42 Ways To Avoid Writing A Boring Screenplay

because every screen rod I think this is really true finishes a screenplay thinks it's brilliant that people do it all the time and they usually write me do Chris Krebs a lot of writers hate because they collect but my script is different from them you have some characters sitting in a diner and somebody goes ketchup what's that about that is a one way to put your audience to sleep very very quickly the other thing is that what's real is more I think a character with no inner life I think is boring and the story's going to be really boring and nobody's going to be interested and be bored to tears anytime one thing where he said to me was he said don't look outside yourself look within and so it's again finding I divided sunny there was one time when he and I was sitting together and I said I just figure out what business you're in I said not writer I said you're in the very Bradbury business and he said yes that's exactly right and what he saw what he was doing was creating something that no one else could create and he told me that he spent he wrote every day for ten years before he wrote a single line a single word that was uniquely his and then one day he sat down and he wrote the words the lake and he wrote a short story based on the time when he was a little boy when he was eight years old he and a little girl friend who was seven when swimming in Lake Michigan and he came out and she never did she drowned and her strength had her coming back as a ghost and he told me that when he finished the story tears were streaming down his face and he knew he'd written something that no one else could have written it came specifically from his experience in his soul and he said it took it and it took another two years of writing every day before he could write something again that was uniquely his and they got to where he could do it again and again and again and he became Ray Bradbury because he was determined to do that and so I thought that was a great lesson to say okay what are you creating what can you create that isn't something that's just an imitation what others are doing but that's unique to you that no one else could have created that you create something fresh in the world that's truthful and meaningful and and then you know you've done something what's doing so that's that's been a great inspiration to me my underlying philosophy of all storytelling whether you're a novelist or screenwriter movie maker TV writer whatever it might be is that your primary goal as a storyteller must be to elicit emotion you must create an emotional experience for the audience if it's a movie or a play for the reader if you're a screenwriter and you have to get get it read so you can get the movie made or if you're a novelist or whatever so your primary goal has to be to create emotion not that cliche right what you know because I've never written what I quote unquote know I write fantastical worlds and and and and and supernatural stories and all of that but write what you feel and write what's in your heart and write something that means something to you and you know I I was a script reader for God probably a decade and I and the and and I was reading seven eight scripts a week and the rare one was the great script and when you found that that was a very exciting day at the office and sometimes the really terrible scripts were kind of they were funny because they were so god-awful but the ones that got really exhausting and really innovating as a script reader who's sitting there and asked to read a script synopsize that write a comment about it then pick up another one and read it and it's not were the ones that you could tell were written by people who were looking at what last year's hit was and trying to imitate it and those were deadly and they were they weren't good they weren't bad they were safe and mediocre and any writer any young writer any old writer anyone who's just starting to write anything write something that you feel write write write write something that comes from the heart and and and people may not think that Beetlejuice is a personal movie it's an intensely personal movie it was intensely personal for Michael me and and you know I I didn't know I had a theme until I had enough work to realize I had a theme and almost everything I've written are about broken families who are put back together in some bizarre way but there but but because I came from a broken family and and what and and so so that there's a I like to think that my work has a sense of heart in a sense of compassion and a sense of humanity in it no matter how bizarre it is no matter how weird the world's get and and you got you got to write something that you feel on something that you have some passion for or just why do it it's too hard it's just it's not an easy job and and I personally can't imagine saying well this was a hit now so I'm going to I'm going to write my version that I don't really it's not really what I care about what I feel but I can imitate it well enough I can't imagine spending a year of your life doing that but people do it all the time and they usually write mediocre scrubs enough story again it's that old thing characters can be wonderful dialogue can be sparkling and even funny as heck but if the story lays there just flat as a pancake that story is not going anywhere it's it's a weak story I'm the slowest reader in the world like it will take me six hours to read a script I don't know why that I've kind of read it out loud in my head or something but what happens because of that is that I am stuck in every single moment in that script for a really long time so I notice really quickly when something takes too long where a quick your reader will probably just go like oh here's a here's a page of whatever now just continue reading on I get angry if I'm on a page that doesn't know what at once and I don't know why I'm in that scene right now and I hope the right this felt very bad but I kind of called the writer personally responsible with wasting my time which really isn't their fault because I'm just a slow reader but at least after reading it I have a very clear and it might be completely off objectively but I had a very clear idea where I felt the script worked or didn't work and then I just apply I'm a big big believer in formula as always working in classic narrative structure like from Aristotle although I think Robert McKee is dreams I know a lot of people think he's too formulaic and ease whatever but I think that most of the weaknesses in narratives when it can't hold your your attention that is because it doesn't adhere to a certain narrative structure three-act structure 5.x structure whatever it is that is ingrained in us as human beings you know so I work a lot with question marks for example at what at what moment at this moment in the script what are the question marks that I as an audience and burning to have answered that make me turn the page why am i interested in continuing this and a lot of time you'll realize there is no question mark that people are just having coffee right now and you know it's a problem in a prospect what we're talking about earlier which is conflict and stakes cost drama is conflict and stakes that also means that you don't know what the outcome of something will be so there is a kind of internal magnetism and a structure from moment to moment that I think you have a it's very easy to get a good feeling for that I do not be distracted by that's maybe another thing I'm not a very visual person as and I don't see the script in my head you know at all feel the story I read the story I get a feeling for the characters I don't see images and I think a lot of other people that do see the images are kind of seduced by that and don't necessarily see that the story is weak you know that the that the cornerstones of the story are not as powerful as they should be but because I don't have that visual at all to distract me I'm always after the moments that don't live up to the full potential in what they are trying to do and that's a very abstract thing that doesn't matter if that happens on a boat or in space or on whatever is you know it's always the why should the audience be at the edge on the edge of their seat right now what are they wondering about what do they want to find out why do they care what do they identify with those things you know so it's almost a mathematical structure which helps me look because it is basically more or less to start the same starting point for almost every script which of course a lot of writers hate because they go like but my script is different from them that's good it is different in subject matter and content but in the underlying audience expectation and the rhythm than an audience has in consuming a story it's not different it's good meat that's met with the same expectations so you have to see it through that lens to know how an audience is going to react to it there's about creativity and originality - I think originality comes from being curious because the more curious you are about something the more you know about something and so the more you can avoid copying something right it's I think the people who write cliche what cliche writing because they don't know what's been done before so they go to them it's new so they go oh they think it's good but people who know and they've seen it a hundred times because they're curious I will say it's cliche because they've seen it a hundred times cooking the reader just so important there regardless of what you're writing I just think you know for me if I'm not really feeling a buck fifty and I will put a lot of books down but fifteen hundred pages is a long time and if I'm not feeling it and you'd be surprised how many books I think don't really work on that level I may not finish it and especially when you're dealing with more commercial genres it becomes even more important younger readers I think it becomes even more important that said I don't think you need to rush or sacrifice the storytelling to make it so hooky in a certain respect like I personally wouldn't want to do that but I think getting into the story right away having something exciting happen in the beginning in my book I chose to write a prologue that showed kind of what happened before when the surface of the earth was destroyed so I told it from if you can imagine the president's daughters point of view as they're evacuating the White