The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 168 - How to Write and Use an Outline

At first, when I was still in school for writing, I openly doubted the importance of outlines. To me, they were suffocating documents that hampered my experience writing a script; I preferred having the story unfold for me as I went along, each day a surprise as to what came next. An outline meant that I would just sit down and bang out the details of a scene that I had already figured out, with little surprise of what was to come. The budding, less-wise writer in me thought that took any sort of art out of writing. 

More recently, as I have improved as a writer, I've come to see the great importance that outlining plays in my technique. Some writers refuse to use them; others outline until there's no room left for changes, and burn through writing the actual script. I, on the other hand, think I've come to learn that there's a comfortable middle ground to work in. I'll outline until I have more than just a loose structure of the film. The document I prepare gives an overall sense of what beats fall where and what happens in them, so it's pretty detailed. However, it's also fluid; that means that when I sit down to produce actual screenplay pages, I don't take the outline as gospel. Case in point: when I wrote my firefighter spec a while ago, I realized before I had even finished the first page that an entire component of the story was missing from the outline. Luckily, the structure I had mapped out was successful enough that it afforded obvious places to include these new characters I was adding, and allowed certain beats to be molded to incorporate them. This flexible outline approach is great - it gets me writing with little hesitation about what the next day will bring, but it also allows me time to problem-solve as I go along.

I've spent the past few weeks talking about various stages of the multiple outlines I'm working on, but I realized I have yet to really delve into what that looks like on the page. For a quick snapshot of what those look like - and, mind you, I have submitted both forms to my manager, so this is what people in the industry have seen - there are two main types of outlines I write. Often, I'll do one of each for each project I'm working on. 

The first type of outline is a pretty straight forward, scene by scene breakdown. It will look something like this:

ACT ONE

-Vietnam, 1972. Mark stands at the edge of a battlefield. He and his buddies are tense. They pass a joint, trying to calm down. Hushed small talk.

-BOOM a mortar round lands not far off. The trees erupt with gunfire.

-In the battle, Mark goes down with a shot to the gut.

-Later, in the field hospital, Mark recovers. A nurse stands nearby. He checks her out.

I tend to conceive of these lines as shots, almost, multiple beats within a sequence. The guys hanging around talking might be a page or two. The mortar round might be a half page. The battle will be a few pages, culminating in Mark's injury. The next scene we see opens in the hospital. Depending on the detail I put into each scene, this type of outline might be 6-10 pages. I'll mark a few tentpole scenes for myself with the following: ACT ONE, PAGE TEN (or INCITING INCIDENT), ACT TWO, MIDPOINT, and ACT THREE. More than anything, those demarcations are to help me with my page count targets. Acto Two should begin between 25 and 30, midpoint will land at 50 or 60 (depending on total count), and Act Three at 75-90. 

The other kind of outline is all prose. This approach will convert the beats into a narrative that reads like a short story. Again, this might be 6-8 pages. My goal with this is to see how the story checks out as a narrative. Sometimes, the beats make sense as bullet point, but reading and writing it the other way makes it easy to see where something's missing or redundant. This approach is also the one my manager tends to favor, and converting the outlines has proven helpful for me. I tend to think out my story in narrative terms a lot, and then convert it to the beat format, so half the work is already done by the time I sit down to work it out as a short story.

Anyway, hope that's helpful. What approach to outlining do you take - if you take one at all?

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 156 - Year Three Recap

This has been quite the writing year - both productive and educational. My post-Apocalyptc spec, which ended 2009 in the hands of a creative executive at a production company in Hollywood, evolved over the course of another three drafts (and many smaller revisions) since then. In May, the independent producer who optioned it a year and a half ago (Gretchen) and the creative exec agreed that the then-current incarnation of the script was just about industry ready. In June, I renewed my option with Gretchen, a move that really protects her as much as if not more than it served me at that point. Finally, after agreeing that the script was just about all there in May, we spent a week doing final proofreading and minor problem-solving in August, having subjected it to another few months of filling in gaps and making tweaks. Toward the end of the summer, not long before Labor Day, the script went out to agents and was slipped to a lawyer. 


We got positive responses from a few of the agents, namely at UTA and WME. While waiting to see if either interested agent was keen enough to meet with me and possibly take me on as a client, and while waiting to hear back from the lawyer who the creative exec had given the script to, I dove into a new project. My firefighter script, a fun, semi-absurd action spec, took about a month to write, after outlining and character sketching was through. During that month, my manager gave me confirmation that someone at UTA was indeed very interested and had a strong working relationship with both the lawyer (who by that point had read and liked the script a lot) and the creative exec still working with us. 


