Getting Notes

 In the latest Let's Schmooze video podcast, I talk with screenwriters Karen Stillman and David Bunello about studio and producer notes.

Karen has written pilots for or sold projects to FOX, ABC, CBS, Freeform, Lifetime, NatGeo and USA. David's credits include Disney’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, 12 ROUNDS: RELOADED, and HALLOWED GROUND, which he also directed

 

 

Audio only:

Ten Comic-Con at Home Panels for Screenwriters

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, San Diego Comic-Con has been cancelled this year. But good news! It has gone online. And it is totally free and open to everyone. So, if you’ve ever wanted to experience Comic-Con but have been unable to get a pass or to travel to San Diego, now’s your chance to get a taste little taste.

You can see the whole line-up of online panels at the website. There are over 350 panels. That’s a lot to wade through. So, below are my ten suggestions for panels that will be of particular interest to film and television writers. Some of these I’ve attended in previous cons, some just look intriguing.

Go to the website to see full descriptions. The con begins Wednesday, July 22nd, but many of the panels will be available indefinitely – which is fortunate because there’s some good ones at the same time.


1. Writing for TV - Sunday 7/26, 1 pm

2. The Art of Adapting Comics to the Screen: David S. Goyer – Saturday 7/25, 11 am

3. Writers Journey: Producers Mentality - Sunday 7/26 3 pm

4. Scary Good TV: A Conversation with Horror’s Top Showrunners - Saturday 7/25, 6 pm

5. Collider: Directors on Directing – Thursday 7/23, 2 pm

6. From Idea to Hired: Books, TV, Film, and Comics (a panel of agents) – Friday 7/24, 1 pm

7. Finance for Creatives – Saturday 7/25, 11 am

8. Authors on the Best Advice I Ever Got – Saturday 7/25, 3 pm

9. The Future of Entertainment – Thursday 7/23, 1 pm

10. Artists as Brand, Rise of the Artist Entrepreneur – Thursday 7/23, 3m

And be sure to watch my Let’s Schmooze Vlog about Comic-Con, networking, and writing in various media. My guests were:

Benjamin Raab - TV writer (Arrow, The Flash) and comic book writer (The Phantom, Green Lantern)

Spiro Skentzos, TV writer (Grimm, Arrow) and host of the “Intro to TV Writing” Comic-Con panel

Eugene Son, animation writer (Avengers Assemble, Star Wars Resistance) and comic book writer (Ultimate Spider-Man)



It’s also available as an audio podcast:

What I Learned at The Portal Virtual Reality Festival

Last weekend I attended The Portal virtual reality festival hosted by Film Independent and LMU. Prior to this I had tried a virtual reality installation at Comic-Con and done a few promotional virtual reality experiences in Google Cardboard, but the technology was still pretty new to me.

I stepped off the elevator into the Playa Vista campus of LMU’s film school – a spacious, airy floor of a large building (full disclosure: I teach a screenwriting class at LMU). I was early for the 90-minute time slot I had reserved. I was directed to a “VR Bar” where I took a seat and was given an Oculus headset loaded with a selection of five short VR experiences to try while I waited. I selected a documentary on tennis player Arthur Ashe. When it was over, I lined up for the main event.

There were eleven virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) installations scattered throughout the space. During my 90-minute time slot, I was able to experience four VR installations and one AR installation. Afterwards, I went back to the VR Bar and watched two more VR experiences (there must be a better term for those!) The eight sessions I ultimately did ranged from three minutes to eighteen minutes in length. Most of the experiences in the main program were done standing where I could turn or walk in the VR or AR space. One of the main experiences, and the experiences at the VR Bar, were done sitting. The installations used a variety of headsets, including the Oculus Go and Vive.

The VR Bar

What Works and What Doesn’t

The virtual reality effect was excellent overall. The sense of being in a 3D space was convincing. Most of the programs had extremely high production value, though there were a couple that seemed more like student projects. Some of the headsets were wired to computers, which felt a bit unsafe in the standing VR experiences. In one, the narrative led me to turn continuously clockwise to follow the action, causing the cable to wrap around me. The wireless headsets were much better, though all the headsets rested heavily on my cheeks.

Creatively, the virtual reality in most of the experiences didn’t seem to add much over what the experience of watching a traditional filmed version of the material might have been. There were two notable exceptions. First was an experience called Gloomy which was a Tim Burton-esque Claymation piece in the vein of Nightmare Before Christmas. It played out in dioramas with characters that appeared to be a few inches tall, sort of like looking into animated doll houses or toy displays. It was really cool, but the style wouldn’t be appropriate for many stories.

The second was a piece called Traveling While Black, a documentary about the Green Book. It was mostly set in a famous Black-friendly diner. It was a sit-down installation, which often positioned me in a booth in the virtual diner. There were mirrors along one side, which were used creatively – for example, showing a scene from the 50’s in the mirrors while inside the diner it was present day. Also, there was an interview with Tamir Rice’s mother* where the effect was as if sitting across from her in a booth as she told her story. It was incredibly powerful.

Traveling While Black Installation

In other cases, the VR was either extraneous, simply letting the setting expand into my peripheral vision, or downright annoying. Any time the camera moved in the virtual space while I was standing still in the physical space, I felt disoriented and off balance. A particularly bad scene involved standing on the front of an animated train zooming through the countryside. It was so disorienting I turned to look at the train conductor instead of the scenery. A friend told me she did the same thing in that experience.

Also annoying was the sitting experiences that required me to turn all the way around in my chair to view action behind me. For example, one scene in the documentary on Arthur Ashe put me next to the net on a tennis court. Ashe shook hands with his opponent and then walked behind me. I watched the opponent get into position and then stand waiting. I realized I was supposed to look back at Ashe directly behind me. Twisting around was uncomfortable, and I immediately wished they’d placed the camera so the action stayed in front of me. The idea of VR is that you have a 360-degree environment, but it’s still usually most satisfying just to look forward at the action.

The AR installation I tried had some advantages. In AR, you see a virtual overlay on top of the real world. Though the particular AR experience I did was fairly simplistic – an actor delivering a Shakespeare monologue while a tree went through its seasons behind him – it was nice to be able to move around the virtual actor with no disorientation or fear of falling. Although many of the VR experiences promised you could move within the VR space, I rarely took more than a couple steps in any direction. Any more would have risked stumbling or bumping into the walls. 

The Economics of VR

It was clear to me that VR has some big structural disadvantages for large audience venues that mean it will never replace movie theaters or theme parks. First, most of the standing VR experiences were in large empty rooms to allow the participant to move around safely. Almost all allowed only a single user at a time, although a couple allowed two people on opposite sides of the room. That means there was a significant amount of space required per participant.

At The Portal festival, it appeared that there were about thirty people allowed in each time window. Most participants still only got to do three or four of the eleven experiences in the 90 minutes, despite each experience being relatively short. I really hustled to squeeze in five. Also, there were probably twice as many festival staffers as users at any given time. Typically, one staffer was in the room to start the VR, clean the headset between uses, and make sure the participant didn’t trip or run into anything while in the VR space. An additional staffer stood outside reserving times for participants, and a couple managed the main check-in table.

The standing VR experiences are by their nature space-intensive, labor-intensive endeavors. It’s hard to imagine how they could be effectively done on a scale serving hundreds of customers a night like a movie theater. The seated VR experiences allowed more people to participate simultaneously in a smaller space, but if you’re just sitting in a chair with your personal headset, you might as well be at home.

Home use makes more sense for VR, but it still seems as though seated VR will be more practical. In the installations at the festival, there were no coffee tables to trip me or lamps I could accidentally knock over. How many people will be willing to dedicate an empty room of their house or apartment to VR?

VR is often talked about as the future of entertainment. While there are clearly things that VR does better than film or television, there is a lot it doesn’t do as well. I think it still remains to be seen how much mass appeal the technology has.

*Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old unarmed boy killed by a police officer in Cleveland in 2014.

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 The Hollywood Pitching Bible

“ ‘Bible’ is the right word. This is the Truth about pitching. Just do what it says.”
- Gary Goldman (Writer/Producer, "Total Recall," "Minority Report," "Big Trouble in Little China")

The Care and Feeding of Your Professional Network

In my last post, I discussed some ways to meet people in the business. This is crucial, as most screenwriters get their breaks through referrals. But meeting someone is only the start of the networking process. Today, I’ll discuss some things to keep in mind when you do meet someone, and tips to keep the relationship alive afterwards.

