People often ask writers about their writing process and habits. I’m always happy to talk about mine, though I believe this is an individual thing and what works for one writer may not work well for another. That said, I have a few tips that I find improve productivity, and I think they’ll work whatever your process.
1. Set aside specific writing time. If you are serious about writing, you ought to set aside a specific time to do it, and protect this time. Eliminate distractions. These days people have become accustomed to being constantly connected, but that doesn’t lend itself to productive writing. When you are writing, don’t answer the phone, don’t look at email or texts, don’t let yourself go on Facebook or Twitter. For the period you determine, you are doing nothing but writing.
For me, the key to making this work is I don’t put pressure on myself to turn out a certain number of pages or scenes or whatever. If I say I’m going to write for two hours, it’s okay if I only write one sentence, as long as I don’t do anything else during those two hours. Even if I don’t feel creative, eventually I’ll get bored staring at that blank page and start to noodle with something, and inevitably I’ll get more work done than I thought I was going to.
Some writers, particularly novelists, prefer to set a page or word count target. This is one of those “whatever works best for you” things. But if you take this approach, you should still block out all other distractions until you hit your goal.
2. Write every day. Or at least six days a week. There is momentum to writing that will carry over day to day, but if you take a couple days off, you’ll lose it. The longer the gap between writing sessions, the more time it will take you to get your imagination back into your story and characters. I find it’s much better to do a short writing session every day (or twice a day) than long writing sessions only on weekends.
You also get an advantage because your brain will work at your story for awhile after a writing session. You’ll find ideas popping into your head while you’re cooking or in the shower. But if you don’t get back to the writing soon, that will fade. Writing every day turns your whole day into a “writing session.”
3. Prepare the next day’s work at end of your writing session. Some proponents of the “setting aside a specific time to write” will advocate stopping mid-sentence when your writing time is up. This goes to the momentum idea. If you stop in the middle of something, you will be primed to jump back in the next day. I don’t take things quite that far. In fact, I prefer to finish any scene I’m working on if at all possible.
However I have found it’s dangerous to finish a scene, save my document, and then walk away. The next day I’m faced with that first page anxiety even if I’m in the middle of my script. It’s much better to spend the last ten minutes or so of your writing session planning out what you’ll do first thing the next day. Brainstorm ideas or bits of dialogue for the scene. You won’t feel any pressure because you don’t have to write it until tomorrow, but when you do sit down tomorrow, you’ll have some rough material to work with. And you’ll also prime your subconscious to come up with ideas between writing sessions.
A bonus technique: Outline. I like to outline my screenplays in great detail. Some writers don’t – including some very successful writers – so obviously this is not the only way to go. But one of the advantages of working from an outline is you always know, at a macro level, what’s going to happen next. You won’t write yourself into a corner and then be stuck for days trying to figure out how to get out. And as a practical matter, if you become a professional screenwriter you will often be forced to break your story for others before you can start your first draft, so you might as well get in the habit.
Another bonus technique: If you need a day job, get one you hate. It will motivate you to write every day so you can quit! Just try to get a job that doesn’t have a lot of overtime.
There is a caveat to all of this. You do not want to put yourself in a mindset where if conditions aren’t perfect, you can’t write. Life is busy, even once you are able to make writing your full time job. You may have to write in a hotel room or the lobby of a building between meetings. When you’re starting out, you may have to write during your lunch hour of your day job.
The most important point is that if you want to be a professional writer you have to commit time to do the job. If you don’t start digging the ditch, the ditch won’t get dug.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Three Ways to Get an Audience to Root for an Antihero
(SPOILERS: Breaking Bad, The Godfather, Taken, Elysium, Bad Santa, Low Winter Sun)
With Breaking Bad (created by Vince Gilligan) nearing its conclusion, I’ve been thinking a lot about how writers get an audience to root for an antihero. Before I go any further, let me define my terms: I’m talking about an antihero in the classical sense, as in a protagonist who lacks heroic qualities such as goodness and selflessness. And I’m looking at protagonists, not supporting rogues like Han Solo or Hannibal Lecter.
Admittedly not every story with an antihero protagonist requires us to root for them. Sometimes we are rooting against them, such as in some gangster or serial killer movies. We are fascinated by them, maybe we even find them charming. But we do not want to see them succeed.
You could argue that Walter White of Breaking Bad belongs in this category, but I disagree. I think we are rooting for him to be successful in his meth manufacturing, at least in the first couple seasons of the show. How do you make the audience root for a drug dealer or other un-heroic lead? Here are three techniques:
1. They do bad things for good causes. This is probably the primary tool used by Breaking Bad. In this scenario you create a likeable character and put them in a situation where their decision to do bad things is completely understandable.
In the pilot of Breaking Bad, Walter White is an underpaid schoolteacher who has to work at a car wash part time to support his family, including a son with serious health issues. Then he learns his wife is pregnant (unplanned) and that he has potentially fatal lung cancer. Poor guy! He chooses to start cooking meth in order to leave behind money that will support his family. His descent into evil begins with this decision that is completely sympathetic and understandable given his situation.
The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola) works much the same way. Michael comes from a criminal family, but he isn’t interested in joining the family business. He’s a war hero! Then someone tries to kill his father. Michael takes his first step into criminality to save his dad. Who can’t root for that?
2. They’re up against an even bigger, more unlikeable opponent. We will root for a bad guy if he’s fighting an even worse guy. In Taken (written by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen) there is not much innately heroic about the character of Bryan Mills. He’s a violent, amoral man, a bad husband and inept father. Yet he’s taking on a vicious human trafficking organization. Of course we’ll root for him!
Another example of bad-vs.-worse is Elysium (written by Neill Blomkamp). Despite some charm, Max is basically a selfish criminal. He could easily be the villain in a different story. But in this story he’s going up against an unfeeling, oppressive, unfair bureaucracy of a kind that we’re all probably a little familiar with in the real world. We root for Max regardless of his moral failings and selfish motivation because he’s a little guy going up against a corrupt system.
3. They are helping an enormously likeable character. We’ll root for a bad guy if his success saves a good guy. In Taken, Mills is trying to rescue his sweet daughter from a horrible fate. Similarly, in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt), the protagonist is Richard, a selfish failure and inattentive husband and father. But in this story he’s trying to help his daughter, Olive, achieve her dream so we root for him to succeed.
Bad Santa (written by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa) has one of the most unlikeable antiheros of all as its protagonist. But early on he befriends a lonely, bullied boy. Sure, at first he’s only doing it to get a free place to crash. But we see how much this kid needs a friend and we root for Willie to step up to the task. Which he does.
That’s another important point: in most of these examples the characters become better people as a result of the story. You could say a fourth technique is to give us an antihero protagonist with the potential for heroism.