House so young girl being evacuated and I because I did that and for a couple reasons but one was I wanted have something really exciting and really relatable that happened right off the bat because I think that that will cook you in and make you want to read more but there's other ways to hook somebody you're like having a great character having central mystery is something I teach about a lot which is it doesn't mean that it has to obviously there's a mystery genre where the whole story is crafted around a mystery but that said you can have a story that has smaller mysteries that are revealed in the beginning of a book a good example is in The Hunger Games they talk about the reaping which is the big thing happens right away in The Hunger Games but they say the word the reaping seven or eight times before they finally tell you what it is and you find out fairly early in the story but still you're kind of reading like oh what is this what is this thing that's happening was this big event so I think that's another way to kind of get somebody interested and trying to figure out what's going on and I got the script and I was really excited to read it and the first page I opened it up and it wasn't even formatted properly and I read the first page and and they weren't writing in proper sentences and I had to slog through this thing to figure out what they were trying to say and I gave up after a couple of pages because they just did abused me basically they'd stolen my time they'd wasted my time on something that wasn't a professional product that could never be produced in its current state and maybe if I had forced myself to read the whole script there would have been a nugget in there that was a great idea and with some work you know I could have pounded the script into shape and tried to do something with it but who has that time and who knows you could get to the end of this hundred and twenty page script it takes you two hours out of a very busy day and you get to the end they could all have been crap even even though that one sentence pitch they sent me was a good idea so you got to be sure and you can't just read it yourself and think it's great other people have to be telling you it's great so you see this a lot I mean this she writing so you get like a character description well you know I read this all the time you know she's beautiful or handsome you know it's the same house nice and it says right I mean yeah that's the same old have you've seen the hundred times you know she's got to be little more creative massive central character that kids killed more scripts than just about anything I've ever seen and week story and PASOK central character they go together they really go to get fit together to a passive central character is a a hero or heroine you know the lead down the middle who doesn't really do anything and life and the story happen to them they do not happen to anything or anyone and that is that is a one way to put your audience to sleep very very quickly audience heroes have to be active having an active hero who has a clear want is definitely a huge thing that I work with writers on every strong story starts with a trigger incident or inciting incident as many people tournament it pushes the central character into a powerful dilemma then the choice that is made in the dilemma is what defines the external role for the a story and every obstacle escalating obstacle in all is lost moments need to link back to that choice and when the goal isn't clear the story doesn't work because everything needs to link back to like there are countless on features as well as TV shows we're in the middle of the story you have no idea what's in spare too long like you've lost it because the actions and obstacles aren't linked to the desire and we lose a sense of what the desire was so when you do that story doesn't work and and very often all writers will write a passive hero that isn't taking action with no inner life I think is boring you know I think if I think if for me I think if the character is having some inner life that makes sense you know whether that inner life is subtext or whether that inner life is in conflict with his public life or her public life you know that's interesting to me you know I don't know I think it really depends on the kind of story it is and you know you know every I guess you know to use a comparison to like making a meal I think every meal is different you know every meal demands different kind of ingredient if there's something about that character that tells me that either that person isn't telling everything about his life or her life or there's something about that person that what he or she is doing you know in front of people is different from what they're doing behind the scenes for me that's interesting every scene is a power grab everybody wants to take control of the situation in whatever way that means to them and so how are they sort of secretly jockeying for position you know like he and I do like which of us it we're all just worried we're worried about which of us look smarter see that's what this whole interview has been the other thing that you said about the quote be the desires on the part of the character I was thinking I know you said there's a lot more than two but two more I would think about as the writer besides what were the two you said what does the character what don't know what that the two different objectives yeah the vision what I broke down Michael is what I call the public objective right in other words if I asked anybody in this room now what are you doing here what do you want what's your objective right now we could talk about what during this interview that's our public objective then there's underneath that deep under there is a private objective which may not even be recognized well yeah that's what I maybe in the unconscious what's driving that character to try to do that right and one way I would look at it is not quite the same as a desire is to ask what is the character hiding from the other person consciously what is she hiding from him and what is she hiding from herself what's the thing that she's not yet aware of that is really driving her and you know underneath especially in the first half or 3/4 of the movie towards the end you'd hope that all that would come to the surface but deception and secrecy are very very powerful in telling a story because they add a whole new layer of conflict they get into this inner journey stuff and though and the more conflict on the more layers the more you're going to pull in your audience that's good I like to hide anything I didn't see because I was into that yeah the subconscious or the unconscious or the you know unaware of but the hiding and deception is secrecy that's good I'm going to steal that can I steal that huh sure I'll get yours like it well you can still use it I've got taking it forever okay you want to share it you don't want to steal no I'm not going to sit back as long as we're clear that Maya gel is going to look better I'll give you credit for it okay good okay because we know my stated objective is to look smarter I think we yes I'm trying and I'm trying to help you with I appreciate that I'll help you think you're winning here let's move on that was great let's move on did you know for instance there are only four viable goals in all of narrative screenwriting and the vocals are yeah when stop escape or retrieve so okay you've got an idea for a character your hero or heroine great you've got an idea and they have okay now what is it they want what they've got to have a goal to pursue right well it has to fall into the category of winds DAF escape or retrieve now these are big categories and there are many versions of each woman many permutations of each one so it's not like it's that cut and dried but it will appear to a lot of people like it's that's to cut and dried for me but the point is this there's only those four because those four share something in common they all provide a visible physical three-dimensional goal for a motion picture that will result in a physical climax and obligatory scene it precludes the use of internal goals and that's one of the things people have to get over an internal goal that's great and it is separate from what drives the movie you need a physical visible goal each one of those four goals has a finish line a visible finish line and a goal like well they want to feel better about themselves that doesn't work on film it just doesn't work personally I like to try to get to know the character in my own mind know the characters enough in my own mind so that I know how they're going to behave or react to whatever I throw at them to me it's like if you can understand the characters and sometimes that's why it's so easy for excuse me sometimes that's why it's better to base a character on somebody you know or yourself because you know when you based on your brother or your mother or best friend or yourself because then you know how that person talks how that person is going to react to something and then you don't have to make everything up otherwise the burden of you as a writer to make up everything that happens is is a lot whereas if you know who the character is an example always use if somebody's walking down the street and a guy jumps out with a knife and says give me your wallet if it's if it's me as a character I probably get on my hands and knees and start crying and you know whatever if it's Jason Bourne you know a fight chase ensues you know what I mean so so knowing the character first I think is helpful and then yeah I think all writers probably have there in their mind a handful of not everything a handful of things that are supposed to happen they're going to drive the story but I I prefer probably to my detriment to only think out the whole thing to a certain degree I try not to have everything set and I tried it maybe I have that I have certainly maybe that first deck I know what the inciting things are going to be but then I like to sort of let the characters in some way tell me what the next scene is as opposed to making them do something that I've already add any more interesting things have come out of that and in the times where I've had like a lot of us have an ending in our mind at times where I've had a definite ending like the whole reason for writing the script was because I got the last scene in my head by the time I get there neva tably it's not that because the