The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 172 - East Coast vs West Coast

It is, without a doubt, a different ballgame trying to launch a writing career from the East Coast than it is from the West Coast. For all intents and purposes, "East Coast" in this argument can be expanded to include anywhere not LA. Now, though, we'll stick with the East Coast, and New York City in particular, because that is what I know and where I am trying to kickstart my career from.


I've done a lot of thinking about this recently - whether a beginning writer should be based in Los Angeles or not - and the cryptic answer that I've allowed myself is that it would probably help. Whether it makes an actual difference in terms of results at the end of the day is harder to determine. The fact is, a good writer with a strong script and the know-how to get it seen can get his or her script into the industry from virtually anywhere (and by "know-how," I don't at all mean "connections"). With the internet, geographical location is less crucial than it used to be. 


Take my experiences thus far, for example. Once I believed my script to be ready for agents and managers to read, I sent a dozen email queries. I was particular - very particular - about where they went. But I was also consistent, sending a few a week for about a month. Part of why I only sent twelve (many how-to guides or teachers will tell you to send a hundred or more), is that I specifically targeted New York based representatives. That naturally required me to cast a much smaller net. I knew, though, that starting from New York meant that securing New York based representation was a sound idea - not only would their contacts be in New York and LA, but they would be here for me to meet with. I liked the idea of having direct, personal access to my first representative.


My line was in the water, and a fish bit it. That wound up not working out, and within six months after first meeting that rep, I was with an LA based manager. Two years have since passed, and my lease just recently came up for renewal, so I got to thinking, "Should I move to LA?"


I was tempted... to a degree. To be honest, I don't really want to have a car, my friends and family are here, and I'm reluctant to move anywhere without a friend coming with me. At the end of the day, I find it's easier to have someone I know splitting an apartment with me, and I don't want that to be someone I met through a Craigslist posting. But that's just me. More realistically, though, I also don't have any concrete reason to make an official move west yet. My job allows me to write and I have a solid understanding of what the workday has in store for me, so any large change to that routine would jeopardize my writing. And at this point, writing is the thing I need to do every single day. To throw that into flux would be a large mistake. 


Do I think it would be easier if I was a West Coast aspiring screenwriter? Sure, sometimes I do. Right now, my manager is looking into whether or not I should head west in a couple weeks for a few meetings. The meeting slate isn't huge, but there are a few producers and directors who liked my writing and would be worth taking a general with. However, they read the script in question half a year ago, and there's little doubt in my mind that if I was out in LA, I would have already had face-time with them. And maybe work that came out of those meetings. Is New York killing my chances? No, I wouldn't say so. Would opportunities have arisen if I was there and not here? Probably; I think they might have. 


At the end of the day, the decisions is a big one, and it's something that each of us who is not currently in LA has to grapple with. Maybe the advice I got from the chairman of my writing department in college will clear things up for at least someone out there; "don't go to LA until you have at least one ready script, a treatment for another, and a pitch for a third. It can be hard to make a life out there, and you risk losing all the free time you have to write."

The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 171 - Upping the Stakes

This time last week, I'd finished the first draft of the outline for my Medieval sped. Though I was comfortable with it, my manager pointed out a number of weaknesses in it. I spent the next six days re-working on the outline, focusing most of my attention on adding to the complexity of the protagonist and upping the stakes of Acts One and Two.

Again, I'm please with the result. I know to be wary, though, because as happy as I was with the first draft, it proved itself rife with problems. This time around, though, I know there's much more to the story. In fact, it's a completely different entity in many ways, having been transformed from a fairly simple, straightforward tale of revenge to a deeper story about redemption and overcoming obstacles. That sounds pretty trite and faux-grandiose in the way writers like to talk about their material, so to better explain and not come across as having a swelled head about what, at the end of the day, is an action script, I'll explain a bit more. 

My protagonist was essentially a saint in the first draft; he always did the right thing, while those around him participated in corrupt activities. He was the unerring voice and embodiment of righteousness. While that might work for some characters, it didn't for this one. He had no growth over the course of the story. More than that, too, the love interest I gave him was also one-note, and their relationship never really built, because I did not give them any interesting screen time. 

