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!

Indiana Jones shoots a sword-wielding menace in lieu of a longer fight.

Matt Damon regales Tom Hanks with tales of his brothers in Saving Private Ryan.

A drunk throws a beer can at the eponymous actor in Being John Malkovich. 

Whether you knew it or not, or believe it or not, all of these moments were unscripted. Screen Rant has posted a list of 32 best unscripted movie moments, many of which might shock you. 

Click above for some fun weekend reading!

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.