No article today, just a quick self-serving blurb.
I just posted Knight: Resurrected to The Black List. I rather enjoyed this one, the story of a teenager who unwittingly rescues a long-lost artificially intelligent supercar. The two become friends and ultimately wind up facing enemies from long ago. Sort of E.T. meets Fast and Furious in a way. In any case, if you’re on The Black List, give it a gander, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Pitfall!
First off, I’m sure I’m going to piss off a few ‘experts’ when I say this, but it is my sincere belief that there really is no right or wrong way to write. For the most part at least. A screenplay consisting entirely of page-long run-on sentences would be pretty horrible, though someone may write one some day and prove me wrong.
Outlines and idea notes are the most common tool for laying out the basics of a story before you get to the actual writing of it. Some may write meticulously detailed outlines while others (myself included) prefer a more basic outline of the key themes, characters and ideas and what order they’d work well in. There are myriad programs to help with the process, or you can do it the old-fashioned way with cards or Post-it notes.
As old-school as it may be, I actually like using Post-its as I can quickly move scenes around on the large wall mirror I use, allowing me to see every scene and descriptions of it with just a single glance. I use different color notes for different times of day to more easily visualize that aspect of the story. Some find it easier to switch pages on a computer screen, and the ability to take that with you via laptop is certainly an advantage, but physical cards are kinetic and I find them more conducive to creativity (for me). I also prefer to do the core of my writing in one place, so the need to move my Post-its doesn’t typically arise.
Others utilize a Train of Thought method, opting to go with the flow and see what comes of it. While this can be a fun way to write, it does tend to lead to a lot of revisions as completion more often than not follows a very windy road rather than a sleek expressway. Anyone who has decided to “just write” with no plan and see where it goes likely has the same story we’ve read time and again, the one with their train of thought derailing like an Amtrak traveling in a straight line (and why is it rollercoasters stay on track but Amtrak seems to flip with nary a curve in the line?) Writers who do this often send their formerly interesting characters on random side trips that ultimately detract from the story.
These exercises in tangential writing often lead to some interesting ideas that may ultimately find a place somewhere, perhaps in a later creation, but the story at hand most often becomes a jumbled mess in need of serious revision. Having a plan, even the most basic one, helps you stay on track and not waste days or weeks chasing the dragon of new ideas that don’t fit in the concept of what you set out to write.
Then there are the Meticulous Rewriters. You know who you are, the ones who edit as they go, unable to leave a sentence on the page unless it is perfect. We’ve all been guilty of it at one time or another, getting so wrapped up with making every single word count that we don’t see the forest for the trees. Unfortunately this leads to what I call Hitting the Perfection Wall, where one imperfect sentence can bring an unfinished script to a screeching halt. Quality writing and the exquisite turn of a phrase are certainly ideals to strive for, but that is not what anyone should be focusing on in their first draft unless they want to be one of those writers who puts out one completed work every few years or so. Over-correcting and constant tweaking/editing can derail actual writing. Get that first draft written, you can edit and tweak to your heart’s content once that is accomplished.
Like a painter creating a body of work for an upcoming exhibit, sometimes you have to put a piece aside and stop tweaking it or you’ll have nothing to show but just one piece that’s never finished. Crank out a body of work and you’ll have a lot of things to revisit and rewrite.
Now in the sea of tips, tricks, and advice out there (mine included) there are many methods that may work well for your particular style. Experiment, try things out, just keep in mind that no matter a blog creator or writing expert’s credentials and bona fides, you don’t have to conform to someone else’s structure if it doesn’t work for you. Some people swear by Save the Cat, others abhor it. Choose what works best for you.
In the quest for a great story, I am certainly guilty of leaving drafts unfinished, though that typically stems from working 60 to 70 hour weeks on set in my “day job”, leaving little brain power to write. This is why I carry notepads, rapidly filled full of outlines, ideas, dialogue and scenes that I hope to have time to fully explore during a break. One such notepad became my Knight Resurrected screenplay first draft in just 5 days during the downtime between shows. For me the outline first then write process works well. But don’t take my word for it, I’m just a guy on the internet, giving my 2 cents worth.
One un-related bit of advice:
Don’t be ashamed to say “I’m a writer.” There’s a lot of negativity placed on saying “I’m an actor/musician/writer/artist” if you aren’t successful yet, but just because you might not be in the .0001% who make a living at it does not lessen or invalidate what you do. I tell people I’m a writer, albeit unproduced, who also works below the line, though I’d prefer to write for a living. There’s no shame in a day job. Very few people make a living from their artistic endeavors, and several amazing artists I know still work other jobs when not selling paintings for thousands of dollars. A paycheck doesn’t define you.
Now go write!
Never give camera direction.