For a look at what happens when you don’t give the audience a reason to root for your protagonist, check out another AMC show: Low Winter Sun. The protagonist in this show is Frank Agnew, a corrupt cop who kills another corrupt cop. The show is about trying to cover up the murder. But we’re given no good reason for why we would want him to get away with the crime, or why we would want him to succeed in any way. He’s a bad guy doing bad things for bad reasons.
“Likeability” is thrown around a lot in Hollywood. Many execs and writers think a likeable character is more appealing to an audience. But likeability or heroism is not actually the reason we invest emotionally in the character. Rather, we invest in the character when we can get behind their goals. If your character is an antihero, make sure you give us a good reason to root for their success.
With Breaking Bad (created by Vince Gilligan) nearing its conclusion, I’ve been thinking a lot about how writers get an audience to root for an antihero. Before I go any further, let me define my terms: I’m talking about an antihero in the classical sense, as in a protagonist who lacks heroic qualities such as goodness and selflessness. And I’m looking at protagonists, not supporting rogues like Han Solo or Hannibal Lecter.
Admittedly not every story with an antihero protagonist requires us to root for them. Sometimes we are rooting against them, such as in some gangster or serial killer movies. We are fascinated by them, maybe we even find them charming. But we do not want to see them succeed.
You could argue that Walter White of Breaking Bad belongs in this category, but I disagree. I think we are rooting for him to be successful in his meth manufacturing, at least in the first couple seasons of the show. How do you make the audience root for a drug dealer or other un-heroic lead? Here are three techniques:
1. They do bad things for good causes. This is probably the primary tool used by Breaking Bad. In this scenario you create a likeable character and put them in a situation where their decision to do bad things is completely understandable.
In the pilot of Breaking Bad, Walter White is an underpaid schoolteacher who has to work at a car wash part time to support his family, including a son with serious health issues. Then he learns his wife is pregnant (unplanned) and that he has potentially fatal lung cancer. Poor guy! He chooses to start cooking meth in order to leave behind money that will support his family. His descent into evil begins with this decision that is completely sympathetic and understandable given his situation.
The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola) works much the same way. Michael comes from a criminal family, but he isn’t interested in joining the family business. He’s a war hero! Then someone tries to kill his father. Michael takes his first step into criminality to save his dad. Who can’t root for that?
2. They’re up against an even bigger, more unlikeable opponent. We will root for a bad guy if he’s fighting an even worse guy. In Taken (written by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen) there is not much innately heroic about the character of Bryan Mills. He’s a violent, amoral man, a bad husband and inept father. Yet he’s taking on a vicious human trafficking organization. Of course we’ll root for him!
Another example of bad-vs.-worse is Elysium (written by Neill Blomkamp). Despite some charm, Max is basically a selfish criminal. He could easily be the villain in a different story. But in this story he’s going up against an unfeeling, oppressive, unfair bureaucracy of a kind that we’re all probably a little familiar with in the real world. We root for Max regardless of his moral failings and selfish motivation because he’s a little guy going up against a corrupt system.
3. They are helping an enormously likeable character. We’ll root for a bad guy if his success saves a good guy. In Taken, Mills is trying to rescue his sweet daughter from a horrible fate. Similarly, in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt), the protagonist is Richard, a selfish failure and inattentive husband and father. But in this story he’s trying to help his daughter, Olive, achieve her dream so we root for him to succeed.
Bad Santa (written by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa) has one of the most unlikeable antiheros of all as its protagonist. But early on he befriends a lonely, bullied boy. Sure, at first he’s only doing it to get a free place to crash. But we see how much this kid needs a friend and we root for Willie to step up to the task. Which he does.
That’s another important point: in most of these examples the characters become better people as a result of the story. You could say a fourth technique is to give us an antihero protagonist with the potential for heroism.
For a look at what happens when you don’t give the audience a reason to root for your protagonist, check out another AMC show: Low Winter Sun. The protagonist in this show is Frank Agnew, a corrupt cop who kills another corrupt cop. The show is about trying to cover up the murder. But we’re given no good reason for why we would want him to get away with the crime, or why we would want him to succeed in any way. He’s a bad guy doing bad things for bad reasons.
“Likeability” is thrown around a lot in Hollywood. Many execs and writers think a likeable character is more appealing to an audience. But likeability or heroism is not actually the reason we invest emotionally in the character. Rather, we invest in the character when we can get behind their goals. If your character is an antihero, make sure you give us a good reason to root for their success.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
The Existential Crisis in the Feature Film Business
You may have heard that this summer set a record for domestic theatrical box office. That is indeed true. But if the celebration seems muted, it may be because it’s getting harder and harder for Hollywood to find good news in the feature film business.
Despite the great summer, 2013 ticket sales – a better measure of the industry’s health than box office – are still down 2% from 2012. And this just continues a decade long decline – from 1.58 billion tickets sold in 2002 to 1.36 billion in 2012. That’s a 14% drop.
In fact, the theatrical feature film business is in the midst of an existential crisis. For the first time, industry insiders are starting to wonder if the theatrical feature business might actually cease to exist in its current form. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s much discussed conversation at USC simply put voice to what studio execs have been worrying about in private. Let’s look at some of the disturbing signs.
Making and marketing movies has gotten extremely expensive. The MPAA used to release the average costs for studio movies, but they stopped in 2008, perhaps because it was too depressing. In 2007 the average production cost was $65 million and marketing was $35 million. It’s undoubtedly a lot more now. This means that failures are disastrous and hits make less.
Remember, box office is not the same as profit – exhibitors usually take between 40 and 50% of domestic box office and sometimes over 80% internationally. On the other hand there are ancillary markets like home video and TV that bring in revenue. So it’s complex, but a commonly used rule of thumb is that the worldwide gross must be twice the film’s budget to break even.
That means if we guess that the average budget of a studio film today is around $100 million (a fairly conservative guess), the average film needs to make $200 million worldwide to break even. But bigger films will need even more to make up not only for bigger budgets, but also for bigger marketing spends. And this summer many have not, and sometimes in spectacular fashion.
Disney is expected to take a write-down of between $100 million and $190 million on The Lone Ranger – only a year after taking a $150 million write-down on John Carter. After Earth grossed $183 million worldwide on a budget of $130 million plus likely over $100 million in marketing. RIPD did even worse, grossing $61 million worldwide on a similar budget to After Earth. Other expensive failures this summer include Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, White House Down and Turbo.
Meanwhile, moderately successful movies like The Wolverine and Pacific Rim will make a teeny-tiny return-on-investment due to their high cost. Of course, studios could make lower budget movies. I’ll get to why they don’t in a bit.
Another cause for concern: the audience is aging. The cliché of the blockbuster era, basically dating from Jaws in 1975, is that big studio movies are made for teenage boys. But last year only 12% of tickets were purchased by teens 12-17 years of age (male and female combined). Even the kind of big action-adventure stuff that theoretically targets teenage boys is skewing older. The audience for World War Z was 67% over 25. Man of Steel’s audience was 62% over 25.
