The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 251 - A Four and a Half Hour Notes Session

Yesterday was a first for me. My writing partner, W.A., and I sat down to meet about the first draft of our sci-fi spec. Before the Thanksgiving holiday, I turned in a 130 page draft to him, and yesterday was our first chance to really go into it in real detail together. What resulted was a four and a half hour meeting in which we talked mostly about character detail, goals, and tone. That is the longest script meeting I have ever had, probably by three or four times. 

Never before have I sat down for such a dedicated amount of time to talk about a script at both the macro and micro levels. It was one hell of a fruitful meeting. For one, W.A. and I identified the tonal inconsistencies that made the draft rocky. Actually, I should amend that a bit; we finally settled on a tone that we both felt was right for the script, and I will be able to make it consistent throughout the entire screenplay in my next draft. We'd fluctuated between adult action sci-fi (like CHILDREN OF MEN), and more family-oriented fare (JURASSIC PARK), but never wanted this to be a children's movie, despite having younger protagonists. In talking it out over the morning/afternoon, we nailed down the type of film we want it to be, which will inform all of the other notes that we have to address in round two.

Besides the tone, the nature of the protagonist's character is the meatiest element we needed to focus on. He's sort of a slacker, sort of a genius, sort of scared, sort of scarred, sort of way too many things. We came into the meeting with a question; who is he? What does he want and why is he the way he is? A lot of the solutions to that stem from the tonal decisions we made; after such a long sit-down, we both know this character a lot more than we did yesterday morning. Character can be one of the hardest things to get right. Your character has to be enjoyable to watch (even if he/she's not likable) and, ideally, has to have an arc that we can follow for 90 to 120 minutes. It can take multiple drafts to figure out what drives your protag - don't be alarmed or ashamed if that's the case. I did seven months of outlines before I wrote this draft, and it wasn't until our meeting that both W.A. and I were content that we had finally identified the person that is our story's hero. It takes time, patience, and sometimes seeing him or her on the page to get there. But it will happen. 

From that, followed the characters' goals - not just the protagonist's, but the antagonist's, as well. The antagonist's wants should be in direct conflict with the protagonist's, or should so mirror them that when one succeeds, the other inherently fails. By understanding our protagonist and his journey, we are better equipped to stack the deck (and the antagonist) against him.

W.A. has decades more industry experience than I do. In fact, though he probably would cringe at hearing it stated this way, he's been in the industry longer than I've been alive. This reason alone is why, despite some great script-work, the last half hour might have been one of the best parts of the meeting for me. As we were wrapping up, I asked him how he thought we'd proceed with the script when it was ready to be show around the industry. From there, we wound up talking about the business side of things, and he showed himself to be incredibly willing to share with and inform me about navigating Hollywood movie-making. He offered quips and insights and experiences; he foretold of things to come, should the movie get greenlit. And, maybe most valuable of all, he indicated his commitment to keeping me on board throughout the process. I am under no deception that the project is more mine than his; he's been working on it for years and brought me on to help. He wants to direct it. Granted, I've been a part of it for nine months now, almost ten, but in the end I know I defer to him. His comments, however, assured me that I will have a place in the future of this project, whatever happens with it, which is invaluable. Not that I expected him to drop me after it gets sold, mind you, but we all know that writers are all too often treated as expendable. W.A. is conscious of my time and effort on this project and doesn't want me to waste any of it. And at the end of the day, he expects me to remain a part of it. Let the learning process begin in earnest soon (with a sale after a couple more drafts, I hope). 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 250 - Flash Back to First Draft

The big news for my own writing this week is that I finished the first draft of my sci-fi spec! After about nine months of collaborating on this project with a writer/director/actor (whom I have dubbed W.A. here), we finally have a full draft to dig into. It's a bit of a doozie at 130 pages, but that's perfectly okay as far as first drafts go. And, W.A. is looking at it with the notion of potentially directing, so that gives us even less cause to worry about a long script at this point. We're going to go over the material page by page during what will probably be an epic meeting after Thanksgiving, but we have plans to touch base about the major elements next week before the holiday. Until then, both of us are giving ourselves some time apart from the script to let it simmer and enable us to come at it with fresher eyes when we do finally meet up.

