose major projects came to fruition in the late 80s and early 90s. Needless to say, he has about two decades of experience on me, which is fecund with knowledge and insight.
The collaboration has been a really interesting journey so far. For one, this is the first time I've worked on a project that has not been - at least partially - my idea from the get go. I came on board years into the development of the piece, though still in the outline stage. Almost immediately, I began implementing changes, and W.A. has been great from day one about letting me run with my ideas. He's been so open to any and every suggestion, as long as they have been in keeping with the fundamental precepts of the idea.
In the months since I first got the call about the project, I've rewritten the outline in a major way in at least 4 different ways. (The latest draft was titled Revision 7, but some of the versions might have incorporated minor changes only.) W.A. wants to direct the piece, so his vision has sort of led it this whole time, but the autonomy that I've had has been tremendous. I don't know that I would have come up with the idea on my own, but I've grown increasingly intrigued by it over these past five or so months, especially as it has morphed from something entirely of his own creation to something that we have both weighed in on equally.
I know that there's a lot of insight I can gain by working with W.A. In the beginning of our time together, our conversations revolved primarily around the project and didn't deviate much from that. In the time since, though, we have become more informal and personal with one another, discussing other projects, as well as the goings on in our lives in general. W.A. is consistently working on other projects - mainly as a director - so I know that he has a lot of wisdom to impart. If nothing else, this experience will be of value for all that I can learn from him.
After about two months of having two to three projects going on concurrently, I'm down to a lull of zero. Well, that's not technically true. At present, though, I have had to table writing any more on any of them for various reasons.
The post-Apocalyptic spec that my team and I were talking about converting into a comic book probably isn't going to progress in a different medium at this point. We hoped that we'd be able to get a short comic book story related to the script out soon, and we still might, but the timeline we were going to have to commit to was a lot longer than we had wanted - by about a year. My thinking is that, in a year a lot can change. Another project could take off, which would revive interest in the script. More than that, though, I'll need to focus on new material during that year, rather than on something that's been tested and hasn't taken off. So, that's on the back burner.
The demon thriller spec, which I worked on for the 30 Day Screenplay Challenge, is out to the League for our meeting next Thursday. I'm eagerly awaiting feedback, but I won't really touch the script until I get notes. That, too, then is just sitting idly by the side of the road for the next week.
Finally, the sci-fi collaboration is moving forward, but also in a way that I have to be hands off with for a little bit. My writing partner and I went back and forth for a while one notes, getting to the knit-picky stage to help address any potential questions that might arise, before we sent it off to our producer for her to take a look at. This incarnation is very different from the last one she saw, but my partner and I both agree it's also a lot cleaner and clearer. I hope she concurs. If she does, then I'll dive into pages as soon as we get the thumbs up. It'd be great to start them well before Labor Day.
With three projects off to the side for the next week or so, I can take a breather. I don't really want to, though. I had an idea for an alien invasion project - might even be a book or a comic book - that I think I'm going to start trying to work out a bit. I've had the creative juices pumping through me for so long now that I don't want to lose the momentum.
Two weeks ago, our 30 Day Screenplay Challenge ended. I decided to work on my demon thriller for the month in question, despite the fact that I went into it with an incompletely revised outline. The end result, though, was a full draft of a script I probably would have still been putting off otherwise, so who can complain with that?
One of the very first things I do after I finish writing a draft is I reread the script from start to finish. Well... first I take a few days to a week off and enjoy being done. Then I print and read through the script. My finished scripts tend to come in somewhere between 95 and 105 pages. Drafts, much like this one did, come in about 10 pages more than that on average. When the Challenge was over, I had a 114 page draft to contend with. The page count didn't matter to me quite as much as the placement of key scenes did.
For example, of 114 pages, my midpoint came in at 65. Frankly, that's 7 pages too late. A midpoint is often not one specific instant or line in a script, but rather a scene or even sequence that can be drawn out over 5 or more pages. I came to terms with the fact that my "midpoint" would not be an altercation between the antagonist and protagonist, but rather the event that immediately preceded and led to their fight. The fight concluded on page 69; the earlier event on 65. There was no way I could have 65 pages before the midpoint and only 49 after it. That would just be way too unbalanced. Also, the moment of despair (which Blake Snyder likes to say should come around page 75, and I now agree with him) - the low moment when everything that didn't crumble at the midpoint just comes crashing down, leaving the protagonist with little to nothing - hit on 80. My Act Two turn into Act Three was about on target at 92, but considering the fact that the inciting incident was not a traditional one and ran onto page 12, I knew that I needed to get those big beats in place. Standard format dictates the inciting incident should come on 10, Act One should end on 25 or 30, the midpoint should be on 60, the moment of despair is on 75, and the turn into Act Three falls on 90. I had to achieve that, yet I didn't have a lot of wiggle room that I saw in the first half - there weren't many gratuitous scenes at all.
So how to go about shrinking the script and getting the beats to land where I wanted them? First, I went through and took a fine look at the dialogue. I often over write lines, reiterating things to make sure that the point comes across, saying in three lines what I really only need one or two to do. Step one: excise extraneous dialogue. Next, I went through and looked for any hanging words. Basically, those are words that sit on a line of dialogue or description by themselves, especially short words. If I see a "one" or "car" or "her" or "did" or anything of the sort taking up its own line in the script, I do back and find a way to trim a few characters out of the lines above in order to consolidate. There's no reason those should hang alone. And it's pretty amazing what cutting a few of those will do.
