The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 90 - Editing the Edits

One of the many things I've learned about trying to make it as a screenwriter over the past year - and there have been many - is that it's important to plan for buffer time. Deadlines are things that (up and coming) writers absolutely have to meet. Beyond that, though, it's equally important to factor in time for edits, tweaks, re-writes, and anything else that might come up.

Today, just now as a matter of fact, I sent my producer and manager the umpteenth draft of the script. (When I say draft here, I mean it in the loosest of possible terms. A lot of writers define a draft as a version of the script in which substantial scenes/sequences have been changed or rewritten. This might mean that whole parts of the script have been removed, or brand new content has been added. What I'm talking about now, though, is more of a revision in which potentially minor edits have been made.)

The rewrites started out pretty big. At first, I wasn't quite prepared to accept them all. I was still ignorant about the assumed success of the script as it was back in May. I thought that the notes would change it dramatically, corrupting its "integrity" in the process. I was definitely wrong.

Once I came to accept the fact that the script not only needed changes (which I knew, but don't think I really wanted to make), it was then easy to see that the proposed changes I was given would really go a long way toward making the script stronger. From there, the rewrites got smaller. Elements that I was hanging onto from earlier drafts (actual drafts, in this case) were becoming more and more apparently out of place. As those got cut, the streamlining process kicked up a notch. The larger structural and plot rewrites segued into smaller edits to trim dialogue and action, particularly to keep the fast pace.

Over the past week, I've probably done no fewer than three edits, where I've worked off of a revised version my producer went through line by line. Each email from her had fewer and smaller edits, condensing beats, shortening monologues, and cutting the page count. At the start of this process, the first draft she read was 105 pages. It ballooned to 117 as I incorporated rewrites. Finally, after weeks of tightening, trimming, and tucking, we're back down to 106. Though only a page longer than the initial draft I gave her, this draft has so much more weight to it. The fluff and repetition are gone, as are the elements that weren't working. All that's left is a deeper, more substantial script that I am genuinely proud of.

Logline Central - Wicked Lovely

Logline Central is an irregular segment that takes a deeper look at loglines of scripts or projects that have just been purchased, as listed on DoneDealPro.

This was logged earlier this week:

Title: Wicked Lovely
Logline: A 17-year-old girl, who can see fairies, must fend off the advances of a fairy king determined to marry her to save the planet from his vengeful mother.
Writer: Caroline Thompson
More: To be adapted from the first book in Melissa Marr's series. CAA brokered the book deal with Writers House.

Maybe it's just me, but the first time I read the above, I dismissed it. Fairies. Meh. Not that I have anything against fairies and unicorns and the like, but they're just not my thing. Next.

Then, just now, I re-read it. What interests me isn't so much the mystical element, but this: "must fend off the advances of a fairy king determined to marry her to save the planet from his vengeful mother." Does this mean what I interpret it to mean? Our dear little protagonist is rejecting the (assumingly) unwanted advances of a fairy king, but he mainly wants to marry her, because doing so would save the Earth? So... he's not a bad guy? Rather, he's actually trying to do something heroic?

It's clear that the "vengeful mother" is the antagonist, but not immediately so. When I first skimmed this - and yes, I skim a lot of loglines, which is probably not too different from how most people in the industry "read" them - it seemed that this fairy king was the antagonist. Closer inspection, though, paints him in a different light. No, it's still not positive, per se, but he's nowhere near as villainous. In fact, he's probably just as good or bad as the 17 year-old he's trying to marry (he should probably wait until she's 18 to avoid winding up on To Catch A Predator).

There seem to be three major characters in play here, though my guess is that the vengeful mother is more an off-screen presence than an on-screen one. Again, I'm not so interested in the idea behind this adaptation, but more so the mechanics of who is represented in what sort of light on screen. The line between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" is less clear in this logline than I initially believed. And that, just for the record, is not necessarily a good thing. Loglines should be pretty clear about who is who. I'm not sure I have the right impression from this, though I am curious to know more. In that way, I suppose this worked.

If I were an Exec at League Productions, I'd most likely request coverage on this.

Competition Alert - The Cyberspace Open

We don't normally promote a lot of competitions here at the League, especially ones that we have not participated in before. But, the Creative Screenwriting Cyberspace Open is not only an intriguing competition, but one that at least 3 Leaguers are entering, as well.

What I like about the sound of this one - besides the low $12 price tag - is that this is a true test of deadline making. There are three, rapid burst rounds of the competition, in which participants write 5-page scenes based on assigned scenarios and characters. Round one gives everyone an entire weekend (this coming weekend) to nail that five pages and click send. Round two offers 100 qualifying writers a night to complete another scene based on a new prompt. Round three lasts 90 minutes from prompt to print for the 10 semi-finalists that make it that far.

Writing under pressure at the whim of a deadline? I'll bite.

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 89 - When do you Make A Stand?

If you recall last week's Writing Week, I was winding down Labor Day weekend waiting for the edits on my post-Apocalyptic spec (some day I hope to be able to give you the title) to come back from my producer. Monday night, I received an email from her that something had come up, which delayed her getting to the script. In the mean time, though, she'd done some thinking and decided that it would be worth adding some of the science behind the scenario I was writing about to the actual script. I've been working on this spec on and off for over 20 months now, and one of the first things I had definitively settled on was that I was never going to go into the science. For the first time since I signed the option agreement at the top of the summer, I was adamantly against the note I'd gotten. I agonized over how to proceed.

This might seem like a no-brainer to many of you, but I was pretty worked up for a while. As new writers, I feel like we get it drilled into our heads to be easy to work with, to know how to take a note and to propel our careers onward by making people want to work with us again. Because my producer and manager and I have been working so well together so far, I didn't want to risk looking problematic right after they felt the script was ready to go out. I would try to work with the note if it came down to that, but I was strongly opposed to it.