Act Two was similarly boring. the action was straightforward, with one scene leading to the next in a fairly coincidental manner. This is an easy trap for a write to fall into, one that I have been victim to a number of times in the past. The story has to continue moving forward, but in such a way that what comes before directly affects what comes next, and builds upon what preceded it. Now, I'm pleased to say that, instead of one looming threat compelling the protagonist forward, he now faces at least three obstacles at any one point. We (and he) find out about them at various beats throughout the script, and they build in tandem to one another, creating a more-realized world and stakes that continue to escalate.

We have a writers group meeting tomorrow, and I'm eager to see how the other Leaguers respond to the outline. For many of them, this will be their first time looking at the project. Fresh eyes on the outline are just what I need to gauge whether or not I'm on the right track. Hopefully, with a vote of confidence from them, I'll be able to move over into the pages stage of this script and tackle any remaining issues there.

The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 170 - Never Say Hello

I can't say I did a ton of writing this week, unfortunately. I did, however, spend a lot of time working out some more of my protagonist's back story for the medieval spec I'm working on. That will prove itself successful depending on how quickly the rest of the outline comes into being. A strong protagonist will inevitably lead to an organic and plausible story. Onyx helped me hash out some of the details, both by providing actual thoughts and suggestions, as well as just a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. If you don't have someone you can toss ideas around with, find one. It's really proven quite essential.

I also spent a lot of time this week talking to other up and coming filmmakers about their projects. I played host to a friend of a friend who has had work show in festivals, which gave me a great opportunity to talk to someone about making their own films (as opposed to writing a script for someone else to make). The projects I'm writing now do not lend themselves to independent productions as readily as some others would, nor do I think that I have any chance in securing directing rights to my post-Apocalyptic spec. There's just no way, what with the scope and scale of the project. But to speak to people who have and who hope to expand from shorts to features is really fascinating.

The other conversation I had this week reminded me a lot of some advice I got during my thesis crit panel my final semester of college (I probably got it before then, but it was hearing it in the thesis meeting that cemented it in my brain). Onyx and I are part of a group of four guys that meet up periodically (the other two are non-Leaguers) to talk movies and, once every so often, each others' pages. In prep for a meeting last Wednesday, I read one of our buddies' scripts. It's a long draft, but that's how he writes (which is truly awesome for him, since I sometimes worry about even making 90 pages these days). Of course, with that approach to writing, there will inevitably be things to cut. And our friend knows this. But reading it reminded me of that sage advice I got from two professors: "cut every hi, howdy, and hello."

Basically, they mean do not have a character say hello in a script, since that probably means your scene is starting way too early. Consider the following, set in a cemetery after a funeral (in which we watched our protag's wife die):

PROTAG is standing aimlessly by the grave, staring into nothingness. The sky is grey above him. His friend approaches.

FRIEND

Hi. 

PROTAG

Hey. 

FRIEND

How are you doing?

PROTAG

Been better.

FRIEND

Can I do anything?

PROTAG

Not unless you can bring her back.

Friend stands silently, not knowing what he can offer. Finally, he takes note of the impending storm.

FRIEND 

At least the rain held off.

OK - so a short example. But hopefully you can see where I'm coming from when I say that we don't need the pleasantries at the beginning. Especially since this scene is likely following the funeral service, it stands to reason that the characters have already said hello to one another. More so, though, we as an audience don't need them to say hello. Start the scene right at the end of it - the friend not knowing what to say to his grieving buddy, and finally, after a long pause, simply says, "At least the rain held off."

This will hopefully be much more powerful. It will get to the meat of your scene that much more quickly, and will spare your reader or producer of having to read the words "hey, how's it going" over and over. 

Of course, this isn't to say that you can never have a character say some variant of "hi" in your screenplay. Sometimes, a hello moment - as during a long-awaited reunion between a father and son - can be quite poignant. But if the hello is not the crucial bit (and I would wager more often than not that it isn't), take a look at every instance of a greeting in your script, and see if you can nix it. You might just be surprised by how much faster your script flows after that.