1. Be aware of the environment. There are many ways you might meet industry contacts. When you do meet someone, make sure your actions are appropriate for the environment. Someone at a party does not want to listen to your lengthy film pitch. In social situations, keep the interaction mostly social. I once met an actor at a film festival party, and the moment they found out I was a screenwriter, they handed me their headshot. I guess they expected me to carry the headshot around for the rest of the party. I didn’t – I conveniently forgot it on a table. On the other hand, in a more professional situation (such as a pitch fest) stay professional.

2. Build relationships first. Too often people think of networking as meeting someone and getting them to read a script. But when you first meet someone, they have very little incentive to help you, and may even be afraid to hear your idea – for all they know, you could be a crazy person who will sue them for some imagined copyright infringement. Real networking is about creating a network of people who can help you along in your career over the long term. And you never know where an opportunity might come from. Sometimes a chance meeting leads to a big break years later in a way you never could have anticipated.

3. Start by asking questions. A good way to start a relationship with someone more established than you is to ask for advice. Most people love to give advice! Don’t overwhelm them – ask a question or two. And don’t ask just to ask, actually listen to the advice – you may learn something of value. If you reach a point of familiarity where you don’t think it’s presumptuous, you may ask to have coffee with your contact to get more detailed advice. If so, come prepared with a list of questions. And pay for their coffee!

4. Have a Good Elevator Pitch – But Don’t Use It in an Elevator! Although I don’t suggest initiating a pitch to someone you just met in a casual environment, often they may ask about your project. If you meet a producer at a party, for example, and say you’re a screenwriter, the producer might ask what you’re working on. This is the perfect time to wow them with your great thirty-second pitch. They probably don’t want to hear more than that right then, but if they like the idea, they may ask to read it when it’s done. In any case, you want to sound like you’re writing cool stuff. Elevator pitches are named based on the idea that if you happen to be in an elevator with a VIP you will have a captive audience for about thirty seconds. But I wouldn’t advocate a pitch in that scenario. You are more likely to end up with a restraining order than a movie deal.

5. Networking is a Two-Way Street. You may not think you have anything to offer an industry professional, but you probably do. Even simple things, like retweeting them or sending a complimentary email about their latest project can get them to think of you in a positive light. If you hear of an event or see an article they might like, send it to them. But be judicious… don’t bombard them with the equivalent of junk mail. Maybe there's someone among your other industry contacts they would like to meet – one of the best ways to network is to help other people network. You also may be able to help them out in some way outside of the business – a discount on something, for example. The point is, don’t just think about what they can do for you, think about what you can do for them.

6. Social media can be your friend. It’s much easier to maintain contacts these days than when I was starting out. After you meet someone at a party or networking event, you can friend/follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This also makes it easy to shoot them quick messages. Don’t abuse this ability. But if you’re a good follower and supporter, social media can keep a relationship alive and help people remember you months after you met them.

7. Do stuff that shows your talent. It’s also never been easier to show people what you can do. Depending on where your talents lie, you can make short films and post them online, write short stories for web magazines, write sketches for a local sketch comedy troupe, create a web comic... there are tons of options. And then you can let your network know about these accomplishments. It gives you an excuse to contact people, to remind them you’re there, and show them you are an active creator. Even just posting funny tweets or cool Instagram images can keep you on people’s radar.

8. It’s not a contact if you’re afraid to use it. I’ve heard people talk about a big Hollywood VIP they know, but then say they don’t want to ask this VIP to read a script because they don’t want to spoil the relationship. Caution is a good instinct. But if you’re a writer, the ultimate purpose of any business relationship is to get read. If you can’t ask someone to read something, then they aren’t really a contact. So put aside your fear and make the ask. That said…

9. When you ask for a read, do it professionally. Make sure you’ve built up the relationship enough that it’s reasonable to ask for a favor. Ask before you send the material. Make sure you give them a script that is your best work. Don’t ask someone to read something new too often. Once you’ve sent a script, don’t badger them about whether they’ve read it – a follow-up three or four weeks later is fine, but they are busy people and you are asking for their time. And if they don’t respond to the material, or they give you harsh critical feedback, be gracious. Telling you what’s wrong with your script is also a favor.

10. Say thank you! Finally, when someone does something to help you out, even if it’s just giving you advice, say thank you. A handwritten card is especially appreciated. Gifts are usually not necessary, but if you do want to give them something, the thoughtfulness of the gift is much more important than how much you spent.

Most of this can be summed up as: be nice. Self-involvement is not attractive. Neither is desperation. Just treat people well, show them what you have to offer, and the networking will take care of itself.

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The third edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible is out! If you are in Los Angeles, Ken Aguado and I will be doing a book signing at Book Soup at 7 pm on September 26th. We’d love to see you there! You can RSVP here which will help us ensure we have enough books on hand.

"Luck, they say, is when preparation meets opportunity.  Consider yourself lucky that Douglas Eboch & Ken Aguado have written a book that tells you not only how to achieve a screenwriting career, but also sustain it over time."
-Lem Dobbs, screenwriter ( Dark City, The Limey, The Score, The Company You Keep, Haywire)

Five Ways to Defeat Writer's Block

The subject of writer’s block comes up fairly frequently at writing panels and conferences, which suggests it’s a pretty big concern for a lot of writers. There is some debate about exactly what it is, or even if it actually exists. My position is that if you think you can’t write because of some kind of mental block, then by definition you have writer’s block.

I think writer’s block can come in many forms and have many sources. I’ve certainly experienced that feeling of being stuck, that I don’t know what to do next on a particular story or script. But I’ve also developed a writing process and techniques to get past that. I can’t remember the last time writer’s block held me up for a significant amount of time. Here are the five most common techniques I use to keep the words flowing:

1. Outline

This is potentially controversial, so let me explain. Fiction writers often divide writing processes into two approaches: pantsers and plotters. Pantsers – as in “seat of the pants” just start writing and see where the story takes them. Plotters outline first. I’m a plotter. When I talk to pantsers, most readily admit they end up throwing away 70-80 percent of the first draft, or that they often go off in the wrong direction for dozens of pages and have to backtrack. This leads me to believe that both pantsers and plotters are doing the same thing in those early stages – figuring out the story. It’s just that pantsers are doing it in draft format while plotters are doing it in outline format. (Not that plotters’ first drafts are perfect, but we typically need to do a lot less revision.)

Personally, I’d rather not spend time working out dialogue and details for scenes that have a high likelihood of getting cut later. And once I have an outline, I always know what comes next. That eliminates most instances of writer’s block. And I’m not married to the outline – if for some reason the story takes me in a new direction, I’ll often pause to re-outline the remainder of the screenplay.

But there are plenty of successful writers who are pantsers, and I feel that writing process is a very individual thing, so if pantsing it works for you, go right ahead. However, if you’re a pantser who often gets writer’s block, maybe you’re not really a pantser. Maybe you just fell in love with the romantic idea of “letting the story guide you.” Maybe try outlining and see if it makes your life easier.

2. Try It Both Ways

Sometimes I get stuck because I can’t decide which way to go with a character or story. For example, do I want the love interest to be an ex-girlfriend coming back into the hero’s life, or someone the character is meeting for the first time? One of the advantages of outlining is I can try the story both ways. I’ll do a quick-and-dirty outline one way, and a quick-and-dirty outline the other way. These outlines may only be a page or two, just to follow through on the reverberations of each choice. Then I can decide which way I like better. Usually I know the answer before I even finish the two outlines. One just feels right. Even if you’re a pantser, you can try this technique when you get stuck – it won’t kill you to think ahead a little bit!

3. Let It Be Bad

Sometimes I get intimidated by the scene to come and kind of freeze up. I think this is common for writers. We’re imagining this great scene, but we’re afraid we won’t be able to pull it off. Or we know the plot point we have to deliver, but don’t have a good idea of how to realize it. My way to solve this is to just let myself write a bad version of the scene. Then I’ll have something to rewrite later, and I’ll be able to keep moving forward. I tell myself that I'll make this scene great in the next draft. This helps me get over the intimidation, and often the resulting scene turns out to be pretty good. And if it doesn’t… well, that’s what rewrites are for!

4. Let Yourself Be Bad

This is for the times you just don’t feel like writing. You’re tired, you don’t feel creative. But I’m a big believer in writing every day. Making it a habit makes it easier to sit down and get something done. So I tell myself to just write for an hour, even if it’s bad, even if I only get a few usable lines of dialogue out. The goal is to establish the habit. And once again, often these “bad” writing sessions end up being quite productive. (I prefer setting a goal of writing for a certain amount of time per day rather than producing a certain number of pages. It takes the pressure off.)