I use Movie Magic 2000 when I write, which affords a maximum of 57 lines per page. Depending what comes next after a page break, stripping one line of text from a page can bump up nearly a tenth of a page. For example, if a new scene begins on page 10, the program might cut page 9 off at line 53 in order to preserve the intro to a scene. The software won't allow a slugg line with no text after it on the bottom of a page. I can't ask page 9 to end with INT. BAR - NIGHT and start page 10 with the scene description. Even if it's only one line of action or description after the slugg line, the program is designed to require something immediately following the slugg line. Scenes that open with a lot of description will necessitate more space at the bottom of a page. That's why, of 57 lines, if 4 are free but I need 5 to accommodate the intro to a new scene, I will go back and look for hanging words.
All in all, merely by consolidating some dialogue and cutting out most hanging words, I was able to drop the script from 114 pages to 106. More than that, my inciting incident came to a close on 10, the midpoint bumped down to 59, the despair point hit perfectly at 75, and Act Three began on 89. This was huge for me and made me much more comfortable with both the presentation and the structure of the script. Though the beats themselves might need work (I'll get the League's feedback in two weeks), at least I know they're where they should be. And that is always good.
The 30 Day Screenplay Challenge officially ended on Wednesday, July 18. When I woke up that morning, I essentially had a full, 114 page draft completed, with three missing scenes. All I had to do then, on that last day, was fill in the blanks.
I really hate gratuitous scenes. I don't mean ones that are overly or unnecessarily violent, but rather ones that don't have a place in the script - scenes that needlessly take up time and pages just to extend an act. When I sat down to fill in the three gaps, I seriously had to consider the relevance and importance of each scene I was adding. Sure, in terms of pacing, I needed something at the designated areas, but what content was necessary? There's little as annoying as a scene that's predominantly dialogue, which accomplishes nothing and, even worse, simply rehashes events that have already happened. I knew I did not want to write anything like that. I needed some spacing and buffer between beats already on the page, but the filler content had to be more than just filler; it had to warrant its existence.
The first scene I wrote felt natural, which was good. It was a logical extension of something that preceded it, but it covered new ground and forwarded the plot (I think/hope). It served as an effective time out before other major events, which had to unfold soon thereafter. It was short, succinct, and achieved a small objective that I hadn't known was missing, but which proved itself important. One scene down.
The second scene veered slightly more toward plain filler. It's a fun scene involving a tertiary character, but it's very much in the spirit of the rest of the script. It handles some elements that I had touched on but glossed over earlier. Can I cut it later? Probably, if it comes to it (and probably really means certainly, since anything that doesn't have to be in the finished draft should go), but I don't think anyone will hold it against me for the time being. My only concern is that it might be too great a deviation from the main characters and too much an out of the blue focus on someone whose fate we're not really interested in. Again, that will be seen later when the League reads the pages for our August meeting.
With the third scene, I hit a small wall. The same characters were in both scenes that bookended the gap, having nearly the same conversation. What can go between these two scenes, that doesn't involve those characters, which would organically bridge their conversations? Ultimately, it hit me - nothing. Not only was there not a single scene that truly fit between those two scenes, but there was also no reason for those two scenes to be two scenes; the solution to that problem lay in merging the scenes. I'm a firm believer in consolidating as many scenes as possible, though when I outline, it's easy to allow myself subconsciously to fall into a trap of writing out more beats than I need that all work toward the same objective. The way to solve that problem is to look at the content of the scenes and, if they're the same, merge them together. So that's what I did.
Three missing beats, replaced by two scenes and the combining of two others to eliminate the need of the third beat, and I was done. For the first time in quite a while, I have a brand new draft of a new project on my desk. It's 114 pages long, which is longer than I normally write, and I'm pretty sure I can trim 10 to 14 pages, but that's not the objective for the moment. For now, all I need to do is read through it again in a few days when the dust from writing settles and begin my edits. At the end of the day, the Challenge proved fruitful for me - I know I wouldn't have driven myself to force out a draft at this time had I not been prompted by the exercise, so despite the quality of the product, I'm pleased. Challenge met!
Curse you, Act Three! Two projects I'm working on this month, and on both of them I slammed head first into a very big and seemingly insurmountable wall after wrapping Act Two. The torture! Three days spent staring at a blinking cursor on the demon thriller, writing a couple lines for some throwaway description, only to follow it up with the ever-depressing...
BEAT HERE?
...as my next slugg line. From page 90 on, my script looks like a dalmatian. Every other page is dotted with bolded question marks and stopgaps to remind me to come back and focus attention on them. On Saturday morning, I churned out 6 rapid fire, usable pages. On Sunday, I scraped together 2. Monday saw 1, which I know is going to get deleted right off, and I think I got through 3 on Tuesday.
It's not so much the low page count that irks me, though, as it is the fact that Act Three should write itself by this point. When Act Three is on the fritz, the problem is inevitably embedded in Act One. There are three other BEAT placeholders throughout the earlier portion of the script, and I have a very good feeling that some B or C story should fill those holes. More so, I know that whatever goes into those beats will lead to a successful third act. I hate adding what I feel are gratuitous sequences or even scenes, though. "Why is this in here? It's not furthering the plot." Breaking up beats isn't a sufficient answer, but if your ending's not working, you can bet that you're missing something earlier on.
There was some good to come out of the week, though. I "finished" Act Two for the demon thriller (finished is a relative term, since I know I'll have to do rewrites), so even though I'm kind of stuck now, I'm about 10 pages out from the end and I have almost a week in which to finish it. Yay for that. Also, I finally got the revised outline to my collaborator on the sci-fi project. I kept hitting the same late Act Two into Act Three obstacles with that project, but I think I sort of came upon a solution this week. We'll see what my writing partner says. And, if nothing else, that's one project temporarily off my desk, which frees me up for undivided focus on the intractable demon thriller for the remainder of the 30 Day Screenplay Challenge.