This is troubling because an aging audience has a predictive quality – if young people today do not develop a movie-going habit, where will the industry be in twenty years?
The business has been here before. In the sixties Hollywood lost touch with the youth audience. The movies were stuffy and old fashioned. Attendance dropped. And this led to a renaissance in filmmaking when the studios had no choice but to start taking creative risks. The seventies are widely regarded as a “golden age” of studio films as a result.
Some, including me, have held out hope that the same thing could happen now. But there are frightening differences between the world of the early seventies and the world of today. Back then there were only three television channels. Their programming was even more old-fashioned than the studios’ and they showed mostly reruns during the summer. Few people had VCRs and few movies were available on video. If you wanted to see a new, filmed story in the summer, you had to go to the movie theater.
Also, a “big screen TV" was 27 inches and standard definition. Video games were primitive. There was no Internet or texting or social networking. No iPads or Angry Birds. More people had black-and-white TVs than had access to a computer.
The world today is very different. Movies are still a reasonably inexpensive form of out-of-home entertainment, but they have to compete with an unbelievably massive amount of in-home and mobile entertainment. It used to be movies could brag of higher quality in the theater than on your home set. But in the current golden age of television, there are more quality hours on TV than all theatrical movies combined. Whether anyone really needs to go see a movie in a theater is a very real question today.
And it’s now easy to see the best movies from any era, any time. Counter-intuitively, this means the ancillary value of new movies is shrinking. Matthew Blank, Showtime’s CEO said in the Hollywood Reporter, “We see cases of a great library movie title that may perform almost as well as all the great first run titles. By the way, we want to have more movies on Showtime in five years – just not necessarily first-run ones.”
Screenwriters are fond of blaming producers and executives for the sad state of the business, but the “suits” are caught between a rock and a hard place today.
All these pressures mean the variety of types of movies is narrowing. Studios have abandoned many genres, particularly those in the mid-budget range. Who needs to go to the theater to see a courtroom drama or detective story when there are so many high-quality versions on television? How many feature dramas can match the quality of Mad Men or Breaking Bad?
This is a major reason studio films are becoming so expensive. The one thing Hollywood has always been able to count on as their trump card is spectacle. Spend enough money and you can put something on the screen that can’t be seen anywhere else. As competition has increased, so has the studio demand that movies be spectacular.
Despite the great summer, 2013 ticket sales – a better measure of the industry’s health than box office – are still down 2% from 2012. And this just continues a decade long decline – from 1.58 billion tickets sold in 2002 to 1.36 billion in 2012. That’s a 14% drop.
In fact, the theatrical feature film business is in the midst of an existential crisis. For the first time, industry insiders are starting to wonder if the theatrical feature business might actually cease to exist in its current form. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s much discussed conversation at USC simply put voice to what studio execs have been worrying about in private. Let’s look at some of the disturbing signs.
Making and marketing movies has gotten extremely expensive. The MPAA used to release the average costs for studio movies, but they stopped in 2008, perhaps because it was too depressing. In 2007 the average production cost was $65 million and marketing was $35 million. It’s undoubtedly a lot more now. This means that failures are disastrous and hits make less.
Remember, box office is not the same as profit – exhibitors usually take between 40 and 50% of domestic box office and sometimes over 80% internationally. On the other hand there are ancillary markets like home video and TV that bring in revenue. So it’s complex, but a commonly used rule of thumb is that the worldwide gross must be twice the film’s budget to break even.
That means if we guess that the average budget of a studio film today is around $100 million (a fairly conservative guess), the average film needs to make $200 million worldwide to break even. But bigger films will need even more to make up not only for bigger budgets, but also for bigger marketing spends. And this summer many have not, and sometimes in spectacular fashion.
Disney is expected to take a write-down of between $100 million and $190 million on The Lone Ranger – only a year after taking a $150 million write-down on John Carter. After Earth grossed $183 million worldwide on a budget of $130 million plus likely over $100 million in marketing. RIPD did even worse, grossing $61 million worldwide on a similar budget to After Earth. Other expensive failures this summer include Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, White House Down and Turbo.
Meanwhile, moderately successful movies like The Wolverine and Pacific Rim will make a teeny-tiny return-on-investment due to their high cost. Of course, studios could make lower budget movies. I’ll get to why they don’t in a bit.
Another cause for concern: the audience is aging. The cliché of the blockbuster era, basically dating from Jaws in 1975, is that big studio movies are made for teenage boys. But last year only 12% of tickets were purchased by teens 12-17 years of age (male and female combined). Even the kind of big action-adventure stuff that theoretically targets teenage boys is skewing older. The audience for World War Z was 67% over 25. Man of Steel’s audience was 62% over 25.
This is troubling because an aging audience has a predictive quality – if young people today do not develop a movie-going habit, where will the industry be in twenty years?
The business has been here before. In the sixties Hollywood lost touch with the youth audience. The movies were stuffy and old fashioned. Attendance dropped. And this led to a renaissance in filmmaking when the studios had no choice but to start taking creative risks. The seventies are widely regarded as a “golden age” of studio films as a result.
Some, including me, have held out hope that the same thing could happen now. But there are frightening differences between the world of the early seventies and the world of today. Back then there were only three television channels. Their programming was even more old-fashioned than the studios’ and they showed mostly reruns during the summer. Few people had VCRs and few movies were available on video. If you wanted to see a new, filmed story in the summer, you had to go to the movie theater.
Also, a “big screen TV" was 27 inches and standard definition. Video games were primitive. There was no Internet or texting or social networking. No iPads or Angry Birds. More people had black-and-white TVs than had access to a computer.
The world today is very different. Movies are still a reasonably inexpensive form of out-of-home entertainment, but they have to compete with an unbelievably massive amount of in-home and mobile entertainment. It used to be movies could brag of higher quality in the theater than on your home set. But in the current golden age of television, there are more quality hours on TV than all theatrical movies combined. Whether anyone really needs to go see a movie in a theater is a very real question today.
And it’s now easy to see the best movies from any era, any time. Counter-intuitively, this means the ancillary value of new movies is shrinking. Matthew Blank, Showtime’s CEO said in the Hollywood Reporter, “We see cases of a great library movie title that may perform almost as well as all the great first run titles. By the way, we want to have more movies on Showtime in five years – just not necessarily first-run ones.”
Screenwriters are fond of blaming producers and executives for the sad state of the business, but the “suits” are caught between a rock and a hard place today.
All these pressures mean the variety of types of movies is narrowing. Studios have abandoned many genres, particularly those in the mid-budget range. Who needs to go to the theater to see a courtroom drama or detective story when there are so many high-quality versions on television? How many feature dramas can match the quality of Mad Men or Breaking Bad?