5. Take a Walk

If I’m wrestling with a particularly thorny scene or character issue, I find it helps to take a walk. (Other writers I know go for a drive or take a shower, but a walk seems more environmentally friendly!) There is something about a little minor physical exertion without the need to concentrate that seems to free up creativity. In fact, there’s actual scientific research that backs up the idea. So if you find yourself stuck, a walk around the block might just be the solution.

What techniques do you have for overcoming writer’s block? Let us know in the comments!

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Get The Three Stages of Screenwriting

"I used to always recommend that new writers read Story as their first and most important introduction to the craft of screenwriting, but from now on, I’m going to recommend The Three Stages of Screenwriting."
-LA Screenwriter Review

Abuse in Hollywood

The Harvey Weinstein scandal is appalling, not just because of the sleazy things he did, but because most everyone recognizes it is not an isolated case in Hollywood. There’s even a slang term for it – “casting couch.” There has been a lot of focus on how willing Hollywood is to look away from bad behavior if the villain is successful. Unfortunately, that’s often true, at least as long as the villain is helping your career. (Hollywood is also well known for schadenfreude, and I’m sure many people are secretly delighted to see Harvey fall.)

But I think there’s an even bigger root cause to the problem: the fact that far more people want to be actors, writers, directors, or producers than there are acting, writing, directing, and producing jobs. This gives those with power to grant those jobs an incredible weapon for abuse. You don’t dare speak up for fear of damaging your career.

And this does not just come into play in sexual harassment. We’ve all heard stories about verbally and physically abusive executives and producers. It also causes pressure on production crews to keep their mouths shut when working conditions become abusive. If you complain, you could be out of a job. Even worse, you could be branded a “troublemaker” and have difficulty finding another job.

This can have horrible consequences. A stuntwoman was killed on the set of Deadpool 2. The investigation is ongoing, but apparently a crewmember had warned producers that the stuntwoman was not qualified for that particular stunt, and the warning was ignored. Recently an actor from Riverdale got into a serious car accident driving home after an extremely long day on set. He was okay, but more than one crew person has been killed or seriously injured in the last few years because they fell asleep at the wheel after a marathon shoot.

Writers also face abuse, though typically with less serious consequences. It comes in the form of things like free rewrites – when the writer has been contracted for a draft, but the producer demands multiple rewrites before they will “accept” the draft and trigger final payment. The writer can refuse, of course, and if it’s a WGA contract, the producer must pay up. But then you might get that “troublemaker” label.

How do the abusers get away with this behavior? They know there’s always someone willing to step into your place and take the abuse.

At this point I want to state very clearly: Anybody who tells you they can destroy your career is lying. Many people may be able to cost you a job, though in the scheme of your career, that job is probably not going to make much difference (and as you rise through the ranks, the number of people with that kind of power will decline). There are a handful of people who can do serious damage to your career, but really only about a dozen in the whole industry (Unfortunately, at one time, Harvey Weinstein was on that list).

The reality is most people who make those kinds of threats are bluffing and counting on you being too afraid or naïve to doubt them. I once saw a third-rate reality TV producer tell a roomful of tape loggers they would “never work in Hollywood again” if they revealed secrets of the show. It was all I could do not to laugh. Unless their career goals were to log tapes on niche cable reality shows the rest of their lives, there was not much this producer could do to them. But I noticed one kid who looked terrified – this was his first job and he believed her.

So what can we do about abuse in Hollywood?

First, stand up for yourself. I wish I could say this came without costs. If nothing else, you probably won’t be able to work for the abuser anymore (though perhaps that’s not such a bad thing). And Hollywood is a small town – word spreads, and people can damage your reputation if they choose. Fortunately, as people like Harvey Weinstein and Roger Ailes discovered, we’ve reached a point where the victim of sexual harassment may have just as much power to destroy the abuser’s career. From now on, if you reject a power figure’s sexual advance and they threaten your career, I would just say the words, “Harvey Weinstein.” I imagine they’ll change their tune very quickly.

In other areas, like pressure on stuntmen to do stunts they aren’t comfortable with, or pressure on writers to do free rewrites, the more people who stand up for themselves, the harder it becomes for abusers to just fire someone and move on to the next willing victim. This is hard, because it takes individual courage in hopes the collective will back you up. But if you don’t stand up for yourself, then how will things ever change?

That brings me to the second thing we can do: stand up for each other. When you see someone being put in an unacceptable situation, back them up. Be the person who spoke up on the Deadpool 2 set. If someone refuses to do something dangerous, or complains about a production running over legal working hours, join their complaint. Sometimes AD's and producers and so on really don't intend to endanger people, but their job is hard. It's easy to dismiss one person as a whiner, but if multiple people speak up, it just might cause that supervisor to reconsider what they're asking.

Third, we should look to the unions. Unions have working rules to prevent most kinds of abuse, but they do depend on members reporting that abuse (see “stand up for yourself.”) IATSE has rules about working hours and turnaround times. The WGA has rules about free rewrites.

Of course not all productions are union. A lot of times you have to do non-union jobs in order to reach the point where you can join the union. I would suggest that if you are going to take a crew position on a non-union production, you ask that the crew deal memo specify that the appropriate union’s workplace rules apply. The union won’t be able to enforce it, but at least you’ll establish expectations, and you’ll have some legal recourse if the contract is violated.

Back around 2006, a message board called “Writer Action” formed. It was for WGA members only, but was not part of the WGA. Part of that message board allowed members to anonymously rate the behavior of producers, agents, and executives, including on things like “Did they demand free rewrites?”

Many producers and executives freaked out when they heard this. They did not like the idea that they might be held accountable for their behavior. They called in "unfair" - which is hilarious, when you think about it.

Maybe all Hollywood unions should institute public databases of complaints. Allow members to register complaints anonymously on anyone they work for. Then post a database of those complaints online that anyone could check. One or two complaints against someone wouldn’t have much effect, but if you saw that a producer had dozens of complaints against them, you might think twice about working for them.

Also, many union members are responsible for hiring and supervising other union members. Cinematographers generally pick their own camera operators and gaffers, for example. Showrunners hire their writing staffs. So when someone files a complaint, the union could look to see if there was another union member who should have been protecting them. Then they could send that person a friendly reminder note of the union’s rules and the obligation of supervisors to protect the rights of those they supervise.

It won’t be easy to change the culture in Hollywood. But as Harvey Weinstein's fall shows, it is possible.


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 The Hollywood Pitching Bible

This book is therapy for anyone having trouble wrapping their head around the technique of pitching. I wish I had Doug and Ken's wisdom earlier in my career.
Eric Heisserer (writer, "Arrival," "Lights Out," "Hours")

The Last (Regular) LetsSchmooze Blog Post

I started this blog in 2008 – that’s almost eight full years of weekly blog posts (with an occasional week off). This week, I’m bringing that streak to an end. It’s been fun and satisfying and occasionally wearying. Lately I’ve struggled to come up with new topics that are interesting and helpful. So I’ve decided to quit while I’m ahead (hopefully I’m not too late!).

The blog will remain online for the foreseeable future, so you can read older posts if you missed some. And I may still post here from time to time when I have something to say that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else (I suspect I will continue to post my annual “Ten Best Written Screenplay” lists, for example). But I am letting go of the obligation to post something new every week. If you want to be notified when I do post, you can subscribe by email or follow me on Twitter (@dougeboch).

I thank those of you who read the blog loyally, and I’m especially grateful those who commented on posts, debated my ideas, or sent me notes of appreciation. It’s great to know that this effort was not in vain!

If you’d like more of my thoughts on screenwriting or the screenwriting business, may I humbly suggest my two books:

The Three Stages of Screenwriting

"I used to always recommend that new writers read Story as their first and most important introduction to the craft of screenwriting, but from now on, I’m going to recommend The Three Stages of Screenwriting."
-LA Screenwriter Review  

 The Hollywood Pitching Bible

“ ‘Bible’ is the right word. This is the Truth about pitching. Just do what it says.”
- Gary Goldman (Writer/Producer, "Total Recall," "Minority Report," "Big Trouble in Little China")

"The 100" Controversy

(Spoilers: The 100, Person of Interest)

Today I am wading into the controversy about the death of a major lesbian character on The 100. If you’re aware of the controversy, you’ll know I’m pretty late to the discussion – but you’ll understand why I’m bringing it up now in a bit. Also, full disclosure: I am friends with the writer of the episode in question, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (though we haven’t discussed the episode or the controversy).