characters have grown and the situation has taken on some sort of life of its own so by the time it gets that thing doesn't make sense anymore they would have been an imposed ending or an artificial ending and so I think the writing can be a lot easier the more real those characters become for you all of these characters there's only 14 that that help you create a plot that help move a story forward and any other character that the particular writer wants to plot you know I really like this character you know that kind of interesting and peppy and zippy and they talk funny and I like it if they do not serve the story if they do not help drive the plot forward get random axle cut them lose them because they have to serve a function the heart and soul of this it's a really interesting screenplay it's a thriller action invention thriller but what is at the heart soul of it that the audience can grab on to and identify with my feeling is the audience doesn't really want to watch a big action-adventure film but they want me to watch it be thrilled to watch it one that's well done but they want to connect with the people and what the people's journey is and what the people's struggles are what the people's epiphanies are or disappointments are in the transformation of characters that's what they want to they want to connect with the aspect of that story that relates to their own lives which may be very subtle only very very powerful but we have to identify that so talking with these these two writers yesterday that was the goal is to find that and then once we can identify that with the writers then we could eat all of us can ask you to is it in the script is it clear in the script that that's what it is but first of all you got to feel what it is and that's why many times looking at a script you can feel it's not there but rather than trying to cover it up or pretend it's there or soon that it's there or just insert something there go back to the writers go back to the people who had the original idea and find out what that is and then try to identify that and that is actually for a director that's what's going to guide you through the entire rest of the process that's what the movie is all about this movie is all about this character who's fighting these struggles wasn't fighting these aspects of himself in the world around him and his family or his work or whatever he's fighting and that what gets revealed through that process is what this man or this woman is going through that we can identify with so you got to get bets early then the process of the rewrites re-examining script is how can we get that in how can we make that clear to the audience also clear to the actors really important so the actors can see it the actors who are playing as parts going to attach themselves to ask in jump is where we as the audience jump onto the screen and become the protagonist in the story and a good story has some sort of a fantasy so it doesn't have to be a positive fantasy that we want to explore in our life so we skin jump and we are Eliot riding his bicycle with et and it flies you know and that is like one of those moments where if you were to turn the camera on the audience and watch would watch the audience they would all be just overjoyed because we're all Elliott in that scene for that moment and if we're looking at a movie that's a we can become Indiana Jones and do the amazing adventure thing and we basically jump from the audience onto the screen which means we need a character to jump into and a good story is about a character that fulfills some sort of dream fulfillment some sort of fantasy the audience has and a the reason why film is a hit is because it ends up hitting the dream fulfillment element of a lot of people and so if you can figure out the zeitgeist of what the audience what people are dreaming about right now that's that thing that's going to pull us onto the screen but it doesn't have to be a positive thing often I did a film to our class here and the film noir often jumps us into people that do bad things because we all sometimes secretly want to do bad things but we can't so you know we all want to you know there's a lot of movies about career criminals because we all sometimes want to break the law there are a lot of movies about people that do terrible awful things that kill people the two horrible bosses that kill their bosses are trying to do bad things because we have that thing going on inside of us that's the dream fulfillment of that story so a good movie is dream fulfillment to the audience the audience fantasizes about something we hopefully as part of that audience as members of that audience we fantasize about some of those things to you a weird movie is when somebody has their dream fulfilled and you go what kind of a sick weirdo is that dream and you see those sometimes and what's going on here but but a good story is going to take going to take action it's going to allow the audience to jump into that character and then take that character on an adventure to be a good adventure it could be a bad adventure but we're going to go along with that story and it's so that means there's going to be a great conflict in there someplace that means often you know the things that often happens is romance of some sort of another because even if it's you know ET is a bonus dog story but the dogs an alien and there is no more unconditional love than from your dog or you know I don't know your cat loves you but your dog loves you no matter what so that's something we can fantasize about we can get into that story we can understand that story and jump in to Eliot's life with ET and you know it's the guy that brings the kid to bring some of the pets that you know mom doesn't want and has to hide it in the closet and you know all those things you know I found a stray dog but the stray dogs an alien and now the dog catcher wants the dog catchers keys he's the guy from the government so it's basically taking that story and finding them you take on that story because he that could have been in just a dog story but by making it the alien we're now telling the story we've already heard and telling a story that's new that's different that gives us a different experience than we've had before the hero is the audience you build that you build a story so that the hero is it with lots of flaws and everything fine yes make them human but they have certain qualities character of character and of circumstance they have to be brave that is absolutely essential but you can put them in you know unfair injury we care about people who are being unjustly dealt with they're in a situation of danger they're funny they have a sense of humor that always helps loved by other people there is this kind of list of things you can do to keep characters interesting that allows us to like them and once we start seeing the nature of of the hero or heroines major problem and the major impossible task before them hopefully on about page six or eight we the audience the audience becomes one person each of us sitting alone and we project ourselves psychologically project ourselves into the hero and then we're along for the ride and if that hero doesn't do anything or doesn't want anything and other people do all this stuff and all the people to come in all the secondary characters are the witty fun urbane you know loquacious and they're they're that and joking and funny they're all the funny characters while basically your central character is more or less wallpaper it's it's dead many things that story is not and it also relates back to this idea that story is better than the real so one of the things that story is not is that it is not a literal day in the life it is not just a you know plod through the day and I get my coffee and I wake up in the morning and I go to work there's something that there is a core action or a core problem that is bigger or better than the real that ties it int that that can tie it into an everyday situation but it's not just those little everyday moments and I and I just wanted to throw in there you know boyhood was my favorite movie of the year and I think that you know it breaks all of these rules but the reason why it works is that it's not just a day in the life or recounting but it's just also this device of having happened over 12 years that makes it so so fascinating and so there are exceptions to this rule but on the whole these are the things that that people should avoid when they're approaching their stories another one is random musings you know this is a you know it seems to me where it's very pretentious where you have some characters sitting in a diner and somebody goes ketchup what's that about right that and then the movie just kind of moves through people saying that and you know it's funny to point out that people think they're profound when they're not once in a while but if your whole movie is just kind of like ketchup what's that about into the audience after about 20 minutes if that long will go what I'm do I need to be here for this what is this and in it it feels very pretentious kind of just fishing around well these are just some people who really they had one germ of an idea but they really didn't think this through it doesn't have any progression stories also it's not a straight line it needs to go up and down and around and there needs to be highs and lows and I like it in the same way that it's not a day-in-the-life it not it's it's not just a straightforward telling of events you know another one is story is not a fascinating place or even a really cool event so we get pitches like this all the time people like I'm going to write a story about I have a movie about a nuclear submarine getting stuck on the bottom of the ocean and we go what's the story sorry they're like uh nuclear submarines on the bottom of the ocean it's like that's not a story a story is when you start telling me and what the character stakes are you know with that you know so another one is oh wow I went to this amazing village in China and you know this is the village where they make you know the Dragons for the for the festivals it's amazing and Mike's my movie is like that village like that's not a story that's an arena so we're constantly having to help writers distinguish a really cool arena you know or an interesting you know kind of event from being a story those things aren't stone tower or Chicago in the 20s you know again great a great arena but you have