With the interest from those parties secured, my manager set up meetings for me. I flew out to LA in mid-October, three days after finishing the first draft of my firefighter spec. My manager and I met that weekend to prepare for the upcoming meetings and to discuss the draft of the firefighter script. While he liked it, we both acknowledged that there was a tone issue that warranted addressing before the script went out anywhere. That Monday, I had successful meetings at UTA and at the law firm. A lunch with the creative exec revealed that the production company she works for would not stay on as a partner on the script, either officially or unofficially. However, she was still devoted to the project, and secured the ability to remain on board, independently, developing the material with us on the side, apart from the production company. Both reps I met took me on as a client, and I was back to NYC with a promise to deliver two specs a year.


Not long after returning from LA, I was bound for the Middle East for vacation. It was a great trip, but also served as a two-week break from all things writing. My return to the States preceded Thanksgiving and year-end madness by just a few days. In the time since, I came up with a handful of other ideas for potential scripts, some more plausible than others. I've now settled on three that I'd like to pursue, though one of them might be less marketable than the others. My charge now is to dive fully into one to have it ready to begin working on and talking about soon into the New Year. And, finally, as 2010 wraps up, my reps and I are awaiting news from a read we are getting at a studio over the holiday, and regarding interest we have from another producer who read and really liked it. With Hollywood effectively closed until January 3, there's little for the post-Apocalyptic spec any of us an do for the next week, other than wait. Still, it could be a result very much worth waiting for. 


One thing that's captured my attention regarding this whole process, is how a writer's script's future is completely out of their hands at a certain point. (I'm talking mostly about unproduced or emerging writers like myself here.) I spent nearly three years writing the post-Apocalyptic spec, yet at this point, I am making very few decisions regarding it. My representatives and independent producers keep me in the loop regarding everything, but the ball is very much not in my court. Sure, I can weigh in, and they're all great to deal with - this is in no way a knock against any of them; I couldn't have lucked out more in terms of the type of people I'm dealing with. Still, when all is said and done, while I think about the script a lot, it can be weeks between phone calls or emails about it. To have gone from so much time with it and being the only person involved in its development, to the one discussing it the least and the last to be responsible for mapping its future is just a very strange feeling, one I've come to terms with, but which still seems odd when I think about it.


It fails to elude me, either as I write this now or when I frequently think about it, that my experiences in the industry - or at least on its periphery - have all been due to one script. The representation I've secured, the lunches and coffee meetings, the development calls and countless rewrites, all of it has been due to one project, for one project. Naturally, this begs the obvious question (while I'm sure my reps are thinking it, I'm the one who has so far vocalized it) - will there be another script? Will I take meetings and lunches and generals and calls for another project that people are interested in?


The honest answer, is that there's no guarantee. Certainly, I hope there will be. The agent and lawyer and manager who have invested time and energy in me definitely hope so. I am working to make a viable follow up script a reality (and soon, I hope). But, as with so many other things in this industry, there is no absolute affirmation. No guarantee. The thing is, though, I don't think that should be a grim revelation. My work is cut out for me, as I love to recall my agent's words; it is both "very easy and very difficult, [I] just have to keep writing." So there it is, my mission for 2011: more writing. If this, my career trajectory, is a script, I like to imagine that I've come to the end of Act One; 2010 (and some major events in the two years preceding it) set up a possible outcome for my venture into screenwriting. As we turn the page into 2011, the difficulties of a self-sustaining second act become readily apparent, and despite the obstacles, highs, and lows I might encounter in the coming years, my directive is to continue writing throughout, and to do it better than I have in the past. I feel ready for the challenge. Onward, into 2011. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 147 - A Story Structure Tip

Pacing is an extremely important part of writing. Solid pacing - knowing when big beats come, where the audience needs a short break, where all the highs and lows come - is an incredibly difficult thing to get down. It can take years of writing and many, many drafts of many scripts. I know I don't always have great pacing in my stuff, especially in first and second (and third) drafts. Effective pacing, however, will not only keep your audience engaged throughout, it will disperse information when necessary and - one of the first crucial steps in the process from page to screen for any script - keep your readers engaged.

When I write, because I work on so many action scripts these days, I like to outline before I start writing actual pages. This outline is always flexible, and the events, dialogue, and information within each scene often change from outline to page. What tends to remain more or less constant, though, is the structure - an informational and dialogue heavy scene here, followed by some action, followed by more info, and then, finally, an even bigger action beat. That is to say, the pacing remains the same, even if the content of the actual scenes does not. 

