The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 283 - Outlining (Again)

It has been 22 months since I first began collaborating with actor turned director-writer, W.A., on our sci-fi project. I have since lost track of the number of drafts of the outline and script that I've written, but it's up there. A few months ago, we sent the script to our representatives for their feedback, hoping they would be on board to start shopping the material around. Unfortunately, they didn't think the script was ready yet. After my initial disappointment at their qualms with it, I came to see the points and understand the flaws they had picked up on. I then went back to the drawing board. 

The major problem with the script, as pointed out to us, was that the first half (and especially the first half of Act Two) failed to excite. A lot happens exposition-wise, and there is a strong science component that the characters focus on. However, as my agent said, we created a heightened other world that the story is set in, but then just have characters sit around in a room for a long time. While an exaggeration, it's not too far off the mark. The more I reread the notes, the more clearly I saw the weaknesses of the first half. Yes, things happen, but it's not riveting, nor is it visually compelling - at least, it's not as aesthetically exciting as a story set in the world we've devised should be. Something big happens at the midpoint that both elevates the emotional resonance and capitalizes on the world and action potential established early on, but the 50 pages before that barely scratch the surface. Our big obstacle in rewriting, therefore, was to make better use of the first half of the script.

W.A. and I got on the phone (a few times) to hammer out ideas. I pitched him one that actually struck me as we spoke. I didn't know if it would be too out there or too disruptive, but the great thing about working with W.A. is that he's always totally game for whatever idea, as long as he thinks it could work. He thought this radical one would be the perfect way to address the first half shortcomings, so we started spitballing using that as our base. I since went back to outlining, as neither of us wanted to spend any time writing before we were positive we had the new direction firmly set. It took me a while to crack the first half of the revised second act, but after a call on Monday with W.A., I think we're there. 

The change I proposed ups the emotional impact of the script very early on, moving a major reveal from page 70 to page 10. IT catapults the characters and story in a way that the inciting incident hadn't yet before, and (we hope) it buys us a little more time before we need a major action beat. We still push the action up, but in really looking at the rules of the world that we've established, it became apparent that certain things simply cannot happen - at least, not organically - and therefore limit how and when we can have a tentpole, edge of your seat scene. Still, with the new incarnation, the major first half of act two action sequence moves up from page 42 to somewhere around 32, which is great.

So, now, after months off, I am about to dive back into pages for the script in what's almost (but not quite entirely) a page one rewrite. In the meantime, I've had additional reviews go up on Under the Radar. You can read my two latest online exclusives there, for Last Days on Mars and Expecting. Suffice it to say, I was underwhelmed by both films I saw.

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 282 - Back in the Saddle

Surprising as it might seem, the fact that I've not been writing blog updates doesn't actually mean that I haven't been writing. In fact, I finally began diving into a new project, which has been both fun and paint-drying slow, as new projects often are at first. League member Onyx (Jon) has for a while now encouraged me to take a time out from writing action scripts to work on something of a different genre. His idea, which I fully subscribe to, is that working on alternative material will clear the dust off of other writing tools and muscles. Sci-fi and action specs don't always have room for deep character cathartic moments or heartbreaking losses or reversals, so making time to write something that does can be invaluable - not that they are definitively devoid of them as a rule, either; many great sci-fi or action screenplays have truly tender and touching moments.

When I was new to writing and, a little later, new to NYU, I loved character-driven material. Plays, screenplays - I didn't care. I was in love with the idea of exploring characters through their reactions to heightened emotional circumstances. I wanted to root for the underdog and relate to people trapped in one of life's ruts and find a way to explain and explore love and the great emotions of the human experience. Most of my early work dealt with the "average" person in recognizable, day to day situations. Then, I wrote  a post-Apocalyptic spec that landed me an agent, manager, lawyer, and two producers, and the game changed. I was encouraged to develop multiple specs per year of a similar genre. Though no sale resulted from my new-found connections, I was brought on to write the sci-fi spec I've been working on for going on two years now. Still, the result has been a deep saturation in the sci-fi and action genres, with few outlets for any other type of emotional expression.

Not long ago, I had an idea for a film about two teenagers falling in love. The theme of young love is by no means new or unexplored - if anything, we're almost drowning in it on an indie level. But the concept I had threw it into an unconventional setting, which (to me at least) elevated the situation and themes I would explore. Still, I had a nagging sense that, no matter what I did with the film, I wouldn't be able to flex my dialogue muscles the way I did when I used to write plays in school. Taking Jon's suggestion, I decided to table development of additional action ideas I have, and instead to focus on the teen love idea, but as a play. Different muscles indeed. Progress has been slow and limited to date, but I have a working document that grows a bit each day I sit down in front of the computer, and I'm excited to be able to unburden myself of an experience certain emotions vicariously through the characters in the play.

In a similar vein, I also began a new venture - thanks to Austin Trunick, aka Zombie, aka the Cinema Editor at Under The Radar magazine - that of movie reviewer. So far, I've had the opportunity to review two films, Mr. Nobody and Casting By. While the cinephile in me loves having access to movies ahead of time and the platform to weigh in on their strengths and weaknesses, the writer in me loves the challenge of a succinct assignment. Tasked with delivering no more than a few hundred words, I find my creative delivery muscles being flexed - how do I say what I want to convey in a captivating, yet short-lipped (typed) way? Every word becomes an element necessitating evaluation. Does I need this "that" there? Can I consolidate these two sentences? Can I cut this train of thought? We're taught as screenwriters to keep action and description brief and moving; writing short articles is a great way to beef up those skills while also developing deeper analytical tools to bolster my own writing.

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 281 - The Query Campaign

I'd be lying if I said that my primary focus the past month has been on writing. Frankly, I've really not done any writing at all to speak of in a while. It's not that I'm done with writing or out of ideas - I just haven't really been able to get motivated for a while. That happens. It's an accepted (though perhaps not entirely acceptable) facet of being a writer. Sometimes, you hit a bit of a slump. When that happens, you just have to do what it takes to pull yourself out of it, and for me, that's been the process of querying my children's book.

Over the summer, I wrote a 1,670(ish) word children's picture story book. Think Dr. Seuss, only I can't draw well enough to do the illustrations in addition to the text. I since cut it down to about 1,270 words. I had two people tell me that's still probably too long back in September, and as they were both much deeper in the world of children's literature than I am, I should probably take what they say as truth - at the very least, as a very solid suggestion.