This is a major reason studio films are becoming so expensive. The one thing Hollywood has always been able to count on as their trump card is spectacle. Spend enough money and you can put something on the screen that can’t be seen anywhere else. As competition has increased, so has the studio demand that movies be spectacular.
But now they’re even losing that battle. Visual effects are becoming cheaper and easier. It’s no longer impressive just to see a building blow up – a talented high school kid can make that on his home computer. TV shows like Game of Thrones regularly pull off amazing visuals. And every summer blockbuster is full of routine CG spectacle. Studios are realizing they can no longer spend their way to success.
If the studios are going to survive, they’re going to have to think about what will convince people to leave their giant TVs, Netflix, X-Boxes and iPads. It won’t be more buildings getting destroyed.
And screenwriters who want to write theatrical features need to think about this, too. What material has a shot in the marketplace? More importantly, what material will have a shot ten years from now? Are you building a professional identity that is viable for the long haul?
For many writers it may be time to consider whether features are really the best place for the kind of stories they want to tell. Recent statistics from the WGA are revealing: There were 25% fewer writers employed writing feature films in 2012 than in 2007. There are multiple reasons for the drop, but the biggest is simply fewer films getting made. On the other hand, TV employment is growing and new media residuals went from $6 million to $16 million in the last year. The flip side of Warner Brothers’ film studio needing to compete with Netflix is that Netflix is now hiring writers (and actors and directors).
But don’t fall for all the hype about the democratizing power of the Internet. Look at the shows Netfilx has produced. All feature stars, veteran creators, or both. Amazon Studios is making very traditional looking sitcoms. There is more creative opportunity, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean the barriers for entry have vanished.
It’s enough to make a screenwriter’s head spin. Remember, the saying, “May you live in interesting times,” was meant as a curse.
If the studios are going to survive, they’re going to have to think about what will convince people to leave their giant TVs, Netflix, X-Boxes and iPads. It won’t be more buildings getting destroyed.
And screenwriters who want to write theatrical features need to think about this, too. What material has a shot in the marketplace? More importantly, what material will have a shot ten years from now? Are you building a professional identity that is viable for the long haul?
For many writers it may be time to consider whether features are really the best place for the kind of stories they want to tell. Recent statistics from the WGA are revealing: There were 25% fewer writers employed writing feature films in 2012 than in 2007. There are multiple reasons for the drop, but the biggest is simply fewer films getting made. On the other hand, TV employment is growing and new media residuals went from $6 million to $16 million in the last year. The flip side of Warner Brothers’ film studio needing to compete with Netflix is that Netflix is now hiring writers (and actors and directors).
But don’t fall for all the hype about the democratizing power of the Internet. Look at the shows Netfilx has produced. All feature stars, veteran creators, or both. Amazon Studios is making very traditional looking sitcoms. There is more creative opportunity, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean the barriers for entry have vanished.
It’s enough to make a screenwriter’s head spin. Remember, the saying, “May you live in interesting times,” was meant as a curse.
--
The Hollywood Pitching Bible is available on Amazon.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Character vs. Charicterization
(SPOILERS: The Heat, The Godfather, Casablanca, Kramer vs. Kramer)
My friend Ken Aguado (co-author with me of The Hollywood Pitching Bible) is fond of saying that film is not really about character, it’s about behavior. In other words, it’s not about the elements that have shaped the character to be who they are today, it’s about how that character’s persona is revealed on screen.
This is because film is a visual medium that unfolds with immediacy. You have to reveal in the moment. It doesn’t matter how interesting and brilliant and unique your characters are if they all talk and behave the same.
Of course in order to give proper characterization to a character, the writer must understand who that person is. We have to know what motivates them, what scares them, their hopes and dreams, their political, moral and religious beliefs. But none of that work will come across to the audience if we don’t reveal it through behavior and other elements of characterization.
There are several characterization tools at our disposal:
How the character looks: In most cases the first impression we’ll get of a character is their appearance. In screenplays it’s best to avoid long descriptions, but whatever you choose to describe about the way a character is dressed or their physicality or how they’re groomed should tell us something important about them.
For example, in The Heat (written by Katie Dippold), the contrast between Mullins’ sleeveless sweatshirt and fingerless leather gloves and Ashburn’s button-up pantsuits tells a lot about who they are – and why they probably won’t get along.
The character’s environment: The environment a character creates for themselves at home or work or wherever can tell us a lot about them. In The Heat we see Mullins’ trashed apartment in a run down building, her fridge filled with weapons and a two-day-old half of a sandwich. That gives a pretty good insight into her personality, doesn’t it?
How the character talks: Character voice is one of your most useful tools when it comes to characterization. The way a character speaks can reveal their personality, their socio-economic status, hints of back-story and, of course, their emotional state.
There’s a great scene in The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) where Michael goes to Vegas. He meets with Mo Green, who has taken in Fredo. In the scene, Michael tells Mo he wants to buy out his interest in the casino. Mo gets furious, yelling and screaming – “Do you know who I am?” Michael stays calm, waits out the storm, never saying more than he needs to. Meanwhile Fredo continually tries to defuse the situation.
Mo’s bluster tells us he’s an arrogant guy with a temper who’s used to getting what he wants. Michael’s calm authority shows his confidence and self-control. Fredo’s rambling and wheedling and attempts to make nice reveal that he’s averse to confrontation and lacks self-confidence. (This scene also makes good use of costuming: Michael’s expensive, conservative dark suit vs. Fredo’s flashy suit with a scarf tied around his neck.)
For tips on how to create character voice, check out my character diary exercise.
What others say about the character: I suppose this is not strictly characterization, but it can reveal a lot. Remember, actions speak louder than words – we believe what a character does more than what they say about themselves. But we will also tend to believe what other characters say about them. And, it’s much more believable for someone to talk about another person’s character than for that person to talk about themselves.
In Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch), other characters tell us about Rick – how he doesn’t drink with his patrons, how he always stays strictly neutral. And it is Laszlo that reveals that Rick used to be something of a freedom fighter. Speaking of Laszlo, he never comes out and talks about what a noble and honorable man he is – that would just sound arrogant. It’s the other characters that tell us that.
Behavior: The best way to characterize someone, however, is through their behavior. Little things can be particularly helpful – the way Sally in When Harry Met Sally… (written by Nora Ephron) always gives explicit instructions about how to prepare her food whenever she orders something in a restaurant, for example.
Behavior can even show character change. In Kramer vs. Kramer (screenplay by Robert Benton), there’s a scene the morning after Ted’s wife has left where he attempts to make French toast for his son’s breakfast. He obviously has no idea what he’s doing, getting eggshells in the mix and burning himself. It’s clear he has not participated much in the domestic chores of the family before this, which tells us something important about him.
Then much later in the movie Ted again makes French toast for his son – only this time his cooking is smooth and effortless and he carries on a meaningful conversation with his son the whole time. He’s a different person now, with different priorities, who has learned from his experiences through the story.