Pacing, though, also means something else to me. Rather, 'pace' does. I hit my writing stride, and I don't want to lose or lessen my pace. I'm churning out the pages, really getting into the meat of the story, and the last thing I want to do is encounter that dastardly League foe, Writer's Block. Sometimes, though, I know that I have Scene A just about completed, and I know exactly what Scene C will be (and sometimes even how long it will be), but I have no idea what Scene B is that connects them. Instead of losing a half hour or more - and, more importantly, the pace that I've been working at - trying to figure out what the bridge between them is, I skip ahead to the next scene. 

Writing out of order can be intimidating. I didn't used to like to do it at all. I know that some very successful writers love it - write the scenes as they come to them and then cue card them into place like a puzzle. That's not really my style. I truly believe that one scene informs the next, even if that's not immediately apparent from what's in them. Still, sometimes a writing streak is just too good to break up for a missing beat. in those cases, I bold the slugg line for the scene that needs another beat before it. Doing this reminds me that there's a missing jump before that scene, which I need to come back to. This can be as simple as two scenes featuring a large jump in time, which organically need something else to bridge the gap. It could be two scene with the same character, which don't naturally flow into one another. It can be any number of things. After I get my draft completed, I go back and look for these bolded slugg lines - usually two or three of them. I check those against the information that I know is missing from the script, bits of dialogue or action that inform the resolution, and see how and where they can be incorporated. I often find that, in the madness of writing, I left out something simple but crucial, and one of those jumped beats is the perfect place for it.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 146 - The L.A. Trip

To say that it's been "quite the week" would be an understatement. The past four days have been some of the most important in my screenwriting career so far (if it can in fact be called a career). I met with some very well respected, very important people in Hollywood on Monday, and I'm pleased to say that things went incredibly well.

The agenda was simple: meet my manager face to face for the first time since we began working together in June of 2009, meet with my producer and the production exec we've been working with (both of whom I had met previously), and - most crucially - meet with an agent and a lawyer who were both interested in my post-Apocalyptic spec. In preparation for the meetings, I had a couple key jobs. First, I promised my manager a draft of the firefighter script by Friday, so that we could address the best way to talk about it in any meetings and go over points for the next draft. Next, I had to come up with three pitches for the agent - 3 or 4 sentences that I could go through in under a minute each to give an idea of other projects I've been thinking of. The overall goal for the meetings was to not only present myself as well-spoken and capable of taking a meeting, but also trying to prove that I have the potential to be more than a one-time writer. While both the agent and lawyer liked my post-Apocalyptic spec, they each would (rightly) want more from me than just that.

On Saturday, I flew out to L.A. for the first time since I was in fifth grade and on a family trip to visit my aunts in Pasadena. Sunday was the meeting with Kevin, my manager. We'd spoken on the phone and via email countless times, but our faces were still a mystery to one another. We met for coffee at noon at my hotel and talked for the next two hours. Kevin prepped me a lot for the two meetings I had on Monday - an 11am with the agent and the lawyer at 5pm. We discussed the first draft of a new spec (the firefighter one), which I managed to get to him Thursday night. We went over the three pitches I prepared. We talked movies, getting me a couple talking points (what I've liked most recently, what I most enjoy or most frequently see in theaters, basically what I'd want to write).

I spent most of my free-time Saturday and Sunday running over the pitches, repeating them like a mantra. I'd shuffle between them, making myself repeat any of them at any moment. If I got so much as one word wrong, I'd start from the top. Doing some vocal work, I added crescendos and falls here and there, trying to make them as engaging as possible. By the end of the night Sunday, I could have repeated them in my sleep. 

Monday was the big day, and it started with an unnerving, Murphy-esque realization. I woke up at what I thought was 8:30, ready for a slow breakfast before heading to the agency. When I turned on my phone and the morning news, thought, every other clock was telling me it was 7:30. Two hours later, I was still holding onto a shred of doubt as to what time it actually was. Somehow, as I slept, my alarm clock decided to jump ahead an hour. Better than falling back an hour, I suppose, but still a jarring way to start such a monumental day. I donned my Converse sneakers, jeans, and black dress-shirt, and I was ready for action.