nothing until you have your characters doing something that's going to move your story forward we have a structural tool called the BMOC which is beginning middle obstacle in climax these are the four points in any great story where the hero is asked to change and they're in every great story whether it's Star Wars or The Fault in Our Stars or a fast and furious Tokyo Drift and these four points also work inside every scene they're in every action sequence this BMOC so this rhythm of story is present in all great story if you don't have good news bad news raising stakes and and and ticking clocks on every page of your story your star is going to be boring but hardly anyone teaches that a B in being conscious of how those tools work is how you start putting them on every page and by the way these suspense tools work in drama they work in romantic comedy they work in every genre and they work in television too if you go and look at a tarantino script or you go and look at a Chris Nolan script or you go and look at Allen's script you will see on every page once you've been shown it that every page has ticking clocks every page has good news bad news every page has raising stakes a lot of them have other suspense tools too but writers are often unaware of this consciously they don't build this into their stories when they write them so just being aware that this is how and they're cheap Trick's by the way it's good news I'm giving you 20 bucks bad news I'm slapping you ticking clocks is just a bomb a bomb ticking down it's a gun pointed at someone these are not sophisticated tricks they're simple but the greatest artists use them in all of their best work you've never seen a Tarantino script that didn't have three or four pointed guns in nearly every scene it's cheap and it works like a charm it entertains and that's why we also see these in television Breaking Bad is nothing but a series of excruciating suspense devices so excruciating I couldn't even get sexy to watch it and when you sit down to watch Breaking Bad you often have to stop because it's so repellant ly attention making but that's what makes it great the very beginning seriously coming up with a good idea is the most important thing and I was coming up with sort of the basics onra ideas so I would run like a basic cop story and that's fine for television not fine for cinema where it's all about the event it's all about something being big and larger than light so my ideas were like too small to begin with and that I have a string of scripts with like they're they're got great scenes great characters but the idea is way too small it's not it's not involving and interesting enough for people to spend 12 bucks to see the movie on top of that whatever it costs for the king-sized popcorn and the king-sized drink you know it's a life's fortune to go to the cinema these days what I'm trying to come up with an idea or write a script it's would this be a movie that I would be in the audience for and it's it's interesting that some I know people that write scripts that they would not go see that movie it was made and I'm like why would you write that then if you're not even the audience for the movie so I try to write a movie that's not the movie that I not what I would want to see because really what I want to see is the producer of my last film spanked in public I read a movie that is the kind of movie that I would want to see that I would stand in line to see that is you know that an existing kind of movie that I'm sitting in the audience for they just don't bother to go deeper you know what I mean you got to be original I mean that's another thing originality is very important you know because if you read the same thing over and over you're just going to not not gonna respond to it you know so really that is actually the bane of the writers existence especially the screenwriter to come up with something new I mean when you think about I think in in the the second edition of the 101 habits bill marsilii one of the one of the screenwriters there talks about doing the 20s so for him like everything that he thinks about any event any scene character whatever he thinks of kind of listing 20 different ways of doing it like if it's like a you know talk about the meet-cute writing a romantic comedy how people meet in a cute way well he's going to do 20 different thoughts about it okay they can be this I mean you have to do he does 20 because the the first two or three or five of them will be cliches will be things that you know your automatic going to think about them because they're the most famous ones or the most that we've seen a hundred times but but going deeper and he forces himself to go deeper that's where you get the creativity in the originality and eventually when you reach that past the 10 or 12 15 although up to 20 you'll start getting some really original ways because you force yourself and so that's that's where the writer needs to do you got to force yourself to go deeper in order to create some original writing right out of the game it's a it's a tip that he uses a you know habit of creativity to just do the 24 anything you know 20 different ways to rob a bank 20 different ways to to say I love you 20 different ways to break up with someone join different ways to kill someone I mean there's all these things that you've seen a hundred times and when you see it over and over you go you know you're you go cool you know because you've seen it a hundred times and it's only the really the movies that breakout stories the stories that break are the ones that are kind of truly original right whenever you come up with a unique angle to that story that we all know the better for you that's where we generality originality comes and you know so and it gets harder and harder because you know the more the more the more romantic comedies there is the harder it is to come up with something new so you know my first step in writing screenplays is coming up basically coming up with a hundred ideas and picking the best idea I have a thing called 100 idea theory and it doesn't nationally doesn't have to be a hundred ideas but if I come up with one idea that's one idea it could be a terrible idea if I come up with a hundred ideas or sixty ideas or whatever I can comb through and find the very best idea and then I take it the Thunderdome I take that idea and I go if I write the script to this everyone's going to say it's going to pick it apart so I'm going to pick it apart first I want to find all the flaws with whatever ideas the idea is and try to get past those flaws and remove them so that the idea is great naturalism is not naturalism and I'm talking about for example dialogue that has a lot of vocalized pauses urns and arms and your nose and I mean and so on we love that line stories better than the real because one of the things that we've figured out is the story is a thing it's different than real life and I mean you could you could talk about that for ten years you know what does that mean especially in the you know and the realistic filmmaking you know phase that you know we're seeing especially the Indies but but the truth is that a story isn't real life and in some ways something's a story in every way in which it's not real life right so in real life people are mainly mysterious to us they we don't know why they do what they do we don't have access to their motivations story is not like that we do have access to their motivations we do know what's driving them so watching a story you get a little surge of guilty pleasure because it gives you something real life cannot legitimately give you that you have no right to want in real life so if a movie is when we read a script is it doesn't give that access if it doesn't clarify the motives of the character really what they want and what they need and what's driving them is a bad story because that's one of the things that people expect and story that they're going for is access you know an emotional access the problem with real there are two problems with it first of all it's available in the streets for free you don't have to buy a ticket and go into the movie theater or hire a babysitter drive to the fee to park the car pay for the ticket to see what's real you can just step out into the street and see what's real the other thing is it what's real is more for the most part I could tell you about my day today everything that I could tell you would be true and contemporary and I really really knew what I had for breakfast the route that I took to get over to the campus the context of three meetings this is a big meeting day the first Wednesday in the month so I was a tad bit to three meetings today I love my colleagues and I thank God every day that God placed me in a face like this if you feel aware where creativity is is happening and I'm allowed to do creative work but these were not terribly exciting meetings I could walk you through the agendas of those meetings and you'd be fast asleep it's even though it's true and and it's now again we want boredom in our lives and we want to passion and excitement in our art and another way that story is better than the real is that the settings are more interesting than our everyday lives you know we don't go to the movies to watch somebody you know in the bathroom for an hour getting ready for work you know that's that's our everyday Monday in life we go to the movies to see beautiful landscapes and beautiful vistas and to see quirky worlds and quirky arenas that are more interesting than our everyday world and similarly we took the characters in movies we like them because there is something just a little bit there they're like us but they're just a little bit better than us and that's the that's the quality of a hero is somebody who aspires to do the things that we could grow up to do that are within reach of what we could do but are just you know they're just going a little bit more beyond what we might be doing in everyday life another way stories are better than the real is that they're structured around a theme they're structured around some universal truth about human life and this is not your real life right you realize if I say to you how did you learn you know what's some big lesson you learned and you say to me well I learned that it's important to be truthful I learned this you know by the time I was thirty that I wasn't going to lie anymore it's like okay so that means probably had a thousand little incidents