So develop your characters, of course, but also spend some time thinking about how to characterize them with their appearance, environment, voice and behavior. It’s how we tell stories on film.
My friend Ken Aguado (co-author with me of The Hollywood Pitching Bible) is fond of saying that film is not really about character, it’s about behavior. In other words, it’s not about the elements that have shaped the character to be who they are today, it’s about how that character’s persona is revealed on screen.
This is because film is a visual medium that unfolds with immediacy. You have to reveal in the moment. It doesn’t matter how interesting and brilliant and unique your characters are if they all talk and behave the same.
Of course in order to give proper characterization to a character, the writer must understand who that person is. We have to know what motivates them, what scares them, their hopes and dreams, their political, moral and religious beliefs. But none of that work will come across to the audience if we don’t reveal it through behavior and other elements of characterization.
There are several characterization tools at our disposal:
How the character looks: In most cases the first impression we’ll get of a character is their appearance. In screenplays it’s best to avoid long descriptions, but whatever you choose to describe about the way a character is dressed or their physicality or how they’re groomed should tell us something important about them.
For example, in The Heat (written by Katie Dippold), the contrast between Mullins’ sleeveless sweatshirt and fingerless leather gloves and Ashburn’s button-up pantsuits tells a lot about who they are – and why they probably won’t get along.
The character’s environment: The environment a character creates for themselves at home or work or wherever can tell us a lot about them. In The Heat we see Mullins’ trashed apartment in a run down building, her fridge filled with weapons and a two-day-old half of a sandwich. That gives a pretty good insight into her personality, doesn’t it?
How the character talks: Character voice is one of your most useful tools when it comes to characterization. The way a character speaks can reveal their personality, their socio-economic status, hints of back-story and, of course, their emotional state.
There’s a great scene in The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) where Michael goes to Vegas. He meets with Mo Green, who has taken in Fredo. In the scene, Michael tells Mo he wants to buy out his interest in the casino. Mo gets furious, yelling and screaming – “Do you know who I am?” Michael stays calm, waits out the storm, never saying more than he needs to. Meanwhile Fredo continually tries to defuse the situation.
Mo’s bluster tells us he’s an arrogant guy with a temper who’s used to getting what he wants. Michael’s calm authority shows his confidence and self-control. Fredo’s rambling and wheedling and attempts to make nice reveal that he’s averse to confrontation and lacks self-confidence. (This scene also makes good use of costuming: Michael’s expensive, conservative dark suit vs. Fredo’s flashy suit with a scarf tied around his neck.)
For tips on how to create character voice, check out my character diary exercise.
What others say about the character: I suppose this is not strictly characterization, but it can reveal a lot. Remember, actions speak louder than words – we believe what a character does more than what they say about themselves. But we will also tend to believe what other characters say about them. And, it’s much more believable for someone to talk about another person’s character than for that person to talk about themselves.
In Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch), other characters tell us about Rick – how he doesn’t drink with his patrons, how he always stays strictly neutral. And it is Laszlo that reveals that Rick used to be something of a freedom fighter. Speaking of Laszlo, he never comes out and talks about what a noble and honorable man he is – that would just sound arrogant. It’s the other characters that tell us that.
Behavior: The best way to characterize someone, however, is through their behavior. Little things can be particularly helpful – the way Sally in When Harry Met Sally… (written by Nora Ephron) always gives explicit instructions about how to prepare her food whenever she orders something in a restaurant, for example.
Behavior can even show character change. In Kramer vs. Kramer (screenplay by Robert Benton), there’s a scene the morning after Ted’s wife has left where he attempts to make French toast for his son’s breakfast. He obviously has no idea what he’s doing, getting eggshells in the mix and burning himself. It’s clear he has not participated much in the domestic chores of the family before this, which tells us something important about him.
Then much later in the movie Ted again makes French toast for his son – only this time his cooking is smooth and effortless and he carries on a meaningful conversation with his son the whole time. He’s a different person now, with different priorities, who has learned from his experiences through the story.
So develop your characters, of course, but also spend some time thinking about how to characterize them with their appearance, environment, voice and behavior. It’s how we tell stories on film.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Recommended Screenwriting Books
From time to time I’m asked what screenwriting books I like. Below are some books I recommend as a starting place to build your screenwriting library.
Making A Good Script Great by Linda Seger
This is the book I would recommend to someone who knows nothing about screenwriting. It’s broad but a little shallow – in other words, it covers most of the crucial parts of the screenwriting craft, but somewhat superficially. It provides a good overview and a good base to build from. It is ostensibly a book about rewriting, but really what it covers is what you have to think about in the outlining and first draft stages as well. Also, Seger’s philosophies and approach to screenwriting pretty closely mirror mine.
The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
This book describes how to apply the mono-myth as described by Joseph Campbell to screenwriting. It’s a different approach to screenwriting than the more typical three-act structure, though the two work together well. Not every story fits the mono-myth, however if you think of it metaphorically, most will. What I like about it is that it approaches plot from the standpoint of the character’s journey, making the story very character driven.
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
Recently unfairly maligned, Save the Cat is as comprehensive as Seger’s book, though more uneven in my opinion. I disagree with some of Snyder’s structural breakdown and a lot of his advice works best if you’re writing the kind of light comedies and family drama that he specialized in. However he also gives a lot of tricks of the trade that I’ve heard pro screenwriters talk about but haven’t seen in a book before. Perhaps that's because this is one of the surprisingly few screenwriting books written by someone who’s actually had screenplays produced.
Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
These guys tell it like it really is in Hollywood. If you want to work within the studio system, you should know what you’re getting into. The book is both cynical and hilarious, and it offers some good tips for dealing with difficult situations you'll encounter in the business. It’s less useful when it purports to give advice on actually writing, but for dealing with the industry and maintaining your psychological health, it’s invaluable. And again, here is a book by actual produced screenwriters.
The Tools of Screenwriting by David Howard and Edward Mabley
David Howard was one of my professors at USC. This book contains lots of useful techniques that are frequently overlooked in other books. The only problem is that the book is not organized in such a way that a beginner could easily build a writing process from it. However if you start with Seger’s book, this one will offer more advanced treatment of many crucial concepts.
And because I can't not mention it...
The Hollywood Pitching Bible by Douglas Eboch and Ken Aguado
Okay, I have to put a big asterisk by this one because I co-wrote it. But I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t think the information was valuable. Pitching is a crucial part of being a professional screenwriter. Our book tells you how to do it effectively. And speaking of screenwriting books I wrote, there's also...
Any favorite screenwriting books I missed? Let me know in the comments!
Making A Good Script Great by Linda Seger
This is the book I would recommend to someone who knows nothing about screenwriting. It’s broad but a little shallow – in other words, it covers most of the crucial parts of the screenwriting craft, but somewhat superficially. It provides a good overview and a good base to build from. It is ostensibly a book about rewriting, but really what it covers is what you have to think about in the outlining and first draft stages as well. Also, Seger’s philosophies and approach to screenwriting pretty closely mirror mine.
