Hang a Lantern On It

There are lots of little tricks professional screenwriters have to overcome small problems in their scripts. Many of them have clever nicknames. One of those tricks is called Hang a Lantern on It.

The idea here is if you have something a little unbelievable, you can have the characters point to how unbelievable it is. If a character says, "Wow, did you see what just happened? That's crazy!" then the audience will understand that the unlikely thing has been done on purpose. If you ignore it, the audience could think it's just bad writing.

This works best with small things that are plausible but might seem like an accident. For example, in the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan) when Indy is talking to the FBI, the FBI guys seem surprisingly ignorant of Biblical history. So at one point Indy asks, "Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday school?"

Now of course it's completely possible someone wouldn't know much about the Ark of the Covenant, but it could also seem like the scene is more about explaining things to the audience (which of course it really is) and the dialogue could start to feel forced. So by having Indy make this little joke, it brings the forced dialogue into the world of the story and makes the agents' lack of knowledge part of the scene.

Sometimes the technique can be used to sell even big logic issues. In The Terminator (written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd), after Reese has rescued Sarah Conner and is explaining to her what's going on, she asks, "So you're from the future, too?"

Reese's response: "One possible future, from your point of view. I don't know tech stuff."

And as simply as that they don't have to explain the time travel paradox. The characters acknowledge that it doesn't quite make sense, but Reese establishes that there is an explanation; it's just that none of them know it. The audience goes along with it - because they want to buy into the story - and the movie can continue on with the important stuff.

There are limits to this technique though. You can't use it to paper over real logic holes in your story. It's simply a way to address those small moments that might make the audience go, "Really?"

It's even better if, when you hang a lantern on a problem, you also provide an explanation. For example in Star Wars (written by George Lucas) it might be a little implausible that a farm boy could pilot a fighter ship. So, when Luke is given an X-wing for the final battle, a commander questions his abilities. And Luke's friend from back home reassures the commander that Luke was an exceptional pilot back in the day. Problem acknowledged and dealt with.

Here we start to bleed into another technique: Eliminating Alternative Possibilities. This is necessary when there is a simpler solution to a problem than the one you need the character to choose. You have to eliminate that solution as a possibility.

This commonly comes up in thrillers or mysteries where someone who is not a professional detective investigates a murder. When most people encounter a murder they don't investigate it, they call the cops. So why does your character choose to investigate themselves? You have to give them a reason. Maybe the cops don't believe them. Or the character thinks the cops have the wrong guy. Or the character is wanted by the police.

A smaller example is in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt). The story is about the family going on a road trip so the daughter can compete in a beauty pageant. But if everyone just piled in the car and took off for California, the audience might think, "Wait... why does the whole family have to go? Why would the teenage brother and the suicidal uncle want to go on this trip?"

So in the dinner scene the characters discuss who's going - hanging a lantern on the logic issue - then they go through all of the various possibilities and eliminate any alternatives. Grandpa is the little girl's coach. Mom can't drive a stick shift. They're not supposed to leave the uncle alone. And so on.

When you give trusted friends your script to read, one thing you should ask them to do is mark any place where they thought something was unlikely (sometimes people not involved in filmmaking are better at this, by the way). If it's really a logic hole, you may have to fix it. But if it's minor, you might be able to solve the problem by hanging a lantern on it.

Do You Need This Scene?

With few exceptions feature films are between 90 and 140 minutes in length. And marketable screenplays must be in an even narrower range – between 90 and 110 pages. This may seem like a lot when you're staring at FADE IN followed by a blank page, but it's really not much time to tell a compelling, deep story with a complex character. So you have to be efficient.

That means you can't afford any scenes that don't pull their weight. You should know – specifically – what purpose each scene is playing in the story. Today I want to look at some valid purposes for a scene. Every scene in a screenplay should do at least one of the following things:

Advance Plot – Any scene where the story moves forward is a plot scene. As you might expect, this is the most common purpose for scenes in movies. But a scene is only considered to be advancing the plot if the situation in the story has actually changed from the beginning of the scene to the end of the scene. Don't confuse activity with advancement. Scenes that advance subplots are a subset of this category. 

