every few days, thoughts on screenwriting
An E Ticket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_ticket
Well worth it.
Who cares about the story? The story’s fine. It works, even with a hole here and there and the occasional line of wretched dialogue. It’s not like you’re hoping it’s CITIZEN KANE.
It’s good.
Go.
Have fun.
Enjoy the 3-D.
I took a screenwriting class some months ago from Gordy Hoffman. He knows what he’s doing. I recommend his writing tips.
http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com/advice/screenwriting_tips.php
These are some most superb screenwriting suggestions from a Guy Who Knows. Not as superb as MY suggestions, mind you, but really close.
He also runs a screenwriting contest. I recommend that too.
I’m just Mr. Recommendation today.
A friend of mine is probably the best book editor in the United States. Edits all the big time heavyweight authors.
A friend reported this conversation with him.
Q: What do you think when a writer won’t do the edits you tell him he should?
A: I just think he’s stupid.
I have only kept two New Year’s Resolutions. 1.) First time you want to walk out of a move, walk out. 2.) If you ask someone for advice, take it.
If you give your screenplay to someone you respect, and they give you notes, you should seriously consider actually doing what they tell you will mprove your screenplay. If you don’t want to do what they suggest, why did you make them read it in the first place?
Hope you get what you want for Christmas…
This grim post from Nikki Finke.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/unofficial-2009-spec-market-scorecard/
Yipes.
Really scary.
Especially as I sit down to start a new spec.
My problem is, I LIKE to write…
I am currently grading student screenplays. My spell check policy has been made clear to them since the first day of class. “Don’t run your spell check, get an F.” Now, after an entire semester, they are turning in their final assignments. 1/4 so far have failed to run their spell check. Wow. Even I am amazed. So I created this handout for the first day of next semester’s class.
This stuff matters.
*
“I read to the first typo.”
Hollywood agent
If you have a word spelled wrong, you get an F. Everyone should know this by now. To understand my motivation, read chapter 78 in my most illuminating book.
Basically, it’s a matter of professionalism.
I have devoted my life to writing. To keep from blowing my brains out every day, I must think writing, and writing well, actually matters. So if you don’t think writing, and writing well matters, you make me feel I have wasted my life.
I run my spell check. You can too.
To give it a different light, if I put in my syllabus that I loathe the New York Knicks and that if you so much as mention the New York Knicks in a homework, I will give you an F… what about that would be unclear?
Why would you then mention the New York Knicks in a homework?
Would that be clever?
Or professional?
Endeavor to make me feel I have not wasted my life.
Thank you to guest author, Linda Lipford.
*
How does the party turn bad? You can’t just say “the party turns bad” – you have to say what happens. Think of writing in the same way you’d want info from your best friend.
Example: If your best friend came running up to you and said, “Oh girl, I have something to tell you. You are not going to believe this! I was at this party and THINGS TURNED BAD!” You’d say “What happened?” Your friend just says, “It just turned bad.” You say, “So TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!!” You friend says again, “Oh, it turned bad.”
Wouldn’t you want to choke her at this point?
Writing is the same way. You have to say what happens. Don’t leave us hopping on our toes waiting for you to spill the details.
This is not easy.
This is not easy because YOU know what you’re writing and you assume the reader does. This is not easy because we don’t read our work out loud. This is not easy because we don’t have friends good enough to ask them to read our work out loud to us.
Ah, well.
For instance… if you write a sentence like this, as I just did for a rough outline I’m doing…
because it is a third world country, they use steam locomotives & he writes formula down & takes train to capital city…
And you had only vaguely established that we are in Bangladesh… you might want to be specific and say…
because Bangladesh is a third world country, they use steam locomotives & he writes formula down & takes train to capital city…
Make it clear to the reader. He or she is the one you have to impress, not your boyfriend, who already adores you beyond all reason and will say anything you write is just swellsville, baby.
Second example.
He takes it to the University.
Room for confusion? You betcha. What you should say is…
He takes his discovery to the University.
Be specific.
All the time.
That’s how you win Oscars and stuff like that.
btw… Did you catch the logic flaw in the above piece? I did. If you’ve got a boyfriend who thinks your work is peachy keen, then you do have a friend who likes you enough to read your work out loud to you. So, if he does exist, put him to work!
Few believe me when I tell this story, but it’s true. My friends Helen and Jay had a dog, Baxter. He was sort of a Black and Tan and / or Beagle mix. He despised homosexuals and would bark like a PCP-crazed maniac whenever a gay man wandered into his radar.
One time I was out at their house, and we having lunch with friends. Baxter was snoozing under the table. We were talking about pets and Helen mentioned that Baxter hated gay men. One luncheon guest, new to Helen’s odd world, gaped in disbelief, and started to argue. I learned long ago not to argue with Helen. Waste of time.
