Time to Write

Is your screenplay story strong enough? Five questions that will reveal the answer

It's hard to be objective about your own work, but a good start is knowing what questions to ask.

A few years ago I came upon a Hollywood script reader's checklist--the questions they used in deciding whether or not a screenplay is worth recommending. In this post, I'll share the questions that relate to the basic story of your screenplay. I think they'd be useful if you're writing a novel as well:

1.   Imagine the trailer. Is the concept marketable?

Of course, nobody really knows what will be successful, but it helps if you can imagine how it might be marketed to catch people's attention.

2. Is the premise naturally intriguing? Does it make people want to know what happens?

A good way to test this is to tell people your premise. If they don't ask you questions about it, the idea may not be interesting enough.

3. Who is the target audience? Would your parents want to see it? Your children?

It's not that your script has to appeal to everybody, you just have to be clear from the start who you are targeting. For one thing, if it's an epic that's going to cost a lot to make, it had better have a broad appeal.

4. Is the concept original?

There's nothing new under the sun, but what aspect of your version makes it fresh and worth telling again? I know, there are plenty of movies that are tired retreads, but that's not what you want for your story.

5. Is there strong emotion at the heart of the story?

People go to movies to feel something--to be scared, or to laugh, or for the satisfaction of seeing rotten people get their comeuppance. Does your story have the potential to transport the audience out of their ordinary lives and give them an emotional experience they will enjoy and talk about with their friends?

Answer these questions as honestly as you can, and call on your gut feelings as well as logic.

Sometimes I've caught myself rationalizing that the story works but knowing in my gut or heart that it really doesn't.

That will catch up with you eventually, so it's much better to respond to it early on. That way you can fix it or move on to another idea.

If you have strong, honest answers to these questions and the ones coming up in the next post, you'll also have all the ingredients for a great pitch.

Post coming soon: IS YOUR SCREENPLAY PLOT AND STRUCTURE STRONG ENOUGH?

How to Give Yourself a Procrastination Allowance

Once we start to procrastinate, we tend to keep procrastinating.

A common refrain is, "I don't have much time left today to work on that task, so I'll make a fresh start tomorrow."

Of course, tomorrow we may find ourselves saying the same thing, and on and on.

Instead, try giving yourself a procrastination allowance: a certain amount of time you will avoid doing that task, after which you will make a start.

For instance, if you plan to work on writing a report between nine and eleven AM, give yourself a procrastination allowance of fifteen minutes per hour. Use it for anything you want--looking at Youtube videos, checking the news, or staring into space.

You would start the first hour by procrastinating between nine and nine-fifteen. Set a timer to go off when the 15 minutes are up, then get to work.

At 10 you get another 15 minutes to goof off or do a more pleasant task. Again, use the timer so you won't spend more than your allowed time.

Idealists may say, "Wait a minute--that means I'm wasting 30 minutes every two hours!" That's true. But isn't that better than wasting the whole two hours?

Your weakness can become your strength

What if your weakness could also be your strength?

In the previous post, I wrote about Dana Terrace, who persisted with an idea for a TV series that her colleague called dumb. The Owl House was renewed for a second season by Disney before the first one even aired. 

In an interview in the L. A. Times, Terrace mentioned feeling left out when she was a kid because she was kind of an oddball. She patterned one of the series' main characters on herself. She says, "He's just a little guy that wants to be big, so I always related to him. He's tiny and no one takes him seriously. He just wants to be taken seriously."

The reason I wanted to revisit this topic is that I think it demonstrates not only the power of persistence in the face of discouragement but also how we can turn what other people see as a weakness into a strength.

This is especially so for writers and artists because supposed weaknesses make great material. People will relate because everybody feels defective in some way, even the most apparently confident ones.

I did something similar in an animated series I created, called Norman Normal. The premise was that Noman is the only normal one in a family of superheroes. Even his baby sister and his dog have powers.

