The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 246 - Track Script Sales

It likely comes as little shock that I tune in regularly to Done Deal Pro. If you've read any of our Logline Central posts, you will have gathered that I go there for all my info on what's recently sold, been picked up in turn around, or otherwise been acquired. If you get the trades - Variety or Hollywood Reporter - or read Deadline, you can get a lot of the same info, albeit maybe less of it than through the subscription-based DDP. Regardless of where you gather info on sales and acquisitions, if you're an aspiring writer, this is something that you should make a point of doing.

I find tracking sales invaluable. For one, it lets you know what the industry is leaning toward at the moment. We all witnessed the giant vampire crazy (which I hope is nearing its conclusion). Trends don't tend to last too long in Hollywood, so noting an uptick in vampire related scripts doesn't necessarily mean you'll have time to conceive of, write, and polish a vampire story of your own. It might, however, indicate that now would be a good time to show the world the vampire script that you have already written and deemed ready for the light of day (bad pun intended). 

Tracking sales is also a great idea if you're beginning your query phase. Looking to land an agent for that big action thriller you're so jazzed about? See who is repping those kinds of sales now, and make sure you don't solicit someone who mainly deals with rom-coms. Hone your queries and chances are, you'll have better results. I was very specific in my outreach, and it paid off in forms of finding a manager. 

Speaking of, managers and agents track sales, which is another reason you should. They are busy people. Presumably, writers are also busy people. But my experience with managers and agents is that they will take the time they need, but won't have much to spare. If it is 1998 and you say, "Hey, I have this great idea about a group of soldiers who have to go find another in WW2," your rep will say, "That's already in the works." If you were tracking sales, you would have known that. The similarity doesn't necessarily mean you have to stop writing that idea, but if you have yet to begin, you might want to put it on the back burner. Save them some time by reserving that pitch for later - you'll all appreciate it. 

Most recently, I've been tracking sci-fi projects closely, as both of mine that are out there (post-Apocalyptic and the collaboration) fall heavily into that category. Unfortunately, two projects - one that is a film in theaters and one that was just announced - share more similarities with the sci-fi collaboration than my writing partner and I would like. Because of that, because we are tracking sales, we've decided to implement some large but not drastic changes going forward, so that we share fewer commonalities with these two projects. It's conceivable that the overlap won't wind up mattering, but if it's something we can avoid outright, then we decided that's what we should do. And that's just one more reason it's prudent to track acquisitions. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 245 - Thoughts on an Agent

It strikes me that just about two years ago, I was flying out to LA to meet with an agent at UTA about possibly representing me. The meeting went well, and I wound up securing a well-known and popular agent. If you've been following this saga for a while now, then you might know that one of the things my manager promised my agent upon the handshake agreement was that I would deliver two scripts per year to him. 

That hasn't happened.

In fact, I haven't been in touch with my agent since a week after we first met. He has seen no new material from me. 

I would try to argue here that this isn't entirely my fault. I've been writing. I've done multiple drafts of different projects. My manager thought some things just weren't right for the market at the time being. Yadda, yadda, yadda...

The truth of it is, I should have produced more. I wound up going idle for a but most of the remainder of 2010 while trying to determine what to write next. I pushed through drafts of a couple scripts, but my manager thought the one - though good - would be unlikely to sell given similar projects that had recently not scored big at the box office. The other is still sitting on my desk, waiting to be rewritten again. 

Sure, I have the sci-fi collaboration with a working actor/writer/director, but that's not anywhere near ready to be shown to the agent. Now and then, I think that maybe I should reach out and update him, but I know that's foolish. He knows my name - every now and then, my producing team still tries something with the post-Apocalyptic spec, but to no avail. My agent knows that's still in the ether. And, frankly, a non-update email is worse than no email. Until I have something to say, I shouldn't say it.

In the past, I've gone back to those few emails he and I exchanged in 2010, wherein he mentioned a project he thought I could write on spec. I would torture myself by rereading the two laconic sentences he wrote me, something to the effect of, "I have a project in mind that I might slip your script for to a producer as a sample. If he likes it and all goes well, I might suggest you write on spec." And that was the last of it. Until, that is, I realized only very recently that his email indicated no different kind of project than the sci-fi collaboration I'm working on now - someone has and idea and needs a writer to work (for free) on it. I wish it hadn't taken another year and a half for something like that to come about, but it did and that's that.

At the end of the day, I know it's no use fretting about any of the above. I have an agent. When I have a script that's ready, he'll read it. In the meantime, I should draw on my lack of other ready-to-go material as a source of inspiration to write, rather than a weight dragging me down. 

So, folks, off to the races.

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 244 - Act One Notes

My collaborator is abroad shooting a movie this and next month, but we managed to grab some time yesterday for a phone call regarding pages I sent him. In an effort to make sure that he and I were on the same page regarding the tone of the piece. Though I am doing the actual writing, this is still his idea first and foremost, and we agreed that it would be better to make adjustments incrementally, rather than discovering after I had written a full draft that we were diametrically opposed in our understandings of the scripts' voice and feel.