Kevin accompanied me to the agent meeting. We waited a few minutes to be called in, making small talk as we sat there. I was still going over the pitches in my mind, cycling through them as quickly as I could. Finally, the agent's assistant came and got us. We thought a junior agent would be joining, but it wound up being just Kevin, the agent, and my self. The next 25 minutes were a combination of me trying to hold my own, absorb everything that was said (and not said), and trying not to sound too much like an idiot. Kevin prompted me to go through my ideas; the constant repeating of each 45 second pitch paid off, as I got through them without a hitch. Of the three, the agent latched onto one in particular, putting the first idea on the backburner for the time being. Unfortunately, that one that was tabled was the firefighter idea - which I'd just cranked out the first draft of - but we all agreed the idea he liked most was the most compelling. At this point, it's also the one that I have the most work to do on.


At about 11:30, we left the office. A lot of hand shaking and "nice to meet you" escorted us out the door. Kevin and I stood in silence as we waited for the elevator to take us down to the ground floor. My neuroses kicked in as soon as we stepped outside, and I needed Kevin to reassure me no fewer than six times that the meeting went well. He's done this much more than I have, so I trusted him when he said he thought it was a meeting to be proud of.


I had about 5 hours to kill before meeting with the lawyer (a meeting which Kevin would not be at with me). At many times, I was one of the only people standing vertically and not encased in an automobile (typically a Porsche, Lexus, Mercedes, or Jaguar) as I walked around Beverly Hills, coming down off the meeting and getting some exercise. It was rainy/dreary pretty much the entire time I was out there, so I didn't spend too much time out and about. But those walks after/before a meeting were a good way to calm down. 


At 5, I was in the reception area at the law firm, drinking a Diet Coke (which I took the third time it was offered), and reading a Hollywood Reporter. I was soon met by the lawyer - one of the partners in a firm that almost exclusively handles writers - and we spent the next hour talking one-on-one. We discussed everything from how I got into writing to what I wanted for my career, who the lawyer's clients are and what kind of situations he's dealt with to what he would do for me. We talked about my script and what I could reasonably expect (all types of scenarios) from future progress on it. It was another very solid meeting, and an hour definitely well spent.


The promising thing about both men I met with was that neither tried to sell me an immediate fortune. They were both realistic in that, while everyone would hope to sell the script sooner than later, the post-Apocalyptic project might not prove to be the one that fills my bank account with more zeros than the number of women I've been rejected by. Still, they were both hopefully for this project, and would do what they could - should we all wind up working together - to get it somewhere.


That night, Kevin, my producer Gretchen, and I all had dinner to celebrate the meetings and the potential for the project. It wasn't until the next morning that I found out just how successful the meetings were. I landed both the agent and the lawyer (will name drop if/when I'm positive I can), and the team is going to start discussing strategies for the script within the coming days. It looks like we'll try to package it, but that's all up in the air.


As my agent said to me during the meeting, my "job is both very simple and very difficult right now," I have to keep writing. I owe him a new script come winter. Time to get cracking.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 145 - Some Tips for the Cross-Country Trek

It's official. One week from today I'll be in LA, most likely having wrapped my first of two meetings for the day (with an agent and a lawyer). I booked my flight this weekend and am still confirming travel arrangements. While I know how to drive, I haven't been to LA in over a decade and don't feel like dealing with navigating unfamiliar territory on a big day. I'm getting a hotel near the meeting locations, and should be able to get around easily enough on foot or via cab.

All in all, this will be a pretty quick trip. Everything official is set to go down on Monday. However, the last thing that I'd want to do is be inflexible should someone need to push back, so I've reserved all of Tuesday for whatever might arise, as well. Coming from the east coast, we need to be able to accommodate changes and last minute additions/subtractions from the itinerary. If you get called out there, it's probably wise to get out there a day early and leave a day late if you can afford it. I haven't used the service myself, but I have some friends who've found couches to crash on through couchsurfing.org. Especially if money is tight, it might be a good idea to look through that - an online community of people willing to let a stranger crash on their couch for a few nights. Sure, it sounds a bit shady, but the people I know who have used it swear by it.

In terms of the flight, Sundays are usually a busier, more expensive travel day. If you can, head out on Saturday and come back Tuesday (or some other time mid-week). I'm doing the red-eye Tuesday night, which means I'm back in NYC in time to go to work on Wednesday, but have all day in LA Tuesday in case I'm needed for whatever reason.

I know a lot of us (emerging/new writers) like to plan for that agent meeting as much as we can, down to the small details. What do I wear? What will we talk about? I'm fortunate enough to have my manager who is more than happy to answer all of those questions and more. In case you're wondering about the dress code, which I certainly was, the answer is to be casual yet presentable. Jeans and a polo or button-down are fine and can be worn with sneakers. There's no need to go over the top. You're an artist and are expected to dress the part. Of course, you'll also want to rehearse your pitches and know which projects you're going to talk about (that's the goal for this week), so that you're prepared to his the ground running in the meeting.