I think this mirrors the feeling of a lot of kids that they're surrounded by parents how have all the power and other kids who are smarter, better looking, or more talented. Of course, it was always Norman who came up with the solutions or was able to help his superhero family win the day. I hope some kids watching the show were comforted or inspired by that.

TURN IT AROUND FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Sometimes we avoid writing about our weaknesses and fears, even in the form of fiction, because they make us uncomfortable.

I'm suggesting that if you face your weakness or your fear and turn it into art--a script, a novel, a short story, a painting--you may end up creating your most powerful and appealing work. It could even be your most profitable work--56 episodes of Norman Normal were produced and because I had a good "created by" deal, it was quite lucrative.

This process can also be therapeutic, as I discovered when I wrote a play called "Killing Mother." (No, my mom never saw it.)

You don't have to make the work directly autobiographical--in fact, usually it's better if you give yourself a lot of leeway to fictionalize so that you can serve the story instead of being bound by the limitations of reality.

At the moment, I'm doing this with a screenplay called Leaving It Behind, about a criminal facing the end of his life. It was triggered when I had to have open-heart surgery and considered the (admittedly slim) chance that I might not make it. I'm not a criminal nor do I have a terminal illness (the operation went well) but the story incorporates a lot of my fears and thoughts at the time.

Maybe you're already doing this, but it may be worth checking whether there's anything in the darker corners of your psyche that you might turn around by putting it at the heart of your next project.

Can You Learn to Write Funny?

An old friend who teaches at a performing arts school recently asked me to look at a script for a short film, written by one of his students, that they are planning to film. It's the story of a young man who decides that using his gift for comedy is more important than going to college.

The problem with the script is that the writer doesn't have a gift for comedy and therefore neither does the character. If you're going to write a convincing funny character, you have to be able to be funny yourself. That brings me to a question I've been asked quite a few times:

CAN YOU LEARN TO WRITE FUNNY?

Sorry, but I think the answer is no. If you are naturally funny, certainly you can learn how best to channel that into screenplays or novels or essays, and the difference between writing for stand-up, sketches, sitcoms, movies, and plays. You can also learn how how to compose works that integrate comedy and drama.

However, if you don't start with a knack for comedy--which usually means you have an ability to see things from a different perspective--reading a book about the theory of threes, or why words starting with consonants are funnier than words that start with vowels, or that exaggeration is important, probably will not work for you. 

HOW TO FIND OUT WHETHER YOU'RE FUNNY

If you don't know whether or not you're funny (plenty of people who aren't, think they are), ask an honest friend whether they think humor is one of your greatest strengths.

That gives them the chance to say, "Hey, sure you're funny, but actually I think your greatest strengths are (x, y, z)."

Translation: "You're not funny." 

WHAT IF YOU'RE NOT FUNNY?

Write to your strengths. If you're not naturally funny, write drama, thrillers, horror, romance, or any of the other genres. Your gift, like that of my friend's student, may lie in other areas. 

 

The best opening for your screenplay or novel

I just read an article about Stephen King's new book, The Institute. The person who wrote the article admires King's novels but in this one he got to chapter 7 and there was still no story.

The Amazon blurb for the novel reads, "In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV."

That's intriguing, but even by chapter 7 there was no hint of that story.

Of course, King has millions of followers who are happy to let him take his time to get the story going, but the rest of us will do better to follow the advice to open your novel or screenplay with something intriguing going on that draws us in and has a strong connection to where the story is going. 

THE PROBLEM WITH NORMAL 

Usually, the first chapters or script pages are about the normal life of the protagonist, before the inciting incident that draws them into the main story. That allows us to identify with them and gives us a sense of their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, in a story about a teacher who is falsely accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student, the first act of a screenplay or the first chapters of a novel would give us a sense of the life that's about to be destroyed. The problem, of course, is that normal life typically isn't very compelling.