I put out a couple feelers and landed a few leads. Two colleagues at the theatre companies I work with had connections to children's book agents that they said they could introduce me to. One said I could use her name in my query; that agent gave me the fastest rejection I have ever received. HOWEVER, that's actually far more positive than it sounds. (I'm serious.) For anyone who has ever queried an agent or manager or producer, you know that it can take months to hear back - and that's if you hear at all. To know within a couple hours that the agent you have reached out to is definitively not your person is actually a relief. With the waiting game over, you can immediately move on. And, what was especially positive in this case, is that the agent let me know why she was not representing me. In addition to being overloaded, she also just doesn't handle the particular type of children's material that I had submitted (not that I knew that based on the information about her online). Agents can be very particular about what they rep, and your project, no matter how incredible, will not find a home with every agent. If it's not their cup of tea, thank them and move onto the next. You won't change their mind (and probably don't want to). I have yet to hear back from the second colleague.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I have a friend who worked in publishing. She has been very generous with her time, reading a few drafts of the story, weighing in with very lengthy notes, and has agreed to help me get it to agents that she knows personally. She's the one who advised that I write a query letter, and she has provided feedback on that, too. I just have to finish tweaking it, and the hope is that we'll go out to agents before the end of the month.

My writing partner on the sci-fi collaboration has connections in the animated film industry. Those connections have contacts in the children's book world, and he has offered to forward it along. Any potential in can help. (Speaking of agents, we got feedback from my agent for that one; it looks like we will be embarking on a potentially not-insignificant rewrite in the coming weeks.) I also reached out to another friend in publishing on Facebook, but I've not yet heard back. 

Finally - and most unexpectedly - I wound up meeting an Assistant Editor at a major children's book publisher at an event this week. She has taken a look at the material and was quite supportive. Like the two people earlier this year, she also recommended that I shorten the book by up to half if possible. That's an almost daunting amount of editing, but she knows her stuff and is a great contact and potential in to have. If she says cut, then cut I will. 

If all leads take me to a dead end, then at least I'll have a solid query letter and a product I believe in. I'll then start the blind query submission.  

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 280 - Prey to Patience

Patience is said to be a virtue, and for writers, it is a necessity. Nothing happens overnight. Even "overnight sensations" have taken years to develop and achieve success. When we had our freshman orientation at NYU, the League's instructors told us not to plan on selling anything until we were at least 35. I didn't know it at the time, but they were planting the all important seed - patience, my friends; it's all about patience.

There are two types of waiting that befall writers. There's waiting on one's self (waiting to develop that next project or complete that draft or edit the script). This waiting is conquerable; all you need to do to overcome it is write, work, drive yourself to finish. Writer's block is a part of this waiting, a threat to productivity, but it can be vanquished. Self-waiting (also called "procrastinating") is sometimes necessary, in the case of taking a breather between projects or in order to gear up for a major rewrite. Sometimes, it stems from being dry or in a rut or simply unmotivated. Whatever the cause, self-waiting is something we writers control. We can turn the switch on and off when we want. 

The second form of waiting, the waiting that I loathe, is waiting on others. If you've ever asked a friend or colleague to read a script, you know this waiting. If you've sent out query letters (read: emails), you may have knows this waiting for three or six month increments. And, if you've been fortunate enough to get notice from an agent/producer/manager, you have further experienced this type of waiting. With my post-Apocalyptic spec, I waited about four months between my initial querying and landing a manager. I then waited another four months for that manager to get his crap together as he jumped jobs (twice) and neglected to inform me of where he'd gone. Then, I got a new team, and collectively, we re-worked the script and waited another six months to attract a bigger producer. More rewrites followed (for a year), and then we waited for a mega-producer to attach him/her self to the project. When that didn't happen, we waited for buyers to cough up money. I'm still waiting on that (though, with zero expectations that script will ever sell.)

In the midst of all that waiting - and I certainly don't mean to sound bitter; I'm actually not at all, mind you - I remained productive. I churned out the first drafts of a couple scripts that weren't quite right or weren't working. Then, about a year and a half ago, the producer we had attached after the six month waiting stint called and offered me a spec writing job. I jumped on it, and it has since become known here as the sci-fi collaboration. For eighteen months, I worked and reworked it with my writing partner. Finally, about a month ago, we settled on a draft both of us liked a lot. We sent it to his manager, who also liked it, but who had concerned that it was becoming too similar to something already in development. Unfortunately for us, the potentially competing picture is shrouded in secrecy, so - for the pas three weeks - we have been waiting to see if anyone can find out any more about it. More waiting, and not the self-driven kind.

Yesterday, I decided to be proactive when waiting on others. I emailed my collaborator and asked him if he thought it was worth me reaching out to my agent about the script. I haven't been in touch with my agent in nearly three years, because I haven't had a product ready for him. I'll admit that part of my desire to reach out was to plant myself back on his radar. Part, obviously, is to further our script and see if he has connections and insight that my collaborator's team doesn't yet. He responded, and I have sent him the script. Sure, I'm still waiting, but with another possible opportunity on the table.

Speaking of waiting, a couple months back, I wrote a children's picture story book. A friend in publishing took a look, loved it, and gave me notes. I shortened it, per her suggestions, reworked it a bit, and made it even more visually stimulating. I sent it back to her... and waited. Unfortunately, my friend got intermittently ill and busy, and my book slid to the back burner. (I can't fault her at all, as I've done this with others' work in the past, too, as much as I am disappointed to admit it.) Still, I was waiting. She had told me she could connect me with literary agents, and yet, the ball wasn't rolling. Through my work in theatre here in NYC, I had access to children's theatre makers with contacts at agencies repping the exact kind of work I had produced. After deciding I was done idly waiting, I became proactive again. I sent my other connection an email, and by that afternoon (far as I know), my book was off via email to his agent contact. I'm waiting on a response from that, but at least I have another ball up in the air and can dispense with the wringing unease of another potential in falling by the wayside.

My friends, you, too, will find yourself waiting while playing this game. It's all about how you spend your time that counts. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 278 - Never Delete an Old Draft

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. The children's book went out to my friend in publishing last weekend. Then, early this week, I got another round of notes from my writing partner on our sci-fi collaboration, which I had to turn around. He gave me final thoughts on Wednesday night, the grand total of which were six minor edits (literally, folks, we're talking about cutting a sentence or changing a couple words here and there). We jumped on a quick call yesterday morning, and after 43 minutes of work, I had the revised draft out to him. We have sent it to his manager for a read. Pending notes from the manager (who was a development exec before becoming a rep), we'll get our producer's notes and, fingers crossed, be that much closer to looping in our agents and developigng a strategy to bring it out.  

Yes, I know that sounds crazy. I said six edits, right? Correct. And it took 43 minutes? That's an average of over seven minutes an edit, and all I was doing was changing a word here and cutting a line there? Well... basically. At this stage, every word counts, so I had to choose them carefully. Sure, the cuts happen in the blink of an eye. Find the page, highlight the text, and hit delete. Problem solved. 