We're going on our third full week of the 30 Day Screenplay Challenge, and let's just say this - they don't call it a challenge for nothing. I'm 79 pages into my demon thriller and still going pretty strong, averaging slightly better than four pages a day. At that pace, I'm right about on target to plop out a 120 page draft by day 30. Of those 120, I'm sure there are at least 10 or 15 that can be cut, and another... 100?... that will need to be rewritten.
The Challenge doesn't allow a lot of time for rewrites, but that's also not the point of it. All it is there to do is get us writing again, which is something that I personally hadn't done in a while. By July 18, less than two weeks from now, I should have a full first draft of a script that I probably wasn't going to dive into for months yet to come. There's nothing wrong with that result.
Many of the pages are turning into fluff. The dialogue isn't great by any stretch of the imagination, which is unfortunate most in the sense that the dialogue is one of the intended big selling points of the script. It's supposed to be snappy and witty and riddled with subtext, but the pressure of a deadline has rendered it fairly prosaic and on the nose, much to my disappointment. Granted, rewriting it after the challenge ends isn't going to be a dire process, so I'm not too concerned about that. I'm also discovering a lot about the plot and characters as I write (oh, so much yet to discover about my characters), so hopefully those realizations will inform draft two.
I've had to start waking up early in order to manage my time better and get more out of my day. In addition to the demon thriller, which I work on for an hour a day (not including necessary outlining at the office so that I can complete pages at home), I've also been re-outlining the sci-fi collaboration. Originally, I intended to get the new draft to my writing partner before he left town yesterday, but that just didn't happen. Though I hate missing deadlines and dropping off the radar on a project, it wasn't until early this week that I had some big ideas for that project. I've outlined a quarter of the script a day the past two days, and hope to wrap that and send it off to him tomorrow at the latest, which would shift something off my plate. And, I'm still working with my team on possibly turning the post-Apocalyptic spec into a comic book, and that venture has required calls and meetings that have dipped into my time and concentration now and again.
So, basically, I'm busy. And it feels good. Interestingly, though, there was a very poignant article recently about claiming busyness. If you haven'r read it, check it out here. I don't tend to include links in these Writing Weeks, but I feel like this article is particularly appropriate and relevant to all of us writers. Maybe you'll get something out of it, too.
June 18 marked the start of our 30 day screenplay challenge over here at the League. As of Monday, I was 30 pages into my demon thriller script, just having crossed the bridge between Acts One and Two. Today, I'm on 49, cresting toward the midpoint and realizing a few pivotal things about the script.
For one, though I understood his comment months ago, I don't think I quite saw it the way he did. When I showed my manager an earlier version of the outline, he told me that thought the demon portions of the script were really engaging and unique, the sections that dealt with humans were a little more hackneyed and thus slowed the momentum. I could see where he was coming from theoretically, but it wasn't until I began writing twelve days ago that I actually saw that in practice. I won't lie - the human scenes strike even me as more dull than the rest, but because Im not quite half way through the script yet and the days are counting down, I don't have time to go back and address that yet.
Also, while I normally like to write as compactly as possible, I'm noticing that this draft is already shaping up to be one of the longer ones I've produced in a while. Granted, that's not a problem, especially given that it's a first draft, but I'd be surprised if it weighs in anywhere under 115 pages. On the one hand, it's great to know that I'll be able to cut a lot upon the first read-through of it. On the other, it makes me wonder if maybe I've stacked too much in the first half, particularly in the first part of Act Two. I've written it so that there's a lot that needs to happen and I'm discovering more as I go. Though I generally love to have a tight outline before I begin writing, I didn't have that luxury with this script, so perhaps that's partly to account for the longer draft. THen again, I also don't have time to censure myself too much as I fly through the draft, so I'm putting a ton of crap down on the page that I know will have to go - especially dialogue.
The final and somewhat expected, though not to this degree, result of the challenge has been that I haven't had time for my other projects at all really. We're talking about turning the post-Apocalyptic spec into a graphic novel, which will require me to change a few things and get some edits going. I've had time to be on the calls and do some minor research, but I have yet to really begin thinking about the story changes. Same with the sci-fi collaboration I'm working on. I'm disappointed with how much I've set that aside and I need to get back on it, since my partner is going out of town toward the end o next week and I want to get him a new outline before he leaves.
So, lots to do, but it's great to be busy. Now if only I had 30 hours in my day...
Something unusual and unexpected occurred at last week's writers group meeting. No one had any pages to present, so we had decided to meet for dinner and just talk about our current projects and anything else that was on our minds. Toward the end of the meal, Austin (aka Zombie) mentioned that he had decided to do a 30 day screenplay challenge, and he was wondering if any of us wanted in. The goal: write the first draft of a new script in the next 30 days.
I jumped on board before he was even done pitching it.
For months now, it seems, I've been stymied when it comes to fleshing out new material. After a couple comprehensive yet flawed outlines, I've gone back to the drawing board to work on character backstories and development for the sci-fi collaboration I'm working on. My demon thriller is basically the Swiss cheese of outlines. And let's not even touch the potential page-one (as a comic book) rewrite of the post-Apocalyptic spec I'm looking at. I felt as though I was mired in the world of endlessly blinking cursors and text pages offering little plot advancement to speak of, and I needed a kick in the pants. Austin's drop of the gauntlet was exactly the elixir I thirsted for.
