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.
Conducting a page-by-page review of a 109 page screenplay is not as taxing as you might initially assume. Or, it's way more so. Depends on your impression of how long that would take. Either way, it's how my collaborator, W.A. and I spent the hours between noon and 3pm last Thursday.
I took the train just outside the city to Westchester, where there's a bit of an industry glob. W.A. took me to a cafe, where immediately I overheard the diners next to us discussing production tiers and projects of varying budget sizes. I grabbed us a couple coffees, as W.A. replied to a few quick emails about SXSW, which he flew down for this year.
We started with a couple big notes on the script overall - that pesky scene in early Act One that I described in previous posts still wasn't where it needed to be, though it was close, so we focused on that a while. There were a couple other beats here and there, but before too long, we were able to jump into the nitty-gritty.
Starting on page one... actually, scratch that; we started on the title page, deciding credit placement for the draft. Then, we went through and checked our edits against one another's. "They would say this word, not this for the science." Or, "I don't think we need that description, but should use a super instead." Page by page by page. Some changes would inform others, but for the most part, the edits were localized enough to treat autonomously.
Things got a bit more involved in the second half of Act Two. Any of us who has written a screenplay knows that it's the quarter of the story that follows the midpoint that can be hardest to structure. You have to keep the pace going, while also giving the characters a breather from whatever just ruined their plans or made their day on page 60. More so, you have to make sure that they audience continues to receive new information. Your characters can't just sit around talking about what happened. They have to do something about it. Or at least figure out what they want to do about it later. Most importantly, you can't duplicate scenes or information - this rule goes for the entire screenplay, but is especially true for this portion of the script, wherein a lot of the earlier dots are starting to connect.
W.A. had some great suggestions for collapsing two scenes into one, or otherwise moving information around so that the story continues to build without slowing, but that we got to keep the larger emotional beats. I went home feeling really jazzed about the changes (and had falsely lured myself into believing that they would only take an hour or two to implement). I wound up dedicating much of the weekend to revising everything, and the hard work seemed to pay off. I'm still not sure whether all of the science adds up, or if the protagonist's and antagonist's plans track throughout the entire script, but that's why we're showing the script to our producer. She gives great notes, and if she says she's confused or something doesn't add up, then we'll know right away it needs work.
Until I hear back from her, I'll have a little time to work on other ideas, which have been simmering for the past year, since I got on board with this one.
Almost one year ago to the day (give or take a week), I had my first meeting with my now writing partner, writer/director/actor, W.A. Since then, I've churned out eight versions of outlines, two major revisions of the script, and five smaller edited versions of the screenplay. Throughout it all, W.A. has been right there beside me - not literally, with the exception of a few times, but via email, phone, and text. It's been a pretty great process.
For nearly two months now, we've been really close with the script to where we think it needs to be. Before we send it to our producer for her review and notes, though, we want to make sure that every potential question or red flag has been addressed. W.A. has been really adamant that we not send it out until everything has been ironed out, and while part of me has gotten impatient at times, I can't deny that he's right in this inclination. Our protagonist's character was close, but not 100% clear or solid yet; W.A. knows that our producer - who has an eagle eye for structure and character - will immediately point out those shortcomings. Why waste her time, or ours, by giving her something that still has a few wrinkles in it?
Two more weeks, then, spent on addressing our protagonist and his desires, fears, and motivations. When I went into that round of revisions, I thought the chore ahead of me was a relatively minor one, due to how solid the structure of the script it. And I was right - to a degree. The structure didn't change, but almost every single subsequent scene (I was addressing something in early act one) did. Dialogue changed. Actions changed. Expressions and desires changed. Oddly, those adjustments imbued the script with a lot of organic foreshadowing, which I personally believe to be a good thing. His actions began to carry more and more weight, certain lines naturally developed subtext, and the unspoken lines became that much more weighted.
Whether or not W.A. agrees (or if it tracks as well as I thought it did when I read and sent it to him on Sunday), we'll see on Thursday. He and I have blocked out a four hour chunk of time in the middle of the day to sit down and go through the script page by page, making sure everything reads as it should, makes sense, and carries from page one through 110. It should be yet another step in what has thus far been a very informative and engaging collaborative process.
It all comes down to one scene. The big reveal. The climax. The inciting incident. The heart-wrenching death of the protagonist's love. We've all written, giddy for the scene we know will sell our scripts and win us our Oscars. Anything can happen in a scene, and any scene has the potential to make - or break - a movie.
Any scene can be a bull to write.