Don’t say “We see.”
Cut out those graphic descriptions.
Oh, and don’t forget to always use well-crafted sluglines.
These are just a few of the oft repeated rules spouted by bloggers, gurus, and countless “experts” the world over, but if you read some of the top scripts floating around out there, you’ll see these rules (and many others) ignored all the time. In fact a great deal of the “rule breakers” spurned so often online wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow amongst actual execs.
Take for example the recent film “The Imitation Game” by Graham Moore. In the first several pages he throws bolded sluglines out the window, opting instead for a very dynamic (if not conventional) style. Rather than traditional sluglines, here is what he wrote:
A CONSTABLE PHONES IN the robbery to headquarters —
— At headquarters, a RADIO GIRL transmits the information to the detectives on duty —
— And in London, a RADIO OPERATOR in a dark room far below Victoria Street TAKES DOWN AN URGENT MESSAGE —
— ON THE MESSAGE: Random letters. Gibberish. It’s ENCRYPTED.
The ENCRYPTED MESSAGE is handed to a CRYPTANALYST, who DECODES it —
— Before the MESSAGE is HANDED OFF and WHISKED through the dim hallways —
— Until it’s finally deposited on the desk of STEWART MENZIES, the Director of MI-6. British Secret Intelligence Services.
Menzies picks up the message: “Alan Turing has been robbed.”
EXT. ALAN TURNING’S HOUSE – MORNING
Another example comes from the Nightcrawler script. Once again, sluglines are eschewed for an unconventional (according to internet gurus at least) style. These breaks shift focus intentionally to what the writer wants the shot to be, but without giving explicit camera direction (though the writer was also the director). Even so, you very clearly see where the writing forces you to visualize the focal point of the images as you read. Take a gander:
PEOPLE
riding bikes and jogging and roller-blading in Venice where we find
LOU
sitting on wall … watching
A MAN
in a spandex bicycle outfit as he locks his racing bike, enters a juice store and
LOU
crosses … picks the bike lock and CUT TO
A PAWN SHOP
You get the idea. Now as I said, the screenwriter was also the director, so liberties are expected.
As far as the use of “We see” or other camera direction, everyone I’ve ever spoken with who actually works in the industry (as opposed to myriad online gurus and experts who are more often than not not making their living as writers) have said that if a script is well written and engaging, they really don’t care if there is camera direction. The point is to tell a good story, and if you’re doing your job as a writer the story should be so enthralling that they don’t even stop to notice visual cues and direction.
This is one of the interesting elements (in my opinion) of the online world of experts and coaches. I wonder how many people have changed their dynamic and engaging reads on the advice of people whose credentials are minimal at best. There are literally thousands of writers who have completed scores of screenplays, but the act of writing a body of work alone should not be enough to give anyone the title of expert. Of course there are those who are like great coaches, perhaps not able to do it themselves, but possessing a keen eye towards improving other people’s creations. An old friend of mine is this way. She’s a lawyer by trade, a stage actress by hobby, and is utterly amazing at picking apart a story and finding strengths and weaknesses. She is also the first to say that she can’t write worth a damn, but she can edit with the best of them.
The takeaway from this all is these rules aren’t rules at all, but rather suggestions or guidelines. Do what you need to do to make your story flow. Just remember that if you do venture outside of conventional style, make sure you do it elegantly and effectively. You can get away with just about anything if you do it really well.
After several revisions and some great notes from friends and co-workers, Living the Good Death was recently submitted to SpecScout for coverage. The result? It is one of the very few non-agency submitted scripts to score high enough to warrant listing on SpecScout’s pages. For comparison, Living the Good Death actually scored higher than an Austin Semi-Finalist and a Script Pipeline Grand Prize winner, both recently listed on SpecScout.
Another plus is Living the Good Death will now be highlighted in the next Scoggins Report.
Obviously I’m thrilled, and though a few folks have recently expressed some interest in the script, achieving this positive traction (the script received two “Recommend” and one “Consider” ratings) is a wonderful validation of a story I hold dear.
For writers looking for really good coverage, I highly recommend checking out SpecScout (and no, I’m not a shill or on their payroll in any way). I’ve also used The Black List (this same script scored an 8 from an Industry Member) in the past but felt their coverage was quite sparse, even though the price is lower. Ultimately it’s up to you which, if any, service to get coverage from.
And now on to the fun part. Writing another one.
Some script doctors are amazing at what they do, possessing an almost uncanny ability to cut to the chase and highlight what works and doesn’t in a story. An old friend of mine has this ability, though she is not in the industry, rather working as an attorney these days (but with a solid theater background). She’s fond of saying, “I can’t write to save my life, but I can dissect a story like nobody’s business.”
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach, but our industry may be one of the more notable exceptions to that rule.