Last week, after the meeting, the four of us who decided to embark on the challenge shot messages back and forth to one another in an attempt to settle on the rules. Beginning today, June 18, we would have until end of the day July 18 to write a full - or as much of a - first draft of a project. Unless we feel the overwhelming need to, we won't meet too regularly about our work. We'll check in once a week to note progress and talk through any story issues any of us is experiencing, but since we're in a time crunch, we're not going to devote our evenings to lengthy meetings and psychiatry sessions.
I've decided to push ahead on the demon thriller for my project. I had a pretty thorough outline until I received feedback from my manager on it. I agreed with his note, and I'm excited about the possibilities for change that come from it, but at the moment, I'm going into this month-long experiment with a fairly coherent understanding of act one, and not a whole lot beyond that. My fear is that the fist draft is going to be one of the more poorly written pieces I've turned out in a long time. On the flip side of that is the fact that it will also be the fist new draft I've produced in a long time, so I can't argue with it too much.
I generally prefer to have the backdrop of a much more solid outline before I begin on pages, but the time crunch doesn't allow for that now. My nights will be spent producing actual pages (fingers crossed), while I'll pretty much have my outline and notes open all day long at the office, and any down time at the day job will go to working out that night's beats and story problems.
I'm excited to see where this takes me. Mainly, I'm just eager to be writing again. I feel as though the grey matter between my ears has been a bit dammed up as of late, so hopefully this will open the floodgates, and I'll come out of it with both material and a surge of creative juices to pour into the other projects on my desk.
Let the challenge... begin!
Later today, I have a call with my co-writer, W.A., and the producer who paired us on our sci-fi spec. It's been about three weeks since I last worked on that project - what with getting it out for review and setting up a phone call at a time convenient for all of us - so I've had some extra time on my hands recently. To fill that gap, I've gone back to the outline of my demon thriller.
It's been fun going back to that project, but of the four main notes I'm trying to incorporate, one is being a real nuisance. Without giving anything away really, the script involves demons living in the world we know. (On the surface, not the most original sounding idea, I'll give you that. But there are, I hope, some really unique things I'm doing with the concept and the notion of demons, hell, and the earth converging.) My manager's overall note was that the demon aspect of the story is really pretty fresh and offers some great visuals, while the human portion of it is fairly prosaic, almost to the detriment of the story as a whole. His reaction was that he loved the demon parts to much that he felt mired in the sequences that didn't involve them and suggested I try to elevate the temporal beats to match those of the supernatural ones.
I understand his point. In my mind, it's not that huge of an issue; maybe I just see the full story more and know that the demon elements won't be as fantastical as perhaps he envisions them. Or, maybe having somewhat more everyday components will enliven and highlight the paranormal that much more. I'm still not 100% convinced of the need to change things out, but at least for exercise's sake, I'm giving it a whirl. (It's probably worth mentioning that the earthly sections take place in the legal world, so if nothing else, removing them from that arena will limit the number of parallels drawn to The Devil's Advocate.)
In my quest for change, I'm looking at the unusual and unexpected careers found in "normal life." What haven't we seen on film that often? What creates and aesthetic that holds its own against that of demons and hell, while also being thematically linked to that world? Demonology and hell and good versus evil have certain tones, certain arcane elements that ideally will find a counterpart in the earthly setting I've established. It's tough going, as you can probably guess, mainly because the parallels were easiest to make when I kept the human interactions confined to the legal world. Court room showdowns and guilty versus innocent are the defacto temporal judgments we're all familiar with, so it's such an easy connection to make. I worry about losing those if I transition the setting somewhere else, but the challenge of determining how to retain them is one I'm enjoying so far.
Either way, the key to a solid script is freshness. I feel as though I'm about 2/3 of the way there. Hopefully, the remainder falls into place this weekend.
Well folks, I won't lie to you. This week has been a bit of a slow one. I still haven't heard back regarding the producer's thoughts on my writing partner's and my outline for a sci-fi action adventure. My manager is also supposed to be giving it a read, but no feedback from him yet, either. And that's fine - I'll be going out of town for the weekend, so it's not as though I'll have much time to work on it anyway.
The post-Apocalyptic spec is still out there somewhere in the ether. I think we (my manager, agent, and producers) are nearing agreement that we've about turned over as many stones as we can on the project... at least for now. It's kind of a sucky feeling, but not one that comes as a surprise to me. I sense that my manager's been slowly prepping me for the inevitable, "there's not much more we can do for it now," and considering the project's been out in the Hollywood atmosphere for a couple years, I could have guessed as much. Thankfully, I have the collaboration to actively focus on and a couple other ideas or outlines that I can jump back to and will jump back to. We're trying for one more A-lister to come on board attached to star, but I think that's more in the wish and prayer category than a strategy we're putting any real money behind.
I began to get back to the demon thriller spec, which was nice. By get back to, I mean I re-read the outline I drafted months ago. I was pleased to see that it reads pretty well. In fact, my manager had some thoughts about it that wouldn't change the pacing or overall structure in any major way, but would alter some situations and potentially eliminate certain parallels in the story that work effectively at present. It's hard to tell whether I'm just being intractable or even just lazy, or if there's merit to my desire not to implement his changes. I like to think that I'll be able to achieve an equally healthy outline for an even more unique story by implementing his suggestions, but I'm currently beset by that ever tempting, partially deleterious affliction whereby writers refuse to tamper with something that works.
Ah well... if nothing else, an attempt at revising yet another outline that seems well-structured might just prove that the current incarnation is the most robust, most effective. And Hell, it felt great to keep working, and in a field where the temptation to procrastinate is ever-present, the drive to work needs to be embraced. After all, who knows how long the next writing break might last.