The good news is we were on the same page. He had some thoughts about tone, but nothing really that would require me to make sweeping changes to the existing first act I sent him. I'll be better equipped to move forward, but I'm not looking at a major rewrite as far as that is concerned. My partner also had larger notes on two main sequences, but again, they're not immediately pressing. I'll go back and reqork them (one of them implies a location change for many upcoming scenes), but we're not at make or break yet, which is great.

Neither of us can really wait to have our hands on a full draft, but we're approaching the next 75% of the script in a prudent fashion. Just as we caught a few things that are good for me to know going forward, so we'll hope to do so again with the next chunk of pages. I will send him the first half of Act Two next, before going on to finish that act, in case he sees anything else that seems off to him. The point, again, is to address those notes as I continue writing, not to get saddled with rewriting pages before the draft is even done.

at any rate, it's great to be writing again and to have a project solidly under way. 

Logline Central - Environmental Awareness

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 Logline Central, let's take a look at a recurring theme - the environmental crisis. WALL-E was a not-so-thinly veiled look at the climate and environment catastrophe facing us at the moment. Leaguer Onyx wrote a script that indirectly addressed global warming. Countless books cover the problem, and with the elections coming up in November, the environment is on the tip of most politicians' tongues. So, naturally, it makes perfect sense that more and more movies are going to deal with the state of the planet. Here are two recent acquisitions.

Title:	Aurora The Spirit Bear of the North
Logline:	Revolves around the growing worldwide trend for conservation and preservation of the natural world, a movement that highlights the wonderful richness of the spiritual, earth-centered beliefs and actions of the Indian peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
Writer:	Erik Daniel Shein (author)
Genre:	Family Adventure
More:	Book. This will be an animated film.

Title:	Darwin: A Galapagos Love Story
Logline:	A group of unlikely friends, some of the rarest creatures on the planet, attempt to rescue a wise and infinitely kind Galapagos tortoise, who needs to find a mate to continue his endangered line.
Writer:	Erik Daniel Shein (author)
Genre:	Family Adventure
More:	Children's book. This will be an animated feature film.

Both of them are adaptations from books, which is no major surprise in this script buying climate. In terms of loglines, the second is far superior to the first. To be honest, I have little idea what the first is about. What we're presented with in this logline is a setting or a context for a film, but it's not a logline. It doesn't convey any plot at all. Perhaps the book has yet to be published, but this statement doesn't give us any insight into the story.  The second, however, sounds fun. We know who the characters are and what they want. We even know where it's set. And, we know what the struggle and challenges are. That, folks, is an effective logline.

I just hope that the trend toward environmental conservation themed family films means that the next generation will be heavily focused on preserving this planet. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 243 - Started a New Script

Working with a partner has been a very positive experience for me so far. One of the biggest unforeseen bonuses has been that there's someone holding me back from jumping the gun on starting a new script prematurely. When working by my lonesome, it's easy enough to say to myself, "this outline is ready; might as well jump into the page stage now." Having my collaborator, W.A., along with our producer, however, has made me hold off until the outline was about as ready to go as we could make it.

I'll admit, I used to loathe the thought of outlines. Granted, this was in college when I was a much more novice and pretentious writer. I thought that no good story could be old without giving it the freedom to roam where it might. Outline? Psh. That would only stifle my creativity. For the character to come alive and the plot to go where it needed, I had to strip away all confines and let the beast roam free. 

The result was usually trash.

In the years since, I've become heavily dependent on my outlines. I don't like to embark upon a script without one, and I'll generally do at least one full pass at an outline before getting anywhere near Movie Magic. For the sci-fi collaboration in question this week, I've done seven - count them, seven - full outlines. Probably about a hundred pages or more in different drafts. That tally doesn't even include the versions that preceded my involvement in the project. I came into the script, back in February, to a an outline, that was the result o many other years of development. And by saying I have done seven, I mean there have been seven major incarnations of the outline since I became involved. There have, as with any writing project, been multiple other revisions that were more edits than actual changes. Seven just represents the number of new documents I have created due to overwhelming changes to the story and structure.

And you know what? Draft seven isn't perfect.

There are a lot of smaller things we still have to fix, but W.A. ans I both felt that those, many of which are dependent on visuals and minute details, are best addressed in the actual pages. So, with a solid though still not perfect outline, I finally set off onto the page stage. My hope is to get W.A. a draft of act one by the end of the week. It will be rough. It won't be edited. It will need streamlining and revisions. But it will, if all goes according to plan, be structurally sounds, and I will ask him to focus primarily on the tone.