FORESHADOW WITH A HINT

Foreshadowing is giving a clue about what's going to be happening later. In our example story, we might have the teacher discipline several students for a prank. One of them comments to the friend who leads their little clique that he's surprised the friend isn't more upset about it. That student says, "That's OK. She won't be teaching our class--or any class--for much longer." OK, maybe a little heavy-handed, but it makes us wonder what he has in mind and we know it's not going to be good. That keeps us interested and buys the writer some time to get more into the life of the protagonist. 

FORESHADOW WITH A METAPHOR

If you can't foreshadow with an incident directly tied to the story, sometimes you can foreshadow with an incident that serves as a metaphor. For instance, during the teacher's happy birthday party there's a scream as one of the guests spots a rat running through the kitchen. Even though rats will not be playing a role in the rest of the story, it gives a hint that in the midst of this happy norm, there's a dark element that will disrupt her life.

This is especially useful if you have a story in which the tone changes drastically as the story goes on. It helps to prepare the reader or viewer on a subconscious level for what's to come.

USING BOOKENDS

You can open at the end of the story if it's exciting or intriguing, flash back to the start, build to the same ending moment with which you began. For instance, you might start a script with your protagonist on the gallows. As the noose is placed around his neck, he turns to the camera and says, "It all started so innocently..." Then you flash back to how it started and continue until we're at the moment with which you started. Then, either he dies, or he manages to get out of being hanged and is available for a sequel.

Another example is Titanic, in which we see old Rose at the start and end, but the core story belongs to young Rose.

OPENINGS TO AVOID

One opening to avoid that I've seen sometimes in novels and short stories is something like, "Little did Posie know that in a mere few days her life would change forever." Clunk!

A dream, especially a nightmare, as an opening tends to feel like a cheat, especially if we don't know it's a dream. 

Prologues can work but tend not to be popular with publishers. Sometimes the prologue is a moment in the heart of the action, a preview of what's to come, and then the novel starts back at the beginning. Or they might show, for instance, a trio of witches brewing up a curse that will come into play later in the story. 

IF YOU CAN'T THINK OF A WAY TO FORESHADOW

If you can't think of a good idea for foreshadowing as you write the first pages, don't worry. It can be easier to come up with that idea after you've gotten farther into the story or even completed the first draft. Often, I'll just write the first act without it and then go back and add it.

And once you get to be as popular as Stephen King, you won't have to worry about it!

Write Like Nobody's Watching

Actually, nobody IS watching. So for your first draft, feel free to be as clumsy, daring, or crazy as you like.

Put it aside for a while.

Then look at it.

    What were you thinking!?

    That's TOO crazy!

    Or it just plain sucks.

The good news is, STILL nobody's watching.

You get to rewrite it as often as you want.

Or maybe more times than you want, but you keep going because you know it's not quite as good as you can make it yet.

Then, finally, when it's ready, you send it out. 

NOW somebody's watching.

They may still say it's too crazy or wonder what you were thinking or that it sucks.

If they have constructive criticism or you suddenly see another way to improve it, great, back to the desk with it. 

If not, keep sending it out until it finds a champion.

Meanwhile, write another thing like nobody's watching.

Bad writing advice from the web

The web is full of good advice. It's also full of bad advice.

Here's some bad screenwriting advice:

"Quite frankly, Hollywood people don't like to read; the first time they see so much as a simple metaphor in your scene description, their eyes are likely to glaze over in incomprehension and they'll slap your front cover down with a definitive 'nope.'"

That's in a book of essays giving writing advice and it's totally wrong. The first person your script will encounter is somebody who reads a lot of scripts and is grateful when they find one that's enjoyable to read. A fitting metaphor or simile can help make the images come alive, as shown by these two examples from the screenplay for Fargo, by the Coen brothers:

"A car bursts through the curtain of snow..."

"She screams, staring at her own imprisoned wrist..."

Illustrating a sense of style and humour in descriptions, this is from the screenplay for The Favourite, by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara:

"ABIGAL, an open, friendly innocent woman is crushed to the side [of the carriage]. She clutches a dirty purse and a letter in her hands. Two kids, snot streaming from their noses, cough TB into the air."