If you're at all like me - and for your sake, I hope you are in as few ways as possible - then you experience a barrage of creativity and ideas and writing followed by listless respites. These can come in months, weeks, or even days. When I'm actively writing a script, I'll write straight through for a month or more, and then experience as long a time off after completing the first draft. Now that I'm working on a collaboration, as well as keeping my demon thriller on the back burner, those draughts are shorter, no more than a few days typically.
Still, a draught is a draught, and it will be felt.
Ok, let me partially retract that. I spent a good week working on revising my outline for W.A., my writing partner. He and I met a couple weeks ago and tossed around a lot of good ideas. For the most part, he was (is) very pleased with the progress I'm making and have made so far. For the most part, the notes he had were pretty minimal. Once again, I've gone through and made some large changes to the outline he first presented. And, once again, he has come back with some mainly "cosmetic" suggestions for improvements. I'd be lying if I said that I've had ample time to devote to them this week in preparation for our meeting tomorrow, but I understand fully where he's coming from on all but one of his remaining notes. I'm not too concerned at all about my ability to address the trio, even if I do lack a degree of clarity for one of them. Hey - that's why we're meeting tomorrow.
In the meantime, I've been planning on getting back to my demon thriller. Time, however, has not been my friend. Though the day job hasn't been overwhelming, commitments after work have seemingly stacked up in the past few weeks. That, and I'm actually exercising again! I know, I know. Lame. Every time I plan on getting down to pumping out some actual pages on the demon thriller, I get waylaid by some other activity.
In general, I love having two scripts on the table, no matter what state they're in. Actually, the less developed they are, the better sometimes. When I'm stuck on one, I can just go ahead and jump onto the other. Being so versatile in the outlining stage isn't as easy when it comes to actual pages. At that point in my process, I tend to favor extreme concentration on one project, which means the other goes bye-bye for a month or more. With the demon thriller, the wait wound up paying off.
The script involved a fair amount of world creation. To me, that's one of the best part of writing a movie. Sure, it can be fun to write about a cop or a transit worker or a librarian, but how much more fun is it to write about one of those people in a brand new world that you've created? Or even in our world, but in a completely different time? Giving birth to an entirely new setting with new rules and visuals and realities... is anything greater when working on a story? It's hard to think of something. Well, for the demon thriller, my manager made the very astute observation today that I did that for half the script. Half of it is very unique with new rules, new visuals, and a new approach to possibly familiar experiences. The other half graces tv screens every night in a handful of shows. It's basically a Law & Order episode.
I didn't realize that odd dichotomy until my manager pointed it out, but it makes total sense. The strength of the premise - and, therefore, in the ultimate execution - comes from originality. Part of the script rises up to the challenge. The other half presents a worthy problem that is organic to the nature of the piece, but it does so in an inferior way. The result, according to my manager, is a loss of steam. I see where he's coming from. More than that, if he sees it in the outline alone, I don't want to even fathom what a producer or potential director might have seen in the script. Other, of course, than a pass. Better, obviously, that I fix it before that happens.
It was a busy week for outlining. I used to deplore outlining. My ego didn't permit me to do them ("I like to surprise myself and see where the story goes"), and multiple drafts that continued to produce failure were never proof enough that I needed to remedy my ways. This month, though, I've been working on two projects - my spec demon thriller and a sci-fi collaboration with a known writer/director/actor we'll call W.A. - and there's no way I could have achieved any progress without outlines.
To add a disclaimer, if it sounds like I only just began outlining consistently for these two projects, that's far from true. I've been outlining for years. I started making it a regular part of my process sometime in college, and no longer do I attempt a script without an outline. It just proves to be too great a waste of time to do so.
At any rate, outlines are an interesting point of discussion between my friends in the League. How long should an outline be? How detailed? Does it need to feature ever single shot, or scene, or just sequences?
The outline (perhaps treatment is a better word, but I tend to use them interchangeably in my screenwriting vernacular) that W.A. presented me on our sci-fi collaboration was just over 21 full pages long, courier new. After I retooled it, which wound up taking a long time by the end, since I was stuck on a couple key beats, I sent him back an 8 page, Times New Roman document, no spaces between paragraphs, each point bulleted. What I emailed him wasn't the most detailed; I didn't state exactly how we first met each character or how certain ones died or whatnot, but their introductory and final beats were all clearly marked. Everything was broken up by beat, primarily, with small transitional scenes wrapped up for the most part in a larger chunk of text.
I get very finicky about my outlines and how long each section is. I stick to traditional three act structure, breaking the script up into four equal parts (act one, act two part one, act two part two, and act three). If act three comes in a little under, then that's fine. I actually prefer a shorter third act, and mine typically wrap up in 15, rather than 25 pages. This is where I get particular - if act one has a total of 8 bullet points, then I aim for each subsequent section to have that exact number, no more, and no less. Generally, I hit this mark on the head naturally. For the demon thriller, each section had 11 beats; for the sci-fi one, eight. Act three is the exception, with perhaps three fewer beats/bullets than the rest.
Both projects turned out well, I feel. W.A. and I have a meeting tomorrow to discuss the sci-fi outline, for which he suggested I watch a movie tonight. His comments so far seem mainly cosmetic, addressing a few set pieces that might feel familiar compared to other movies, and similar tweaks. We'll get into the details at our meeting. As for the demon thriller, the Leaguers who have read it have responded pretty well to it so far, with only a few minor suggestions. At this point, it sounds as if I'm good to move forward with actual pages on both. Can you imagine how much harder those pages would have been, had I not taken the time to outline? Just think - what stumped me for a few days in an outline and necessitated changing a few prior beats could have been a week's stalemate with pages in front of me and an immediate rewrite as a result.