Reveal/Advance Character – This includes character introduction scenes, scenes where we learn something new about a key character, and any scene where the character changes. The way we reveal character is through behavior (dialog can count as behavior as long as the character is trying to accomplish something with what they say). Often character scenes also have another purpose. For example, a scene may both introduce a character and advance the plot. You should avoid too many pure character scenes, though a handful are acceptable.

Preparation – Often we need scenes to prepare for the big plot advancement scenes. Usually these are scenes where the characters are preparing themselves for the upcoming event. Preparation scenes allow us to plant things that will pay off in later scenes and to get out critical exposition. In fact, there's a subset of preparation called the expository scene – the scenes where James Bond is getting briefed on his mission, or where Indiana Jones describes what is needed to locate the Ark of the Covenant. (Expository scenes are usually boring, so limit yourself to one if at all possible.) Preparation scenes also give us a chance to show how the character feels about the upcoming event – and are thus often also character scenes.

Aftermath – Often we want to have a scene of aftermath showing the impact of a plot scene. The impact is frequently an emotional one on the character, so these are usually also character scenes, though sometimes the aftermath is more expositional, showing how the situation has changed as a result of the last plot action. It is not uncommon for scenes of aftermath to morph into scenes of preparation. And any denouement scenes at the end of the film would be considered aftermath scenes, showing how the story has affected the character and the world.

Pay Off the Genre – If you are doing a comedy, you better have several really funny scenes in your script. If you're doing a horror film, you better have some really scary scenes. Usually and ideally these scenes also advance plot. But every once in a while you need to include a standalone scene just to deliver on the expectations of the genre. A good example would be the fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally... (written by Nora Ephron). It doesn't really have anything to do with the story, but it's the most hilarious scene in the movie. This is the key – if you're doing a purely genre payoff scene, it better be great!

There are two times I use this list in my writing process. First, when I have what I believe is my finished outline, I'll go through and identify the purpose of each scene - specifically to that story. So the purpose of a scene might be: "Character advancement – Kelsey decides to trust Dominic."

The second time is when I'm preparing to do my second draft. I'll go through every scene in the first draft and reevaluate what its purpose is – and whether it is fulfilling that purpose effectively. It's important to be honest with yourself here. The purpose of the scene should be apparent. If you're reaching to come up with the reason the scene needs to be in the script, it probably doesn't have a real purpose.

And if it doesn't have a purpose, it should be cut.

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In other news: Sweet Home Alabama is going to be on Lifetime Sunday at 7 pm PST. I'll be live-tweeting along with it. If you'd like to hear some of my trivia and experiences, follow me on Twitter at @dougeboch. Or you can see my twitter feed on my website: www.douglasjeboch.com

Establishing the World of the Story

In the first ten or fifteen minutes of a movie, the audience is trying to determine the world of your story and the rules of that world. They are open to just about anything as long as it’s logically consistent. Are there giant monsters in this world? Okay. Do people break into song and dance in the middle of the street? Sure. Have mutations given people superpowers? Yep, I’m with you.

Then at some point the audience begins to feel they know what world they’re in. After this they will reject any new fantastical element you try to introduce. So it’s important early in your story to at least hint at any unusual things you want the audience to buy into.

For example, we suspend our disbelief about zombies in Zombieland (written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick) because we are told right up front that they exist - in fact it's in the title. But if zombies appeared in the middle of a movie like Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) it would seem ridiculous. It would even seem ridiculous in The Sixth Sense (written by M. Night Shyamalan) - we're told ghosts are real in that movie, not zombies.

Sometimes, however, we want to hold back a piece of information to create a surprise or twist, or just to avoid overloading the movie with exposition up front. In The Sixth Sense, Cole doesn’t actually deliver his famous line, “I see dead people,” until the middle of the movie. Ghosts aren’t explicitly discussed until that point. But we have to be prepared to accept them. So we get the creepy scene where all the drawers and cabinets in Cole’s kitchen mysteriously open. We’re being prepared that something supernatural is going on so that it’s believable when it’s finally revealed that ghosts are behind the strange happenings. You can get away with this as long as the additional element falls within the bounds of the kind of world you’ve set up.