When it comes to dialogue, though, you want to be more circumspect. For example, we were altering one small bit of dialogue - perhaps about six lines in total - that describes the enterprises and roles of an underworld character. The existing dialogue hinted at a reason why the character (and his wares) is so important, but it was too vague. The character's role in the world played a major factor in something that was to payoff later, so we had to get it just right. I spent the most time of all the edits on that section, writing and then revising it, wording and re-wording until it felt right. I was happy that my collaborator was pleased with the results. 

I also had to go back and re-incorporate something that had been cut from the current draft, but which was present in earlier incarnations of it. The ability to go back to old drafts and look at what you had, potentially to lift it and re-insert it, is invaluable. It is because of this that I make it a practice of not simply saving over an old draft when editing. I always create a copy of the file and save it as the current version (usually by date). Even if I'm just making relatively small edits in revision mode, I want to preserve the earlier work. Sure, at some point, after the script it made, I can purge the files if I need the space. Until then, though, there's no reason to overwrite an existing file. Script files don't take up that much room on your hard drive, and they can prove valuable (as evidenced in the example above). I suggest that you try to retain all previous versisons, too - you never know when they might come in handy.  

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 277 - A Shorter, Streamlined Script

Last night, I submitted a revised draft of my sci-fi spec to my writing partner. The past couple months have born witness to an incredible transformation in that script. By roughly mid-April, we had a really solid idea of the story we wanted to tell. From about mid-May through mid-July, my collaborator and I were going back and forth on the script with each other, as well as with our producer. A lot of notes passed from one mind to the other via email and phone calls, all with the goal of distilling the story down to its most streamlined, concise, and riveting version possible.

Just shy of a month ago, I sent my partner a 108 page draft, which was the culmination of edits driven by the aforementioned notes and discussions. He got back to me about a week later with another round of notes. He asked me to do a major dialogue and action pass through as I edited, looking for anywhere I could cut. I did him one better - I made my edits, and then I did the dialogue and action pass. After that, I did another dialogue only pass, reading for cohesiveness, redundancies, and consistency. I sent him back a 98 page draft.

Not long later, about a week and a half ago, my collaborator came back with more notes. For the most part, his suggestions this last time were cosmetic. He pointed out a few areas that could be further truncated, multiple scenes that could be collapsed into one, and lines of dialogue that could be shortened or cut entirely. Still, he had some larger thoughts. 

One character we meet right around the midpoint wasn't quite working, because he required a lot of back story that a) we didn't have the means to easily convey and b) really affected a lot of the other characters and necessitated a lot more to be directly stated about them and their histories. More so, his presence created a double beat with a pair of characters we meet later in the script (more about them anon). We came up with a smart and easily workable solution - the character remains necessary, but his story was malleable. So, we completely rewrote who he was in the world. He lost his affiliation and history with the others, which solved the back story hurdles, and because he became so different, we didn't have to worry about the double beat any more. In changing him, we crafted a much more interesting character unbound by lengthy exposition. 

As for the duo, we had to spice them up a bit and give them a reason for their current situation in life. With the double beat worry off the table, I was free to take a closer look at what role they had to serve in the story, and the solution I came up with also made them much more compelling and lamentable. 

My writing partner's astute observations for where to collapse scenes all proved right on. I did more edits, consolidating and merging and further streamlining dialogue, for an end result of an additional four pages chopped off, bringing the script to a lean and mean 94. The cuts and reworkings of the characters have worked together to make this the strongest draft of the script yet. Hopefully, my partner agrees that it is strong enough to show our agents next.         

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 276 - That WHAM Moment

Ah, rewrites. How you are necessary. How you are exhausting.

It's been a long haul on my sci-fi spec (over 18 months now). For the most part, it has been a wonderful process. My writing partner is great and offers a superb learning opportunity (he has decades of industry experience and work). We (I) have churned out draft after draft, first of the treatment (at least seven major versions), and then the script (I've lost track - maybe five primary drafts with smaller edits in between). Now, we're just about there. 

My collaborator and I spent about 90 minutes on the phone last night going over his final set of notes on the most recent draft I sent him. For the most part, the notes were miniscule - this is a little confusing here, and I'm not quite sure we need this there. A couple larger notes will be fun to address. We're revising one of the characters from a scientist into more of an underworld entity, because the role he fills as a scientist is a duplicated later in more important scientist characters. He became a redundancy as we spoke, and all redundancies must go. We've also figured out how to further simplify the science, which will be fun if for no other reason that it will eliminate some of the headache of explaining the rulse of the world. 

One note, though, demanded a fair amount of chit chat before we decided we had to bite the bullet and forgo what I like to call the WHAM moment. Every script should have lots of "WHAM moments" - scenes, beats, or revelations that glue you to the edge of your seat. No amount of urgency to refill your popcorn or soda or to take a leak should be able to draw you away from a WHAM moment. These will typically occur around the tentpole scenes (inciting incident, act turns, midpoint, climax, etc.) but can be scattered throughout. Our inciting incident draws the protagonist from the everyday into the sci-fi world he was unaware of. He lands somewhere completely foreign to him, somewhere dangerous and devastating; this should be a WHAM moment. It's a big moment, but due to the rules of the world, we can't thrust him into the heart of the chaos. His emergence into this other realm, while jarring, takes place in a controlled environment, which is heated emotional, but not physical, implications. 

My partner and I went over this scene again and again. How can we get him into the chaos? What can go wrong that forces him there? Can we manipulate in a way that the moment he crosses the plane, he's in danger in a big way? That's what the scene should be. That's how we'll capture the audience and the reader in a big way. That's the WHAM moment. 

Ultimately, the rules of the world won't let it be so. Too many things would have to be fudged; too much would have to be explained (or worse, glossed over later). It just wouldn't work. Yes, we lose our WHAM moment, which is a shame, but we do so in order to preserve the rules we have established. Ultimately, though perhaps a less riveting exposure to this other realm, the rules have to trump the WHAM. We can't unravel the story for the sake of the scene. Who knows, maybe we'll figure out a solution. But for now, we have to suck it up on this one and proceed true to the story. 

On a side note, I've been working on editing my children's book further. For a project that has never been longer than 1,670 words, it is an incredibly difficult process. In fact, it is an incredibly difficult process because the project has never been longer than 1,670 words (and needs to be closer to 1,000). 

A friend who works in publishing suggested that I cut the nearly 1,700 word manuscript down to a thousand or so, since the age group of my targeted readership is low. It's a wise note, but cutting is easier said than done. I have excised some portions and looked for redundancies or areas to combine verses in order to truncate others, but the fewer words I have, the harder it becomes to strip further. I'm down to just under 1,350 words now, which is still probably too long, but I feel like I can't cut much more without eliminating entire parts of the story. What I can do, though (another suggestion from my friend) is to look at the verb choices and words I use. If I can't reduce the word count, I can at least make the existing words more active, imaginative, and magical. The goal is to make every single verse sing, which is a laborious, yet fun process. My goal is to be able to send it to my friend by Labor Day, so that she can put me in touch with agents soon after.   