Two weeks ago, I received a short email from my manager, Kevin, alerting me to the fact that one of the producers who had been shopping around my post-apocalyptic spec was working on a project with another writer-producer-director, and they were in need of a writer. Particularly, they wanted one based in New York. When this multi-hyphenate collaborator - let's call him W.A., since I can't go into a lot of detail about who or what with this project - asked the producer if she knew of anyone, she immediately thought of me. (And though I can't quite reveal who W.A. is, you'd definitely recognize him, or at least his films, if I gave you his name.)
The following week, I got an email from the producer to set up a time to talk about the script. She sent me a 22 page treatment on the project, as well as other reading material: research conducted on some of the sci-fi themes, images and tidbits on elements involved, and a couple other core articles and documents to help me prep for our chat. Then, Friday of the week before this past one, W.A., the producer, and I got on the phone for 15 minutes and spit-balled about the project. It was a good chat, with W.A. and I clicking pretty much off the bat. Over the weekend, he sent me character bios, story notes, and a few other things to read over. We met last Thursday.
This was my first real story meeting with an industry collaborator. Yes, I've had phone and email exchanges with the producers on my post-Apocalyptic spec before, but this was an in-office meeting with a known talent about a project. Suffice it to say, I was pretty damn excited. I also was pretty damn prepared. I had reread the outline and all other documents, done some research, and made notes for myself of thoughts and questions for W.A. For an hour and a half, we chatted about the project; I threw out some not-so-small ideas for changes and alterations, and we had a good back and forth on the ideas. This weekend, I put those notes down into a new document for him, which we'll use to help us move forward with the story.
To be completely honest, this collaborative endeavor comes at a great time for me. I was feeling a little stalled on my demon thriller (which I finished outlining over the weekend, by the way!). Having a new project - and one much further along in the developmental stages - helped get the ball rolling for me. I worked through the rest of my idea and was able to jump onto this sci-fi collaboration guns a-blazing. My mind is working on the two stories to varying degrees most of the day. Besides that, I'm having other ideas for scripts, which is a welcome change from the drought I'd been in. And, not to mention the excitement of having a collaboration to work on.
I've tried collaborating with other Leaguers in the past, but those attempts, while not long lived, were always on ideas we both helped create. This experience is my first with material that didn't originate at least in half from me. That is, it's my first foray into what being a commission-earning writer is like. As professional scribes, we'll (likely) want to write on spec when we can, but the sustainable career comes from being able to land rewriting or commission-based gigs. I'm fortunate to have found a collaborator whose idea I responded so well to and who himself is so receptive to my work and ideas. There's no doubt in my mind that this can prove to be a great learning experience. I just have to be sure to deliver the goods.
I had one Hell of a busy week recently. for one, the outline on my demon thriller is finally chugging along again. At the suggestion of my manager, I stared reading Blake Snyder's Save the Cat to help re-energize my writing faculties. Though I don't want to, I have to admit that it's been helpful. At least, I think it has been - I've made more progress in the past few days than I had made in a while, and I attribute that to the informal refresher course I'm giving myself.
Over the course of working on the outline, and act two in particular, I'm starting to see more and more the mistakes or redundancies I typically make in a script. Usually, these involve the same two characters in two different scenes that achieve two parts of the same goal. For example, with the demon thriller, the protag and his friend-turned-antagonist have an argument around the midpoint. I spread that argument across two different scenes, with a buffer scene between them. Looking at it, however, I couldn't for the life of me determine what naturally would go between those scenes, nor did I have a very strong reason for splitting them up. Rather than one good blowout fight, I was working my way toward two weaker confrontations with a stuttering step between them. It didn't make sense. Last night, after some waffling, I decided to combine them into the one intrinsic scene they wanted to be all along. No unnecessary filler needed, no mid-argument cutoffs, no redundant scene a page later. Just one scene with one fight. Much stronger.
Ideally, I'll finish the act two outline today. That's not the only thing I have going on nowadays, though. I have started contributing to Screenwriters Utopia, a site dedicated to screenwriters of all skills, levels, and experience. My first post there came out on Sunday and deals with the many frustrations I have with a show I still somewhat enjoy watching - AMC's The Walking Dead. (Don't even get me started on it; the most recent episode fueled the flames of my fury again. Why can't they just get a script supervisor - OR ANYONE - to check for inconsistencies? It would be so easy and alleviate so many glaring issues with the show.) I hope you like it.
Finally, I was recently given an opportunity to look into some collaboration work with a known writer/producer/director. I can't or won't say too much about it beyond that, but this would be my first foray into writing a project that I didn't conceive of on my own. And though I've done some minor collaboration work before, that has all been within the League. I'm pretty damn excited for this chance, so I'll let you know what comes of it (within the scope of my ability to discuss it).
I hope your week was just as if not more productive, and that this Leap Year proves not just fecund, but fruitful.
Outlining isn't easy, nor is it quick work. If it was either, the ten incomplete projects on my hard drive would at least each have full first drafts, if not industry-ready scripts to show for all my (varied amounts of) effort on them. No, outlines are the meat of a developmental phase of working on a script. It might only take me three weeks to bang out 90 script pages once the outline is done, but that outline (in and of itself perhaps five to ten pages) is a month long endeavor, if not more. Because the outline contains the framework for the entire plot, each act and every potential major beat, it is a monumental undertaking. It is where the story comes together, and where the weaknesses reveal themselves.
It is also where a writer can most frequently become stuck.