Here's an example in a character description, from The Imitation Game, by Graham Moore--it's not a metaphor or simile but it's the kind of thing that the "only the actable facts!" absolutists object to:

"DETECTIVE ROBERT NOCK, 40's, athletic, more interested in football than in being a detective, hustles past a few double-parked police cars..."

Finally, this example from Logan, screenplay by Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green:

"Logan cruises the wet El Paso streets. LCD Billboards for chemically enhanced life. Gang graffiti on self-driving buses. A kaleidoscope of moments, dark and mundane."

I doubt anybody slapped down the front covers of these screenplays with a definitive 'nope' and I feel sorry for any aspiring screenwriters who buy into the idea that employing a well-chosen metaphor is a prescription for failure in Hollywood.

Probably the best strategy for spotting dodgy advice is to keep your eyes open for absolutes. When you see phrases like, "If your screenplay is one page longer than 120...," or "If your script contains even one metaphor..." you're probably looking at bad advice.

What you CAN'T learn from others

The internet is full of tips on how to learn from [name of successful person]. The implication is that if you just do things their way, you'll have their success.

Usually, these tips are too general to be useful. Things like, "Be an original thinker, like Steve Jobs."

Sometimes they carry an unintentional irony: "If you want to be original, copy Picasso." Hmm.

Sometimes the tips are too specific. It may be that super-successful people X, Y, and Z get up at 5am and carry around a notebook, but it's far from clear that these are the reasons for their success. What if it's the fact that they all eat lasagna and do yoga?

As writer Dale Dauten points out, "People try to conform to success, but to be successful is to be a non-conformist." Even that is flawed advice if it leads somebody to think that being a non-conformist is, by itself, a formula for success. There are plenty of non-conformists sleeping in doorways.

For a while, Writing Magazine ran a series of articles on the theme of "How to Write Like Anton Chekhov" (or other great writers). I'm not saying you can't learn by studying Chekhov, who indeed is a wonderful writer, but writing like him has one requirement none of us can fulfill: being Anton Chekhov. As I mentioned in the previous post, imagining how he might solve a writing problem can lead you to a solution, but it won't actually be his, it'll be yours.

The moral, I think, is to write or draw, or paint, or whatever you do, your way. There's no guarantee it'll pay off, but at least you'll enjoy yourself.

 

 

 

Brainstorming Strategies: What would (X) do?

One of my favorite brainstorming strategies is imagining how another person might solve the problem or approach the task.

I'll give you a personal example. I'm thinking of writing a film or play about how political polarization affects a family, with a Christmas family get-together as the setting and occasion. How to give it a fresh angle? How would the three people above approach it?

BILLY WILDER is noted for his witty approach to comedies like "Some Like It Hot," and "Seven Year Itch." I imagine a Wilder-style approach would be a smart comedy, maybe told through the eyes of a recent addition to the family (the new spouse/partner of one of the family) who, to be accepted by everybody has pretended to agree with both sides--and of course runs into big problems when the whole family gets together.

MICHAEL MOORE is noted for documentaries like "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." He might take a mockumentary approach to the event, perhaps with a psychologist stopping the action to explain what's going on and, if it's a comedy, getting it totally wrong; or maybe the shrink has been hired by the patriarch of the family to intervene and bring peace to the family but of course screws it up and only makes it worse.

STANLEY KUBRICK is known for "2001," "Eyes Wide Shut," and "The Shining," among others. Although there are moments of black comedy in his films, I think he'd be more likely to treat it as a dark psychodrama, perhaps leading to the total breakdown of one of the family members, with deadly consequences.

Of course, your "X" doesn't have to be a film-maker. It could be anybody whose way of thinking you're familiar with and admire. The next time you're stuck or just want a bit of extra inspiration, try the "What would X do?" method.