I have the next six days to work on everything (including trying to revise the first draft of my firefighter spec so that it goes from "incredibly rough" to just "rough"). Knowing myself, perfecting the pitches is going to be more difficult. I'm not great at the one sentence sell yet, so that's where I'll be focusing a lot of my energy this week. It's been a long road (I began the post-Apocalyptic spec for which I'm taking these meetings in January of 2008), but hopefully this is far from the end.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 143 - The Act Two Hump

Ask just about any writer what the most difficult pages to write are, and I bet you'll frequently hear, "pages 60 through 70." If not that, then "the second half of act two" or "the pages right after the midpoint." Ask me the same question, and I'll invariably tell you the same thing.

I like to call it the "60-70 slump" or, a bit more generally, the "Act Two hump." Basically, these are the pages that just plain suck to write. Act One often breezes by. It involves a lot of set up, but also a lot of fun. The stakes aren't necessarily too high yet - in fact, theoretically they're as low as they'll be throughout the whole script, since the stakes should build steadily as the film goes on. This first half of Act Two (pages 30-60 in a conventional three act, 120 page script) build rapidly, as does the action or conflict or tension. The midpoint (60) hits, and should hit hard - for better or worse. The protagonist meets with great defeat here or is thrown off the path he's been following or experiences a great success from which she might fall later. Things change at the midpoint. It's what comes next that's the hard part.

I often get past the midpoint and, even though I know what has to happen in toward the end of Act Two and into Act Three, I usually stop and think, "what's next?" Things often just stagnate here. My characters and story are not yet at a point where the later events can come to fruition - there are a couple missing beats in between - but they also can't backtrack. In short, they're stuck. Rather, I'm stuck. 

With the firefighter script that I'm working on now, I spent no fewer than two days last week essentially staring at a blinking cursor for an hour a day, trying to figure out what would come next and why my characters couldn't just skip ahead to the end. Granted, I needed the pages in between to bulk up the script, but the main concern in the writing for me at this point is the actual story progression. If it seems like the natural next move is the one that immediately brings about the end of Act Two, then perhaps I've missed something earlier or have not given enough credit to something that needs to happen. Of course, it could also mean that my story's short and warrants a bit more exploration somewhere. 

Ultimately, in this case, the solution came about in two ways. For one, I realized that the order of a few scenes building up to, including, and immediately following the midpoint turn was wrong. I had laid things out in such a way that, in order to fill a scene gap and convey some necessary information, I was going to have to write a highly redundant scene between two characters no more than a couple pages after their last one. Bad news. What's more, other gratuitous scenes and bits of information were going to be thrown in later, since the best places to achieve those moments had already been taken by earlier, similar beats. Reshuffling the scene order not only saved me wasted space in the form of redundant dialogue and action, but it got me thinking about how the rest of the script would likely play out. And when the juices started flowing, they flooded. As if lightning had struck, I raced to hammer out a very terse beat sheet detailing nine or ten sequences that would carry me through most of the rest of the film. They just all clicked right into place, connecting naturally end to end in what seemed like seamless fashion. There's no guarantee that these sequences will generate perfect pacing or pages, of course, but they at least helped me to get through the 60-70 slump, over the Act Two hump.

Don't worry that you're not cut out for this whole writing thing just because you hit a wall in your writing. It's totally natural for writers to experience that at some point. Just work through the slump - it might take some time, but it'll be so worth it when you do - and you'll be in the home stretch. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 142 - How to Use Slugg Lines

I really can't tell you how great it feels to be working on something new after so much time dedicated to my post-Apocalyptic spec. Not that I disliked working on that script - in fact, the complete opposite is true. I loved writing (and re-writing) it. After a while, though, my "new script" muscles were beginning to atrophy, so a change to an unexplored project was a welcome one. 

While I was writing this week (almost to page 50 of an intended 90), I got to thinking a lot about slugg lines and the way that they're best utilized. I'm pretty content with the way I handle them, but considering this blog is primarily intended to share our experiences and discoveries with other aspiring writers, I figured it couldn't hurt to talk about them a bit this week. After all, we all use them every day in our writing, and I certainly have a number of them in my week's pages, so why not.