I can't (or don't want to) tell you how many days these past two weeks I've devoted my daily hour of writing to alternating my blank stare between the blinking cursor on my screen and the clock on my wall. Tick, tick, tick, the second hand mocks me, as the screen goes dim to conserve power, and the outline refuses to grow. Sure, I might add something here or there, but it is typically inconsequential. "The characters have their first date." That's all well and good, but it's also something that anyone who knows anything about the script must assume is in there somewhere, and it rebuffs any further description. While it appears good on screen (progress!), it offers about as much as it did in terms of tangible forward movement than it did when it was unwritten.
Yes, outlines can suck. They can be maddening. If I wasn't worried about going bald, I'd say they can induce hair-pulling. But there's a workaround that I've found helps. Watch movies. Not just any movie (though, sometimes merely seeing something succeed in any genre can be inspiration enough to get past the hump). Specifically, though, it can help to check out movies that are either in the same genre or are somehow otherwise related. For the demon spec, I watch both The Devil's Advocate and The Lives of Others. Devil's Advocate might be a pretty obvious connection, but Lives of Others perhaps at first glance seems an odd parallel. Think about it, though - demons, devils, and the protagonist in Lives are all observers, with the key difference being in how they respond to their subjects. Lives of Others is a great study in observation, and observation is one thing there's not going to be a shortage of in my demon thriller. Lives is also a prime example of a well-paced, engaging movie that has no real typical "action" (i.e., guns and explosions and whatnot).
When I watch these, sometimes I take copious notes on beats and plot and structure. Sometimes, I just watch and try to absorb. I did a little of both with the above two films. Hopefully, the next time I sit down to work on the outline, I will find that I've actually gleaned something useful from those two viewings.
Have you ever written out your goals for each act of your screenplay? I hadn't - nor had I really heard of the idea before, that I can recall - until this weekend. I've been outlining my demon thriller spec, and the going was a bit slow to begin with. In order to kick things into gear, I decided it might be worth the exercise to write out my goals for each portion of the script before actually setting beats down.
Boy, did it help. I had a very loose document with some scattered thoughts here and there, and some ideas for what had to happen in Act Three, but little concept of how to get there. (I'm still stuck on Act Two, but hopefully that will sort itself out by the end of this week.) So, I thought, "what the hell, might as well give it a shot." I started small, bulleting goals such as, "introduce the main target," "explain that demons are real," and "introduce his best friend and hint at their history." Some things were a bit more complex, like "showcase the rules of eternally damning people," for example.
Bit by bit, though, the objectives for those first 25-30 pages started becoming clearer and clearer. Shortly into the goal-laying process, the means by which to attempt to accomplish those objectives started to become apparent. I knew I could open with a particular scene, which would naturally segue into a second, then a third scene, and a fourth would shed light on what happened in them. I would start with a mysterious, cryptic hook, and then piece it together for the audience in a way that tackled four or five Act One goals at once. I wouldn't flat out explain everything (in fact, I wouldn't have to flat out explain anything so directly), but I'd offer enough for attentive viewers to pick up on what was happening, while capturing the interest of less discerning audience members. By the time act one ends, ideally, the basics are in place, and more specific details will be set up to come out later in Act Two.
I'm not quite sure how many pages, roughly, I've outlined yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm looking at a shorter first act. That's ok, to start. Now, I just have to get cracking on Act Two, and see where this story takes itself. The thing I'm enjoying so far, which has surprised me a bit, is how visual the idea is becoming. Before, my emphasis had been on the dialogue I anticipated I'd get to write. The focus is shifting toward the visuals at the moment, and I have to admit I'm quite enticed by them. I think this is going to be a fun script; hitting that realization marker is always a good step in the right direction.
Finally, I decide to try opening with a title card for the first time. (I attempted once before, but that project required little more than a time and place title card; this script requires a bit of a setup.) I found a particularly apt quote from the Bible, which I think will go a long way toward setting up the situations I'm writing about. Hopefully, a week from now, I will have a full outline to show for it.
The League had its February meeting last night, and once again we focused primarily on my demon thriller. Everyone else is in some stage of development on their latest script or novel, so there weren't many tangible pages presented for the gathering. So that we'd have something to read and discuss - and since it would help me craft the plot of this increasingly logistically difficult script - I sent out the rules of the world that I'd worked on a couple weeks back.
The discussion was pretty fruitful. Doing their duty as scrupulous readers, they brought up some good questions about the machinations of the characters and their interactions. If this happens, then why do they need that to be a rule? Why do they have to submit to this power? How will you reveal all this?
This last question - the one that asks me to elaborate upon how I'm going to convey all the various rules and nuances - is pivotal. Luckily, my group members are astute and clever visual thinkers, and as a group we were able to piece together a few strong approaches to showing and not telling. Still, their ruminations made it clear that I still have a great deal of work to do in prepping how to best inform the audience of the ways in which my world works. Take, for example, Children of Men, a movie I enjoy. However, there's a blatantly expositional scene early on in which Michael Caine's character informs Clive Owen of the whys and hows of their society, despite the fact that Owen's been living in it for nearly two decades. This is clearly just for the audience, but too simple a device to seem organic. It is also the exact type of thing I wish to avoid.
During the meeting, I brought to the group one of the largest question I had and still have about the material. Namely, it deals with the ending of the movie. I've figured out how I want it to end and what it would mean for this ending to happen, but I was and am unsure of technically how it will occur in the story. Normally, I would let the writing take care of that. However, the ending and the rules that govern it is so contingent upon rules set up in the beginning of the script that I can't just wait to get there to work it out. More than with any other script I've written, the ending in this one is dependent upon hard and solid rules, which I am still working out.