 

 

 

The scourge of dishonest writing

When I was a student of Danny Simon (Neil's brother and a very successful TV writer) one of his maxims was, "Don't go for the joke!" 

This may seem like strange advice from a comedy writer, but what he meant was that you should stay true to the situation and the characters. If you have them say or do something they wouldn't logically do, you're sacrificing them for the sake of a joke. If you do that a lot, you end up with characters nobody believes. A high price to pay for a cheap laugh.

I was reminded of this the other day when I watched a few minutes of a US TV series called 911. It's on the Fox network, which says, "The show draws from real-life, high-pressure experiences of first responders who regularly face heart-stopping situations that are often unpredictable, intense, and uplifting at the same time." 

One of the situations was an old guy who was working on an old car that somehow sucked his head, or maybe just his beard, into the innards of the engine. A woman who may have been his wife or daughter calls 911 and says the car is eating the man and starts to talk about his relationship to the vehicle, and when the responders show up she tells them the car is finally getting her revenge...this is while somebody she presumably loves has his head stuck and she doesn't know how seriously he could be hurt. 

Yes, it's comic relief, designed to give the audience a breather from the more tragic plots, which is fine, but it was so obviously written to be a zany moment that it cheapened the entire enterprise.

The writer might say, "Hey, there are all kinds of crazy people who say just about anything." That's true, and if you've established that the character is like that before the moment of maximum craziness, it works. But in this case, this was the first time we'd seen these people.

I'm using a comedic example but you'll find plenty of examples in drama as well, with people saying or doing things solely because that's what's needed in order to advance the plot. It's not only dishonest, it's also lazy. 

If in doubt, it's useful to ask, "Would a human being really say this in this situation?" If the answer is, 99% of the time, no, then it's worth rewriting. 

 

Sneaky hybrid movie: Rolling Thunder's little white lies

Martin Scorses's film of a Bob Dylan concert, "Rolling Thunder Revue," looks like a typical music documentary, but as Indiewire points out, it's not.

Fictional characters are mixed in with real people in order to provide context...and also just for fun.

The little white lies include:

• Sharon Stone claiming an affair with Dylan;
• The reminiscences of retired politician Jack Tanner (actually actor Michael Murphy who played that role in HBO series "Tanner 88)";
• The testimony of filmmaker Stephan van Drop (actually actor Martin von Haselberg);
• The memories of concert promoter Jim Gianopulos (who is actually the CEO of Paramount Pictures but was never involved with promoting music events).

While I do like Dylan's music, what interests me from the perspective of screenwriting is the film's blend of factual material with fiction--maybe that's why the film's full title is, "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese."

Still from "Rolling Thunder Revue." (Not really, just an image I like)

Can you tell your screenplay story in six words?

Screenwriter Scott Meyers suggests boiling the story of your screenplay down into six words. If you can't do that, he says, you don't have a story.

Sometimes I really resist the idea that everything should be simple, but he has a point. Obviously, six words will not encapsulate the totality of your script but especially if you tend to get lost in your story sometimes, this can be a good tool.

Let's try some examples. See if you can tell right away which films I'm describing:

Son takes over family business: the mafia

Racist driver. Black passenger. Southern roadtrip. (I may be cheating, road trip probably should be two words.)

He's down, she's up: love possible?

Or, for a classic play: Father murdered. Son's revenge consumes all.

I imagine you got those: The Godfather trilogy, Green Book, A Star is Born, Hamlet.

Admittedly, these descriptions don't reveal that Michael doesn't want to be the new godfather, or that a friendship develops between the driver and the passenger, or that the 'down' and 'up' refer to fame and musical careers. And six words can't do justice to Hamlet. However, these do all identify the core elements of each plot.

IT'S ABOUT THE PLOT

Someone said that plot is what the story is about, and theme is what the story is REALLY about.

For instance, Macbeth's plot is the series of murders the Macbeths commit to try to make him king; the theme is the price of ruthless ambition.