If you are unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, the CW show The 100 featured a lesbian relationship between its main character and another character. When the main character’s girlfriend was killed off in the middle of the season, there was an outcry from the LGBT community. The primary reason for the anger appears to be that there are so few LGBT characters on television, though there was also anger at the way in which the character was killed off (in a non-heroic manner immediately after the consummation of the relationship) and in the showrunner's cavalier handling of the uproar afterwards.

On the other side of the argument, it’s important to remember that this is a show where many characters – including heroic and well-loved characters – have died. And the actress who played the character, Alycia Debnam Carey, had taken a major role on Fear the Walking Dead, so likely the character was removed partly because the actress wasn’t going to be able to star in two shows at the same time for very long.

There is certainly good reason to complain about the lack of heroic LGBT characters on television, and about how many of them end up dying. There should be more heroic, happy LGBT characters on television who survive all the way through their series. My fear is that this goal could be jeopardized by the backlash against The 100. Here’s how:

I read an interview with some of the writers of Person of Interest a few weeks ago. The interviewer asked them about the lesbian couple on that show and whether the controversy from The 100 might cause them to avoid killing either of those characters. The writers sidestepped, but the question is a bit disturbing. It happens that the characters on Person of Interest weren’t originally intended to be lesbians. But the actresses had great chemistry so the writers decided to give them a romantic relationship. The trouble is, we’re talking about another show where main characters have died. If making those two characters lesbian takes otherwise valid plot options away from the writers, the writers might not make that choice in the future.

I’m writing this post precisely because I just encountered that in something I’m outlining. I have a married couple in my story. Initially I conceived of them as a heterosexual couple. But it occurred to me that my story could use more diversity. I looked to see which character or characters I could make gay, and I thought it would be cool to turn this couple into a lesbian couple.

The only problem is, one of them is going to die in the story. This isn’t because they’re lesbians – that plot decision was made while they were still a man and a woman. But now I’m wondering whether I should make them a lesbian couple instead. Will people attack me when one of the characters dies as they have The 100?

So The 100 controversy is discouraging me from putting LGBT characters in my story. And that’s not a good thing.

I also recently read a roundtable in the Hollywood Reporter that included Lee Daniels, who said that it offends him when White writers write Black characters. I certainly don’t want to speak for him, but in context I think what he really meant was it offends him when primarily Black cast shows have primarily White writing staffs. And I agree that’s pretty offensive.

But the way he said it – that it offends him when White writers write Black characters – feels like a warning to White writers not to write Black characters. And that would mean less diversity in casts, a bad thing. I sympathize with the frustrations of communities that have been traditionally underrepresented, but it’s important to couch those frustrations carefully. You don't want to turn characters from that group into a "third rail" that discourages showing them on screen.

As I said, there was more to The 100 controversy than just the death of a lesbian character. It could and should have been handled better. Let’s just make sure that we affirm efforts toward diversity and that when someone missteps we couch our criticism in a way that’s productive rather than destructive.

By the way, I’ve decided to leave the characters in my story lesbians.

Icebox Questions

(SPOILERS: Sweet Home Alabama, The Matrix)

When I was doing rewrites on Sweet Home Alabama, I got into an argument with the producers about a point of story logic. In the story, Melanie goes back to Alabama to secure a divorce from her estranged husband Jake. In my original spec script, Jake signs the divorce papers at the end of Act Two. The producers wanted to move that to the midpoint for valid reasons of character arc.

The only problem was, once Melanie has the divorce papers she has no reason to stay in Alabama. Her fiancé, friends, and business associates in New York are already pressuring her to get back home. Yet in the producers’ version, she would hang out in Alabama for the next couple of days for no apparent reason. The producers argued that the audience won’t notice or care. I wasn’t so sure.

The producers won the battle on the script, as they usually seem to do. And it turns out they were right about the audience: I’ve heard a lot of criticism of the movie over the years, but nobody has questioned why Melanie doesn’t hop the first plane home after getting the divorce papers. (We did try to sell the idea that she sticks around because she feels she needs to apologize to all of her friends for her bad behavior before she leaves. If you have to make a change, you ought to do it the best way you can!)

I still think this is a bit of a logic problem in the movie, but I now realize it’s what Alfred Hitchcock called an “icebox question.” An icebox question is a logic flaw that the audience doesn’t think about until they’ve gone home and are getting a snack from the icebox (refrigerator for us Americans). Hitchcock’s theory was that by then the audience has already firmly decided whether they liked the movie or not, and belated recognition of logic holes wouldn’t change their mind.

I think this is also related to the saying that “The only rule in screenwriting is don’t be boring.” (Not sure who coined that one.) Audiences want to be entertained, and as long as they’re entertained, they won’t start picking too hard at the story. Stories have an emotional logic that trumps plot logic. The audience doesn’t question Melanie sticking around Alabama for a couple more days because they want her to stick around Alabama for a couple more days.

The Matrix (written by Lilly & Lana Wachowski) also demonstrates this theory in action. Toward the end, Neo is shot inside the Matrix and therefore dying in the real world, according to the well-established rules of the story. But then Trinity tells him he can’t die because the Oracle prophesied that the person she loved would be The One and she loves Neo. She kisses him and he comes back to life.

There is no narrative logic as to why Trinity’s kiss has the power to resurrect. It’s a logic hole. But it is absolutely right in terms of emotional logic. It’s the culmination of Trinity’s emotional journey, the culmination of Neo’s internal journey, it plays off classic fairy tale mythology, and most of all, it’s what we want to happen. I think it also matters that it occurs late in the movie when the audience is deeply invested in the story. Once we have bought into the story, it takes bigger logic bumps to knock us out.

So as a writer, it’s important not to let plot logic trump emotional logic. The trouble is, how do you tell the difference between a serious logic hole that will take the audience out of the story and an icebox question? Because serious logic holes can absolutely ruin your movie.

In my experience, audiences don’t generally get too hung up on timeline issues like the one in Sweet Home Alabama. They don’t calculate how long it would really take to get from point A to point B or to write a computer program or for wet clothes to dry, as long as it's not blatantly unrealistic. They also don’t get overly concerned about things like how long a character’s been awake or whether they had a chance to go to the bathroom or if they’ve eaten recently (unless you explicitly make those things part of the story). They usually don’t track the ammunition in guns or the amount of gas in a car’s tank. In real life these kinds of limits are annoying and we're happy to look the other way if the movie ignores those annoyances for the sake of fun.

But probably the most important thing is to test your screenplay with a selection of friendly readers who will give you brutal and honest feedback. If those readers don’t notice a logic hole, then you might be safe ignoring it. If someone does point it out, though, you better figure out a way to fix it. It isn’t an icebox question if it occurs to the reader during the read.

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Check out my book, The Three Stages of Screenwriting.

“In the crowded field of scriptwriting how-to books, Doug Eboch’s Three Stages of Screenwriting is a standout and a must-read. Why? Three solid reasons: He really, truly knows what he’s talking about. It will help everyone, from novice to pro, become a better writer. And, most impressive of all, it is entertaining as hell - as engaging and fun to read as one of Doug’s scripts.”
-Ross LaManna (Rush Hour)

How I Broke In

Today I thought I would share the story of how I got my start as a professional screenwriter, along with some of the lessons I learned along the way.

When I was a kid I saw Star Wars. I was so blown away by this movie that I read everything I could get my hands on about it – which wasn’t easy back then. This was before DVD commentary tracks and shows like Extra. As my young mind was devouring articles in Time magazine and the like, I kept reading about this guy named George Lucas who had a job called director. Sounds like a fun job, I thought. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I grow up.

When I was growing up I didn’t know anybody in the movie business. In fact, I was so far removed from Hollywood that when I told friends, family, and guidance counselors that I wanted to be a movie director, they all thought that sounded pretty great. Nobody knew how insanely competitive the field was or how many very talented people utterly failed in the business. I pursued directing the same way a high school student in Juneau, Alaska (where I lived) would pursue engineering. I researched what colleges were the best in the field and sent off my applications. I ended up at George Lucas’s alma mater: The University of Southern California.

As an undergrad I was in the production program. That is essentially a program to teach directing, though most people unofficially emphasized one technical area or another. I emphasized cinematography. When I graduated I worked back-breaking, low paying jobs doing such high tech tasks as coiling cable and hauling gear on music video shoots, or holding the boom on public service announcement shoots.

“At least you’re working on film sets,” people would say. It didn’t make me feel better. Turns out, having any job in film wasn’t enough for me. I had been working on screenplays on those days when I wasn’t working on set (there were a lot of those days), and I’d completed three of them. None were very good, but I enjoyed writing and at least one of my ideas felt like it could maybe be a movie if it was better.