In science fiction or fantasy stories, the world may be a believable representation of our world with one or two fantastical elements added such as in Back to the Future (written by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale) or Harry Potter (screenplay by Steve Kloves); or it could be a near future projection of our world such as in Children of Men (screenplay by Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby); or it could be a vision of our world projected far into the future that is both familiar and very different such as in Alien (story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, screenplay by O'Bannon); or it could be a complete alternate world such as in Star Wars (written by George Lucas) or The Lord of the Rings (screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson).

That decision will affect how much work you have to do to bring us into the world. In a world we’re familiar with you don’t need much set up. In The Terminator (written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd) the writers don’t have to explain Sarah Connors’ lifestyle because it’s one we’re familiar with. We know about waitresses and single women getting stood up by their dates and nightclubs. What the writers have to do is hint to us that time travel and killer robots are going to be a part of this story. They do that by showing a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing in a glowing ball of energy in the opening.

The world of The Lord of the Rings, however, is completely unfamiliar. The filmmakers have to explain how magic works in this world and the politics of hobbits, elves, dwarves and men. That’s a big reason why the films open with a long expository prologue. They need to teach us the unfamiliar history of this world.

You also have to show us the rules of the fantastical elements you introduce. The most important thing is that your story has an internal consistency and logic. You get to create the rules but then you must abide by them. You can't add to them or change them later unless you carefully plant the changes. Otherwise it will feel like “cheating” and the audience will reject your story.

The technology of Star Trek and of Alien are very specific – and not the same. Teleportation exists in Star Trek but not in Alien. And the conditions required for successful teleportation in Star Trek are clearly laid out. You need a teleportation room on one end and the range is limited. Also, the faster someone is moving the more difficult teleportation is. So the writer couldn't decide in the middle of the story that someone has a handheld teleportation device unless they set that up.

Musicals have a similar issue. There are two basic types of musicals. First we have those that are set in the real world where the music in the film comes from performance. This would include films like Ray (story by Taylor Hackford and James L. White, screenplay by White) and Almost Famous (written by Cameron Crowe).

Then there are musicals that exist in a world where people break into song on the street and bystanders instantly know and join in with choreographed dance numbers. These are movies like Singin' in the Rain (written by Adolph Green and Betty Comden) and Les Miserable (screenplay by William Nicholson & Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schonberg & Herbert Kretzmer). In this second type of musical we are operating in a fantasy world, which means we need to introduce the audience to the fantastical element early. If the first time someone breaks into song in public is an hour into the film (and it’s not a dream or a psychotic break), we won’t accept it.

So think carefully about the fantastical elements in your story and how you're going to introduce them. Make sure to get the word out to the audience before their suspension of disbelief hardens.

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In other news, the book I wrote with producer Ken Aguado - "The Hollywood Pitching Bible" - is getting close to release. We just received the proof copy this week (and found an error on the cover that is being fixed). We also have a website: www.screenmasterbooks.com. Check it out!

How to Take Notes

(Part Two of Two on Notes Sessions)

Last post I discussed the politics behind a professional notes session. This week I’ll discuss how you, the writer, should behave when receiving notes and some strategies for dealing with bad notes. Be aware, notes sessions can be in person in a meeting or over the phone. Notes may be delivered verbally or in writing.

Write Everything Down

The first rule of taking notes is don’t react immediately to the note. This is true whether the note is coming from a producer or from a member of your writers' group. The best thing to do is simply write the comment down. In fact, in a studio notes meeting, not writing the note down could be seen as unprofessional or even insulting.

There are a couple good reasons not to react immediately. First of all, you are likely to have an emotional response, and if this response is that the note is stupid, then you might say something unwise. Second, it can take a while to wrap your head around a bigger change. Your initial reaction might be that the suggestion can’t possibly work, whereas if you think about it for a while it may actually dramatically improve the script. Third, the stress of a notes session may not be the best place to evaluate the quality of a note.

Finally, if the notes are delivered verbally, sometimes people start coming up with things off the top of their heads. And when they’re doing this, sometimes they’ll blurt out something dumb. They may know it’s dumb the moment it leaves their mouth and are hoping everyone will just kind of forget they said it. But if you point out the dumbness, you force them to defend it, particularly if their boss is in the room. Now they will insist that you must do the dumb idea.

So write everything down. If you don’t fully understand a comment, feel free to ask for clarification. But turn off your judgment for the moment and just record the notes. Later you can ponder them at your leisure and decide how to address them.