The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
This book describes how to apply the mono-myth as described by Joseph Campbell to screenwriting. It’s a different approach to screenwriting than the more typical three-act structure, though the two work together well. Not every story fits the mono-myth, however if you think of it metaphorically, most will. What I like about it is that it approaches plot from the standpoint of the character’s journey, making the story very character driven.
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
Recently unfairly maligned, Save the Cat is as comprehensive as Seger’s book, though more uneven in my opinion. I disagree with some of Snyder’s structural breakdown and a lot of his advice works best if you’re writing the kind of light comedies and family drama that he specialized in. However he also gives a lot of tricks of the trade that I’ve heard pro screenwriters talk about but haven’t seen in a book before. Perhaps that's because this is one of the surprisingly few screenwriting books written by someone who’s actually had screenplays produced.
Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
These guys tell it like it really is in Hollywood. If you want to work within the studio system, you should know what you’re getting into. The book is both cynical and hilarious, and it offers some good tips for dealing with difficult situations you'll encounter in the business. It’s less useful when it purports to give advice on actually writing, but for dealing with the industry and maintaining your psychological health, it’s invaluable. And again, here is a book by actual produced screenwriters.
The Tools of Screenwriting by David Howard and Edward Mabley
David Howard was one of my professors at USC. This book contains lots of useful techniques that are frequently overlooked in other books. The only problem is that the book is not organized in such a way that a beginner could easily build a writing process from it. However if you start with Seger’s book, this one will offer more advanced treatment of many crucial concepts.
And because I can't not mention it...
The Hollywood Pitching Bible by Douglas Eboch and Ken Aguado
Okay, I have to put a big asterisk by this one because I co-wrote it. But I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t think the information was valuable. Pitching is a crucial part of being a professional screenwriter. Our book tells you how to do it effectively. And speaking of screenwriting books I wrote, there's also...
Any favorite screenwriting books I missed? Let me know in the comments!
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Techniques for Tightening Your Screenplay
When I was discussing how to fix a screenplay that was too long a couple weeks back, I promised to give some tips on how to tighten your writing. Here they are!
One of the most common problems in beginner scripts is overwriting. Overwriting is when you use more words than you need to in order to do the job. It’s easy to overwrite because as you write, you are imagining the scene and putting down what you imagine. But now that you’re rewriting, you need to make sure every sentence is working properly and moving the story forward. You want to eliminate that extra padding that the reader might not even notice but that slows down the pace unnecessarily.
I personally have a bad habit of writing the character “turns around” and does something, because as the scene plays out in my head the character turns. But that’s almost always unnecessary to write. If the character is picking up a knife, for example, I can just write, “He picks up the knife.” If on the set the knife is behind the actor, I can trust he will figure out he has to turn around to get it.
Keep your action simple and spare. Only describe what’s needed to understand the scene. Give just enough carefully chosen, specific detail to make the scene come alive and if there’s something you want to emphasize, make sure you hit it hard. Instead of:
There is a KNOCK at the door. Steve stands up and goes over to open it. Megan is on the other side. She enters.
Just write:
There is a KNOCK. Steve opens the door for Megan.
Cut any action or dialogue that doesn’t really advance plot or character. Sometimes you’ll need a line of transitory dialogue to move a scene forward, but make these as efficient as possible. Let’s say you have two characters at a barbecue and you need them to go inside. You might write something like (please forgive improper formatting - difficult to get screenplay format in Blogger):
WAYNE
I’m thirsty. Is there any more beer?
CHARLOTTE
It’s in the fridge.
WAYNE
Do you want to come with me?
CHARLOTTE
Sure.
They go inside
There’s nothing awful about that dialogue on the surface. It’s reasonably realistic. But it’s also boring. You could get the same result with:
WAYNE
Let’s go get another drink.
They go inside
Even better, you could probably just cut to them inside getting their beers. Would the audience really be confused?
Particularly watch out for the dreaded “greetings, introductions and farewells.” Too many weak scripts begin scenes with characters entering, greeting each other, introducing friends, asking how each other is doing, etc. It’s boring! Cut into the scene at the meat of the conversation. The same rule applies to leaving. We don’t need long goodbyes, just cut out of the scene. And definitely avoid having someone introducing a group of characters to each other. It takes lots of space and the audience probably won’t remember the names anyway.
Watch for overly detailed descriptions. Many new writers start a scene by describing everything in the room. That’s unnecessary. If the slug line says we’re in a classroom we have a pretty good idea of what we’ll find in there. Pick a few specific things to point out that tell us what kind of classroom it is and let us fill in the rest. If the chalkboard at the front of the room is just an ordinary chalkboard you don’t need to mention it.
Something that will help here is specificity. Try to pick specific, evocative words and details. Consider this description:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
The walls are painted grey. There are pictures of Presidents above the chalkboard. There are a dozen old desks arranged in three rows and a big teacher’s desk at the front. One wall has dirty windows overlooking the ball field. There is a tattered flag in the corner. The fluorescent lights cast a greenish hue.
Now try this version:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
More of a prison than a learning environment. The peeling grey paint was applied at least a decade ago. Some of the graffiti carved into the desktops dates back five times as long.
Doesn’t the second give you a much stronger impression of the environment in a lot fewer words? And yet even that is probably too much for most scenes. Usually all you need is:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
A worn and decrepit prison of education.
...and get started on the drama. There are exceptions – sometimes you need to establish a mood. Or sometimes a key location needs more detail to provide context for the scene. But far more often a classroom is just a classroom.
It’s not always easy to ignore the forest and focus on the trees. You have to force yourself to go slow and evaluate every line and even every word. But if you are ruthless with your cutting, you will not only significantly reduce page count, you’ll have a breezy, faster paced screenplay.
One of the most common problems in beginner scripts is overwriting. Overwriting is when you use more words than you need to in order to do the job. It’s easy to overwrite because as you write, you are imagining the scene and putting down what you imagine. But now that you’re rewriting, you need to make sure every sentence is working properly and moving the story forward. You want to eliminate that extra padding that the reader might not even notice but that slows down the pace unnecessarily.
I personally have a bad habit of writing the character “turns around” and does something, because as the scene plays out in my head the character turns. But that’s almost always unnecessary to write. If the character is picking up a knife, for example, I can just write, “He picks up the knife.” If on the set the knife is behind the actor, I can trust he will figure out he has to turn around to get it.
Keep your action simple and spare. Only describe what’s needed to understand the scene. Give just enough carefully chosen, specific detail to make the scene come alive and if there’s something you want to emphasize, make sure you hit it hard. Instead of:
There is a KNOCK at the door. Steve stands up and goes over to open it. Megan is on the other side. She enters.
Just write:
There is a KNOCK. Steve opens the door for Megan.