So I decided to go back to USC to study screenwriting in their graduate program. Fortunately, they let me. The program taught me an enormous amount about the craft of screenwriting, and once I’d learned those skills, I discovered I was actually a pretty good writer. For my thesis, I wrote a romantic comedy script called “Melanie’s Getting Married” about a sophisticated woman from New York who must return to her small hometown to convince her estranged white trash husband to give her a divorce so she can marry someone else. It was very loosely based on one of the scripts I’d written before going to school.

Lesson 1: Learn your craft.

When I graduated, USC sent out a list of all the graduating students’ thesis script log lines to producers and studios around town. From that I got a few dozen calls requesting to read the script. I guess that was a little unusual – the power of a good log line. From there, I met with half a dozen producers who liked the script. Half of those were actually real producers with offices and everything.

Lesson 2: Create a good log line.

One of the companies I met with was MBST. The intern, a woman named Emily, had read my script – because interns are the people who read film student scripts – and recommended it to her boss. The boss liked it and they brought me in for a very nice meeting. “Send us your next script,” they said. Which is pretty much what everyone said.

So I started temping. And at night, I worked on another script, one I’d started in school, an action adventure called “Undertow.” I didn’t know at the time you were supposed to stick with one genre early in your career. (Note: “Undertow” has not been produced yet, though another movie with a similar title has since been released.)

I sent “Undertow” to the people who liked “Melanie.” When I called MBST, I discovered Emily was now head of development. She really liked “Undertow,” but the company didn’t do action movies (thus the advantage of sticking to one genre). However she thought I should have an agent and offered to make some recommendations for me.

Her assistant, Aghi, had a friend who had just been made an agent at a large boutique literary agency. She asked if she could send the script to him. “Of course,” I said. That turned out to be the agent I signed with. (And Aghi became head of development at MBST a short time later.)

Lesson 3: Be nice to the interns and assistants. They control your fate.

The agent sent out “Undertow” and Neal Moritz at Original Films liked it. We let him take it to three studios, all of whom also liked it. But all of them decided it was just too expensive. The project died, but Neal was pleased with the reaction and asked me to come in for a meeting. They asked what else I had and I gave them “Melanie’s Getting Married.” Neal didn’t go for it - not his genre - but a protégé producer named Stokely Chaffin really liked it.

Stokely gave me some feedback on the script and I did a rewrite, but she was not able to get Original to buy it at the time. I went on to other spec scripts and got a permanent job at Disney Feature Animation to pay the bills. I won a screenwriting contest with a science fiction thriller script called “Overload” (also still unproduced) but otherwise wasn’t having much success. Eventually I parted ways with my agent.

Then one day my phone rang. It was Stokely. I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly two years but it turns out she’d been pushing my “Melanie’s Getting Married” script the whole time and finally convinced Original to option it. We did the deal and I took the small option payment and bought a brand new china hutch to replace the cheap shelving that held my liquor supply (hey, I’m a writer). And then I went back to the day job.

A couple years passed. Other writers were hired to rewrite my script. Actors and directors came and went on the project. I would get phone calls from Stokely telling me the good or bad news and learned not to invest too much emotion into any of it. But they kept renewing the option and I kept cashing the checks and buying myself little presents. I also kept writing and got a new agent based on another script, this one a broad comedy (I still hadn’t learned to stick with one genre).

Lesson 4: Always keep writing.

Then one day Disney and Original actually made the movie. Nobody was as surprised as me. It had been re-titled Sweet Home Alabama and starred Reese Witherspoon. It resembled my original script more than I might have guessed after all that time, and I was awarded “Story by” credit after a brutal Writers Guild arbitration process. The movie set a record for biggest September opening ($38 million) and went on to earn over $100 million domestically. I made enough to pay off my student loans and quit my day job.

People called me an overnight success.

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Want to learn your craft? Check out my book: The Three Stages of Screenwriting.

Announcing My Upcoming Screenwriting Book

Big announcement, Lets Schmooze readers. I am near publication of a book on screenwriting: Mastering the Three Stages of Screenwriting. It should be available in a few weeks – I will certainly keep you posted. I thought I’d include an excerpt from the Introduction which explains why I wrote the book and what my approach is. Hope you enjoy!

Introduction

Why another book on screenwriting?

Fair question. There are a lot of them out there. Let me tell you why I went to the trouble of writing this and maybe that will help explain why I think the world needs another screenwriting book.

I became a screenwriter because of Star Wars and Time magazine. After I saw Star Wars as a kid, I became obsessed with it, reading everything I could about the movie. At that time, there wasn’t much information available about how movies were made. No DVD commentaries, movie magazines, or movie websites for a kid to seek out. But my dad’s Time magazine had an article about Star Wars, so I read it. And that’s where I learned about a guy named George Lucas who was a director. “Sounds like a fun job,” I thought. “That’s what I’m going to be when I grow up.”

Not such an easy thing when you go to high school in Juneau, Alaska and don’t know anybody in the film business. I went to the University of Southern California film school because I learned that’s where George Lucas went… and my guidance counselor didn’t even know you could major in film.

I started out focusing mostly on cinematography, and when I graduated I worked small jobs as a production assistant, gaffer, or grip. On the side, I was working on screenplays. I discovered I had more of a passion for the writing part of making movies than anything else. So I went back to grad school, majoring in screenwriting. And over time I discovered writing was the thing people were most willing to pay me to do.

I learned story structure (of the three-act variety) in grad school back at USC. I’ve also read dozens of books on the subject, most of which added to or altered my approach in some ways. More importantly, I’ve written over twenty-five screenplays, some of which were bad, some of which were good, some of which got me an agent or writing work, and in one case (so far) got made into a big hit movie – Sweet Home Alabama. I’ve also written a children’s play that’s been performed thousands of times (Sleepover at the Stable), a video game (Nightmare Cove), and an animated television pilot (The MOFF Shoppe). Each experience helped me hone my approach to screenwriting.

Then, I got hired to teach a screenwriting class at Art Center College of Design. I naturally built my syllabus around what I was initially taught. But I quickly realized some of that stuff I never actually used. Plus, I wanted to include the many other things that I had learned since. So I adjusted the class to reflect my “real world” experience. I also asked other professional screenwriters what they thought about various techniques and adjusted my teaching process further.

Since then I have had the experience of helping hundreds of students hone their own screenplays. I’ve seen the mistakes they commonly make and I continued adjusting my teaching approach to head off those mistakes. I’ve also become a better writer myself in the process.

I was looking for a book to use as a textbook for my class. I found some very good screenwriting books, but nothing that was both comprehensive and deep on all the subjects I covered. Many gave a useful account of structure; far fewer dealt with crafting a powerful scene. Almost none covered techniques for rewriting. And there was a lot of misinformation about character development out there.

So I wrote this book to provide a complete guide to the craft of writing a screenplay the way the professionals do it. I will cover each part of the process in-depth; giving you the theories, techniques, and tools I have found to be the most practical in my own writing career. And I will endeavor to always keep the focus on creating a screenplay that can actually be turned into a movie. Because that’s the goal, isn’t it.

How to Use This Book

The screenwriting process consists of three distinct stages that require different mindsets. As you’ve undoubtedly figured out from my title, I’ve divided the book by those three stages.

The first stage is story development. This is where you figure out what your story is, who the characters are, and what happens. It requires both creativity and an understanding of narrative structure.

The second stage is writing the first draft. This is where you take the solid skeleton you built in the first stage and flesh it out with action, dialogue, spectacle and all the things we love in movies.

The third stage is rewriting. This takes the longest. Your first draft will not be perfect. Likely it will be a raging disaster. That’s okay – that’s what first drafts are for. It is in the rewriting stage that you take that raw material and shape it into something brilliant.

I will discuss the techniques used in each of the stages, including the theory behind them. I think it’s important that you don’t just memorize rules or a list of plot points, but that you understand why we’ve come to codify these techniques the way we have. Every story is different, and if you really understand technique, you will know how to apply it to your unique story in a way that brings out your vision and voice, rather than conforming your ideas to someone else’s form.

Report from Comic-Con Part 2

If you read my last post, you’ll know that last week I was down in Comic-Con in San Diego. While there, I attended several panels of potential interest to aspiring screenwriters. I reported on a couple last week, and today I will cover some of the highlights of a few more.

Indie Comics Marketing & PR

I attended this because I am working up an idea for a graphic novel. Most of the content of the panel is a little off-topic for this blog, but one thing that I wanted to mention was this quote: “The thing you love is the thing that will resonate and sell.” Also fairly true in screenwriting.