Sometimes you’ll get a suggestion that is so right on and so clear and that will so obviously make the script better, you smack your head because you didn’t think of it yourself. But that, unfortunately, is the exception. It can take a little work to evaluate notes. Sometimes the note-giver will have identified a problem but offer the wrong solution. Other times it may be difficult to even figure out what problem they stumbled over. When I get a note that doesn’t seem to make sense, the first thing I do is try to figure out what prompted it.

This is key because most of the time the producer or executive isn’t so concerned that you do exactly what they say, but rather that you address the issue they brought up in some form. If you come up with a better solution than what they suggested, they will usually be delighted. Sometimes, however, they will insist that you make the change exactly as they said. In those cases, you have to decide how important it is to make them happy – which may amount to how important it is that you keep the job.

Pick Your Battles

Obviously if a suggestion will improve the script, you should do it. You should also do the suggestions that are neutral – those that don’t make the script better, but they don’t make it particularly worse. Why fight over something that doesn’t really matter? If the note makes the script only slightly worse, you probably want to do that, too. Save your resistance for the notes that really hurt the script. The more suggestions you take, the easier it will be to fight the ones you hate.

And what do you do with the bad notes? As I mentioned earlier, sometimes you can just ignore them, especially if they were delivered verbally and there is no real record of them other than what you wrote down. If, however, you ignore a note and then it comes up again in the next meeting, you’re probably going to have to do it.

A for Effort

Usually you have a certain latitude to say, “I tried it and it didn’t work.” You might be able to use this on up to 20% of the smaller notes, the ones that only impact a scene or two.

Now, I recommend that you really do try these notes. Maybe the producer or executive is actually right and you’re wrong. Shocking, I know, but it does happen. Sometimes when you try a note you think is off base, you’ll find it actually does make the scene better. Or perhaps it will give you a different idea that improves the scene. And if it turns out it doesn’t work, then you can honestly justify why you didn’t do it.

If you’re collaborative, if you make a serious attempt to execute most of the notes, then usually the executives will accept that the handful of notes you rejected really didn’t work. But it’s important to make it clear that you listened and took them seriously. I find this to be the best way to deal with conflicting notes. You can say you tried both approaches and you picked the one that worked best.

When I am faced with the prospect of executing a note that I disagree with, the first thing I will do is try to come up with an even better change. I will give credit to the note-giver for inspiring this new idea. Hopefully they will agree it’s better than what they suggested.

Lipstick for a Pig

There will be times, though, when you are instructed in no uncertain terms to make a change that you disagree with. You’re only choice here is to do it or quit. Quitting is hard, both on your spirit and on your career, but occasionally it’s really the best choice for your long-term success and happiness. Most of the time you’ll want to hold your nose and make the change.

And when that happens, I recommend doing your very best to make the change work. As I said last time, it’s your name on the script. You don’t get to assign blame to the person who made the awful suggestion. So try like hell to make the note work.

I know some writer believe “if they are paying you, you should do whatever they say.” I disagree. Sometimes your job is to save them from themselves. If the script improves, everyone benefits. The trick is to build a good relationship with the people you’re working for, and to be willing to make changes – if not always every change or the exact change they suggested.

And remember, there are a lot worse jobs than screenwriting!

The Politics of Notes Sessions

(Part One of Two on Notes Sessions)

One of the things we sometimes lose sight of when discussing screenwriting is that the screenplay is not actually the final product. It may be our final product, but the ultimate goal is to have a movie made. Filmmaking is a collaborative endeavor even if screenwriting is usually a solitary one. If you want to be a happy screenwriter, it behooves you to embrace this collaboration – and that means recognizing that the story is going to change as it progresses from page to screen.

One aspect of the collaborative process is that some of your filmmaking partners will give you notes on the screenplay. Really, a notes session with a producer or development exec or director is not so different from getting feedback from a writers’ group or your manager – except the producer or exec or director may have the power to fire you and hire someone else to rewrite you.

If you don’t want to get fired, it helps to have an understanding of the politics behind note sessions. Ostensibly these sessions are simply an opportunity for experienced storytellers to give you feedback that will help you improve the screenplay. In reality there is typically a lot more going on.