from the time you were four and started talking where you started to learn when I lie I get in trouble you know and having to juggle story telling and you know and all of this stuff and so finally at the age of thirty you go hoeing I'm not going to lie anymore but it's this cumulative thing that well in a movie or in a story if it happens in two hours there you take out all the other lessons that people are learning and you say we're just going to look at how Luke learned that he needs to trust the force right you know in stars we're not going to look at all Luke's other problems the fact that he's a slob or he has issues with women or that he's you know he's got jealousy stuff no we're just going to hone in on that so it's a very unnatural structured around a theme experience so when we read a screenplay that it just seems to be all over the place we say people this isn't going to work as a story because the audience doesn't get what are we talking about here what is this about and that's one at a big notes that we end up getting all the time that the writer hasn't been able to really say this story is about this and so I'm going to eliminate everything that isn't about that you know it's a big idea that writer since I've just never made that choice and so the you stand back from the screenplay and you say I don't know what this comes down to in the end I don't know what this is really about so a story is better than real life because it gives us it really cuts out everything that isn't on your main universal truth and story also has a resolution unlike real life where it seems like we're always waiting for our act 3 to happen we often don't know what what resolutions are going to be happening for us in our everyday world but in a story it needs to resolve and that that resolution needs to be satisfying and it's the satisfaction that comes from that resolution that makes that story better than what we normally go through in life and then on top of that all the little elements of story are better than real life so dialogue you know in to write a good line of dialogue sometimes it'll take me three weeks and then ten drafts later I'm still tweaking that comeback think about it as you have a fight with your friend and then you sit there in the shower kind of replaying that and you keep coming all I should have said I joined that line like that's what movies are that they're the writer has gotten that perfect response so you have this perfect back-and-forth ref arte that real life never has if any if people in real life talk the way they do in the movies these will be crazy people you know but in the movies it's okay it's expected you know in storytelling so the idea of everything being honed to be entertaining to be compelling to be a feast it's a story is a feast as opposed to just running through the frigerator open the door and grab a few things that's real life right but a story is a piece and so that that's a we seen our writers you know your your your what you've done here just isn't feasting enough it's just not better enough than people's real life and you know we always quote this one line when the cinema verite movement was going through the 50s everybody was trying to do some realism realism realism mainly coming out of Europe cuz they don't have any money but Hitchcock the Great Master said you know some people want movies to be a slice of life I want two movies to be a slice of cake you know and there it is now that a movie is better than the real and that it's a slice of cake and and if it's we don't see it on the screen on the paper because you're trying too much to be gritty and real then it's like why would anybody want to do this and and then the last thing I would say too is that your movie needs to be at least as good as the real but it needs to be better than the real so in other words it can't be such that people watch this movie and go wow people don't talk like that that would never happen or this is so far and it's like they're right you know so those those are signs that the script isn't working that your movie as an even as good as the real so you got a ten you got to get to the real and then you got to push it and be better than the real everything's there to hear of their own story and there's a little truth to it but I gotta say I mean if I'm talking from experience and from hearing people's life stories that they want to write as movies I would say about 90% of them are not that interesting they just the writers themselves think it's interesting I don't think it is interesting and audiences don't think it's interesting so they got to learn that the day that's why feedback comes in if the feedback is okay well you know I mean I always bring out Hitchcock's quote about you know drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out so a lot of people feel that just because they've had a few interesting experiences may be unique that it warns them to making a movie out of it they may be right but a lot of times are not are on the for emotions mad sad glad and scared you haven't heard that one yeah again there are they they are you know there's a lot of variations or demands meds ed glad and scared there's many permutations and and dimensions there but the way they are useful is like this if you are building if you're outlining something a section a particular section here a goal sequence or a particular scene the thing is the way you guarantee that it's going to have conflict and change in it and change is one of the single most important is to talk about that in a minute to change is the power that makes screenplays either work or not work you got to quantify it but it can be done wonderfully that if if the hero lead character walks stomps jumps falls into a scene and they are either mad sad glad or scared by the end of the scene they have to be one of the others if they're mad when they show up they have to be scared when they walk away or if they're scared when they show up they have to be glad when they walk away because that guarantees dramatic change within the scene and it's a way of checking yourself because we read a whole lot of scenes which are just talk and they're the same everything is the same at the end as as it was at the beginning and that is not a viable scene for visual storytelling the thing you should be aware of is human dynamics you know psychology emotions character relationships that you should be well-versed in now lucky is the writer who has had amazing life experience and had all those experiences that he can write about that makes it easier but it's not necessary if you're a highly curious person I mean you know you could be a great writer who's had a very mediocre life you know I mean I'm not I'm not a believer of the Hemingway thing about you know if you want to write about adventure you got a you got a go and be adventurous and stuff I mean maybe see there's some truth to it but I think it really depends on your mind and your curiosity you know and I think we can all find you know it's all about your imagination if you have if you're highly imaginative you can you can write about anything whether you experience it or not you know if you write science fiction you know George Lucas didn't didn't experience going on a ship in order to be able to write about it right or James Cameron you know do you think he'd think all that stuff about Pandora and Avatar that he experienced that in his own life no it's all imagination right so that's what you need you need you need to know you need to have high imagination obviously but then you need to know be well-versed in character relationships so yes if you've had experience recurrency relationships that's great in character conflicts but if you haven't you can always learn it and if you're highly curious you know I mean I've a psychology degree so so I wasn't a writer I'd be a psychologist because that's what fascinates me I'm fascinated by human interactions given psychology and especially the reason why people do what they do which is what characters doing stories so really you know that works for me but my life story as much as it was I considered very unique and different from most people's life stories I don't have the desire to write about it so it doesn't affect me at all in that in that sense think the thing and that's a thing that screenwriters have to do is scream owners have to figure out how to get out there in the world how to get out of there for many reasons they have to figure out how to get out of their home and out of their comfort zone because one of the things that happens is as we shrink our world we shrink what we can write about and we end up writing stories you know as my two years in my in my apartment after selling the script we're just like smaller and smaller and smaller stories because I was not getting out in the world and being part of the world and it's one of those things where you you know life experience is the is the raw material for your scripts and the more life experience you have whatever that is you know broken hearts you know all that stuff is all part of what makes you who you are so you write the script but also if you don't see the world out there people often online that people will ask questions research questions and they go well how do I know about this and my answer to that is you find the person that does that for a living and you ask them you don't ask me I'm a writer what the hell do I know but if you want to know about stuff you go out and ask those people because part of that is you get out of your comfort zone and into the world but you also get the real answers and so I get a script called recall that was about the auto industry and I went to when it existed the van nuys GM plant and across the street was a bar and I went into that bar and I bought pitchers of beer and I asked guys that worked on the assembly line just to tell me about their lives and I got all kinds of just stuff that I could never get from Google never get from you know going to library it was all stuff that was their real life and one of the things that made it into my script was this guy that talked about how his hands were so calloused that he was afraid to touch his wife and I was a real heartbreaking story it's like one of those things that you don't think about when you think about guys working an assembly line you don't think that there's going to be this thing that's going to affect their the romantic emotional life and those are the stories