However, I don't really want to focus on my own writing this week. Rather, I want to share with you something that happened, that reminded me of a lot of fundamentals - and my first days as a nascent writer. A friend of mine, someone I actually met abroad, wrote a script and asked me to give it a read. I was happy to. This is the first draft of a piece he's working on on spec - oddly, it has some startling thematic and circumstantial similarities to my project with W.A., but that's beside the point (for now). He asked me to weigh in with any thoughts I had, knowing that this is his first script.

What struck me first is how this script was so similar in myriad ways to many of my earliest efforts. Disclaimer before I say anything else, this is in no way meant to be a criticism of his work; these are purely observations. For one, a lot of first drafts are written in the passive voice. "Gunfire is seen coming from the house" and "he is sitting." It took me a long time to break the habit, and sometimes it's easiest to use the passive voice, but if you can find a more active way to say something, please do. "Gunfire erupts from the house" or "he straddles the chair" - not only are these more active sentences, but they paint a more exciting and vibrant picture of what's happening. They also enable you as a writer to expand the vocabulary of your script and engage the reader on a deeper level.

When I first began writing, I relied heavily on the use of "we" in my descriptive passages. "We hear glass crunching" or "we see them run through the park." As with passive, this is a method of writing that, if possible, you'll want to transition out of. "Glass CRUNCHES" or "they run through the park" are more exciting and more concise. Both of those are good things. 

Action is also tough to write. I used to be guilty of describing every punch. A five second fight would take up a half page or more, because I choreographed it down to the inch. "He takes one step and punches twice. Bill punches back - uppercut. Jim shoves him with both hands and trips him with his right leg. Bill gets back up and..." on it goes. It's fun and cool, but unless there's something pivotal about that right leg, it doesn't matter. "Bill and Jim wail on one another. It's a brutal, animalistic fight. Jim ultimately gets the upper hand, sending Bill to the ground with a kick and keeping him down with a solid punch." You get it, the reader gets it, and the fight choreographer has enough information to do his or her job freely. The same goes with rooms and sets. Unless it's vital that we see four chairs at the kitchen table in a house for five, we don't need to know how many the dining set can accommodate. Just say, "an elegant dining room" or something of the kind. 

All of the above tips and more go to the fact that, as a writer, you are that - a writer. As readers, we should have an idea of what you want us to see. If it's something routine, you don't need to go into every detail for us (most kitchen tables have four or six chairs, unless it's essential, don't tell us which). If something is atypical - your protag lives in a rondavel - describe it in a bit more detail. But don't get lost in telling us what color of blue the wall in the foyer is if your character runs through there in two steps and we never see it again. Your production team will involve designers and a director who will take care of that. Your focus, is the story, and that can get mired in the details if you're not careful. 

Jumping back to the similarities between that script and mine, I only want to say one thing. Reading other people's material is a great thing to do, provided they actually want your feedback, and not just your praise. However, it can also be risky. Especially the more established you get and more likely you are to have a sale, keep in mind that you never know how someone will react if they feel you're using their material or otherwise stealing from them. Granted, I first saw this script about a week ago, and I trust that the writer will understand that my project was in no way influenced by his, but you never know. The similarities are such that, if two years from now he went to the theater and saw my movie, he could cause quite the commotion by saying, "Zach stole my ideas, and I have the evidence of sending him a script to prove it." Sure, I have an email trail with W.A. that predates this writer's interaction with me by nine months, as well as daily email backups of the script and outlines I sent myself, but you can never be 100% certain who will do what. As they said at my high school, "verbum sap sat."