So, this woman was saying it’s nuts to think that a dog could tell if a man was homosexual, and suddenly Baxter EXPLODED and tore out from under the table like Cujo, his claws nearly ripping gouges in the wood floor. He flew to the front door and had his paws against it, barking and clawing and barking and barking like the devil himself was trying to get in. Jay opened the door and it was a gay friend of ours, blinking, wondering what all the commotion was about.
Have you ever met a dog who hated gay men?
Okay, that said, I’ll mention Ellen Beson’s book. Animation Unleashed. Great book. After you’ve bought your tenth copy of my book, buy some of hers! I was on a panel with Ellen and she taught us the most interesting thing. She asks each of her animation students to draw “a little old lady.”
They do, and then she passes the drawings around the classroom. And they are always all alike! Each “little old lady” has a knee length skirt, a cane, and a bun!
Then, genius that she is, Ellen asks the students to describe their own grandmothers. Not one grandmother has a knee length skirt, a cane, or a bun. They are old ladies, but each is her own, individual person.
Got it? Back to Baxter, the homosexual-hating dog. (Not a winning children’s book title, btw)
Now, you can’t use Baxter in your work, cause he’s mine. But, when you give a character a dog, or when you invent a little old lady, DO NOT DO THE CLICHÉ! Find a way to make your dog or your little old lady (or bank president, or grave robber, or action hero, or corruption-fighting school teacher!) someone unlike anybody else we’ve EVER seen in the movies.
Go find my old posts on Lisbeth Salander if you need clarification on this point.
Beating the cliché is hard to do. I bet you can!
Doesn’t this sound like the start of a movie to you?
EXT. GATED SUBURBAN ENCLAVE – NIGHT
With a well-oiled WHIRR, wrought iron gates glide open.
A giant black Escalade rockets out into the leafy street. The SUV slides through a corner, rocks as it tries to regain control, slips sideways and can’t scramble back on the road — SMACKING a tree. CRASH. Airbags. Then, silence.
Nothing happens.
The heavy gates begin to swing shut.
A figure sprints out of the shadows. A gorgeous woman, NIKI FINDERGUN, 30s, clever, high-spirited and furious, barefoot, wears a tee shirt and carries a 9 iron.
She reaches the silent SUV and swings the golf club like a pro, SHATTERING the driver’s window.
*
Okay, apologies to our golf hero. But look at how fast this story has mushroomed, from a late night traffic accident to, within days, voice mail messages played on national television, giant cash offers to the wife to stay in the marriage, etc. etc.
If the scene above is the start of a movie, look at how much is NOT there… we FIND OUT later that the guy in the car is a sports hero. We FIND OUT later what relationship he has with his wife. We FIND OUT later about the first girlfriend, then the second, sluttier one, and wow, his true love, another dude on the team.
You don’t have to include heaps of backstory in the first act. You start with action and fill in the blanks as needed.
As FADE IN: is when the gated community gates open… you have wasted zero time on backstory — and there’s all the time in the world for action and story development after you hit the ground running. With a golf club.
You never know when it will come in handy.
Read all kinds of stuff. I’ve got a friend who never subscribes to magazines, but he goes to bookstores and pulls magazines off the rack that catch his interest. Less of an investment than a subscription, and you would be amazed what you find at newsstands. Magazines you had no idea existed.
And, if you push yourself to read stuff that may not be right up your alley, it may really pay off.
I am currently working with a producer about an idea, and two articles I had read within the past three years blasted together like atomic particles (or puffed wheat, shot from guns!) with a nonfiction book I read over Thanksgiving and together, floated to the surface of my murky brain… Their content combined and twisted my original idea (that was hacky and derivative from every movie I’ve ever seen) into something that smells like a MOVIE and is incredibly interesting because it’s based on real life.
We’ll see how it goes.
Reading informs your writing when you start because it shows you what other people are doing as you work to find your own voice. Reading informs your writing when you’re further down the craft road because you can find little things you want to try in your own work, or things to avoid!
You read something good and you want to raise the bar on your own work. You read crap and you realize that your bar has been raised on its own over the years. For example, there are some authors I can’t read because the writing is so bad. This is interesting if I return to an author I used to like, but because of the reading I do, I realize they just… ain’t that great… and I put the book down.
Anyway, this is a bit of a disconnected ramble… but I was so pleased that these distantly separated bits of reading-from-the-past combined to help me come up with a killer idea, that I had to share.
I hate that word. “Share.” Reminds me of when I was in church at age 16, chasing after my 16 year old girlfriend, and a guy in camo fatigues came up wanting to witness / share about his experiences in Viet… nam. “Nam” rhymed with “Spam.” When he was done sharing about all his agonies, I realized I hadn’t wanted him to share it at all. Like the punchline to the old joke, “I don’t believe I’d have told THAT, brother…”
Hope you don’t feel that way about this post!