the great story by conflict you don't have to have a an antagonist for conflict I mean most characters in comedy are in conflict anyway they're in conflict because they're [ __ ] and so they're they're in conflict with their co-workers or their idiots and so they're in conflict with the world around them or they're like George and Seinfeld you know always kind of downtrodden you know II or as it were and so these in conflict with the world and so the the best comedies create characters that are intentionally conflicting with either other people or or the world or themselves what you don't need is you don't need an antagonist you can have an antagonist but it's not necessary in Groundhog Day there's no antagonist there's no villain who's trying to thwart him it's just that he's a jerk who you know everybody kind of rolls their eyes about and then he's stuck in this time warp ik how'd it happen no one knows how do I get out of it no one can help him so that's the conflict of the premise actually introduces a conflict the the company of the catalyst and you usually want to create that conflict in the protagonist after you have successfully sketched out the normal world don't don't start you know it's not an action film don't start or you could mean there's no you know there's no rule that can't be broken but you know don't start with something crazy happening before I know who this person is what's their normal world what's what's what's the deal with them what's the deal with how they live and then you can create something that that threatens that normal world again in in in big there's a whole scene of him his relationship with his best friend his wanting to be with the little girl and then the cat you know the conflict is but now he's a 30 year old man what did he want to do what does he do in in Groundhog Day it's it's living the same day over and over again and and splashes you fall in love with a mermaid but before that you want to take the time to let me know what would this guy be like what would the world be like if that didn't happen take that you know and is that two pages five pages ten pages it's got to be what you need to create the foundation of a real world before the crazy world starts again because the better your foundation the better we're going to believe the incredibly crazy things that are happening in act three teach you in film school or any writing book is you know conflict is the source of all drama if everybody if all your characters are just getting along then for ya nothing you know I look how long are you so I mean I think there's a tendency is a reason why most movies over the last 20 years have adopted the James Bond opening which is just start with like start with conflict from frame 1 so that you can hold everybody's attention I don't that's a good question I would probably say that you know delaying conflict too long or not not introducing what the central conflict is going to be can be a problem like for example I did a film I did a short recently it was like a 40 minute short and shorts are harder because I think you know because you have less time to establish character and the movie that I'm was making is a thriller called where's Roman which I'm actually very very happy about with it's kind of a surrealistic thriller and the 3/4 of the movie is really this one character venturing into this very disturbingly weird hotel and meeting all these characters and all these terrible things happening to but I wanted you to care about this character before all this crazy [ __ ] happened so I deliberately wrote a you know like a five or so most a five or six minute scene in a bar where you meet this main character through another character and it virtually is no conflict it's really just two guys who like a strangers Rangers meeting just having a conversation about stuff and it was a way of getting you to know who this guy was and what a situation was and who he was before all this stuff happened and I think half the audience or the people that watched it half for a little more than half really appreciated that and then I was rude I met another filmmaker you know who's been around for years and years years and said I really loved the movie I would have cut down that conversation at the beginning meaning that he was saying you know get to the get to the thing gets of the conflict get to the conflict suit I think that's the hardest thing for right is to do is to try to establish a character even through action and at the same time getting the plot going which tends to be when the conflict is is established so the only danger of starting with conflict too soon is that you've got to maintain somehow maintain this level of drama and that if you stop that people are going to be accustomed to a certain tension or a certain thing and when you stop to smell the roses and you may lose everybody but you know I don't know that's that's that's what I was thinking one of the key skill sets in addition to creative integration is they build the right and compelling conflict and compelling conflict is what takes great characters and great dialogue and just makes it pop off the page it's just it's hard to explain that you have a you all the visceral experience when you read you can read you look you read some stuff that's just bad and then you read some stuff and it's got some great moments and some great characters of dialogue but it's nothing really happening then you read some stuff and it's it's good things are happening and that's interesting but then you read something and just pops off the page it just you can tell I was a studio reader and I could tell within one page if someone knew what they were doing if it popped off the page or not now that one page was great I don't know if they could write a whole script I have to keep reading but if that one page didn't pop I knew they couldn't and yeah if I had a class of about 20 people they're usually about two people and they're writing just sort of popped off the page more than others they didn't know why necessarily but everyone could tell and I think they could tell they would often not say anything it's like in a writing group there's usually one person who's writing just is better than everyone else I learn in an MFA program it's just maybe people don't know why but it does what I've learned is it's because they're writing and compelling conflict and I find that about 5% of the writers that come to work with me naturally do that I don't have to teach them it just has that popping off the page and about 5% for to do that and the other 90% are anywheres from they need some work today they suck at it they just sucked at it but you can teach people how to do it so a great example is Neil Simon the playwright he has a book called rewrites which is his autobiography he talks about like year after year when he was a younger man he'd write these plays and he loved the characters and in everyone thought there was terribly funny but there was just something missing it just didn't hold together this wasn't interesting enough and over time he's like I know something's missing but I don't know what it is and I know a lot of writers who feel that way it's a really terrible feeling he eventually did the one thing he never wanted to do is he went to his older brother who was a really successful writer and his older brother read his stuff and said you're not writing a compelling conflict and Neil Simon's like what are you talking about what is this and he said my older brother taught me what it was and then the light bulb went off and so then he said I would just structure my compelling conflict and then pour in all the character and comedy and that's how he did his career David Mamet and this was on my website or you can look online he did a memo about a decade ago or so to the writers of the unit his TV show and he basically said you will learn how to write in compelling conflict or you'll be in the blanking unemployment line or the bread line and a lot of f-bombs in this memo but he's basically saying this is not a natural skill set for most people you will learn to do this or you will not survive any story you can talk about epic poem you can talk about a myth you can talk about a fairy tale or children's book they're all built on character desire and conflict every story that I can think of almost without exception if it's a narrative story that has a beginning middle Emma and just going to about it be about a character who desperately wants something and something stands in their way too little conflict in any story or too little tension and the story is going to be really boring and nobody's going to be interested I think you need to have conflict and tension almost if not in every scene of your book pretty much in every scene even things that are character driven I always think you want to look for how can you ramp up the tension in that even if it's just a dialogue exchange you try to have moments that are ratcheting up the tension so a good example of that is something like in the beginning of the shining the movie I also loved the book with the film there's a scene where it's um the mom talking to Child Protective Services so you're learning information about the fact that the father may have been abusive toward to the son but it's just a dialogue scene but the whole time she's smoking a cigarette and the ash just gets longer and longer and you're like oh my god ash your cigarette you get so tense for her you're like that's going to fall all over you and she doesn't and it just somehow is this genius way of just keeping tension so there's always little things you can look at in a scene to kind of keep the tension going and then obviously there's big conflict scenes where there's a fight or actually something major happening or a major obstacle but I think throughout a story that's what keeps you reading and people will be like oh it's getting worse it's getting so much worse for these characters and you know or even like a book series like Game of Thrones you're like oh my god things are still happening and happening but it's like that's what keeps the story going you know a story about conflict is a really boring story I think Ravana get famously said make great characters and then make bad things happen to them one exercise that we do with our clients is we have them make a list of every possible conflict that could ever happen to their character and and then you know try to come up with 20 things and