Children of Tendu Live Podcast

If you’re interested in television writing, you should be listening to the Children of Tendu podcast by Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, The Middle Man, The 100) and Jose Molina (The Vampire Diaries, Sleepy Hollow, Agent Carter). Javier and Jose did a live version of the podcast at Comic-Con. Some of the points they made:

If you get on a show, it’s important to know how to behave "in the room" (meaning the writers' room). Javier and Jose discussed the importance of not “stopping the fun train.” Your job is not to point out all the flaws in the ideas being thrown around. “Pitch, don’t criticize,” Javier said.

They also encouraged new writers to check their ego and learn on the job. Be patient – you don’t have to prove yourself the first day. It takes time to learn when to speak up and how to contribute.

Answering a question from the audience, they stressed the importance of moving to Los Angeles if you want to work in television. American television is written in L.A., no matter where it’s made. They acknowledged the financial risk this entails, but you can’t break in from out of town.

They also addressed the reality that your career will always have ups and downs. Javier said no matter what level you reach in the business, “You always feel like the train is leaving the station without you.” (I can attest to the truth of that sentiment!)

From Comics to Animation

The last panel I attended was a group of comic creators who had moved into animation. There was a lot of discussion of pitching on the panel. Johnen Vasquez (Invader Zim) said, “To me, pitching is just being in a room with people and talking about what’s a good idea.” Later, referring to the need to have a solid core concept, he said, “That’s why God invented log lines. If it’s a good idea, it’s right there.”

Executive and creator Reginald Hudlin (Black Panther) discussed the new trend of making pitch reels. He said you can sell something without one, but having something to look at makes it easier for an executive to pull the trigger on a project. He’s seen buyers push for creators to make pitch reels. However, there are some dangers. He’s seen people “go down the hole with it.” Conversely, he’s seen good ideas ruined by bad art or production. (My note: these days writers and especially directors in live action are increasingly being pushed to do pitch reels – and the same advantages and pitfalls apply.)

More on Publicity

As it happened, I had two friends who were at the Con actively promoting projects (this is in addition to those like my animation writer friends who are kind of always promoting their shows). One was James Murray from the show Impractical Jokers (watch it on Tru-TV!) and the other was Zack Lipovsky, director of Dead Rising: Watchtower (watch it on Crackle!). Both had publicists who were getting them on panels and into industry parties.

I bring this up because it does become part of your job when you are a creator of entertainment product. Publicists play a critical role largely invisible to the outside world. Sometimes the publicists are appointed by the studio, but sometimes it can be useful to hire your own publicist to help promote your career as an artist as well as the individual project.

Publicists aren’t cheap, though. So when should you consider hiring one? When you have a product launching in the marketplace, and ideally when you have a promotional platform like Comic-Con to leverage. You’ll want to start working with the publicist a few months before the release/event. But you only need them for a few months. You should have a specific idea of who you want to reach and why, and work with the publicist to figure out how to do that.

Hope you enjoyed this report from Comic-Con 2015.

Report from the WGA Lake Arrowhead Craft Conference

A couple weeks ago I attended the WGA Lake Arrowhead Craft Conference. This is a weekend long retreat at Lake Arrowhead for WGA members (meaning all the attendees have to have sold something or worked for a signatory studio or television company).

The event is built around five speakers giving “master class” workshops over the course of three days. This year the speakers were Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex), Jill Soloway (Transparent, Afternoon Delight), Chip Johannessen (Homeland, 24), David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue) and Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, Grandma). There are also breakout sessions – and, full disclosure, I ran a breakout session on “Crafting the Perfect Pitch.”

I thought today I’d report back on some of the larger insights I took from the master classes.

The first session was Michelle Ashford talking about writing historical pieces. She discussed the importance of honoring the truth of history, but also the necessity to forget the history and get inside the characters and the motivations for their actions. Ms. Ashford does extensive research. I mean she reads everything she can about the subject. This gives her the confidence to make decisions where the historical record is contradictory or missing, because she feels she understands the people and what would be true to them. Though she feels bound to honor the truth in Masters of Sex, she also discussed a major subplot line that was entirely invented. She felt justified in that case because the events could have happened and they stayed true to what she knew about the actual person.

Jill Soloway ran the second session. Much of the focus was on providing opportunities both behind and in front of the camera for diverse types of people – certainly an important issue (and more on that in a moment). But there was also a lot of craft advice in her talk.

Ms. Soloway said that most writers know how important it is to identify what the character wants in a scene, but it’s equally important to identify what they’re doing to get what they want. That’s the action of the scene. She also talked about the moment in the scene where the character realizes what they’re doing isn’t working and they then change tactics and try harder. She advocated choosing character actions that carry emotion. So rather than thinking a character is “walking out of the room,” think that they are “escaping.”

Both Jill Soloway and David Milch talked about doing work that was authentic and personal. As I said, Ms. Soloway made a passionate plea for diverse voices. She said that she used to try to find ways to put bits of herself into other things; but now she works to reveal herself through her writing. Mr. Milch’s master class was focused on letting the truth of the character drive the plot of the story. My favorite quote from his talk was, “In the fullness of time, you’ll outlast your own inauthenticity.”

As somewhat of a contrast, my big takeaway from Chip Johannessen’s master class was his term, WOOS, which means “Writer Out Of the Script.” He talked about the varying levels of realism of the shows he’s worked on, letting character drive story (echoes of Milch), and how for Homeland he polices the scripts for any line of dialogue that sounds “written.” He showed an intensely dramatic clip from Homeland and pointed out how the dialogue was fairly cliché and mundane – but that’s how real people talk. What made the scene work was the subtext – the drama that was set up by the situation and the desires of the characters. Interestingly, that scene also provided and excellent illustration of Soloway’s “they try harder” moment.

On Sunday morning, Paul Weitz spoke. He showed a long scene from his upcoming movie Grandma and went through how the drama was generated by authentic character desire, subtext and changing beats – in many ways bringing together all of the themes of the weekend. He made the point that story is really about why characters are doing things.

Mr. Weitz also talked about the importance of taking the pressure off of the process. My favorite quote: “When I go to work, I’m not sitting down to write well, I’m just sitting down to write.”

There were two bits of directing advice I jotted down as well:

From Jill Soloway: In staging the scene, you must privilege the emotional moment.

From Paul Weitz: Directing is about making decisions, right or wrong. The worst decision is standing around not making a decision.

Overall, the conference was an inspiring experience and has prompted me to look back at some great scenes in movies I love for how they build drama.


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In other news: The Hollywood Pitching Bible is now available as an audiobook! It is read by the talented David Simkins (Grimm, Adventures in Babysitting)

Become a Prince in Another Land

A couple years ago I attended a Writer’s Guild retreat where J. Michael Straczynski spoke. Mr. Straczynski is known for creating the television series Babylon 5, doing runs as writer on the comic books The Amazing Spider-man, Thor, and Superman, and writing the movie Changeling. And that is only a sampling of his television, comic book, and film writing!

A major topic of Mr. Stracynski’s talk was his “Prince from Another Land” concept. He believes writing in different media boosts his career, because people are more impressed by accomplishments in a different field, one they don’t know as well. So comic book people are impressed that he worked in television, movie people are impressed that he worked in comic books, and TV people are impressed that he worked in film. The prince from another land is more impressive than the local prince.

Mr. Stracynski may have been prescient in his career approach. The screenwriting business is changing fast. When I entered it, there were firm walls – screenwriters didn’t work in television and television writers didn’t work in film. You picked one and if you were lucky enough to be successful, you stayed there. But today, many screenwriters are moving to television, and several television writers I know have made movie deals – and both are finding jobs in videogame and comic book writing.

There are many reasons for the shift. One thing that has broken down the barrier between film and television is the improving quality of TV. When I started out, television was considered creatively inferior to movies. Writing for TV was supposedly beneath screenwriters, and television writers were thought to lack the skill to write movies. Now, of course, most people regard television, on average, as creatively superior to feature films… and the wall has come down.

But there’s a bigger change at work here – a technological paradigm shift. Not only has the snobbish judgment collapsed, the divide between what is television and what is film is blurring. And you can add “web series” to that blur.

In the past, we defined media largely by delivery system. Television came in over cable or through the air to your TV set. Movies played in movie theaters (and then on television and DVD, but that was considered secondary). Anything on the Internet was a web series, something you watched on a computer.

But now we’re moving to a world where television series and movies are being created by websites like Netflix and Amazon – and winning Emmys. Web series are streamed to your television while television shows are often viewed on a computer. Widespread day-and-date releasing of movies in theaters and on-demand at home seems inevitable. And the new buzzword in movies is “story worlds” – a fictional universe that can generate multiple movies (e.g. the Marvel, Harry Potter, and Star Wars story worlds), changing the perception of what a movie story is.