I decided to send my producer an email (in response to her note), explaining my two major reasons for being against the additions. The next morning, I sent a follow-up, reiterating both my point and, should the additions be desired still, my willingness to work the changes into the script. It is in no small part due to the fact that I have been so willing to work with the notes I've gotten so far that the lines of communication between the three of us working on this project right now are so open, and I was able to speak my mind. In the end, we opted to remove a few small lines of dialogue that alluded to certain elements, rather than add anything major - in favor of my point of view on the issue. I really count myself pretty luck to be working with industry professionals who honor my opinions on these things (which is not always the case for a writer, as almost any book/story/article on screenwriting will tell you).

Then, on Saturday, I got the edits. Going through them, I noticed one short scene cut and a few lines here or there streamlined out of the script. For the most part, though, the script changed very little. It came in about 7 pages shorter, but cutting a line or two on one page can dramatically adjust content on subsequent pages, so there wasn't actually a ton cut out. There were some instances of dialogue being moved from character no longer in the script to those still in, which I'll go back and reconfigure to sound more like the people delivering them. I'll admit that I was not 100% comfortable having my material in someone else's hands with their figurative red pen hovering over it and me nowhere to defend my work, but seeing the final product has put me back at ease. I'm still not sure I like the idea of edits without me around, but maybe that's something I'll have to get used to going forward in this business.

"I will not read your f***ing script."

A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson blogs for the Village Voice in a piece called "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script":

I will not read your fucking script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fucking script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

Simple enough, indeed. A bit later:

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn't actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn't require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don't regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

A very harsh truth in a lot of cases, I'm sure - but I have had experiences in the past where professional, working screenwriters were more than willing to offer feedback and advice to a fledgling writer. I know other Leaguers have, too.

You can read the full article here, and feel free to let me know what you think.

It's Sale Season!

Labor Day has come and gone, marking the unofficial end of summer. Offices are operating at full steam again, as the long weekend getaways have come to an end. So you know what that means...

Get those scripts ready, because studios are getting ready to start buying again. My producer tells me that for the next month or so (in particular once September ends), the spec market is like a shark feeding frenzy. It's highly competitive, and companies are biting.

In light of that - or perhaps as a testament to it - today's DoneDealPro tracking was the busiest I've seen it in weeks. Granted, six of the sales were to the Swedish company Yellow Bird that I haven't heard of before, which bought up what looks to be an eight-part novel series about crime reporter Annika Bengtzon.

Still, I think that the post-summer market deserves it's own Logline Central, so let's represent the times with:

Title: Supermax
Logline: Set in a maximum security prison for the supernatural, a guard must join forces with a lethal inmate after a riot ensues in order to fight his way through various monsters and mad-men in order to survive.
Writer: Christopher Allen Nelson, Mitch Rouse
More: Spec. Broken Road's Sean Robins & Todd Garner will produce. Sony's Doug Belgrad & DeVon Franklin will oversee.

I chose SUPERMAX for a few reasons. One - it's a spec. There aren't nearly as many specs selling (compared to adaptations or sequels) as any writer would like, so it's great to see one go. Two - the writers are intriguing. Christopher Allen Nelson might be most recognizable (or was to me) as Uma Thurman's groom in KILL BILL and has done a ton of work as a special effects makeup artist; he doesn't have any other writing credits on imdb. Mitch Rouse has more writing credits to his name with STRANGERS WITH CANDY, WITHOUT A PADDLE, and EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH (among others).

The last reason that I chose SUPERMAX this week is that it is disappointingly similar to an idea I had. That happens, unfortunately. Doesn't mean I won't immediately drop that idea, but it's part of my training to become a working writer. I hope any of our readers who, like us, are trying to get into this crazy field develop enough of the c'est la vie attitude to let things like that roll off their back when it happens.

Anyway, go take that script market by storm!

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 88 - The Plan of Action

As I was leaving work on Friday, my phone rang. It was my manager, and he had Gretchen - the producer who optioned my post-Apocalyptic spec - waiting to conference in. With all three of us on the line, it was time to talk about the latest (and we hoped, final) draft I had turned in and what the plan for moving forward with my script is.

First, the great news was that they really liked all of the changes I have made and how effectively I have incorporated their notes. They reminded me that unproduced, young writers can best guarantee their careers by being easy to work with. Had I fought every note I've gotten from them, I'd be burying myself. Since I took their notes, threw in my own new ideas, fleshed the story out, and made the script much stronger, they said I have a much better chance of having a long career.

There's one final round of edits that Gretchen and I will be working on. There were some things that she wanted to cut, so she was going to use the weekend to really comb through the script. I should have those final edits soon. The difficulty, though, is that I write in Movie Magic 2000, while she uses Final Draft. Though the software claims to be compatible, I've found that it really isn't. She finally managed to get the script working in Final Draft after I converted the script to a rich text file. So, we'll see how re-converting goes.

Once the edits are all done, we're actually going to hold off on going to production companies or studios. Gretchen and (manager) Kevin have decided that trying to get an agent on board will make our case for the sale stronger. Their reasoning is that an agent at CAA, WME, or ICM will have other contacts at possibly bigger places and will also bring a level of name recognition that we might not yet have. Not to say that Kevin and Gretchen are unknown in the industry, but since they're working with an unknown writer, we have to do everything we can to make some things happen. If, however, we don't get any bites from agents by October 1st, we'll go forward on our own.

So, while there's more waiting ahead, I can handle it fine. There's been so much waiting to this point, that the next month shouldn't be too bad. Yes, we're waiting to hear back on some potentially big news, but I know I can't make those deadlines come any quicker. the best thing I can do going forward is to get another script in order that I can use it as a follow-up to this one. Roman army spec, here I come.