Cut any action or dialogue that doesn’t really advance plot or character. Sometimes you’ll need a line of transitory dialogue to move a scene forward, but make these as efficient as possible. Let’s say you have two characters at a barbecue and you need them to go inside. You might write something like (please forgive improper formatting - difficult to get screenplay format in Blogger):
WAYNE
I’m thirsty. Is there any more beer?
CHARLOTTE
It’s in the fridge.
WAYNE
Do you want to come with me?
CHARLOTTE
Sure.
They go inside
There’s nothing awful about that dialogue on the surface. It’s reasonably realistic. But it’s also boring. You could get the same result with:
WAYNE
Let’s go get another drink.
They go inside
Even better, you could probably just cut to them inside getting their beers. Would the audience really be confused?
Particularly watch out for the dreaded “greetings, introductions and farewells.” Too many weak scripts begin scenes with characters entering, greeting each other, introducing friends, asking how each other is doing, etc. It’s boring! Cut into the scene at the meat of the conversation. The same rule applies to leaving. We don’t need long goodbyes, just cut out of the scene. And definitely avoid having someone introducing a group of characters to each other. It takes lots of space and the audience probably won’t remember the names anyway.
Watch for overly detailed descriptions. Many new writers start a scene by describing everything in the room. That’s unnecessary. If the slug line says we’re in a classroom we have a pretty good idea of what we’ll find in there. Pick a few specific things to point out that tell us what kind of classroom it is and let us fill in the rest. If the chalkboard at the front of the room is just an ordinary chalkboard you don’t need to mention it.
Something that will help here is specificity. Try to pick specific, evocative words and details. Consider this description:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
The walls are painted grey. There are pictures of Presidents above the chalkboard. There are a dozen old desks arranged in three rows and a big teacher’s desk at the front. One wall has dirty windows overlooking the ball field. There is a tattered flag in the corner. The fluorescent lights cast a greenish hue.
Now try this version:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
More of a prison than a learning environment. The peeling grey paint was applied at least a decade ago. Some of the graffiti carved into the desktops dates back five times as long.
Doesn’t the second give you a much stronger impression of the environment in a lot fewer words? And yet even that is probably too much for most scenes. Usually all you need is:
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
A worn and decrepit prison of education.
...and get started on the drama. There are exceptions – sometimes you need to establish a mood. Or sometimes a key location needs more detail to provide context for the scene. But far more often a classroom is just a classroom.
It’s not always easy to ignore the forest and focus on the trees. You have to force yourself to go slow and evaluate every line and even every word. But if you are ruthless with your cutting, you will not only significantly reduce page count, you’ll have a breezy, faster paced screenplay.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Help! My Screenplay is Too Short
(Spoilers: Ocean’s Eleven, There’s Something About Mary, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial)
As I mentioned last post, spec feature screenplays should be a minimum of 90 pages, though you might get away with as few as 85 for a low budget indie. Fewer than that and your script will feel slight. It won’t feel like a movie. Assuming your structure is working, you are going to have to find a way to bulk it up. And you don’t want to pad or add filler – that will just make your script feel bloated and slow.
There are two basic reasons I’ve seen for screenplays to come in under length: either the scenes are underdeveloped or there isn’t enough story.
The easiest way to diagnose the first problem is to look at the length of your scenes. If most are under two pages, you probably haven’t adequately milked your scenes for maximum impact. You are being perfunctory and not dramatizing the action. Not every scene has to be long, but you should have at least eight juicy scenes (and usually many more) spread throughout your script. What do I mean by juicy? They have multiple obstacles, mounting tension, and twists. They are like miniature movies unto themselves.
If your problem is underdeveloped scenes, identify the key moments in your film. Be sure to pick out at least eight scenes. Re-examine those scenes, treating them like short films. You know what has to happen in the scene, what’s the most interesting, dramatic way to get there?
Make sure there is adequate conflict in the scene. Can you add obstacles blocking the hero from achieving their goal? Can you throw in an unexpected obstacle somewhere in the middle? Good scenes, like good scripts, go up and down, with the character alternately getting close to their goal and then pulled farther away. You can also try the out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire approach: a character overcomes one obstacle only to find himself in deeper trouble.
You should also ask yourself if the outcome of the scene is obvious from the opening of the scene. If so, can you revise the beginning so it appears things will head in a different direction, giving you a twist?
Sometimes underdeveloped scenes come from inadequate outlining. The writer is using the first draft to figure out their story and fails to pay enough attention to the scene work. Other times a writer will have a solid outline, but will do little more than convert the outline to screenplay format in the first draft, checking off plot points and not fully developing scenes. It’s important in your first draft to take the time to think about what will make your big scenes great.
If you have good scenes but you just don’t have enough of them, you probably don’t have enough story. The first thing to do is look at how your acts are balanced. Usually Act One takes up one fourth of your script, Act Two one half, and Act Three one fourth. Is your problem that your story overall is too short, or is one of the acts too short?
If you are short across the board, make sure you are properly tracking your character arc. Are the beats of the character’s change dramatized so the audience can see them? Also make sure that you’re not missing important preparation and aftermath scenes to allow us to touch base with the character’s emotion.
Another problem could be that you don’t have enough subplots. We look for about three subplots in addition to the main plot. If you need to add a subplot, consider if there’s another angle on your subject/theme that you could explore, maybe with a supporting character. For example, if you’re writing a love story, is there another relationship that illuminates an alternative experience to the main relationship?
If your problem is mostly in Act One it probably means you haven’t properly set up the character’s status quo before the Catalyst, or your character hasn’t eliminated alternate solutions before taking on the problem. Make sure that the stakes of the story are clear and that you’ve locked the character into the story.
A short Act One really isn’t bad unless it doesn’t adequately set up the rest of the film. Usually you’ll realize what you’re missing when you try to write Act Three. If you don’t have a list of things to add into Act One, look at Act Three and see if you’ve really established everything you need for your ending to hit with maximum impact.
If Act Two is short, first make sure that there are multiple stages to your hero achieving their goal. I’ve seen many bad mystery stories where the hero finds one clue that reveals everything. In a good mystery the clues need to be a path – one leading to the next and that one to the next until the truth is assembled like a jigsaw puzzle from all the multiple clues.
Similarly, if your movie is about a robbery then there better be several steps the character has to take to prepare. Consider the Ocean’s Eleven remake (screenplay by Ted Griffin). Before the big heist Danny has to get financing and recruit his team, which involves several mini-capers such as getting Basher out of jail. They also have to build a replica of the vault to work out the plan, and commit other tricks to get inside info on the casinos. All of this provides the meat for Act Two before we get to the heist in Act Three.
You also need to make sure you have multiple obstacles for the hero to overcome. In There’s Something About Mary (story by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss, screenplay by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss and Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly), Ted wants to win Mary’s heart. That would be pretty easy to accomplish if it weren’t for Healy and Tucker trying to sabotage the relationship.