To recap quickly in case you're not 100% sure what I'm talking about, the slugg line is the heading that appears before each scene, usually formatted like this:  INT. HOSPITAL ROOM -- DAY (or something very similar). The "INT." or "EXT." offer the environment (i.e. inside or outside). "HOSPITAL ROOM" is the specific location, with "DAY" being the time of day the scene is set. It's generally understood that the time of day be written either as day or night, with few exceptions leaning either way between or outside those general markers (afternoon, morning, evening). You can also use "LATER" or "MOMENTS LATER" or "CONTINUOUS" in place of day or night. For more on Continuous, check out this earlier post.

The reason that Day and Night are the most typical time indicators is that, for the most part, there are other people who will go through your script and prep it for production, a task that involves determining the shooting schedule. Unless it is absolutely imperative that a particular scene occur in the wee hours of the morning or at sundown, unnecessarily adding anything other than day or night makes planning the shooting schedule that much more difficult. The last thing you want to do as a new (or any) writer is make other people's jobs more difficult. Sticking with those two should not hinder your writing in most cases. 

As for Later, Moments Later, and Continuous, these are a bit different. In theory, all action is "continuous" (the movie doesn't just stop between scenes), so you do not need to use it all the time. If things are happening at the same time, you can do it - or "SIMULTANEOUS" if you want. For Later and Moments Later, I like to use them as such: both are used to denote a scene that takes place on the same day as the previous one. For example, something occurs during the day, and the following scene is still during the day, only a bit later on, I would use Later. If it is within the same 24 hours but now it's dark out, go with Night. If something happens during the day, and the following scene is a continuation of it that we have jumped to (perhaps set up to fifteen minutes later) but the locale, characters, and beat are the same, instead of writing in JUMP CUT TO, I go with Moments Later. There can even be a change of location here. If action is the next day (i.e. two "day" scenes back to back with 24 hours between them), I would use Day again in the slugg line, but specify "The next day" at the beginning of the description/action.

Your last option - and one that I like a lot - is to use Secondary Headings, especially in cases where action continues in the same location. Basically, these are modified slugg lines, which contain neither the interior/exterior designation, nor information about the time of day. You don't have to bog down the page with extra text to describe a scene set in a house, for example, in which the characters go from room to room. Rather than constantly typing INT. BILL'S HOUSE, [SPECIFIC] ROOM -- CONTINUOUS for each subsequent room, start with an overview - INT. BILL'S HOUSE -- DAY - and then follow the characters into the... DINING ROOM and then into the... LIVING ROOM and so on and so forth. "DINING ROOM" stands alone on the slugg line, followed by the action or dialogue, and then LIVING ROOM taking us into the next chunk. It reads quicker and looks cleaner. Some writers even use secondary headings almost exclusively. I like them quite a bit myself.

Remember, slugg lines are malleable. They involve words that you still have to type out, and therefore, you can change them as need be. However, there's also an accepted format to them, which you would do well to work within for the most part.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 141 - Positive Response from Agents and A New Approach to Writing

Three weeks ago, my post-Apocalyptic spec went out to a handful of agents at some of the largest agencies. Two weeks ago, all I knew was that one had passed. My manager didn't expect to hear much until after Labor Day, as most people were out of town for the end of the summer then. Last week, as expected, we got word from the other two we went out to initially.

I was thrilled to hear that both responses were quite positive. While I can't say who or where (though obviously I know both), I can say that these are agents at companies that any emerging writer would love to wind up at. If anything, they could be considered too big - in the sense that they would have other clients earning more and therefore more "important" right now - but that doesn't seem to be a concern in either case. The agents have teams working with them, and it's likely that there would be a few people handling the material. Of the two, we're still waiting to hear from one who liked the script, but recently signed a client writing similar work (which could be a conflict of interest). Either way, two people interested in the work and a few others we're hoping to hear from this week - some of which have La and NYC offices, which could be really nice. 

As the post-Apocalyptic spec slowly moves along, I've been getting further into the firefighter one, as well. It's been an interesting writing process for me, unique in many ways. I almost immediately cast my outline aside. Sure, I still open it each day and work by it - loosely - but it's definitely not guiding my daily writing. Rather, each day I sit down to the computer (which regrettably was not every day this week), I find myself carefully crafting the day's scene(s), unsure exactly what will come up in the action or dialogue. It's a much more painstaking process than I'm used to. Normally, I can produce 4 to 5 pages per hour-long writing session; with this script, my average has dropped to somewhere around 3. I'm not complaining by any means. At the same time, though, I can't say if that change in pace and approach is affecting me positively or negatively or differently at all. Nor am I sure quite where the change from. 