The Writing Week (Vol. 6 ) part 275 - Need to Plan Next Projects

Half of your success as a writer will be determined by the strength of the screenplay you are trying to sell. The other half is determined by your ability to pitch and sell your next projects.

No agent/producer/lawyer/manager/studio wants a one-off writer. All those entities, whether they outright say it or not, are in the franchise business, and you, my friend, as a writer are a franchise. To be the most valuable commodity you can be, to get all of those people and buyers and businesses behind you, you need to give them a long-term reason. That reason, naturally, is a series of ideas you can continue to produce for them.

When I took my meeting at UTA (can it really almost have been three years ago already?), my manager worked with me to prepare three pitches for additional specs before I even got in the room with the agent. Sure, I had a strong script that we all thought would be a relatively easy sell (it wasn't - so sad), but that wasn't enough. No matter how great that one project was, my agent's time was more valuable than a single sale. I needed to show him that I'd be around working and earning for years to come. But, let's step back a moment - before UTA was even on the horizon for me, I was settling into a partnership with a pair of producers and a new (to me) manager. One of the very first things my manager asked for was another script of mine. He, too, was testing the waters of my writing; he was relieved when I said that the somewhat inferior script I gave him as a followup (the only other viable one I had on hand at the time) was an earlier script. It wasn't as strong, but I was younger when I wrote it. Similarly, if you recall, when I met with a publishing friend about my children's book, one of the first things she advised me to do was come up with other book ideas I could mention in meetings with potential agents. 

Clearly, having additional ideas is valuable - and it is best to keep them in the same genre as the project that you're gaining attention with, since that is where your strengths are most immediately visible to people who have only minimal, but favorable, exposure to your writing. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to focus on what's next when you're in the middle of a large project, or even when you're coming down onto the tail end of it. I recently got the (hopefully) last draft of the sci-fi collaboration to my partner. He liked it, and aside from a few notes we'll discuss in the coming days, didn't see the need for many more edits. If that's in fact the case, then we'll give it to our producer and representatives next. Barring glaring errors or holes that they might discover, we'll be fast approaching the "try to sell it" stage, which means looping my agent in. Yes, that same guy at UTA and, no, he's not aware I'm working on this yet. There's no reason for him to be until there's a product, since I haven't really been on his radar since the post-Apocalyptic spec failed to sell. But, the moment I call or email him to present him with a spec I wrote for a know director, all that will change. At least, it should. And I will be shooting myself in the foot if I don't have a laundry list of the next specs I want to write ready to give him. So it is time to put on my thinking cap, dust off the old ideas, and determine what projects I want to work on next. 

The Writing Week (vol. 6) part 274 - Busy, Productive Week

Sunday morning, 10am - I meet with a friend in the publishing industry to ask her about what my next steps and considerations should be for my children's book. She tells me that she's moving upstate in two hours. "What? Do you even have time to do this today?" She says she does, so while we wait in line for our bagels and coffee, I tell her I've decided to pursue getting it out there sooner rather than later, that I'm jazzed about it now and want to see if I can make anything happen with it. I give her the pitch and find myself sounding 100% like the token writer I've always tried to avoid being, "I'm really excited about the book. I believe in it and think that it can be great. No, I haven't thought much about the marketing yet, but I kind of thought that the idea itself would be the big grab."

Oy.

I dial it back a bit. My friend - who, by the way, came to our breakfast meeting with the names of agents she thinks might be a good fit - tells me I should come up with some followup book ideas. Of course! How dumb of me not to have considered this. When in school, the head of our department told my friends and I not to begin pitching to agents and managers until we had at least three projects we could talk about. No rep wants a one-time only client. They want someone who can become a franchise and a more guaranteed sell. D'uh. Silly me. Good to think on.

We part. She - to go move. I immediately head into my apartment and email her the book. That night, she reads it. The following day (her birthday), she texts me that she's read it, that she loves it and thinks it's fantastic. Notes forthcoming. 

Groovy.

So I set that pot on the backburner for the time being. Meanwhile, I need to get the current, and hopefully final (before sending to our representatives) draft of the sci-fi spec to my writing partner, W.A. He cautioned me earlier this week to take my time, to make sure that I've done a solid dialogue and action pass before giving it to him. We want to be able to send this incarnation to our producer and representatives soon, to essentially make this version the one we go out with. Sure, we're open to edits still, but we've identified everything we want the movie to be, and our hope is that we'll have nailed all of that in this draft. 

I spend a few weeks doing edits. Along the way, I trim dialogue and descriptions, but the main legwork is done on scenes and sequences, excising the fat, cutting what's no longer relevant, adding in scenes to fill in the gaps, and trimming back gratuitous elements. The script drops five pages. 

Before I send it to W.A., I pull up a PDF of the script on my iPad Mini, open Adobe Reader (a great, free app for editing PDFs), and spend two nights doing a thorough dialogue and action pass. I trim. Boy, how I trim. If there's a block of text that ends with one lone word on its own line, I reword the paragraph to cut that hanging line. Redundant dialogue goes. Description gets pared down, consolidated, clarified, and, when possible, nixed. The script drops four more pages.

Finally, I do a second dialogue-only pass. I use this to find further redundancies and to track the science in the script - how do the characters refer to everything, and where are the anomalies? I find a few instances that need edits. All that remains, now, is one tiny, though important, beat wherein the protagonist has to realize something. I know what he finds out; I just have to plant something that helps him discover it. The options to do this are manifold, yet I haven't settled on the right one. Once I do, the script goes out to W.A. for his approval. Perhaps, just perhaps, we'll get new eyes on it then.  

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 273 - Back in the Groove

This past week has been good - really good. My creative juices have started flowing again, and the deluge has been fast and fruitful. And I think I have to attribute at least part of that to having multiple project to work on. (The other factor in the equation is a burning drive to move forward on a couple projects quickly and bring them to completion.)

For starters, I've really gotten back into the sci-fi spec. I'd taken some time off to travel, await notes from my producer, and regroup. I'm off an running now, and it feels awesome. I started with linear edits, working my way forward from page one, tackling major revisions first and saving smaller, less readily apparent edits and cuts for a second pass, which I'll do in a few days (I hope). My writing partner, W.A., and I identified five or six primary elements that we wanted to address. There are plenty of smaller issues throughout the script that still need tightening or editing, but the bulk of the work was going to be those half dozen points. To date, I've tackled all but two. I'm really pleased with the progress so far, but it won't be until I do the read-through that I'll really have a good sense of how it's all coming together. (I've abandoned the chronological editing approach and am now doing it piecemeal, which is fine, but can be disorienting and lead to omissions or redundancies.) W.A. and I would like this to be the final draft before we show the script to our reps, and I hope to be able ot get it to him within the next ten days or so.