First, the people giving you notes probably have agendas other than simply making the screenplay better. They may need to get the movie down to a certain budget level or rating. They may be hoping to build a part to attract a particular movie star. They may be trying to impress their boss or justify their job by “saving” a project – even if it doesn’t need saving. They may actually be trying to save a project that they know is in danger of being cancelled. There may be politics and rivalries in the executive suite that you know nothing about that affect the nature of the notes you are given.

True story (no names to protect the guilty): A writer was hired by a studio to work with a director to rewrite a project. The studio asked the writer to help convince the director that the story needed major changes. Meanwhile the director asked the writer to help him convince the studio that the story was fine the way it was.

It is not uncommon to be given notes by two people with differing visions of the project. The studio executive may want the story to go one way while the producer wants it another way. The writer is stuck in the middle to negotiate the compromise, while never being able to acknowledge the disagreement even exists. Sometimes you’ll get conflicting notes from two different people in the same meeting. Nobody ever points out the impossibility of doing both things.

True story (no names to protect the guilty): A writer was given contradictory notes by two executives during a meeting. Each executive called him after the meeting to tell him that their notes were the ones the writer had to pay attention to, and that he could ignore the other executive’s notes.

Ideally the people who give you notes are extremely qualified and good at story development. And often this is the case. But just as often you will get notes from someone who really knows nothing about writing or how to talk to writers. It seems more and more people are empowered to give notes these days. When a twenty-two year-old with a business degree starts lecturing you on how to make the characters more compelling, you might start to wonder about the wisdom of the Hollywood system.

Even worse, sometimes the person giving the notes hasn’t actually read the material, or hasn’t read it all the way through. Sometimes they read it quickly, perhaps while on the treadmill or being constantly interrupted with phone calls. Yet you are expected to take the notes seriously.

Obviously, if you are getting notes from multiple people, the people won’t all be equally powerful. It helps to know who really holds your fate in their hands. But even there things get complex. You may be working with a producer and a studio executive. You get notes from the executive and do a rewrite. The producer wants to see the rewrite before you turn it in to the studio. The producer then asks you to make some changes – changes that go against the studio exec’s notes. What do you do?

If you figure it out, tell me. Some of these situations are like the Kobayashi Maru test in Star Trek – no win scenarios.

This doesn’t mean notes are bad by definition. In fact, the majority will probably be at least mildly helpful, and some will dramatically improve the story. First drafts are rarely ready to shoot. Several drafts in, everyone loses perspective, especially the writer. Plus, like I said earlier, this is a collaborative process. You ought to be collaborative. Nobody is trying to make a bad movie.

At the end of the day, though, it’s your name on the script. If it fails, you will get blamed no matter who gave you what notes. If I’m going down anyway, I’d rather go down with a screenplay I’m proud of than one I hate.

Despite the politics involved, there are some techniques to navigating the minefield of notes sessions, and techniques to get the most value out of a notes session. After all, the goal is to make the next draft better. I’ll discuss some of these techniques in next week’s post.

Six Techniques to Build Suspense in a Scene

(SPOILERS: Little Miss Sunshine, Notorious, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Abyss, The Silence of the Lambs)

Suspense is a powerful screenwriting tool. It gets the audience emotionally and viscerally involved in the story. When we think of suspense we usually think of thrillers, but suspense is common in all genres. Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) contains several suspense scenes. Getting grandpa’s body out of the hospital, for example, or the scene where the cop pulls the family over.

Here are six techniques to building a powerful suspense scene:

1. Make Us Care – In order for us to feel suspense we have to care about the outcome of the scene, and that means we have to care about the character. Make sure you’ve given us someone we can root for (or perhaps against). And make the stakes clear for the character. This means letting the audience know what the possible outcomes of the scene are and how they could affect the character.

2. Take Your Time – It is difficult to create tension and anxiety in the audience in a few seconds. Usually we are focused on keeping the pace fast in a screenplay, but suspense requires anticipation. You have to give tension time to build. This doesn’t mean adding mundane, boring stuff to the beginning of your scene. The idea is to introduce the danger early but delay the outcome, so the audience is stuck in that period of anticipation.