Last Thursday, I reviewed Richard Walter's Essentials of Screenwriting. Perhaps the lessons emphasized in that book are governing the new writing tactics. Maybe I'm subconsciously working from a place where I'm reminded of all the re-writes I had to do on the post-Apocalyptic spec and am trying to preempt them by being more careful in my first draft. Maybe it's a combination of both. Maybe it's neither. Either way, I'm eager to see how the draft turns out. It feels much more like I'm crafting a story now, fitting the puzzle together while at the same time allowing it to evolve as it needs to, as it organically should. I like it. I'm slower now, but hopefully, even if this draft isn't solid, this new method will prove to be.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 140 - New Script and Agent Updates

It feels good to be writing something new again. I mean, really writing something - not just jotting down a few random notes here or typing up a rough outline there. No, I mean actually sitting down, opening Movie Magic 2000, and putting words to the page, working my way up from a blank page one all over again.

I haven't gone through this process in quite a while now. Most of my time the past two years has been dedicated to my post-Apocalyptic spec. However, as it's now in the hands of the creative exec at the production company in LA and out to agents, there's not a whole lot I can do for it these days. Not until some decisions are made by people who aren't me. And, if I'm at all serious about trying to become a working, career screenwriter, I know that I can't just let the time pass and not use it to produce other pages for a new project.

Time's too valuable to waste right now - if, (knock on wood) I have to take some meetings in the coming month, I certainly don't want to show up at them empty handed. It's all well and good to have the post-Apocalyptic spec open the door to that meeting for me, but I know that one of the very first questions (once the basic "tell me about yourself" stuff is done with) is going to be, "So what else do you have?" The thing is, I don't necessarily have to have a library of scripts ready to be messaged over right then and there. What I will need, though, is the ability to talk about other ideas in specific details. The more I have written of a script, the more I should know about it. And even if I don't have pages, the more I've worked an idea out, the better able I'll be to talk about it in a meeting without getting flustered. It just so happens that I do have pages for this new thing - the firefighter script - and while I'm just at page 18 of a first draft, that's better than nothing.

So on the writing front, you could say that it was a pretty good wee. Regarding the post-Apocalyptic spec, it was just so-so. We still waiting to hear back from one of the two agents that we initially went to with the hopes of finding me some representation. Unfortunately, the agent that we did hear back from passed. I'm not 100% sure why, just not for them, I guess. Still, I don't know whether that says more about my writing or the state of the industry. I'm hoping it's the latter, of course. This agent was brought a script that a production company is already basically behind, which people want to go out and try to sell very soon. We just want the agent behind it. Even having an A-list producer's name behind the project didn't seal representation, which just goes to show that you never know what will work. 

Far as I know, we're still waiting to hear back from the other agent, and - in light of the one's pass - have gone out to a few others. My manager didn't expect we'd hear anything before Labor Day, so hopefully this coming week will bring news from a few of the others we've reached out to. And, more hopefully, one of them will like it and like me. I think we can still go ahead if I wind up being un-repped (those very same agents could come knocking if I make a sale without an agent behind me), but it would be nice to land some representation now that we're actually putting the script out there with that intent. No one likes to come away empty-handed. We'll see what this coming week brings.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 139 - Started a New Script

It's been a long, loooonnnng time since I've sat down to begin working on a screenplay that was anything other than the post-Apocalyptic spec. So long, in fact, that it feels a little strange. (Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But a year or two ago, I was used to starting a new project every five or six months. An outline aside, it's been closer to a year now, I think.)

On Saturday afternoon, as I've been doing a lot this summer, I took my laptop into my back yard and sat down to get an hour of work in. (Yes, you can have a back yard with real grass and trees and everything in New York. It's crazy to get home grown tomatoes and grapes from someone in New York City, but that's what my neighbor hands me over the fence with regularity.) Tanning while working, I set my playlist to accommodate the right kind of air-drumming music and got to it. 

About a half an hour later, I had two shots and a total of about 3/4 of a page down. Not my best pace. However, in that brief time, something interesting, important, and unusual happened. I realized that the outline I was working off of was in need of change, major change. The protagonist is a fire fighter, but I never thought to include the other members of his engine company in the script. Well, the chief's there, but the other guys never factored in. Half way through the second shot, I realized that they'd have to play bigger roles. Instantly, the script had changed - for the better, I hope.