In addition to the screenplay, if you recall, I had been working on a short children's book, which I completed a draft of a couple weeks ago. A few tweaks later, I think it's ready to see the light. I've sent it to the League for our August meeting, as well as to a few other friends. More than that, though, I've reached out to contacts I have in the publishing industry and have asked to take a few of them out for coffee (independently) to pick their brains a bit. Normally, I would advocate that writers, especially screenwriters, get a few rounds of feedback and push through a couple drafts of a script, at least, before contacting people who have the potential to help get the product sold. But, I'm bucking my own advice here; I believe in the product and, though perhaps a poor excuse, given the brevity of the work, feel that I am in a strong enough place with it to at least initiate the conversations I want to have to help bring it into being. The League's feedback will be much appreciated - hopefully they don't turn around and reveal fatal flaws to me or tell me it flat out sucks - but so far, response has been pretty glowing. If I have friends who can point me in the right direction, I want to learn as much as possible about what considerations I ought to take into account to move ahead with the project.

Lastly, a few weeks back, Onyx proposed a writing project to the League. His idea was simple: we each take turns writing one page (and one page only) of a screenplay. No outlining, no group discussion on the type of story we're telling; just writing. He wrote the first page. I took a long time, but finally delivered the second. Now, it's off to the rest of the group for their contributions. Theoretically, we'll each get about 18 turns before the six of us produce a feature-length script. I'm just as curious as anyone to see where this script goes.

The Writing Week (vol. 6) part 272 - Children's Book Draft Done

Yikes - I've fallen... a bit behind schedule here. I could tell you that, though I haven't posted an update in a while, I've been writing regularly. But that, my friends, would be a fabulation, and because I love you, I don't want to lose your trust, dear readers. 

The truth is, I was in Iceland. Yes, the land of Vikings and Blue Lagoons and fermented rotten shark. It was beautiful, but unproductive as far as my writing is concerned. Now, lest I sound like a total shirker, my writing partner and I were awaiting notes from our producer, which were supposed to come in while I was on vacation. (We got them a few days after I got back, so no worries there.) 

About a week after I touched back down at JFK, W.A. (my collaborator) and I were on the phone going over the notes, picking and choosing the ones we wanted to address. We had a great two-hour discussion in which we recrafted a lot of the weakest parts of the script. W.A.'s really excited to get it out there and see if we can sell it (I'd be lying if I said I wasn't, but after years of near-hits and aggravating misses, I have learned to temper my excitement quite a bit). The work is on me to get it to a place where we can go out by summer's end. Despite the fact that the edits are not unsubstantial, I think it's quite doable.

In the meantime, I decided to pour myself into my inaugural children's book. I attempted some free form writing, but realized that I was rambling and ambling without direction. So, I sat down for a night and outlined the book. It's short - barely two thousand words - and the story is far from the most involved that I have ever worked on. Still, there are about eight main beats to it, and I wanted to get them all down in order and fleshed out. Afterward, the writing came smoothly, and I got it done in about four sessions. I was home in Arlington, VA with my family for the weekend and gave them a preview reading. Reviews were favorable (old saying about not relying on your mom to be your critic aside). I found a few lines I need to edit, but I'm content enough with the draft to set the project aside temporarily, as far as editing goes, and to get back to the sci-fi spec for W.A.

While I work on the sci-fi collaboration, I'd like to see what if any traction I can get with the children's book. I know nothing about the children's book publishing world, but I have a few connections to people that do. I'll ask them and see what they say. More so, I think I probably need to find an illustrator before I show it to the industry. Though this will be a back-burner project for a bit, it will be fun to have something to occupy my mind in addition to the sci-fi spec. And it's a whole new type of writing project for me; that, in and of itself, has been gratifying - and a welcome return to storytelling after my month-plus hiatus.  

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 271 - Awaiting Notes and Reading Scripts

As my lack of recent Writing Week updates may have indicated, I have not been doing a ton of writing recently. Actually, I've not done any at all. I began entertaining thoughts about a children's book I think I'd like to write, but beyond putting a few rhymes down in a Word document, I've hardly touched it. And I have done nothing on any of my scripts.

Part of the inertia stems from the fact that my writing partner and I are awaiting a second round of notes from our producer on the sci-fi spec we've been working on. I haven't touched it in over a month, because I was out of town. Our producer had other commitments, but she read, and we're all talking tonight. I go out of town again for two weeks this Thursday, so it's anyone's guess when I'll get back to work on it - unless, of course, she loves the new draft and has only minor suggestions that I can implement on Wednesday. 

A large part of my lack of momentum, though, is just that - a lack of momentum. Theoretically, I should have treated the month since we sent the script out as a time to break my back getting new (or old) projects ready to outline and write. But I needed a break. The day job got slow for me, and while that maybe should have been a great reason to fully invest in my writing, it had the inverse effect of dulling my motivation outside the office, as well. I'm not self-flagellating here, though. I think every writer needs a break now and then. I just have to make sure that mine ends with the conclusion of my vacation.

In the meantime, the League met last week. We didn't have any scripts to read, so one of the group members suggested a different homework assignment: read a Nicholl winning script. Not just a Nicholl winner, the one we chose had actually been developed through a mentorship project with the WGA. We wanted to see how we all responded to it and, because let's be honest, how we stacked up against it. 

To be honest - and hopefully neither smug nor arrogant - I felt like each member of the League could hold his or her own against the script we read. Perhaps we're not as strong in the particular genre (historical noir/thriller), but I didn't see the Nicholl winner as obviously better in any major way than any of our best projects. In fact, there were some sloppy elements throughout that made me wonder what it takes (luck?, the right reader?, the promise of greater talent yet to come?) to place in the competition. Granted, I can't truly compare, because none of us submitted a competing script that year, nor have any of us read any of the other submissions, winning or not. But my faith in us was unscathed by the read through. Was it a good script? Sure, but with work, I believe any of my writers group members could achieve a similarly strong product. 

We likely won't have pages next meeting, either, so we'll probably read another winning script from that year, to further the experiment. I hope that read, too, will support my hypothesis that, after four years of training in college and six years of writing since, we're just as competitive.

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 270 - Yellow Revisions

I've been away. Could you tell?

I busted my back to get the script revised and off to my collaborator, W.A., before heading on vacation on the 15th of this month. This latest draft became a patchwork quilt of colored revisions - blue, pink, and finally yellow - leading up to me submitting it to him again. While it might seem a bit unnecessary to keep adjusting the revision color, doing so made it extremely easy for W.A. and I both to track the most recent edits. 