I’ve read a lot of aspiring writers rant about having a script doctor review their work only to discover that person has not produced or optioned work of their own. While in many industries you need to have that sort of accolade in your CV to be considered an expert, in the writing game the amount of people with that type of success is miniscule given the quantity of writers out there. Literally thousands upon thousands of scripts are written in L.A. alone every year, but how many do you ever hear about? And of those, only a handful will ever be optioned or win the Nicholl or Page, but that doesn’t mean the other submitting writers lack talent. Some are exceptional, their work just may not have been to that particular reader’s taste on that particular day. In the non-contest world I think it translates to sending out a great script that unfortunately just doesn’t make it to the right desk. It’s a daunting task no doubt, and as we know this business is certainly as much about connections and relationships as the quality of your work.
Is it worth paying for a bit of outside critique?
At a certain point most people of the creative sort wish for some external feedback on the work we’ve poured hours, weeks, or months of effort into. However good or bad the reception is by our friends and family, an objective outside opinion can be quite beneficial, especially if you are open to critique and can read negative points with an open mind. Even coverage that you don’t agree with will most likely hit on a point or two that have validity. The hard part is putting ego aside and being willing to consider that your baby you’ve been tirelessly working on for months on end may not be the perfect and unique snowflake that you believe it to be. That’s why you pay for that outside opinion. Friends may be reluctant to be totally blunt, but a stranger has no such problem.
That said, I feel writers should have faith in their work and not take a set of script notes as a simple checklist of what to fix or change to make your story great. Guess what, your script may be amazing as-is and changing things per those notes might work great for that one particular reader but may also diminish the work for the larger audience. This is where we need to take a step back and digest the critique, then revisit our work with fresh eyes at a later date to better see if the points have merit. It’s like that trick when writing an angry email, you know the one where you draft it but don’t send it until later. It feels great to get it out of your system, but if you come back to it the next day you’ll almost certainly be glad you didn’t send it and will have a plethora of ideas (no, not piñatas) to make it better.
Now some writers want to keep their Precious safe from outside eyes, choosing rather to hold it close and tight. As for me, I personally like to get as many eyes as possible on my work. Sure, some critiques are great, some not so much, but every single reader, even those I disagree with, has given me something to think about as I walk the road to bettering my writing.
In honor of Glenn A. Larson, here’s a little something I posted to Reddit. Well more than little I suppose. It’s a completed script I tried (and failed) to get to the Weinsteins, who own the film rights to Knight Rider. I still really like the story and thought I’d share with my fellow Knight Rider fans.
Logline: When a teen unwittingly salvages a long-lost artificially intelligent supercar from a junkyard, his new friend’s resurrection does not go unnoticed, thrusting them into harm’s way both on the road and off.
Link below. Hope ya like it. Comments and critique are welcome.
Knight: Resurrected (via my post on Reddit)
Film production is tiring. Everyone knows that, right? But what exactly do we define as exhausting in our industry?
Most “civilians” work 8, sometimes 10 hours in a day. This is a “normal” work day for them. Industry folk on the other hand consider anything less than 12 hours to be a short day, and if you somehow miraculously work only 8 hours, it’s called an “8 and skate” as you breeze in and breeze out so quickly. I must apologize if this seems a bit disjointed, but I just worked 47 hours in 3 days, you see.
I was lucky enough to crew on one of the top scripted cable TV shows of the Summer, and this week production on season two started up again. Awesome people to work with, from the top down, but the hours can be a wee tad brutal. A 70 to 80 hour week is not impossible when things really need to be shot, though production does all they can to avoid those situations. Still, sometimes it happens, and when it does, you’re looking at working double the weekly hours of normal folks. You don’t know tired until you’ve had to finish work at 3am on Saturday morning, only to have a 5am call time on Monday.
Of course this is nothing compared to music videos. Those notoriously run 18 or more hours in a day. Yes, 18+. My personal longest was a 25 1/2 hour video shoot in the desert. One director actually did a 35 hour shoot, though we all wonder what quality you get at that point. Mind you he is one of the top directors in the world, but come on already, these hours are why people die driving home.
Why post this? Because the reality of production is often far less glamorous and incredibly more exhausting than people realize. I still recommend you follow your dreams and do all you can to get into the industry if that’s what you want, but just do so with your eyes open. Of course as you now realize, that’s something that gets increasingly difficult to do as the weeks pass. In fact my eyes can barely stay open right now.
Anyway, this is disjointed and I am dain bramaged, so methinks I’ll post and edit a bit later when the ol’ noggin is firing on more pistons.
Sharing a bit of good news.