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 249 - Surviving Sandy

"I wonder if I should sleep in the living room," I thought to myself Sunday night. My bed is right under a window, and it hadn't occurred to me until my boss sent a cautionary email that being near exposed glass in the hurricane might not be the wisest idea. "Eh, the futon's not that comfortable," I dissuaded myself, "and I'm too tired to go collect blankets and pillows."

My gamble paid off - I was fortunate, and my windows all remained intact. In fact, my neighborhood in Astoria, Queens was quite lucky throughout the ordeal. Unbeknownst to me, I was near an evacuation zone, but I didn't lose power (just internet for a bit), and Netflix streaming helped my housemates and I pass the time in restless comfort. We ate. We watched. We ate. We watched. I broke the pattern to read and write. While much of New York City flooded, burned, or literally washed away, I plugged away at the sci-fi spec, spinning a long second act into a 70 page yarn that needs adjusting but doesn't have any obvious cuts yet.

As I mentioned before, the script is getting long. I submitted a 74 page first "half" to my writing partner a week ago, and this morning I sent him the first two acts. He got an email with a 104 page pdf. We both know that this draft is going to be long - maybe 130, 135. I don't want to start with edits now; it would just be counterproductive. I want to keep my momentum going, so I'm ignoring what I know to be a page count issue. Some stories demand long scripts - this just isn't one of them. Also, though, I know that I can't short-change Act Three to come in at the desired 120. I want to strip 5 pages from Act One and 10 from the first half of Two, but I'm not going to do a disservice to the script by trying to preemptively trim Act Three. My writing partner told me to keep going, and I'm certainly not going to argue with that. 

We've been in touch over the past week - when you are stranded and can't get to work, you feel guilty when you're not working on your scripts. He has notes, for sure - some tonal, others about character motivations - but we're setting those aside for the time being, too. Neither of us is displeased with the draft. More than that, we're also learning a lot about the story from my pages, what's working what isn't, and where we're falling short. Character motivations are still a little rocky, especially with the protagonist. But we're seeing that clearly now, and our game plan is to do a full, line by line edit/review after I send him the completed first draft. Only then will we really know where we've landed and what we need to focus on next. 

I know I was fortunate to have made it through Sandy the way I did. Friends of friends lost everything. My cousin lost his roof (literally). Even other Leaguers went without power or water for days. I'm grateful that I was able to get so much done during the storm, especially when I know so many artists and theatres that have lost or suspended everything. 

I hope all you writers out there who have been affected by Sandy - or whose families have been - are back up and running and writing at full speed. 

Logline Central - Left Behind

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.

For this issue of Logline Central, I want to take a look at a logline that I at first wrote off, then thought about for a second, and the wheels just started spinning. Ultimately, I think it succeeds on a number of levels and in ways that, if not written exactly as follows, could render it a failed logline.

Title:	Left Behind
Logline:	Centers on a group of survivors during the first few hours after the Rapture.
Writer:	John Patus	Paul Lalonde
Genre:	Action Thriller
More:	Reboot of the series which started in 2001. Based on the novels by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins. Paul Lalonde and Michael Walker will produce. J. David Williams will executive produce. Vic Armstrong is attached to direct. Nicolas Cage is in talks to star. The film is budgeted around $15 million. Production is planned for early spring of 2013 in Baton Rouge.

My first reaction when reading it was, meh. What does it mean to have to "survive" for "the first few hours" after the Rapture? I don't care.

Then I thought about it. Wait a sec. This is actually pretty cool (potentially). In the Rapture, those destined to go to Heaven ascend - body and all - at either the end of days or before the second coming of Christ. As I highly doubt the Nic Cage starrer will be a theological debate, all I believe we need to know to get a handle on the idea is that the good people are all gone. The population of Earth will be (at least marginally) reduced, and those "left behind" are... not good individuals. Think, the airplane in ConAir, only it's the entire planet, and there's no John Cusack cop trying to save the day.