(In case you have yet to use revision mode, scripts keep track of edits in chronological order by assigning a color to them. A page with "blue" edits, for example, is one that has only been revised once. "Pink" is second, "yellow" third, and so on. Ultimately, you get weird colors and double colors. Especially in the past, studios actually printed the various versions of the script on multi-colored paper to the degree that it wasn't uncommon for a script to come out looking like a rainbow by the time it was done. In Final Draft, you can alter the color of the text with each revision mode, which I recommend doing so that your producer/collaborator/manager/whoever can see where the edits are. However, the header of each page also gets labeled with the most recent color and applicable date. For example, if you finished the first draft on 4/1/13, then did a pass on 4/4/13, all pages you made edits on will have "Blue 4/4/13" for a header. If you do another revision a week later, pages that get revised again read "Pink 4/11/13" at the top. A final pass on April 14 will yield "Yellow 4/14/13" on edited pages. The draft I turned in to my writing partner had all of the above color pages. That way, he could see where something had been fixed on the first round of edits, what was address on the second, and what I had finally resolved on the most recent pass. I had set a different color text for each revision mode, so he could immediately call out the changes.)

As we discussed and re-revised, three or four scenes stuck out as being problematic, hence the numerous revision modes. Each subsequent edit was less involved than the one that had preceded it, but the dialogue still wasn't right. Or the scene wasn't working properly. Or something that happened first should have happened second. I kept whittling away at the script, dropping a cumulative 12 pages and chipping away at what wasn't working. Finally, on the night before I flew out, I wound up spending three near-uninterrupted hours at the computer, putting all the pieces into order, touching up the script with "yellow." I thought it was working, but I also felt like perhaps I was starting to lose the forest for the trees. 

Off the script went.

W.A. called me the next morning as I was finishing my packing. He liked the edits and, other than one line of dialogue I had meant to cut but forgotten about, had no notes that merited immediate attention. He sent to our producer, and I boarded a plan for Belgium.

We will get her notes this week. 





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The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 269 - Another Leg of the Journey

I think today officially marks 15 months that I have been working on the sci-fi script with my writing partner, W.A. The project has taken more twists and turns than I can count in that time. We developed nearly ten major versions of the outline. I wrote three substantial drafts. I've done smaller scale revisions of all of those.

I think we're in the home stretch... for now. 

A few weeks back (actually, it's more like a month and a half ago at this point), we got the second major draft of the script to our producer. To her, it was a first draft. She praised it, by saying the issues we had to address were "second draft problems." If that sounds like a slight to you, I assure you that it's not. Whatever incarnation of a script your producer, manager, agent, or director sees first is the first draft to them - even if you've written a dozen drafts of it prior to showing it the light of day.

W.A. and I chatted about her notes over the next couple of days. The outcome of those discussions, coupled with our producer's notes? A fresh draft. I thought the changes were going to be minimal. All but perhaps five pages wound up having revision marks on them. Final Draft defaults to doing revisions in blue text. Entire pages were blue by the time I was done. Rather than hunt for the changes, you would have done better to hunt for uncorrupted black text. 

The changes were, comparatively, minimal. 

Still, we had more work to do. W.A. read the new draft, and then we got back on the phone. He liked much of it, but a few things came to light for him. The biggest issue was that the leading science elements of the script weren't working. They came in too late and didn't track. Or they were incomplete. Or they just didn't fit within the context of the new draft. The rest was pretty sturdy, and we certainly weren't about to duct tape the science on as an afterthought, but it was necessary. We had to make it work. I have to make it work. 

That's where I am now. I head to Belgium to visit friends on Wednesday, so I have four more days and nights to complete my edits. The good news is that, after last night's work and today's session, I feel like it's in a good place. I think the Wednesday deadline is doable. Whether I'll come back from Europe with another round of rewrites remains to be seen. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 268 - Using Revision Mode

Up until this point in my career, I've had very little cause to use revision mode in my writing. Sure, I did revision mode a few times with my post-Apocalyptic spec so that my producers could follow my the edits I made. But I didn't really understand the scope of revisions mode, nor did I use them anywhere close to their fullest. I have since started.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I recently made the switch from using Movie Magic to Final Draft, spurred on by the fact that both my writing partner and producer use Final Draft. More so, that software seems to have very clearly come out ahead as the industry standard for screenwriting. (I miss you, Movie Magic, but the transition to Final Draft has been a smooth one so far.) Granted, I also neglected to use Movie Magic to its fullest extent, but I'm really digging on Final Draft at the moment. 

It took me a little while to get used to the shortcuts in FD compared to those in Movie Magic. Somethings are actually a little more intuitive to me in MM; for example, hitting Enter in MM prompts the next field in a slug line. Doing so in Final Draft drops me down to the action paragraph. For instance, when I used MM, I could intro my slug line (INT.) and hit enter. The software was designed to ask me which location I wanted to use. Writing in one and hitting Enter again would then prompt me to decide which time of day I was setting the scene in. I couldn't move beyond the slug line without either completing it, or telling the system to ignore that field and let me proceed. With FD, hitting enter will take me to the action paragraph, risking a blank or incomplete slug line. Rather, with the latter software, I have to hit Tab to call up the location and then time of day. Hitting Tab in MM would prompt dialogue.

Discrepancies in key commands aside, Final Draft has been pretty intuitive. In addition to, you know, actually writing the script, I've been making use of the above mentioned revision mode features. To be fair to Move Magic, since I didn't really use that feature when writing in that program, I can't compare how it worked. But for Final Draft, it's easy to assign another revision mode (the initial revisions are "Blue" in both name and appearance; the second set of revisions are Pink, and so on). Like with MM, and asterix denotes any line that was edited, added, or cut. Pages that only have one revision pass have "Blue' as their heading. Pages on which I edited the revisions are "Pink" at the top, and so on, making it easy to track what version of the script each page - and whole script - my team is reading. 

Additionally, my writing partner and producer can easily read and mark up the Final Draft document I send them. Movie Magic has some weird settings, whereby it was difficult for me to even open a Movie Magic file I emailed myself. I would have to open the backup version in order to upload the script if I had been working remotely for some reason. WIth Final Draft, the files are universal (like Word documents), so anyone can open them and see all revision marks and script notes. (If you're paranoid about someone stealing your work, that might be a bad thing. But don't be worried. Just be careful who you send fdx files to and go with PDF when in doubt.) Speaking of, Script Notes are a way for my writing partner, for instance, to put his thoughts into the script without throwing off the formatting or page count. Script Notes enable him to tag a little note to any piece of text, which I can then click into to read. It can be anything he wants to make me aware of - "this dialogue doesn't make sense," "this is a typo," "you're brilliant and should win many Oscars." 

Whether you're writing for yourself, a writers group, or more professionally, I encourage you to play around with your revision mode features and see what they can do for you. It beats the alternative (which, embarrassingly, I relied on even until quite recently) of simply saving each draft with a new name or version number and not having any fast way to track where the actual edits were made. Sure, you should still save each version as a new document, but it makes for comparing versions so much easier. 