3. Build the Obstacles – Obstacles are an important part of any good scene, of course. In a suspense scene, you want the obstacles to steadily increase in difficulty. It also helps to throw in new, unexpected obstacles, especially when you have a ticking clock. Which brings me to…

4. Add a Ticking Clock – A ticking clock is a screenwriting term for a deadline. You’ve put the character in a tough situation, now give them limited time to come up with a solution. This is the idea of a timer on a bomb, counting down as the hero tries to defuse it. The clock doesn’t have to be a literal clock, though. In Notorious (written by Ben Hecht) there is a scene where our heroes are trying to investigate a wine cellar during a party. Suspense is built by the addition of a ticking clock in the form of a dwindling supply of champagne at the party. When the bottles run out, someone will come to the wine cellar for more and catch our heroes where they shouldn’t be. Also, having something "speed up" the clock can be a potential obstacle.

5. Raise the Stakes – Raising the stakes mid-scene can be an effective way to ratchet up the tension. In the scene in Little Miss Sunshine where the family is pulled over by the police officer, the stakes at the beginning of the scene are that they are almost out of time to get to the pageant. But then the officer wants to see what’s in the back of the car – and what’s back there is grandpa’s body. The scene suddenly got a lot more tense.

6. Gradually Increase the Characters’ Anxiety – Sometimes you want an unflappable hero, but this can make it difficult to create tension. If the character isn’t concerned, why should we be? Remember the scene in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (written by George Lucas) when the two Jedi Knights and Jar Jar are in a submarine being attacked by monster fish? The Jedi seem completely unconcerned – and as a result the audience is unconcerned. Compare that to the scene in the Abyss (written by James Cameron) where the heroes are trapped in a submarine filling with water. At first they are unconcerned – they’re engineers, they’ll fix it. But obstacles keep appearing and the water keeps rising. Slowly the characters become more and more anxious – and the audience does too. The key is to have the anxiety rise gradually. If you start with your characters in full-blown panic, you have nowhere to go.

Let’s see how these techniques are used a tense scene in Silence of the Lambs (screenplay by Ted Tally). Clarice has been barred from seeing Hannibal Lecter, but she knows he’s lied about the identity of the killer on the loose. She plans to sneak in to try to get the real information out of Lecter.

We care about the outcome because Clarice is a likeable hero who has put herself at risk to save an innocent. We know that this is her last chance – if she fails here then most likely the killer’s hostage will die.

The scene takes its time. We see Clarice enter the building, mislead the men guarding Lecter, and ride up in the elevator with a young cop. We know she shouldn’t be there so we’re anxious to see what will happen. Because of this, all the pleasantries she exchanges with the guards and Lecter are filled with tension.

The obstacles gradually increase. At first it’s the relatively simple task of getting into the room she’s not supposed to be in. But then Lecter isn’t as cooperative as she hopes. She is going to have to convince him to help. Then when he agrees to help, he won’t just give her the answer; he wants her to figure it out on her own. Finally the conversation is cut short when Clarice’s rival shows up and has her kicked out.

There are a couple of ticking clocks working in the scene. First is the bigger clock in the form of the limited time they have to identify the killer and save the hostage. Second, Clarice knows she only has a certain amount of time before she is discovered.

Lecter raises the stakes in the middle of the scene. Before he will help Clarice, he wants her to tell him about an incident in her past, an incident that Clarice does not want to talk about. The stakes go from saving someone else to personal, emotional stakes for Clarice.

Throughout the scene, Clarice’s anxiety increases as time passes. At first she’s nervous about her deception but not particularly anxious. When Lecter pushes her to reveal her deepest secrets, though, her anxiety increases. And when he forces her to work through the problem herself we see her struggle to stave off rising panic.

All of which adds up to a tense, emotionally powerful scene.

Hollywood Etiquette for Screenwriters

The film business is a little culture unto itself, and like any culture there are rules of etiquette. If you’re new to the business, those rules may not be readily apparent. Here’s a small primer for the screenwriter:

Phone Calls

If you leave a message for someone you have a relationship with (your agent, the producer of a project you’re working on, etc.), the rule of thumb is they should return the call within twenty-four hours. The reverse is true as well, though I would recommend returning the call the same day if you can. If you’re trying to reach someone you don’t have a relationship with, give them at least a week, maybe up to two before calling again. If they don’t return the call after the third message, maybe you should take the hint.