The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 169 - Completed My Next Outline

After a long couple of weeks in which moss seemed to grow all over my horror spec's outline, I switched over to my medieval action idea. I'm pleased to say that, unlike it's belligerent brother, this one seemed to come together naturally for me. It was a pleasant change of pace.


Of course, nothing's ever perfect. I spoke to my manager today, and he brought up some good points about it. Act Three (really, the last third of the outline) works well. However, the bits and pieces leading up to it - you know, just act one and the majority of act two - still need attention. I actually had an inkling something like this was going to happen, because I felt too confidently about the script; and if experience tells me anything, it's that the projects I believe to be the least flawed are often the ones that people most rapidly point out the shortcomings of. And I am glad they do.


In this case, my manager made some good points about my protagonist being too saintly. He lives in a world where corruption and murder are commonplace, and I tried to set him apart from all of it. The truth, though, is that I didn't fully flesh out either his backstory or what I was trying to achieve with certain early beats. A protagonist shouldn't be without faults. That's, like, writing 101 (and despite that, it's easy to overlook it sometimes). Not that my guy's totally pure in this script; quite the opposite, in fact. Only, I did a crappy job of getting that point across, and my manager was spot on in calling me on that, especially since I hope to delve into pages soon.


Similarly, my act two - that evil, no good, bully of an act - needs more. It's a simple story, really, but that doesn't mean a simpleton should be able to write it. In order to forge a compelling world and sympathetic characters, I need more from the plot. Another forehead smacking duh. 


The good news is my mind is already working hard at solving the protagonist issue. It's quite possible - nay, probable - that the fixes to act two will come from the improvements to the character and the events unfolding in act one. One thing will naturally follow the other, like weight loss from exercise or regrettable texts from too many pitchers. The other bit of good news is that this project has risen above the horror one (which I still have some major holdups about) as the likely contender for my next script. Now just to work out a few kinks, and hopefully pages will spring forth soon.

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

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

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

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

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

ACT ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spec Market Analysis - 2010 Sales and Current Progress

The prolific Scott Myers, over at Go Into the Story, has done another incredible job tracking the spec market. If you haven't read it, a) I suggest you do so, and b) here's a bit of a recap.

First, while we posted a 2010 spec sale analysis a while ago, we didn't follow up on it - even though it only looked at the first ten months of 2010. Granted, the end of the year tends to be pretty slow in terms of acquisitions, due to festival circuits winding down, the holidays, and money drains. Still, it helps to get a year-end picture of the market.

Myers' breakdown of the 2010 spec market is really great. (Point of clarification for anyone who needs it - these sales are for original material, no sequels or adaptations.) First off, he offers a breakdown by genre, compared side by side with 2009 and 2008. The sad fact is that the industry went from 88 specs sold in 2008, to 68 the next year, and down to 55 in 2010. That's a 37.5% decrease in two years. The non-mathematical way of saying this, is that "it blows."

You can see the breakdown here:

2008 (88 sales)
COMEDY 41
ACTION 13
DRAMA 12
THRILLER 10
FANTASY 3
SCIENCE FICTION 3
ADVENTURE 2
DISASTER 2
FAMILY 1
HORROR 1

2009 (68 sales)
COMEDY 26
THRILLER 12
ACTION 11
DRAMA 7
SCIENCE FICTION 4
ROMANTIC COMEDY 3
FAMILY 1
FANTASY 1
HEIST 1
HORROR 1
MURDER MYSTERY 1

2010 (55 sales)
COMEDY 16
ACTION 14
THRILLER 10
SCIENCE FICTION 7
DRAMA 4
FAMILY 2
FANTASY 1
MYSTERY 1

The next breakdown is by studio. This list is helpful and interesting to look at, but not quite as useful as some of the other data, since most writers are not submitting directly to these companies. (If you're querying studios directly without invites to do so... let me know how that's working for you, as it's considered a major no-no and, in many cases, rookie move.) Your rep will target these buyers, and just because Universal might have gone from 6 spec purchases to 1, that does not mean that you won't be that one next year if you have the right material and team.