I guess it's not too encouraging that it only took me a decade of writing to really capitalize on these features, is it?

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 267 - Done with Revisions

It's been almost a month since my collaborator, W.A., and I received feedback from our producer on the working draft of the sci-fi spec I delivered. Overall, her notes were really positive (and if you look back a few weeks, in sync with ones I got from The League). As I frequently do, I assumed that the rewrite work would be fast and easy. I don't know why I always do that - it's hardly ever the case.

All things considered, this pass was nowhere near as onerous as it could have been. I had a few major challenges to meet, which would then all string throughout the entire script. My task wasn't to insert a scene or two here or there and call it a day, but to infuse the entire script with new elements, refined existing ones, and to strengthen characters all around. Fortunately, the coherency of the notes made my job easy in some respects, since I could concentrate on three or four main objectives, and then just make sure they tracked throughout.

Without getting into too many specifics, one of the main things I had to do was to better elucidate the science behind the "sci" component of the sci-fi, and then to tie that more clearly into the protagonist's and antagonist's goals. Before we sent the script to our producer, I had an inkling that she would suggest the science be clarified. I wasn't sure, though, nor was I at a good place to determine exactly how to go about doing that. For months leading up to that moment, I had been so closely mired in the script so as to not have clear, discerning eyes when looking at it. Her notes validated my suspicions, and the call with her, along with two consecutive days of calls with W.A. shed a ton of light on how to proceed.

I was off an running. Curiously, though not surprisingly in the least, the further I got into that element, the more the other weak links tightened. By nailing the science, I was gaining a stronger foothold for my character work. As the characters fleshed out, their goals, drives, and interactions with the world solidified. Soon, the antagonist had become a more powerful, more terrifying force, not only because his goals were clearer, but because his back story leapt off the page. Inversely, the protagonist became more sympathetic and more deserving of support. 

While things tied together more, they also streamlined naturally. The script dropped from a way-too-long 121 pages, to a much more manageable 109. Dialogue chunks that had been twelve or fourteen lines long were shortened by half. The language used in describing the science became more uniform, and the smaller lexicon made every event much clearer and more readily comprehensible. I'm doing a final read through over the next couple nights to make sure that the elements I added all track, and since I jumped around as ideas struck, I want to ensure that I didn't neglect to delete or add something where appropriate. But I'm very pleased and excited by this draft and can't wait to get it back to W.A.

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 266 - Tools of the Trade

Every writer has tools and practices idiosyncratic to his or her work. For those of us who write, or aspire to write, these particularities are fun to talk about in an extremely nerdy way - much like page count or formatting issues. Recently, I've been expanding my toolbox, and I think you might find some of these instruments helpful to your process, as well.

Last week, I talked a lot about the environmental toll that my writing is beginning to take. Draft after draft after draft, I feel compelled to print out a script so that I can scribble all over it when going through the rewrite process. I find it incredibly hard to sit down in front of Final Draft (a new toy for me, as it has replaced Movie Magic as my current writing software), pass Go, and collect my $200 when doing edits. I need to have a physical script in front of me that I can labor and sweat over, a page that I can leaden with ink and scratch marks, where I can triple strike out words and scenes that need to go and scrawl thoughts, dialogue, and proposed revisions in the margins. I can't do any of that to my liking on the computer, and so I felt compelled to print out 120 pages (or more) with each subsequent draft. I thought that the most ecologically sound option I had was to do that on recycled paper, printing on the clean side of used sheets.

I discovered I had been remiss in my green detective work. There are a number of apps out there specifically made for annotating pdfs on iPads (mini and regular), Kindles, and other tablets. (Apologies in advance if this post seems more marketing driven than any of my others; I'm not supported by any of the below vendors. I just happen to really like the programs and services they provide, which make my writing easier.) Beyond saving paper, using the app to annotate a pdf of my script is also just less unwieldy than working with over a hundred sheets of loose-leaf. 

I started off with the PDF Master app for my iPad mini. Initially, I love it. You can highlight text, strike out, insert notes and/or text, free draw, and change the opacity and color of all of the above. There are also features that allow the user to add stamps and signatures, but I used neither of those. After I sung the app's praises to a couple writer friends and League members, I was confronted with the program's limitations. For one, there's a three-document limit, which I discovered when trying to import my producer's marked up pdf. I had to delete the app's instruction document in order to work around that. More seriously, though, the app seems to have some saving issues. Like, major saving issues. Thankfully, I emailed the document to myself the second night I used it (always email your work to yourself, friends), because it neglected to save about 30 pages of progress I made. I had to re-import from the email in order to continue where I left off. Then, on the last day, it just stopped saving after a certain point. I would mark up one page, scroll to the next, and then notice that none of my previous annotations were saved. Then, they began to disappear from the page I was working on at that time, immediately after I made them. Very concerning. 

To fix that, I took my father's suggestion (he's a bit of a tech guy and uses similar tools at work) and switched to the Adobe Reader App. I wound up completing my annotations in the ironically named PDF Master, but Adobe's product offers the same features, plus you can type in a specific page you want to access, rather than scroll through the entire document, which Master required, coupled with what I assume will be more product stability. Adobe's not small time in the PDF world, so I can only hope that their product will be more stable.

As I made my annotations, it became apparent that a finger, even one as narrow and pointy as mine, isn't as precise as annotating a PDF document on a tablet requires. Perhaps that's intrinsic to working with the faulty PDF Master (half the time I struck out the wrong text and had to hit undo), but I wanted more precision. So, I started looking into stylus pens. There are a number of them out there, but the reviews I read (and I read a lot of them), indicated that the amPen was the best. I haven't used it yet - I'll have it Friday - but it sounds as if the rubber tip with a conductor layer makes for the most seamless, efficient tracking on the tablet screen. Plus, the pen will give the added feature of feeling more like marking up a paper script, which might make the transition to digital editing smoother. 

If all goes as I hope, then I won't have to do much script printing going forward. Except, maybe, for the final version, because sometimes there's nothing more rewarding than seeing and holding the fruits of your months or years of labor.  

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 265 - Re-Writes Galore

Somewhere out there is the finish line for my sci-fi spec. I can almost see it. Maybe not quite on the horizon, but not wildly far beyond it. 

Last week, my writing partner and I had two days of phone calls to go over the page notes our producer gave us. There was a lot to cover, but in a strange way, the repetition of some of her points was a comfort. She hit a few big notes time and again, stressing what (we agreed) was missing from the script, and where the characters were falling short of being fully developed. Yes, the result was a lot of mark-up, but the fact that her observations can be boiled down to about a half-dozen issues was encouraging. We were on the same page by and large with most of her thoughts, and the fact that they kept coming up throughout the script was an indicator of what the screenplay needs to really come to life. No matter how much proverbial red ink one might scribble on your script, having someone who knows the industry and - more importantly - know story weigh in on your screenplay is a giant blessing. 