Escalation is key, as are reversals. If your character is simply checking off unrelated obstacles or to-do items on his plan, then your story will feel episodic and lack forward momentum. What you want is a feeling of “but… so…” instead of “and then.” The character does A but it causes B, so the character does C, but it causes D and so on.
Finally, take a good look at your midpoint. It’s a good idea to throw a new element into the story here and raise the stakes. Bringing in something new will generate more material to fill out the story.
It isn’t uncommon for Act Three to be a bit shorter than a quarter of your script. You’ve gotten all the exposition out, so everything in Act Three is go, go, go. But if your Act Three is significantly short, there are several things to look at:
Have you given an appropriate period of aftermath after the Act Two Turning Point so we see the impact of the character’s failure or success?
Is your Act Two Turning Point severe enough? At the end of Act Two we should think there is no way the ultimate resolution could possibly happen. A big Act Two Turning Point should provide lots of material for Act Three
Is the ending too easy? Perhaps you haven’t provided a big enough final conflict after the Epiphany. The Epiphany should give the character the key to overcoming their problem (assuming a successful ending) but there should still be big challenges to overcome. In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (written by Melissa Mathison), when Elliot learns E.T. is alive, he still has to get the alien out of the house and past the cops. Think of what obstacles the character might face in executing the solution from the Epiphany.
The key to your next draft is to add heft to your story in the right way. You don’t want length for length’s sake; you want to add material that makes your story cooler and more powerful. That starts with properly diagnosing your problem.
There are two basic reasons I’ve seen for screenplays to come in under length: either the scenes are underdeveloped or there isn’t enough story.
The easiest way to diagnose the first problem is to look at the length of your scenes. If most are under two pages, you probably haven’t adequately milked your scenes for maximum impact. You are being perfunctory and not dramatizing the action. Not every scene has to be long, but you should have at least eight juicy scenes (and usually many more) spread throughout your script. What do I mean by juicy? They have multiple obstacles, mounting tension, and twists. They are like miniature movies unto themselves.
If your problem is underdeveloped scenes, identify the key moments in your film. Be sure to pick out at least eight scenes. Re-examine those scenes, treating them like short films. You know what has to happen in the scene, what’s the most interesting, dramatic way to get there?
Make sure there is adequate conflict in the scene. Can you add obstacles blocking the hero from achieving their goal? Can you throw in an unexpected obstacle somewhere in the middle? Good scenes, like good scripts, go up and down, with the character alternately getting close to their goal and then pulled farther away. You can also try the out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire approach: a character overcomes one obstacle only to find himself in deeper trouble.
You should also ask yourself if the outcome of the scene is obvious from the opening of the scene. If so, can you revise the beginning so it appears things will head in a different direction, giving you a twist?
Sometimes underdeveloped scenes come from inadequate outlining. The writer is using the first draft to figure out their story and fails to pay enough attention to the scene work. Other times a writer will have a solid outline, but will do little more than convert the outline to screenplay format in the first draft, checking off plot points and not fully developing scenes. It’s important in your first draft to take the time to think about what will make your big scenes great.
If you have good scenes but you just don’t have enough of them, you probably don’t have enough story. The first thing to do is look at how your acts are balanced. Usually Act One takes up one fourth of your script, Act Two one half, and Act Three one fourth. Is your problem that your story overall is too short, or is one of the acts too short?
If you are short across the board, make sure you are properly tracking your character arc. Are the beats of the character’s change dramatized so the audience can see them? Also make sure that you’re not missing important preparation and aftermath scenes to allow us to touch base with the character’s emotion.
Another problem could be that you don’t have enough subplots. We look for about three subplots in addition to the main plot. If you need to add a subplot, consider if there’s another angle on your subject/theme that you could explore, maybe with a supporting character. For example, if you’re writing a love story, is there another relationship that illuminates an alternative experience to the main relationship?
If your problem is mostly in Act One it probably means you haven’t properly set up the character’s status quo before the Catalyst, or your character hasn’t eliminated alternate solutions before taking on the problem. Make sure that the stakes of the story are clear and that you’ve locked the character into the story.
A short Act One really isn’t bad unless it doesn’t adequately set up the rest of the film. Usually you’ll realize what you’re missing when you try to write Act Three. If you don’t have a list of things to add into Act One, look at Act Three and see if you’ve really established everything you need for your ending to hit with maximum impact.
If Act Two is short, first make sure that there are multiple stages to your hero achieving their goal. I’ve seen many bad mystery stories where the hero finds one clue that reveals everything. In a good mystery the clues need to be a path – one leading to the next and that one to the next until the truth is assembled like a jigsaw puzzle from all the multiple clues.
Similarly, if your movie is about a robbery then there better be several steps the character has to take to prepare. Consider the Ocean’s Eleven remake (screenplay by Ted Griffin). Before the big heist Danny has to get financing and recruit his team, which involves several mini-capers such as getting Basher out of jail. They also have to build a replica of the vault to work out the plan, and commit other tricks to get inside info on the casinos. All of this provides the meat for Act Two before we get to the heist in Act Three.
You also need to make sure you have multiple obstacles for the hero to overcome. In There’s Something About Mary (story by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss, screenplay by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss and Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly), Ted wants to win Mary’s heart. That would be pretty easy to accomplish if it weren’t for Healy and Tucker trying to sabotage the relationship.
Escalation is key, as are reversals. If your character is simply checking off unrelated obstacles or to-do items on his plan, then your story will feel episodic and lack forward momentum. What you want is a feeling of “but… so…” instead of “and then.” The character does A but it causes B, so the character does C, but it causes D and so on.
Finally, take a good look at your midpoint. It’s a good idea to throw a new element into the story here and raise the stakes. Bringing in something new will generate more material to fill out the story.
It isn’t uncommon for Act Three to be a bit shorter than a quarter of your script. You’ve gotten all the exposition out, so everything in Act Three is go, go, go. But if your Act Three is significantly short, there are several things to look at:
Have you given an appropriate period of aftermath after the Act Two Turning Point so we see the impact of the character’s failure or success?
Is your Act Two Turning Point severe enough? At the end of Act Two we should think there is no way the ultimate resolution could possibly happen. A big Act Two Turning Point should provide lots of material for Act Three
Is the ending too easy? Perhaps you haven’t provided a big enough final conflict after the Epiphany. The Epiphany should give the character the key to overcoming their problem (assuming a successful ending) but there should still be big challenges to overcome. In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (written by Melissa Mathison), when Elliot learns E.T. is alive, he still has to get the alien out of the house and past the cops. Think of what obstacles the character might face in executing the solution from the Epiphany.
The key to your next draft is to add heft to your story in the right way. You don’t want length for length’s sake; you want to add material that makes your story cooler and more powerful. That starts with properly diagnosing your problem.
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