then we say okay now come up with 10 more and then come up with 10 more and now put them put it all in your script see how much conflict you can add to your script and that's a really common beginner mistake is that there's just simply not enough conflict happening in the story and high stakes lots of conflict that's what drives a story so you know it should so something should happen on page 1 yeah or the conflict is only as one nature to me that's the mistake so many Hollywood studio films today that the conflict is all external conflict you know or the world is ending the world ending yeah you know so we need to superheroes to come in and and you know stop with that guy but know that there's all kinds of different levels of conflict you know between human beings there's a psychological oscillate between yourself between you and and the gods or the fate you know and and and so the idea is what the nature of the conflict in your script if you only have external conflict coming at your character one kind of you know like literally like somebody's everybody's throwing stones at them then then it's a boring movie you need to have all different kinds of conflict you need to see a physical emotional spiritual every every type of yeah so things story is not something without conflict you know stories about conflict and and the essential conflict in a story by the way is the conflict between what a character wants and what they need so you know the character says I want to be an astronaut they need to be somebody who can be dependent you know interdependent with other people so the movie ends the story ends when those two things meet when when they're want becomes their real need so their want begins to transform it's like it's not about being an astronaut that I should want it's this thing as soon as the character wants what they really should want the story's over but that kind of trying to get those two things to converge what they want and what they need that's the fundamental conflict many music and when a main character gets what they need that's typically a happy ending when the main character gets what they want that's typically a tragedy the problem is there is no adversary or there is no powerful adversary adversary is so critical people need to work on their adversary until it is the adversary should be the strongest person in the story and I you know when I was coming up is they oh they have to be equal they have to be equal in power to the hero no they have to be much more powerful than the hero it has to look for most of the movie it has to look like the hero has no bloody way of defeating this adversary or surmounting this the the problems being presented by this adversary but they do it they they clink them and they out try them and drive and they can make it happen and that's a story with great conflict with a hero who is doing things who sucks us in emotionally that we can ride along happily for the journey and that's how that's how the good ones work what roger ebert used to call the idiot plot where the thing is if two characters just said what they know to each other the movie would be over in five seconds pretty much and so basically what it is is you have a character that is being forced by the writer not by not by in real life and real life they would say something but if the writer realizes if they say it the movies over in five minutes or now this thing goes in a different direction so they don't say those things they keep them to themselves which plays false instead we want to do is we want to have the and this is this is the thing often people they're afraid to create the conflict because the conflict gets into the messy stuff and so they hold back on the conflict when we need to get into that conflict they there's a thing that another another screenwriting problem is delaying things because we you know will that conflict really can't happen until this point or this point psychic camera this point in the movie when we're at this point well what usually happens is they they stall until they get to that conflict when instead what they should do is have that conflict happened here and then have things just continue to get worse so that's seeing here instead of being the you know the the beginning of the conflict instead is when the conflict is a hell of a lot worse they don't escalate the conflict enough an escalating conflict is important again it's an in dialogue it would seem false if that character didn't say there's a problem and here's what it is or you know I have an issue with you and they need to have that issue it needs to be it needs to start here you know the fuse needs to not just be lit but then it needs to explode and that explosion has to start a chain reaction of other explosions so that's it's like an act to problem often it's writers try to not try to hold everything off until act two when you need to kick off with you know with something exciting happening the first thing before you even start writing the words of the scene you want to step back and as usual my suggested vices ask questions in other words first of all you should have already asked the questions who is my hero what is the hero's wound what are they afraid of what is their visible goal that they're going after and where structurally does the scene occur because depending on how far along in that inner journey the character is that's going to affect how they would react in the situation after you figured those things out then the next question you want to ask is what does my character want in this scene and does that desire is that desire going toward ooh they think it's going to move them closer to their goal or at least overcome an obstacle to achieving their goal if the answer to that question is no then the scene should be jettisoned it's not serving the story because every scene has to move the character closer to their visible goal or force them to face an obstacle or anticipate an obstacle that they didn't know they were going to previously so let's say the answer is yes though you do know that this is going to contribute to the goal and you figure out what do they want to accomplish within the scene what do they where do they want to be or what do they want to have happen to the end of the scene then what are they going to do to try and do that that will constitute the action of the scene the dialogue you just set aside until all these other things are figured out because the dialogue is only really to reveal in some way how they're feeling about the situation or its dialogue where they're trying to persuade somebody to do something or get above somebody else take control of the situation and so on but first you want to see what does the character want in the scene and then what is the obstacle they must face in the scene to achieving that because the motion of a movie and the emotion of any scene is primarily going to grow out of the conflict if it's not the conflict being faced right then it's the conflict that they are anticipating or occasionally that the audience is anticipating in the thriller we may know that the killer is in the next room and all the hero wants to do is get to the kitchen to make a sandwich but it's still it's still about what do they want and what are we anticipating is going to get in their way and then when it comes to dialogue especially if you struggle the dialogue get get something down you should get anything down to begin with just so you've got to seem to work with rather than a blank page but if you don't know what the dialogue should be right dialogue where the character is just saying how they feel and what they want it's what's known as on-the-nose dialogue it's terrible dialogue but at least now you've got a scene you've got action you've got character you got dialogue and now you can ask the last question there would be my suggestion that is okay now I know what they want they're going through this action how can I make it more difficult for them first of all but also instead of having them announce their feelings or desires can they do it without saying anything or if they in a conversation how can they hide their true desires or feelings and cover it up with more surface superficial subtextual language and that's sort of what you're going for and those are sort of the beats of going through it then it's a matter of just going through that process again and again and again with each successive draft but that will that will get you to something if you're looking at that blank page to begin with so it's good Michael oh thank you you're very welcome huh I'm going to write that down wanna movie to me is constantly interesting I was totally engaged by imitation game from beginning to end they were able to comment on some very very weighty and difficult issues without ever getting preachy or intellectual about it bully bullying homophobia uh issues involving the war and peace in life and death should we tell these people that they're about to you know the Nazis arooo with the u-boats are about to sink this convoy and we can save all the lives are the people in the convoy that way but that will also tell the Nazis that we're on to their code and that'll they'll change the code and we won't be able to read them anymore and that will cost more like these are very interesting questions and their answer in a dramatic context without ever becoming a lecture about principles or [Music] protocols or anything like that now there's nothing wrong with with lectures on principles and protocols but movie is not the place for that of writing this is getting back to that assumption thing we're talking about before which we deal a lot with and I go back to write your life I'm telling you a story about a traumatic experience I had it's for instance say personal experience and I'm going to assume that if I tell you everything that happened you're going to have the same emotional reaction I did that's a huge assumption you may not a writer can write a script it may be true may be personal may be totally fiction but the right of writing that script and all those characters is having an emotional experience as he or she is creating it with these characters how they related to each other all the twists and turns in the story and they going oh that's great that's great assuming that anybody else reading it will be having the same reaction that may not be true so that the assumption of the writer is a problem can be a problem the best way to deal with