So, for me, the re-write process began yet again last week. I'll admit, it's been a bit more of a laborious few days than I'm used to; I've not been making a ton of progress (or really much at all to speak of some days), but I think I've identified why that is. The environmentalist in me hates printing scripts out again and again for each round of revisions. However, the writer in me is increasingly incapable of delving into rewrites without a hard copy of the script in front of him that he can mark-up and cross out and insert new hand-written dialogue into. 

What to do? Print out another 120 pages? Or sit inertly before the flashing cursor in Final Draft, making minimal progress each day? 

Before I set it all to print again, I'm trying two things. First, there are large chunks of the script that necessitate edits, but which didn't change too much at all since last I printed the thing. My first step is going to be to see how much I can edit from there. Alternatively, there are a couple PDF annotation apps available for iPad, so Google tells me, which I am going to check out tonight. If those work, I'll get all the benefit of a hard copy script to scribble on, without any of the tree killing that comes with it.

Of course, at the end of the day, completing the script is the priority, so if the above two fail (and I'll admit with you that the recycled script option is less than ideal), I'll print the thing. I guess I'll just have to do extra scribbling on it to make up for it.

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 264 - A Little Experiment

Two weeks ago, my writing partner, W.A., and I sent a draft of our sci-fi project to our producer for the first time. We had a call with her a week ago Monday to get her overarching notes, and then sent her the Final Draft file of the script, so that she could mark it up in revision tracking mode and give us more specific page notes. Concurrently, I sent the script to the rest of the League for their feedback, having first prepped them that I was only really interested in larger, gut-reaction notes, rather than having them get mired in the minutia of the scrip. Before I told them what our producer thought, I wanted to hear their feedback. I was really curious to see how my writers group's notes compared with those of a development executive. 

I was very pleased with the results. So, I am sure, were the Leaguers. 

By and large, the notes stacked up pretty perfectly. My producer had notes about where certain bits of act one are set, vis-a-vis where the bulk of Act Two takes place; the League brought up the same issue. The producer touched a lot on the protagonist and his somewhat cold vibe toward the other characters; the League thought he was a bit arrogant and callous. Our producer questioned some of the science in the script and how it relates to the characters' goals; my group members focused pretty intently on the science and where it either didn't track or was way too heady.

All in all, they were pretty much on track with the producer's. Couple that with the fact that W.A.'s manager had very similar notes, and two things become very apparent to me. One) with so many people hitting the same notes, it's quite clear where the script needs to be retooled or bolstered. And two) the quality of feedback that the League presents one another is very strong, on par with the kind of observations coming from industry people. Revelation two is obviously less about this particular script than it is about the strength of the group. And I can't be more happy about that. 

Especially for those of us writers who don't have many (or any) industry contacts and have yet to land our first sales, we have to rely on other writers to help us refine our material and get our screenplays industry-ready. Sure, you can have non-writer friends and family read your scripts, but unless all you want is praise, you should try to set up a group of other writers that you can meet with and be very frank with. Had the League just jumped for joy over the script and not delivered any criticism, then - given the other sets of notes we were getting - I would have to think twice on the caliber of feedback they've given on every project and debate the merit of showing future work to them. But that wasn't the case, which means that I know I can turn to them for help and hard-hitting thoughts on the script. (Of course, I knew this already, having been writing with these guys and gals for a decade now, but I'm quite glad the mini-experiment reinforced what I already knew.)

If you're without other writers that you know, I suggest using the web and social media - Facebook, MeetUp.com, or even CraigsList - to get a group of writers that you feel comfortable sharing work with. They will be one of the best resources you have in honing your writing. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 6) part 263 - Which Screenwriting software Should I Get?

There are myriad screenwriting programs to choose from. The big industry leaders are Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter. Of course, if you don't want to shell out a couple hundred bucks for writing software, there are various cheap or even free online alternatives. Celtx seems to be the biggest offering, though apparently Adobe has a program, as do Scripped (they claim it's free for members) and ScriptBuddy. I'm sure a quick Google search will turn up manifold others. (Full disclosure - I haven't used any of the web-based options, so I have no idea how well they work or how standard their formatting is.)

I use Movie Magic, because when I bought it a decade ago, I was told that there was no industry preference between that and Final Draft. Apparently, I was led astray.

After over a year working with my writing partner, W.A., on our sci-fi spec, we finally got it to our producer last week. She read it really quickly, and we scheduled (and had - see next installment) a call this past Monday about the script. In preparation for the conversation, though, she asked for the script in Final Draft. W.A. replied to her that, nope, Zach writes in Movie Magic, so no dice. As if that wasn't embarrassing, the same thing had happened when W.A. asked me for the script in Final Draft format. Both he and the producer like to make their notes directly in the script - this is quite common in the developmental stages of a screenplay. Hell, even I scribble all over the page when editing. Without the file in front of them, they would either have to write over a pdf, then scan and email it out, or write all their notes in a word document and then hope they sync up with the script. 

Either way, the effort to markup a script is not ideal. And when something isn't technologically ideal, it's an inconvenience. Luckily for me, both W.A. and our producer are quite accommodating and understanding; W.A. even said, to paraphrase, "Don't worry about it, Final Draft just managed to pull ahead in the past few years." The rival programs are supposed to be able to convert screenplays from one format to the other, but the fact is that neither does. To convert a Movie Magic screenplay into a Final Draft one, you first need to save it as an rtf file, which both programs can do and can import. Then, as W.A. did last night, Final Draft can import it practically seamlessly. 

Facility with the workaround solution aside, I can't ignore the fact that of the two industry professionals I'm working with on this project, neither is using Movie Magic, and both assumed I was on Final Draft. Ultimately, though we were able to convert the script to Final Draft easily, the software question left me a bit red faced and feeling more a rookie than I think I am at this point. 

A word in Movie Magic's defense, though - I love the software. For ten years now, I've written screenplays (and a few plays) on it with little hassle or trouble. The version I have, 4.5.3 (they are now on 6), doesn't allow all title page features, for some reason, so I have a bare-bones formatting template to work with there. Otherwise, I really don't have any complaints about it, and using the program has become second nature to me. I haven't used Final Draft, so I'm not sure what the differences are, but I can't imagine they're too great in terms of general functionality or appearance. If you're weighing your options and looking to acquire some screenwriting software, know that I believe you will be quite happy with the user interface and functionality of Movie Magic Screenwriter, especially, I assume, the latest version. However, it's important to know that it seems the tug of war has crossed the line in Final Draft's favor, and that is nothing to overlook.