If you’ve given someone a screenplay to read, you should generally allow them two to four weeks before following up with them. And four weeks is better than two. The exception is your representation, who should read the screenplay the weekend after you gave it to them, if not before. Remember, though, that people are busy and be patient.

When you do get someone on the phone, respect their time. Have a reason for the call. You should not be calling your agent to “check in” very often. (They may call you for this reason sometimes, though.) A little chitchat can be nice, but get to the point quickly. They have things they need to be doing. Most calls ought to be shorter than five minutes. This does not apply to phone meetings that are scheduled, such as when you’re going to get notes on a script or pitch an idea.

Meetings

The first rule of meetings is to be on time! The producer or exec will probably make you wait, but you should never keep them waiting. It’s a business meeting, so be reasonably well groomed. Writers dress casually in Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean you can look like you just came from the beach or the gym. Also, bring a pen and notepad or some other way of taking notes. There is a whole art to meetings, some of which I’ve discussed in this post.

Meals

Occasionally you will have a lunch meeting. You may even have breakfast or dinner meetings from time to time. Again, be punctual. These days most people frown upon ordering alcohol during the day. Wine or possibly a cocktail with dinner is usually acceptable, but I’d follow the lead of the person you’re meeting with.

There are no real rules about what food you should order, but I’d suggest avoiding messy, hard-to-eat food that might be distracting, like spaghetti or ribs. Even hamburgers can be piled high with messy, drippy toppings. If you order something like this you’re asking for an embarrassing incident. Sandwiches and salads are safe choices. Most people skip dessert at lunch, and you probably don’t want to order the biggest, most expensive thing on the menu if everyone else is ordering salad. You don’t want to look like a pig. Again, it’s best to follow the lead of the people you’re meeting with.

There’s a hierarchy to who pays at a Hollywood business meal. The good news is the writer is at the bottom of the list. If someone asks for a lunch meeting, you’ll eat for free. If they ask you to split the check, it either says something about their lack of clout or about how little regard they have for you. The exception, of course, is if you offer to take someone to lunch in return for a favor or to get advice on the business. Also, movie stars almost never pay for meals, but you’re not likely to be dining alone with a movie star – the producer will probably be there and pick up the check.

Parties

There are many types of industry parties – premieres, holiday parties, networking parties and parties for producers and agents to show off. The rules of etiquette are the same as any party, except I recommend not overindulging on alcohol. You want to do business with these people – don’t make a fool of yourself. Also, don't be too focused on business. It's a party, nobody wants to be cornered and forced to listen to you pitch your latest project.

Holiday and Other Gifts

Gift giving is a competitive sport in Hollywood. At the holidays, agencies, producers and studios send expensive gifts to the people they do business with and the people they want to do business with. If your career gets some heat around the holidays, you will probably receive some nice gifts.

As near as I can tell, there isn’t a consistent expectation of gift giving on the part of writers. This is good news – half of the writers I’ve asked about this have never given gifts to business contacts at the holidays (we’re talking end of year holidays here – Christmas, Hanukah, New Years – though you generally don’t specify religion with business contacts). So if you do nothing, you will probably be okay. If you are going to give gifts, the most likely candidates would be your representation – agent, manager, attorney. If you are currently working on a project, you might consider giving something to the producer or even the studio executives.

The thing to remember is, unless you are independently very wealthy, you will not be able to impress anyone by how much you spend. Keep in mind, your representatives know how much you make. And unless you’re they’re top client, they probably make more than you. A lot more. And they represent much wealthier people who will be giving them gifts, not to mention the very wealthy producers who will be giving them gifts. That $250 bottle of wine you saved up for – they might appreciate it, but it will be on the low end of what they receive in terms of value.

Far better than taking out a loan to buy expensive gifts is to give something personal. It really is the thought that counts – show them you thought about them when picking the gift. This works both ways. The best holiday gift I got was from a previous manager who gave me a humorous holiday book she thought I’d like. It cost less than $10, but it said something about her taste and about her sense of what my taste was. A favorite book would make a good gift from a writer to their agent or manager. So would something related to a shared hobby or interest. Don't get too personal, though – this is a business contact.

Any other etiquette situations you can think of? Leave a comment and I’ll try to address them.