Off we go. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 242 - Thoughts on Structure

I spent last weekend at the beach (finally) with some friends from college. As most beach weekends do, the days in the sun with the sand between our toes and salty air in our nostrils faded into nights spent around tables with platters covered in seafood and glasses filled with wine. At the end of the night, when people were tired but didn't want to abandon the fun altogether for bed, we popped a DVD into the player and settled in for a few more drinks and some laughs. The selection? Bridesmaids.

I saw Bridesmaids in theaters and enjoyed it a lot. It's worth a ton of genuine laughs and seems - despite some scatological hilarity - is brainier than many comedies tend to be. As we watched it, I found myself studying the film more than I was simply observing and enjoying it. And I found that Bridesmaids is actually a very strong example of multiple plots and layers of story, which are structured extremely well. You might disagree with me, but the script has an Oscar nomination to back it up. Let's take a look at it. 


SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen the movie yet.


When the film opens, we're treated to a raunchy and roaring glimpse of Kristen Wiig (Annie) and her sex buddy, played wonderfully by Jon Hamm. This scene represents a portion of the really pretty sad status quo of Annie's life at the moment. We're soon then also exposed to both her work and her living situations. Let's just say, we wouldn't want either. Intermingled with all of that, we get to know Maya Rudolph's Lillian, the bride-to-be and Annie's best friend. Soon, Annie and Lillian find their relationship strained by a new alpha female in Annie's life (Helen), and when things are starting to slip for Annie, she gets pulled over by an endearing cop, Rhodes. 

Annie's hookup buddy. Annie's job. Annie's undesirable roommates and living situation. Annie's fraying friendship with Lillian and  correlating distaste for Helen. Annie's relationship with Rhodes. That amounts to five thing - five - that are going on in the movie. You can further break them down if you want, but they can get lumped into those general categories. Annie's employment woes and difficulty making rent (and subsequent need to live with the odd English siblings) are due to a failed baking business that she put all of her money into. She had a serious relationship, but that dissolved when the business did, and now she's left with the douche she's sleeping with. Lillian and she go back a long way, but Lillian is moving on, and Annie is stuck in a rut. Annie is afraid to let her self open to people again; she is also afraid of flying (which plays out brilliantly later). In short, Annie has a lot of issues.

The script is masterful in its handling of all these seemingly disparate elements. For one, we can see why they all exist at this time in her life, for the reasons above. One thing led to another, which led to another, which splintered her existence. Furthermore, when things get bad for Annie, they don't get singularly bad; all things converge on her at the same time. When Annie hits rock bottom at the end of Act Two, she is really down in the dumps. Her hookup buddy has downgraded her from "sex buddy number three;" she has lost her job at the jewelry store; she's lost the apartment she didn't like and is back at home with her mom; Lillian not only demoted Annie from maid-of-honor but doesn't want her at her wedding; and Rhodes has called things off with Annie. Five concurrent plots that have all bashed together in the terrible train-wreck that is Annie's life. And these things did not happen independently of one another. Rhodes stopped seeing her, because he was frustrated with her antics and disgusted when he met Hamm's character. Annie's increasing loneliness and dejection related to Lillian caused her to act up at work, which cost her her job and meant she couldn't afford rent. Everything comes together wonderfully.

While I was watching Bridesmaids, I kept thinking to myself, "there are five levels to this story, and they're all working so well. Some are small, but they all seem to fit and all warrant screen time. How many layers do I tend to have?" I was dismayed to accept that I often have two at best. Sometimes, shamefully, it's closer to one. Subplots are pivotal in making a screenplay successful. Too many can clutter the structure or slow the pacing, but too few will leave you with nowhere to turn when you need an interlude. 

There are many other successful films out there, but if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it recently, I suggest going back and rewatching Bridesmaids. It has its structure down pat. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 241 - Receiving Notes

One of the most important parts of writing is receiving notes. You work so hard on a script and become so immersed in it, that for a while, it is all you can see. Getting those drafts read by other people whose opinions you value (people who don't jut pat you on the back and congratulate you on your accomplishment, but actually critique the work) becomes integral to developing, writing, and completing an industry-worthy script. That entire notion is why, years ago, we formed The League. 

Last week, we held our monthly meeting. Though I hadn't submitted for a while, my 30 Day Screenplay Challenge script, a demon thriller, was subject of the meeting. Like dutiful group members that they all are, the Leaguers read the material and gave me feedback. Sometimes, I go into these meetings with specific notes for the group. This time, though, I only had a general notion of wanting to know whether or not the script was working, if it was slow or confusing at any point, if anything was missing, or if the rules of the world lacked clarity. 

On the whole, the group provided some very useful feedback. They told me what was working, what was falling short, and what they liked. For the most part, though, with the exception of the introductory scene, they didn't target specific portions of the script as needing a lot of attention. That makes my job both easier and harder. On the one hand, the rewrite becomes about an overall finessing of the script, which means that I can add, subtract, and edit as need be. On the other, there's nothing in particular to concentrate on now, which could make focusing on a start point for the revisions easier.

Either way, it's great to have notes again and to be able to dive back into a rewrite.