Outlines are supposed to be flexible. A script can change organically while being written, rendering certain things unnecessary or outdated (compared to in the outline). Having a malleable outline also allows for more fun while writing, inviting surprises to creep onto the page and provide a fulfilling writing experience - versus one that is, more or less, an exercise in transcribing from outline to screenplay. Still, despite all my awareness of an outline's flexibility, I've never had one change so early into the writing. 

To be honest, I wasn't 100% satisfied with the outline. It was workable, sure, but also seemed a bit too linear (a common first draft problem) and lacking in pizazz. The realizations that I had within that first 3/4 page will hopefully breathe the new life into the outline that I needed. I look forward to getting back to it tonight and seeing how the story evolves. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 130 - Overlapping Projects

I managed to accomplish a few things last week, even while on vacation. For one, I discovered just how out of shape I've grown living an idle life in New York. More encouraging, though, was the fact that I got a rough, three page outline of my next project idea (the firefighter script) to my manager by the end of the week. Sometimes, I guess knowing how to sit sedentary for a few hours at a time can in fact pay off. 

After last week's post about trying to work with pen and paper more, I had to make the transition over to typing up my ideas in Word. Over the course of the week, I got all my original notes transferred over, and then built upon them, ultimately generating the outline. I guess it's a little strange, but my process generally involves creating an initial document that has both notes and the majority of my outline. When holes appear in the outline or I discover questions that need to be answered before I can move on, I open a new document and paste a copy of the outline into there. Then, I continue to work on filling in the plot holes in the more note-filled first document, ultimately collecting the full unadulterated outline in the second. Something about having a scrap document for notes and questions and problem solving helps (and replaces the earlier pad of paper).

Right around the time I was getting the outline prepped to send off to my manager, I got a call from him. The executive that we've been working with on the post-Apocalyptic spec had another round of notes - the final round, I'm told. She essentially had five points that she wants us to take a closer look at. At first, one of them seemed to really jump out as not a minor change. I called my producer and manager pretty quickly, and they both talked me down, making me see that it's really just a question of adding a beat or two to one part of the script, and removing a couple from a later one, to shift some of the focus around. Not too bad.

Still, though, the prospect of more notes to address - even though I think they'll only take me a week - was not so hot. At this point, we've been working on the script with this particular production company since October. My manager assure me that, barring any glaring problems that we've all managed to overlook by being too close to the material, the fixes I do now will be the last one before the script goes out to the rest of the team at the production company (including the head producer). One last round of tweaks, and then it goes out, out of our hands and into all of theirs. From there, it's only a matter of a couple weeks before we should know whether they'll be moving forward with the project or not. And in the meantime, I'll be working on the firefighter spec, getting ready to answer the question we all hope to hear one day: "so what's next for you?"

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 129 - Pen and Paper, When Tried is True for a Reason

I gave myself a week off. Friday marked a week since I sent the most recent version of my script into the production company that we're working with. (I just heard from my manager today that we're hoping to get notes by end of day tomorrow - and we're hoping the notes are little more than very minor tweaks and finesses.) Any one out there could easily argue that waiting a week before writing again - especially at a time when we're hoping I'll have to go to LA and take meetings soon - is incredibly bad planning. I won't argue with you there. However, I was feeling a little bit like I was running on fumes, and I was having a difficult time cracking the new project open. So, I took a week off.

On Saturday, I started actively writing down ideas for the new script (let's call it the "firefighter script" here on out). Sure, I'd jotted things down here and there, but that was the start of blocking out the time and really making myself work on the new idea. Sunday followed with more work, including a few revelations that helped really crack the thing open. Then today, I spend five hours on a bus heading back down to Arlington, Virginia. In between naps (more than I should probably have taken), I got more work done. The general story arc is slowly starting to congeal; I have a fairly stable foundation for each act and where many of the big beats fall. Soon, it'll be time to put all this down on the computer and get it out to the manager. But not yet.

I'm constantly going back and forth on the merits of writing on the computer versus with pen and paper. Recently, though, I find it increasingly satisfying (and easier) to begin outlining on a notepad, where no blinking cursor can remind me that I'm not putting new material down. To avoid that nagging reminder, I find myself re-typing the same info over and over again - everything I already know being put down in my notes with little or no actual progress coming with it. Pen and paper, though, is so basic. It doesn't actively remind you that another word should follow. Yes, the page remains blank until you fill it, but it's patient. It allows you to work  through your ideas as they come. And when they do come, it's glorious.

One more day with the notebook - I think that's my goal. Maybe by the end of tomorrow I'll open Word and try to make that cursor blink as little as possible. Until then, though, I'm doing just fine without it.