So, we know that the planet is now inhabited exclusively by bad people, and Nic Cage is among them. Presumably, he has to stop even worse people from doing very bad things, which, because Heaven has already been introduced via the Rapture, might earn him salvation in the end. If not full, go to Heaven salvation, then he might at least come away with the hope of entering heaven during a later Rapture (there are thought to be stages of Rapture). Either way, this could be a really interesting set up for a movie rife with bad people doing bad things in an action-packed way. 

It also has the potential to be just that and to not capitalize on the theological elements at all. The basic setup introduces the empyrean, so I have to assume that Heaven and Hell, maybe even angels or demons will be a part of the film. But that's not a guarantee. Perhaps all this is is a setup, and the rest is Nic Cage shooting people from his motorcycle. The logline doesn't offer much, but the questions it does provide are ones that pique my interest and make me want to read more. The script could very well suck for all I know, but if I was a producer and that came across my desk, I would ask to see the pages.

I looked up the writers, and they don't have many credits on imdb. That doesn't mean anything - they could have a hundred uncredited rewrite or script doctor jobs under their belts apiece, or might have sold material that never made it to the screen. (Oddly, John Patus has a writer and producer credit for something called Left Behind: World at War from 2005, about a nuclear war - no relation to this project from what I can tell.) Regardless, I think I'll track this one. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 248 - Concerns About Page Count

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the term "page count" became a part of my - and the other Leaguers' - lexicon. Much like the tools and knowledge that any craftsman wields in his labor, so is assessing the length of a script a key skill for a screenwriter. (I'm sure there are people who will disagree with me on this, but the fact of it is, people will always read the shorter script first when given material that they feel equally curious about. I know this, because that's what I did when I was a reader, it's what all readers I talk to do, and it's what my manager and producers have confirmed.)

These days, when I begin writing a screenplay, I usually have a pretty solid idea of my target page count. "This shouldn't be any more than 105, tops," I'll tell the League. And, more often than not, the finished drat will clock in at 105 on the dot - maybe a page or two shy of that, but rarely longer. Keeping track of the length of the script is closely related (in my mind) to paying attention to your outline as you write. With the outline, you know what's coming in the next scene, you know how you got there, and you know where you and your characters and story have to end up. Page count is an excellent barometer for all of this. If you look at your outline - as I did for my sci-fi thriller - and you think to yourself that a particular section seems undeniably longer than all the other parts, then there's a damn good chance that the pages will vindicate you. 

For example, in my 16 page outline, the first half of Act Two wound up coming in at about 6 full pages. That's nearly a third of the outline. Granted, some beats are overwritten in there, and many in other sections were underwritten, but my gut was telling me it was going to be a very heavily weighted section. Forget about how many outline pages it consumed for a moment; I counted the number of beats, and that quarter of the script contained far more than the other acts (or half act). With much trepidation, I set out writing the pages. Sure enough, I saw that my hunch was right before I had gotten very far. This morning, I completed my 29th page in Act Two; the script is currently 64 pages long, and the "midpoint" is at least a good 5 to 7 pages away. The next quarters of the script are a bit thinner, but I know I'm coming in at way over target. (A 35 page first act is partially responsible for that, too).

Now, if you're balking at what I'm saying, I'll give you a free shot. You're totally right in thinking a) it's only a first draft and b) scripts can be longer than 120 pages and c) who really cares? The fact is, a lot of readers still turn to pages 30, 60, and 90 to make sure you have a solid grasp of structure, so I want to make sure that I at least nail the end of act one, page 30 beat. The rest will fluctuate depending on ultimate page count. My charge now is to write the draft and then worry about how long the script is, but I don't quite want to show such a long piece to the director I'm working with on it - even if he knows it's going to be a length fist showing. 