So today, the difference between “television” and “movies” is simply whether something is serialized or self-contained. For screenwriters, it means that we must become increasingly versatile to sustain a career.

And that can be harder than it sounds. Narrative works differently when it’s serialized vs. when it’s self-contained. That’s another reason film and TV writers didn’t cross over much in the old days – their skill sets were different. Movies are all about beginning-middle-end. Television is all middle. Story worlds are a new form entirely – a world that can generate multiple self-contained stories that are yet interconnected.

Let me get back to the “Prince from Another Land” idea. You may have noticed another shift in the film industry. Almost everything is based on something else – a comic book, novel, videogame, etc. There have always been a fair number of studio movies based on underlying material (historically novels and plays), but now it’s newsworthy when a studio actually greenlights an original screenplay.

Television isn’t immune to this trend. Many recent television shows are based on comic books (Daredevil, Flash, iZombie, Agents of Shield) or movies (About a Boy, Fargo, Parenthood, the upcoming Rush Hour).

This is posing a challenge for newcomers breaking into the business and for established writers trying to reinvent themselves. It used to be you would do both of those things by writing a spec script. Spec scripts got a lot of attention and showcased what a writer could do. But the spec market is waning in the era of “underlying material.” It’s actually a little unclear how the industry is going to find new writers in the future. Specs are certainly still part of the equation, but it looks more and more like if you want to write for movies and/or television, you ought to showcase your skills in another medium.

To that end, I just self-published an ebook novella based on one of my favorite spec screenplay that was never produced. It’s an action-adventure story called Aftermath: Kodiak and Dawn. The logline is: After America is devastated by a deadly plague, a world-weary trucker who’s lost his family searches for a runaway teenage girl in a wilderness controlled by a gang of vicious hijackers.

It was an interesting process turning a screenplay into a novella. I’ve written prose before, but converting a screenplay to prose really emphasized the differences in the mediums. Much like the difference between serialized and self-contained stories, there are differences in the way film and prose function. It was sometimes challenging to deal with those differences – but also a lot of fun to try something new.

If you’d like to read the ebook of Aftermath: Kodiak and Dawn, it’s available for a mere 99 cents at Smashwords, Barns and Noble and in the iTunes store (use the search function from iTunes) – with more outlets to come. Let me know what you think!

My Writing Day

During Q&A’s, writers are often asked about their writing habits – How long do they write each day? Morning or Night? In a coffee shop or in an office or by the pool? I have found that the answers vary tremendously. If you ask a lot of successful writers this question, you will probably discover that there is no common element in their answers. This is either depressing – “There’s no secret to lead me to success!” – or encouraging – “The way I’m doing it is okay.”

Despite this, over the years I’ve discovered a few tips that I find are helpful to writers struggling to be productive. One of the best is: write every day. It doesn’t have to be every day – maybe you take Sundays and holidays off. But the most important factor in writing success is the application of butt to chair, and making this a daily habit makes it easier.

It also helps keep the ideas flowing. If you write every day, your screenplay will never be far from your mind. When you sit down, you will be able to get back into the writing groove quickly. Take a week off and it will take time to get back into the flow of your story, to remember what you were doing and thinking in the last writing session.

When I first graduated from college, I had to get a day job – just like most film school grads who are not independently wealthy. This meant finding daily writing time was difficult. (But this was an especially important time for me to establish the daily writing habit as I no longer had class deadlines to keep me on schedule.)

One piece of advice served me well at this point: set a specific amount of writing time and shut out everything else. I did an hour a day, first thing when I got home from work. An hour may not seem like much, but it keeps you mentally in your screenplay and you’d be surprised at how productive you can be – how those individual hours add up over a month. I wrote three spec screenplays in that first year. Some writers set page goals, but that can be intimidating. As long as I put in my hour I didn’t criticize how much I produced. That took the pressure off and I believe it actually allowed me to produce more.

When I sold the Sweet Home Alabama spec script, I was able to quit my day job. That meant, in theory, I had all day to write. I have tried writing eight hours a day. I find that I’m only really productive in the first few hours, and that after a few days I burn out creatively. I think I trained myself to write in short, intense bursts in my hour-a-day period.

So I got in the habit of writing a couple of hours in the morning and a couple more hours in the late afternoon. There was plenty of other things to do anyway – reading the trades, research, meetings with producers, phone calls with my agent, reading scripts of successful films, etc.

Occasionally I would have to put in more time writing, usually when I was on an assignment with a tight deadline. And I can do that for short periods of time.

What inspired me to address this topic today is that I am revamping my daily writing process. I’ve realized that lately I haven’t been giving my writing work the priority level I want it to be. I’ll save it until after other tasks are done – grading student work for the classes I teach at Art Center, writing this blog, etc. I once heard a theory that people tend to prioritize by urgency when they really should prioritize by importance. I’ve definitely been guilty of that lately.

So I’m trying a new technique (it’s not original with me, though I’m not sure who came up with it). I wake up about 7 am every day. I’m going to devote 7-10 am to writing. No answering emails, the phone turned off, no surfing of the internet – though I will make coffee and have a bite to eat.

I think this will work well for me as I find that I write best when I’m most rested. I’ll have three hours with no mental distractions just to write. It will also allow me to turn to other tasks after 10 am without that weight of “I need to get my writing in” hanging over my head. I expect I’ll usually also do an afternoon writing session as well, but I know from experience that I can accomplish a lot in three focused hours a day.

I’m not suggesting this approach would work for you. As I said at the outset, I think the right process depends on the writer. Whatever process you find makes you productive is the one for you. However, if you are having trouble being productive, I would suggest at least trying the one-hour-a-day approach.

And don’t expect to reach me from 7-10am!

Mailbag: How Much Do Screenwriters Make?

Today I’m going to address a couple of questions that have been asked by blog readers.

Marilyn Thomas asked about the financials of a normal script sale (as opposed to a huge million dollar type of sale).

This is a tough question because there really isn’t such a thing as a “normal” script sale, especially these days. For the purposes of this question, we’ll assume it’s a WGA covered deal (an independent, non-union deal could be for as little as nothing up front in return for a vague back-end payment). We’ll also assume we’re talking about a studio film (i.e. high budget), and that we’re talking about a straight up spec sale.

You can look at the schedule of WGA minimum payments on the Guild website - it can be a little hard to follow, as it covers multiple time periods and budget levels. Currently the minimum (scale) for an original high budget spec sale is $93,257. Often your agent will be able to negotiate scale+10% for a new writer. To make the math easy, we’ll round off to $100,000

Typically, studios don’t purchase the script outright, they option the script (giving them the exclusive right to purchase the script for one year - if they don't you get it back and keep the option payment). A 10% option for one year with a renewal for an additional 10% is fairly standard. That means your option payment would be $10,000.

Of that, you’ll pay 10% ($1,000) to your agent, 10% ($1,000) to your manager, and 5% ($500) to your attorney, assuming you have all three. The Guild dues are 1.5% ($150). That means your revenue will be $7,500. Your tax rate will depend on a lot of other factors about your income, but let’s say it’s 25%. Fortunately the above commissions and dues are deductable, so taking 25% off $7,500, you’re left with $5,625 for the one year option.

If the studio exercises the option and purchases the script, they pay the difference between the option and the purchase price. That’s $90,000 more to you – minus $9000 to your agent, $9000 to your manager, $4500 to your attorney and $1350 to the WGA. That leaves you with $66,150, which, after taxes, comes to $49,612.50. There will probably be a few other expenses from that as well, such as for an accountant to handle your taxes.

Of course there’s lots of variables in there. Your option could be for more or less. The total price could be higher if there’s competition among buyers. But the market for specs is very weak right now. Bidding wars are rare and often producers don’t feel the need to option material because they aren’t afraid of someone else stealing it away from them, or else they option it for a token payment. Also, ideally you want to include a rewrite in your deal, which would add a minimum of $33,916 to the deal but comes with other issues.

Still, that should give you an idea of how a deal might look for a new writer working with a studio. The most important thing is to get experienced people to advise and represent you. You especially want a good entertainment attorney.

Now on to the second question:

David Bishop asked, “The usual wisdom says you should write within your wheel house to build a cohesive career. … You've blogged how Sweet Home Alabama was an outlier for you, and that created challenges when it took off. Could you talk about how overcome that challenge, or about what happened next?”