For me, that scene this week has come within the first 15 pages of the script and is charged with no small feat: it has to establish the protagonist, his goals, and his fears. In short, it has to prep him (and therefore, us) for his entire story arc. I know it might seem silly to boil such an important task down to one scene, but the anatomy of the first act of this new script is a little atypical. Many sci-fi scripts start off with a normal world, before the foreign/unknown/extraterrestrial/fictional invades Earth and kicks things into drive. That's no different with the collaboration I'm working on. However, this script also opens with a five-page prologue. The inciting incident still has to happen around page ten and is shortly followed by the aforementioned invasion, which turns normal on its head. In the script, that happens around page 13.
Page thirteen. With the first five pages setting future events up in a way that offer very little introduction of the protagonist. So, I'm down to eight pages to establish my protagonist, his world, his friends, and the current "normal" before all goes awry on page thirteen. It's a Sisyphean feat, especially when you consider that, in this particular scene, his character is being established mainly through dialogue with a confidante. Dialogue, as I'm sure you've experienced, can be a lot of fun or incredibly sticky. You don't want to be too on the nose. My protagonist isn't going to say, "this is my opinion of myself, and these are all the skeletons in my closet that are going to hold me back, which I need to overcome to grow as a person over the coming experience." But, of course, that's exactly what the subtext has to be, and it has to be subtle enough that it sounds natural, but not so esoteric that audiences won't follow it.
The dialogue has to be crisp, revealing, and deep. And right now, I have a three pages scene set up in which I can make it happen. The whole rest of the script will follow from there - and we have it, ready for this scene to be slotted in and the following dialogue tweaked to match - but the script can't go to our producer or representatives until this one scene is reworked. One little scene. What a bear.
Hollywood's big night is coming up on Sunday, and all the pundits are predicting who will win, and who will be snubbed. For those of us wishing to break in (and those in the industry, I'd imagine), the Oscars can be incredibly fun - or incredibly aggravating.
What do you mean that was the best picture?!
I can write better than that with my eyes closed!
How did they overlook him/her/that movie (cough Dark Knight cough)?!
Whatever your opinions may be, it's good to take a close look at the Best Screenplay Nominees - adapted and original - to see what caught the Academy's eye this year. Deadline has done a nice wrap-up of them.
You can read the Original and Adapted screenplay write ups there.
I spent my Presidents' Day, not touring the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument as perhaps others did, but rather going over the second draft of my sci-fi collaboration with my writing partner. Almost a year to the date since we began working together, we now have a very strong workable draft of our script. It didn't come easily or quickly, though. Leading up to today, we went through seven drafts of our outline (and minor revisions along the way) and two major drafts of the script, before arriving at the one we went over today.
We're poised to send the script to the producer who paired us together. Before we do it, though, there's one more issue we have to tackle in the script. It's not exactly a small matter. In fact, it's what the entire screenplay is built on. I'm talking about the protagonist's character.
The hero of our story is a senior in college with some heavy baggage in his past. He is incredibly talented and smart, but he's also afraid (for good reason) of his own potential. He's at an amazing academic institution, but he's squandering his potential. In short, he's both the most capable student in his class, and a slacker.
We've been struggling with our protagonist since we started working together, but today it was most apparent that he can't straddle the line we have him on now. It just doesn't work. And if our protagonist and his motivations don't work, then the rest of the script fails, too.
In fact, over the course of our one and a half hour conversation, pretty much the only thing we discussed was our protagonist. More specifically, we spoke about our protagonist as we see him in the first 15 pages. Fifteen pages. Because of how we structured the screenplay (a 4 page prologue, inciting incident around page 11, and a big reveal on 15), we only have the first fifteen pages to set up our protagonist. However, with the prologue, we go down to eleven pages. That's not a lot of room to establish a deeply wounded character with incredible potential.
We spoke at length about him. What does he want? What motivates him? What is he afraid of? Of course, all of this will have to come to a head over the course of the script, as he evolves, grows, and changes by the end of act three. I think we landed in a good place by the end of our conversation, but it just goes to show - if your protagonist isn't clearly written, especially within the first fifteen pages of your script, then good luck getting it to a producer. We're not even going to show the one that we work with our draft until this issue is resolved. It's a no-brainer that she would ask us about the protagonist - or tell us that she doesn't understand his motivations. It's that apparent. No way will we turn in something that's weak at such a fundamental level.
How do you make sure your protagonist is as strongly written as he or she can be?
Vanity Fair has a very interesting article on the recent history of the spec market's rise, fall, and minor blip upward. Check it out for a good read for anyone trying to break in with a spec these days (like all of us here at the League).