The group offered me a great suggestion that not only makes certain things easier to convey, but actually ramps up the stakes at the end, as well. Naturally, I decided to adopt this new approach. Yet, I am still left with the gaping hole before me of what in their world enables the protagonist to defeat the antagonist in a reasonable manner.
All told, this script is shaping up to be quite a unique one for me of late. There are next to no guns or fighting in it. The material will be dialogue-cenric. And, what's more, I can't move forward with it until the rules and machinations are clear as day to me. Part of me feels that such an involved script is the wrong direction to go in, when I'm at a time where I'm trying to get something to my agent as quickly as possible. However, if I pull it off, I have a good feeling that this could be a very strong piece of screenwriting.
Time will tell.
Rules are one of the most important part of any screenplay. If you're setting your story in a new, original world, then what are the rules there? Is gravity different? Is society? Are the laws? If it's set in this world, but there are people with special powers or knowledge or abilities or allegiances, then what are the rules that govern their actions, strengths, and weaknesses?
The Matrix is a perfect example of the utter necessity of rules. What can one do in the matrix that can't be done by ordinary people? How do Neo and his allies learn new tricks and skills? What are the agents' limitations? The rules are integral to effective story telling in a case such as this. As an audience, we certainly won't know all the rules going in, but things such as, "if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life" are fundamental to the plot and the world. We - by hearing that - know the stakes. So do the characters.
Even simple seeming stories have rules. They have to. Otherwise, what's to stop the writer from relying on a crutch or a deus ex machina to expedite or wrap the story? With my demon thriller, the rules were something I had yet to solidify when I showed an outline to my manager. I'll admit that was a bit of a rookie mistake, and then move on to a point where I can learn from it.
After talking with the League last month, I took some time recently to hammer out the rules. They might not all be down there on paper, and those that are perhaps seem quite obvious, but I think it's essential to put them down in writing. And, after a prolonged period of inactivity, I have to admit that it also felt very rewarding and refreshing. I wound up writing out about two pages of bullet-pointed rules. Though I have the ability to alter them later, their presence will really prove a very solid guide to hold my hand through the upcoming re-outlining stage. I think that, from here on out, getting the rules down on the page is going to prove a necessary part of my writing process.
On another note, I read on Done Deal Pro today a bit of unsettling news. I hadn't read the site in a while, and what with the month over at the end of the day, I wanted to get caught up on January sales. Unfortunately, something I'd been dreading came a bit to a head today - there was an idea that was disturbingly similar to my post-Apocalyptic spec. I figured that had to happen at a certain point, and the stories are not identical, but the basic premise (i.e., the Apocalyptic event) is close enough to my own to warrant nervousness. I immediately emailed the discovery to my producer, and she reached out to the rest of the team. The sale in question is actually the acquisition of book rights to a novel that is slated to drop this summer. In some respects, that's good news: a) the script for the adaptation is almost guaranteed not to have been written yet, so my project could land first and b) just because the film rights were picked up, that doesn't mean a film will actually get made from it.
I'm looking at this two ways. First, and least desirable, is that this will effectively quell any interest or heat regarding my script. The more optimistic alternative is that a rival production company will be in the market now for something similar, and the emergence of this novel will light a fire of urgency not only under my team, but under buyers. What with this project now on the table, buyers might come back to my script with renewed interest. I'm sure there's a right way to spin this in our favor; I don't know what it is exactly, but that's what my team is there for. Fingers crossed that this book isn't one of the last nails in the coffin on my post-Apocalyptic spec. While I've prepped for that, I'd hate to see it come to pass.
Despite the fact that no member of The League had any pages to present at this month's meeting, we made it a point to remain on track and gather last Tuesday anyway. (I highly recommend that any group do this; sticking to the schedule - even when there are no physical pages to talk about, is a great way to maintain order and regularity, both as a group and as individual writers.) Surprisingly - or perhaps not so - it was actually one of our more productive meetings.
We went around, BSing for a long time, as is allowed. When we meet, everyone brings some food (mainly appetizer type things) and beer or wine for anyone drinking. We meet at someone's apartment - the same one, not on a rotating basis. It's a good time for friends to gather who might not otherwise see each other too often; it's also a laid back setting, which makes giving and getting notes comfortable and easy.
Once the snacking and catching up is done, it's down to business time. Normally, if there are pages on the docket, we'll start with whoever submitted first and go from there. Someone will say, "ok, you're up, Zach" (if I was the first to send, that is), and then the conversation kicks off. Each person receives however much time is necessary for everyone to get their opinions out. This usually takes about an hour per note-recipient, sometimes more if there is only one project on the table.
This past week, since there weren't pages, we just went around the circle and solicited updates from everyone one-by-one. Some people didn't have too much to say, "I'm working on this or that, but I'm not too far along. Here's a basic idea, but I hope to have an outline out by the next meeting." Others, like Jon and myself, were looking for a bit more in-depth analysis on our projects. I was still a bit stalled on my demon thriller, so I asked the group to help me talk through it a bit.
I have to say, what I got was really valuable. I was looking for feedback on some of the bigger and more important rules of the world and the characters' motivations. By going around the circle after I explained briefly what I was looking for, the group was really able to weigh in and help me come up with some great solutions. I think I'm at a much better place now than I was before the meeting, which is a great feeling. If you're ever stuck, or if no one in your group has any pages, I genuinely advocate getting a meeting together anyway. Sometimes spitballing is the best remedy for writers block.
For now, though, I'm gearing up to head up to the Bocas del Toro region of Panama for some (hopefully) quality beach - and brainstorming - time.
Adios, amigos.