Today we refer to this as your “brand.” Successful screenwriters are typically associated with one type of film – a certain genre, and maybe budget level or style. There are big career advantages to this. You’ll build relationships with producers and execs who like that type of film. You’ll get called upon when they need someone with the skill set you’ve established. And it will be easier to keep track of the market and your competition.

One big advantage to being a screenwriter is you can change your brand simply by writing spec work of a different type. If you’re a horror writer and you decide you want to write broad comedy, just write a broad comedy spec and voila – now you’re a broad comedy writer.

However, you lose much of the clout from what you did before. Most of the producers and executives with whom you’ve built relationships writing horror won’t be interested in making a broad comedy. The few who are might read yours but they’ll be skeptical of your abilities since they only know your skills at horror. And broad comedy producers will not know you or your writing. You’ll be building your network again almost from scratch.

Furthermore, your agent or manager may not be interested in representing you for broad comedy (you should definitely discuss it with them before changing your brand). So you may have to seek out new representation. And since agents and managers generally want to see multiple scripts from a prospective client, that means you’ll need to write more than one broad comedy spec to prove your abilities - and your commitment to the new direction.

Essentially, shifting brands means starting over again almost as though you were a newbie.

After Sweet Home Alabama set records for a September opening, I got known as a romantic comedy writer with particular skills in writing female characters. It opened a lot of doors to me. I could get pitch meetings just about anywhere – as long as I was pitching romantic comedy. Most of my assignment work has been in that genre – just this year I got a gig to rewrite a romantic comedy.

But what I've always wanted to write is science fiction and adventure movies. Sweet Home Alabama was an unusual spec for me, something I did in school somewhat on a whim before I really thought about things like branding. I don’t regret it. I like being paid to write! But I decided a couple years after the movie came out that I wanted to do different things and set about changing my brand. So I wrote a new action-adventure spec. My manager at the time was very supportive, but my agents weren't. So when I finished the spec I started looking for a new agent. To my shock, about a third would not even read the action-adventure spec. "If he does a romantic comedy, we'll look at it," they'd tell my manager.

Fortunately, the agent I did sign with, Lew Weitzman, was very supportive of the new direction. With his help, I was able to do some new things. Unfortunately Lew passed away a bit over a year ago. My current manager understands what I want to do now… but he still frequently encourages me to reconsider romantic comedy. It’s just easier for him to sell me that way.

What I really need is for one of my newer scripts to get turned into a big hit movie. But that's easier said than done.

Daily Habits of Successful Screenwriters

A couple months ago, I asked for suggestions for blog topics. Since then, I’ve been working my way through them (in between writing about other topics that come up.) If you have something you’d like me to discuss, feel free to let me know in the comments of this post or via Twitter.

Today I’m going to address a suggestion from Michelle Hall (hopefully she's still reading my blog): “As a newbie wanting to pursue screenwriting full time, what tasks to pursue on daily basis?”

One of the problems, of course, for most “newbies” is that they often can’t really pursue screenwriting full time because they have to hold down a full time job to support themselves while they write. But they are also in competition with established pros whose only job is screenwriting, with way more experience and resources. It’s a challenge. The next challenge comes when you actually are able to pursue screenwriting full time. I’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s start with what you do when you have a limited amount of time.

The first thing that you have to do on a daily basis, naturally, is write. You can’t become a professional screenwriter if you don’t write! You need to learn your craft and generate a body of work to demonstrate your skill and potential employability. And I highly recommend writing on a daily basis – as in writing every day – to achieve this body of work. At some point you may be able to take weekends off – though the movie business is pretty 24-7 – but when you are stealing time around a job and other commitments, you can’t really afford to give up any possible writing time.

I think the best approach is to set a goal of daily writing time, as opposed to a certain number of pages or something. So you might say that you are going to write for an hour a day. It doesn’t matter if you write one line of dialogue or six pages, sit in front of your computer (or legal pad or whatever) and do nothing but write or think about your story. No email, no texting, no surfing the web. It may not seem like you’re accomplishing much in each session, but you’ll be surprised how much you get done in a month. Those hours add up.

You also gain momentum from writing on a daily basis. Your mind stays in your story. You’ll be working out problems as you commute or do laundry or take a shower. Take too many days off and your mind moves on. You’ll find it hard to get started when you sit back down to work on your screenplay.

Probably the next most important thing is to make time to watch movies and read screenplays. This serves several purposes. First, you learn by observing what works and doesn’t work. As you read screenplays, the style and form will become instinctive. And you will gain an understanding of the market. If you want to succeed in the movie business, you need to have seen the latest hit movies – and at least a few of the latest flops – particularly in your genre. You won’t necessarily watch a movie or read a screenplay every day, but each should be at least a weekly habit.

There is a third thing that you should be incorporating into your daily schedule, but what that thing is depends on where you are in your career preparation.

If you’re just starting to write (i.e. you’ve completed fewer than four screenplays), you should be learning writing techniques. Read screenwriting books and/or take classes. Not every book or class is equally good – and some are actually quite bad. Also, not every writer responds to the same approach. But there is valuable insight to be had. Try to get a variety of perspectives and use what seems to work best for you.

If you feel you’re starting to get the hang of screenwriting and you’ve built up a body of work, you’ll want to start plotting the move to “full time screenwriter.” This is going to mean earning a living from writing. And if writing is going to be a source of income (as opposed to a hobby), then you have to treat it like a business. That means market research becomes a part of your day. You’ll move from reading books on screenwriting to checking industry news daily. Deadline.com is a good source of free info, but if you want to be a pro, it’s probably worth subscribing to The Hollywood Reporter or Variety and getting their daily email editions.

(Learning how to pitch will also be a useful skill – might I humbly recommend The Hollywood Pitching Bible as a source of good information?)

And at some point you have to translate that market research into action. You need to get your screenplay read by people in the business. At the most basic level, the way to break in is to write great screenplays and show them to anyone who will read them. Get involved in industry organizations, go to film festivals, participate in online message boards – whatever you can do to meet and befriend people who are connected to the business. Once they like you, ask them to read your work. Entering the top contests or taking classes or going to pitch fests are other ways to get your work in front of industry connected people. You won’t necessarily reach agents, managers or buyers right off the bat, but if your work is great – and I mean really great – people will be happy to recommend it to the agents, managers or buyers they know. (See this post on “How to Get an Agent.”)

Now, what happens when you find yourself in the position of having all day to dedicate to your screenwriting career? The danger here is that it’s easy to fill up your day with non-job activities. The gym is less crowded in the middle of the day, as is the grocery store… Flexibility is one of the advantages of the profession, but you have to maintain self-discipline. Most of the time you’re the only one who will be making sure you’re doing what you need to do to keep earning.

Your daily screenwriting-oriented activity when you’re full time is much the same as when you weren’t, except you do everything for longer periods of time. You have to keep writing. Hopefully, sometimes you’ll be working on assignments – rewrites, adaptations, turning your sold pitch into a screenplay. But if you don’t have an assignment, you should be generating spec work. Writing is your job and really should be the focus of your day.

Writers have different work habits. I personally write in short, intense bursts. I will sit down and write for an hour or two, then go do something else for a while, then come back for another session. If I try to write more than five or six hours in a day, for more than a few days in a row, I will eventually burn out. But I get a lot done in those short bursts – often I can do 3-5 pages in an hour. I think this is because I’m focused and because my mind noodles with the story between writing sessions. I also find it helpful if I work on one project in the morning and a different project in the afternoon. Somehow it keeps my creativity level higher.

This works for me, but other writers find other work habits are more successful for them. And of course I don’t always have the luxury of this system. Sometimes I’m under deadline and have to work ten hours straight on one project. Sometimes I have meetings, or have to teach my class and I can only get in a single writing session in a day (though I always try to get in at least one.)

The other daily activities are often business related: Reading Deadline.com or The Hollywood Reporter or Done Deal. Talking to my manager or attorney about a project or contract or upcoming meeting. Returning emails and phone calls from producers or development execs. Rehearsing pitches. I also practice saying my log lines for all of my current projects that I might want to mention should I run into a potential contact in a social situation.

Other things will come into your calendar on a non-daily basis, of course. As your career progresses, you’ll be doing general meetings and pitch meetings, and perhaps reading books or screenplays to prep for assignment pitches. If you should be so fortunate to have a movie coming out, you’ll have press and promotional obligations. You’ll go to networking events whenever you can.

But not matter what, write every day.

Make no mistake, it’s hard to become a full time professional screenwriter. Most people who attempt it fail. Those that succeed often struggle for years before they support themselves from writing. You have to be committed to it. You have to carve out that time every day. But if you take a strategic, disciplined approach, you will have a much better chance of success.

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