This makes me sound like an even bigger dork than I am, if that's even possible, but I actually love line editing my scripts for page count. If I see a single word or even a couple short words hanging by themselves, taking up a whole line in the script, I will try to figure out how to say what I want more concisely. This generally results in cutting the words "just" or "seemingly" - two words I use a lot that probably shouldn't be there to begin with. So, that's a great editing and skill builder. Also, with Movie Magic, I know that I get 57 lines to a page. The software will enter a page break starting on line 53 if the next scene opens with a long descriptor paragraph or if there aren't any convenient breaks in a length bit of dialogue. Part of my editing process involves finding these reduced pages and figuring out how I can make use of those additional few lines by editing above and bumping the material that begins on the next page to the bottom of the one preceding it. I can often slice off 6 pages or more just by doing those trims - and they are almost always cosmetic only, a few words removed here or there, but no elimination of scenes or dialogue. And lastly, there are the bigger edits. This scene doesn't work, or this dialogue could be summed up or cut entirely, or that is redundant or unnecessary. 

All in all, I hope to cut about 10 pages from what i have so far. I'm not sure that will all happen before I send it to my collaborator, but that's the target when all is said and done. In the meantime, I'll keep writing with an eye on my page count. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 247 - Revising Act One

I normally try to refrain from revising pages in the middle of a draft. It disrupts momentum, slows progress, and perhaps most draining, opens the door for me to get caught up in the minutiae, rather than laying a proper foundation for a second draft. Draft one is all about getting the thoughts down on the page (hopefully successfully) and seeing what works and what doesn't. Ideally, you're working off of an outline and have already been able to piece your story together, instead of writing blindly, but it can be tough to gauge the effectiveness of the structure you're plotted until you see (and read) it in screenplay format. For all these reasons, when I bang out a first draft, I really do try to push it through as quickly, yet intelligently, as possible. I want a draft that I can print first and then edit and evaluate later. 

Last month, I submitted the first draft of act one of my sci-fi script to my writing partner, W.A. He got back to me with notes - three scenes that needed a heavier rewrite and an overall tone adjustment. Neither of us wanted the notes to inhibit continued progress in any major way. For the most part, we both felt the script was by and large on track, especially given that it was just a first draft. Still, the discussion the endued was a valuable one and a timely one. Given that W.A. had thoughts on the tone, I decided to implement that note going forward. I didn't have to redress all tone and dialogue in act one there and then, but the next 75% of the script would be more on par with what he's imagining. Once draft one is done, I will only have one act in which I need to tweak dialogue and descriptors for the tonal adjustment, rather than an entire script. As for the three big scenes, however, I wanted to go back and rewrite them then, rather than after the script's first draft is completed.

I knew that some of the changes were going to have a larger impact on the subsequent, as of yet unwritten pages. What I didn't anticipate, though, was how long they would take to implement. I targeted the second beat first, since it was the smallest. Yet while revising the scene - a fairly expositional one between the protagonist and a character who dies shortly thereafter - I began to realize a lot of things about those characters' relationship, as well as about the protagonist and his motivators. Those realizations then fed the first sequence I needed to revisit, which tie into the antagonist's goals and desires. And the third targeted sequence, well that was the most complex. I changed one thing, which raised questions about the new goals that the antagonist and protagonist had, eliminated the need for a major action piece that was necessary in terms of keeping the pace moving, and fed a lot of information into act one that was intended to come in act two. 

The two day revision became a five day revision; the result, though, is a much stronger first act. The threat, though, is that now I'm in revisionist mode, I need to either tear myself away and move forward (that's the plan) or become mired in minor edits and tweaks that I normally don't get involved in until after the draft is done. In the interest of seeing this draft through, though, I am just going to move forward and hopefully get W.A. the first half of the script within a week.

A final bit of news - my producers on my post-Apocalyptic spec have gone out with that script again, and we're being read at a few places. I have a good feeling about this round, but we'll see what happens with these latest submissions. 

Ken Levine's 2012 Fall Movie Preview

The witty Ken Levine does it again, folks! Check out his three-part Fall Movie Preview (an admittedly belated notice on our part)

here
here
and here.

Enjoy!