I recently posted my supernatural romantic comedy Living the Good Death to The Black List after making some revisions to it following input from the site’s paid readers. Several really astute observations were made, and after thinking about them and making some changes, I finally arrived at a draft that I felt achieved my expectations.
The result? An Industry Member just rated it an 8.
Having a busy industry member choose to read the script of their own free will and enjoy it enough to take the time to rate it really brings me joy. We know how busy people are in this industry, so it means a lot to me.
I’d venture a guess that many of you would agree that whether or not a script is ever produced, just being able to entertain a reader with a story spawned from your noggin that they truly enjoy is a really good feeling for any writer. I for one hope to ride this wave of happy feelings well into the next script I’m currently outlining. Hopefully people will find that one enjoyable as well one day.
As writers, I think most of us would agree that it’s pretty fair to say we all tend to have a fairly well developed sense of self-worth, at least when it comes to our writing. Though our styles may vary wildly, we like our work and believe in it, otherwise we’d have given up long ago. So when we finally manage to get a script in the door at an actual reputable production house, that means we’ve finally got a chance to have our craft appreciated by people who “get it”, right?
A fellow writer just informed me that his son is now a reader for a well-respected Hollywood producer. His kid is the fabled gatekeeper we have to entertain if we hope to make it past those high walls and onto the producer’s desk. There’s just one problem. This kid is an idiot.
Now I don’t have anything against him, but his own father said as much, lamenting that a kid who doesn’t know the first thing about scriptwriting, formatting, structure, or basically anything crucial to telling a good story, is now (purely through social connections and no actual skills whatsoever) the guy who determines who makes it to round 2.
Disheartening? Well, it certainly doesn’t inspire a dance of joy, that’s for certain. Now we all know that it’s a crapshoot with readers anyway. If you’re like me, you’ve had great reviews and horrible reviews, sometimes concurrently for the same unedited piece of work, so perhaps having a neophyte rating your work doesn’t surprise you. It certainly explains those outlier reviews that leave you scratching your head, wondering, “Does this person know the first thing about moviemaking?” But having those worst suspicions confirmed is still a wee bit lamentable.
Funny enough, I posted recently on the need to write for you, to not try and tailor your work into what you think a gatekeeper wants. Everyone’s taste is different, there’s no pleasing them all, and we almost never know who is going to be reading our scripts. If, however, you happen to know your reader has a non-entertainment background such as my friend’s son (and if the gatekeeper is also the reader, this is where being friendly during phone calls can pay off ) perhaps a bit more flourish to the script to appeal to their taste might help you make a favorable impression. Personally, I’m of the belief that directors and actors should decide the beats that work for them, but then again, before they can turn our words into action we must first entertain the gate-reader enough to score that sought after “Recommend” so our scripts can make it to their desk in the first place.
Conundrum
Not too long ago, my pilot Blowback was a semi-finalist in the Industry Insider Television Writing Contest. I was elated. Even if I didn’t make it further in the rankings (no, I didn’t make the finals), it was still good to feel my concept was perceived as a viable television show (a very Burn Notice-esque show with a “Blue Skies” type appeal). Anyway, since then I’ve been looking into other contests and competitions to see which, if any, might be beneficial to enter my feature and pilot scripts.
We all know by now that there are a bevy of contests to enter, but so far as I can tell, only a handful appear to have a sound enough reputation to bolster your script by your doing well in them alone. Nicholl, Page, Trackingb, Austin, Blue Cat, those are among the handful that seem to have the clout to make that kind of a splash, but I think a common question we all have is is it worth submitting to others, especially the lesser known ones?
My personal opinion is unless you’ve got a track record, it can really be worth while to have your work judged completely objectively against your peers. More than just getting an idea if a particular coverage reader likes your work or not, a contest can give you something a Pass/Recommend doesn’t; namely an idea where your work stands when directly compared to others. If you make quarter or semi-finals, you know you’re on the right track. Make it to the finals or even place? That’s great validation of your work.
Another benefit is the ability to give someone a reason to go into your script hoping for or expecting a good read, not fearful of stumbling into a bad one. Which would you be more likely to assume will be at least a decent read, a Scriptapalooza semi-finalist or an unknown writer’s cold submission? Of course contests can be expensive, so we all have to decide if the benefit is worth the cost.
Now some people enter every contest under the sun, which is fine, but seems a tad excessive in my opinion. Personally, when I see a list of a dozen contests for one script I can’t help but feel the writer would be better served by listing the key wins or rankings, then offering further accolades upon request. Maybe it’s just me, but too many contests listed looks cluttered and just reminds me of resumé padding. Again, that could just be my skewed perception.
Ultimately there is no right or wrong answer. Contests are great for some and not for others, but I do believe there is something to be said for a competitive environment where you don’t just get notes, but also get to see where you stand in the pack.
Shoot From the Quip 