Usually, your six words will be about the plot. In the example above, only the six words about Hamlet hint at the theme: that revenge can destroy the person exacting it as well as that person's target.

Don't try to make the six words reflect the theme unless that comes naturally. Of course, it's your execution of the plot that largely determines the quality of the script, but you have to have a solid plot before you can execute it.

HOW TO USE THE SIX-WORD STRATEGY

I'd never use the six-word format in a pitch, but it can be useful to work it out to make sure you know the core of the story.

Write the six words on an index card and put it where you can see it as you work on the script.

When you're unsure about a scene, ask yourself whether it is in alignment with that core idea. Even if it's a scene in a subplot, probably it will reflect the main idea in some way. I haven't done an analysis, but I'm pretty sure almost every scene in A Star is Born is about either him going downhill, her rising to fame, and/or their love.

Think about the films you've seen most recently. How would you sum up their plots in six words? Practicing with other people's stories will make it easier to do it with your own.

 

Unleash your Creativity by Writing from Within

Drawing from Within: Unleashing Your Creative Potential is a book by Nick Meglin that has a lot of great thoughts about drawing that apply equally to writing: 

"We make the mistake of looking outside ourselves for validation of what is, in fact, an inner experience. We look to others for approval, for them to tell us how good our work is before we can feel good about having done it!"

Of course, we want to sell what we write so eventually others will have to think our work is good, but worrying about that too soon can cripple your creative process.

Meglin adds, "The wonderful paradox is that the work that is sincere, personal, and created for one's own satisfaction is what is most often celebrated by both critics and the public alike."

"People learn to draw through the experience of drawing."

"The goal is not to make a pretty drawing, a neat drawing, a good drawing, etc., but just to draw." A good thing to keep in mind when doing your first draft.

AND IF YOU'RE TOO CRITICAL OF YOURSELF:

"We must focus our energies on identifying that part of ourselves that 'finds fault' with or 'disapproves' of our own work--that voice which tends to be self-deprecating, insecure, and negative. And we must learn how to cognitively reframe these negative voices and turn those destructive energies around."

 

If you're having trouble creating a character, try the Fellini method

How do you get to know your characters well enough to feel confident writing what they do and say?

The great director Federico Fellini had a particular method. He said, "Some people get a quick handle on things by means of words, by sensations. I design. I sketch the traits of the face, the details of the costume, a person's attitudes, anatomy. That is my way of getting close to a film I'm making, of understanding what it is..."

You don't have to be an artist to use this method. Nobody else needs to see your crude sketches, the important thing is that they help you understand the character.

If you don't draw at all, you can look for images online that inspire you. 

For instance, let's say your protagonist is a young man.

I searched for: Google images young man. What came up at the top of the results page was '1000+ amazing young man photos' (these are free stock images). If you scrolled through these images I'm sure there'd be one that clicked, that made you think, "That's my protagonist!" 

You can do the same with clothing, settings, and the other elements of your story.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you, either in the comments or via email at [email protected]

Good luck!

What's the best place to write?

The best place to write is wherever you feel most inspired and productive, but there's a good case for trying writing or brainstorming in your nearest nice park. According to Science Daily:

"Taking at least 20 minutes out of your day to stroll or sit in a place that makes you feel in contact with nature will significantly lower your stress hormone levels.

That's the finding of a study that has established for the first time the most effective dose of an urban nature experience.

Healthcare practitioners can use this discovery to prescribe 'nature-pills' in the knowledge that they have a real measurable effect." [The study was published in Frontiers of Psychology] 

Especially now that we're on the verge of friendlier weather in many places, why not take your favorite notebook or even your laptop to a park bench, spend the first ten minutes just breathing deeply and enjoying the scenery and then have thinking or writing session. When people are blocked I always suggest a change of location, and that could be another benefit of writing in the park.

If you try it, let me know how it works for you, in the comments here or via email to [email protected] And if you can't get out to a park today, stare at the picture below for a minute...