The studio info brings us to the next bit of data, which really useful for anyone looking to break into the industry through querying reps - an analysis of the sales by representatives. This list includes both managers and agents, and as he advises, the numbers might not quite add up, since many writers will have both, rather than one or the other. When you're trying to get representation, pay attention to which managers and agents seem to have the most success within the market now. Of course, managers will often handle far fewer clients than an agency, so a smaller number of sales via one of those companies is not a huge issues. (Personally, I feel that new writers should gravitate more toward managers to begin with, but that's a post for a later time.)

The study concludes with two final bits of info. The first is a look at the top sales by price tag. While it's fun to dream about what's possible with that first big sale, keep in mind that everything has to be in place for something like this to happen - talent and directors attached, interest from more than just one buyer, the right material at the right time. Otherwise, you can wind up in an option scenario, like the one I discussed two weeks ago.

Finally, Myers takes a look at the sales by first-time writers. This is good info to have, especially the bits about their history. While not full biographies, some of these posts shed a bit of light on how these scribes landed that first big sale.

Now that the detailed 2010 analysis is done, let's take a quick look - again, through Go Into the Story - at what 2011 is shaping up to be. First off, the good news (though it's all relative and must be looked at in the greater context of the industry as a whole), is that there were already 6 spec sales made in one week in March! That's ridiculous. And ridiculously good, especially when taken in context of the preceding year's stats. More so, though, Myers links to this article, which hints that the market in general might be heating up for 2011. Whether that means that 2011 will end at the same level as 2009 or even 2008 has yet to be seen, but after a year or more of doom and gloom, it's nice to know that at least some insiders are noting a change for the better.

In light of all this info, I'll borrow a phrase from our old friend, LoKor: "Write on."

The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 167 - Make your Writers Group Work for You

The League is, first and foremost, a writers group. Obviously, this blog is a big component of what we do; but we initially came together to share pages. The marketing and information sharing is not the glue that holds us together. 

Recently, we've been firming up our schedule, so as to ensure that meetings aren't dropped or missed. We cemented our meeting date as the second Tuesday of each month. (In the past, we somewhat haphazardly tried to meet every two weeks. While the frequency of the meetings was great at first, it became difficult to maintain. More so, though, the meetings became less productive. Whereas we might have a full script to read one week, the next meeting might see ten pages from one person and a brief outline from another. This can be great, but as we all matured as writers, we found the need to present full or at least half drafts greater than showing off the first ten pages. Thus, the meetings became less frequent, as we frequently had less we wanted to show for them. The end result was that we were meeting irregularly, often shifting dates, and attendance was not always high.) 

The regular schedule has had the obvious effect of bringing people together more readily. We had one snafu with our February meeting and had to change it, but now people know that they have to clear a certain day of the month for the meetings, and they have a week before that date to get pages out. With the stress or confusion of scheduling the meetings out of the way, it's much easier to just focus on the pages for them.

We met last week. The only piece of material on the agenda was the outline for my horror spec. Typically, our group just dives right into notes. We're at a place where we no longer even devote a lot of time to what worked. In the formative days of a writers group, positive feedback is essential. though it's still helpful, we're all comfortable enough with each other to bypass that and go right to the trouble areas. However, this meeting was a bit different. I knew that there would be specific notes on what wasn't working, but getting those notes was not my priority. Rather, I wanted to have a more open, broader discussion on the script as a whole.

I feel like there are a number of directions I can take the script, and while the one I'm pursuing seems the most logical from a narrative point of view, I wanted to know what the rest of the group thought. I really like the idea that drives the script, and my biggest concern was whether or not it felt underused. Certainly, I didn't want everyone coming away with the opinion that the idea was cool, but the execution was less original. Luckily, that wasn't the case. I prefaced the meeting with an email to the group saying what I was looking for and what kind of discussion I wanted to have. I knew what I needed from the meeting, and the group gave it to me. If you have a writers group (I strongly suggest you find a few folks to start one up with if you don't), presenting them with what you need to best develop your material is a great way to make it work for you.