that is really simple you tell the writer there's your problem you wrote that scene and you're very moved by it I read the scene I don't get it okay what you're intending is great I'm not getting it and other people are not you're assuming it would get in because you are so identified with those characters in that situation okay not a problem let's figure out how we can make it clearer to the honest so the audience does get it and that's my job as a director that's my job as a directing consultant or a writing consultant is to help writers get to that point where the scene is clear and note one thing which we don't need to talk a lot about but one thing is a script speaking of script and writer a script initially in order to get made into a movie has to engage the reader and as you know the reader very often is not the person who's going to produce it the reader is somebody down the line in some production company whatever it does you in other words that script by itself by its little self those 120 pages has to impact that reader so the first thing is let's make sure the reader gets it the reader who just picks up another script and reading gets it that's really crucial so forget me the director and forget all the other people we got it we got to make sure that the script is strong enough that that works and if it's not doing it then it's not going to get made and the writer can deal with his for his or her frustration like why can't they get it don't go there don't go why can't they get it let's go back to how good this is what a lot of people like Michael Haig and Chris logo and all those people teach screenwriting work with writers on is not lots of times it's not about what the story is about how do you craft these scenes and characters and certainly that the writer will get it and eventually all the other people who are going to work on it I'm just going to make this up I had this bout with cancer and I fought off cancer together robbed me of a year of my life but now I'm a cancer survivor I could tell you about it and you should feel horrified by what happened because I didn't frightened and someone could tell me that I go OK it's not it's not going to impact me the way you think it is only because you as you tell it we reinstate filter of assumption the filter of assumption of a writer even writing fiction I created this great moment in the scene and nobody gets it well and we have to keep working on it I understand what you're going for I understand what you want them to get you haven't crafted it in the way for them to get it so it's also understanding not only from a writer's point of view not only understanding their layer or barrier of assumption and because every screen rod I just think this is really true finishes the screenplay thinks it's brilliant hopefully they do why otherwise why do it and that's an assumption too but also they have to realize that every reader has barriers against certain things that you have to plow through you have to break through you have to surprise them you have to sort of find your way around the barriers and obstacles that the reader has within themselves so yes you have to understand yourself and you have to understand you can't say why don't you get that you have to understand they they don't get it for a reason I teach I am the home of TMI I come in and vomit everything going on in my life be a good bad tragic happy I I am I am an open book if I'm being completely honest a cuz it's free therapy and I have a captive audience of 20 people but it's also because I hear here when I went to one of the great sages and of all time and with a view of the human condition Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin said said I never want to be respectable I always want to be responsible and I love that quote and I hope after the first class that people take with me they know they're not going to get respectable at all I can i I will I will again I will tell too much and there is a little bit of method to my madness though because because I don't want because I know writers directors and put themselves on that pedestal because they've had this degree of success and they feel that they have to come in and be very buttoned down and very above the people that they're talking to we're talking down to I don't look at it like that at all I will tell you about my bad night my hangover my whatever but but and part of it again it's like free therapy but part of it is also this is this is my life and end where and it sometimes it's not terribly respectable but I'm responsible because I'm responsible because I will get my ass to my computer and right and don't worry about being perfect but that is a debt that I wish I could say that that my success rate was a hundred percent with that but again most people will never finish their scripts because that sense of that needing to be perfect oh I'm being boring oh this isn't gonna this isn't working it will take over and it will crush their creativity and it's a very sad thing the witness I try to get people over it I try to say look it's a first draft I tell you no don't worry so much but but that is the toughest job any person who's teaching any kind of creativity has is to convince people to get out of their own way and my way of doing it again is to say today students I am a hot mess but I wrote but I but I wrote for four hours I just don't you know I I you know i-i've knock wicker I've made a living at this for thirty years I mean it's insane sometimes great sometimes skating by sometimes whatever but it hasn't come out of being perfect believe me but it's coming out of of having that enough discipline to write always don't need to be respectable always be responsive in pain any pay wow thank you go back to Sean Ryan again the one who was so promising and he got a job on a sitcom as soon as he came to LA and then he didn't work for six years and what he did is he wrote and I think that he wrote about 14 spec scripts and what happened is his scripts were all good but nothing was getting him traction and he asked his manager he said to his manager send me an example of a script that is getting somebody work and his manager sent over the script that had the most buzz at the time and Sean compared it page to page and said he'd have you know three things on a page that were really good but this one the one that got the buzz every single beat was perfect and when he realized that he had not been hitting the mark he started to write and hit the mark and in not too long a time he got hired on the show and that show led to another show and then he got he developed the shield so you just have to keep working you know I suspect it was about four or five years in that that happened so he was only writing that next level of script for a couple of years I don't know the exact dates but I know that story and how do you test out a screenplay you test it out by getting people to sit around a table or at least half of them sitting around the table reading parts and the other half of them sitting around the table drinking wine it's important eating eating some cheese and listen and and don't get actors together don't rehearse them that would be the death of it what you want is you want a si si experience sick is the Latin word for as is you just want to hear the script as is without trying to make it better because if something works on the page in the mouths of you know maybe just another writer not another trained actor you know it's alive and if something's flat then you know something's wrong and and then the the hard task is to not to wake up to the coma that that writers put themselves in when they hear their script being read out loud and try to try to do what you need to do in order to in order to fix it from beginning to end the least we want is not to be bored I mean I go to the movies and see screeners scandalously I'm going less and less the theaters and looking more and more screeners I used to feel guilty about not going to the theaters now I feel guilty about not screening the screeners and and the reason is usually I am bored I think most art is is pretty bad most paintings most sculpture the most literature most music is lousy now that also may seem like a cynical and a dark thing to say but it's the opposite of that the truth is that the the stuff that is contemporary much of it is going to be pretty bad some of it will be brilliant what happens is that it the bad stuff falls away you go I was in New York not too terribly long ago and I was in the Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of my favorite museums and I didn't see a single painting there that wasn't timeless and eternal that didn't deserve to be there and you could get the impression from that that the paintings are somehow worthy all the time well you don't realize a lot of people don't realize is that for every painting that hangs at the Met there are 10,000 stupid worthless jerky amateur paintings now there's nothing wrong I think it's one of other people tried to paint and tried to be creative and took a shot at it but it's unusual that it's worth bothering somebody else about that is to say there's something in the work that merits the attention and the consideration of the time of an audience an observer in film because it is contemporary even more so television because it's in our face now there hasn't been the chance for the stuff the bad stuff to drop away so we think that it's uniquely bad when it isn't it's just as bad as other as other art fortunately the little bit of really really good stuff is enough to change your life and and make it worth engaging all of it all of the stuff so that you do see the the good stuff there's people people say why don't they make good movies now like they used to in the 30s and the 40s did they make good movies in the 30s and the way they did there were a lot of really good ones but there were also a lot a lot of lousy ones we just don't remember them I think 50 60 years from now they'll be saying why don't they make good movies like they did back in the early you know new millennium because the people will have forgotten - The Hunger Games I'm not a big fan of the things I think people are going to forget about it but they're going to remember the imitation game that we're into games today I guess the least we want when I say don't be boring I'm saying that's the very least that I want from a work of art we're talking now about dramatic narratives you know he's I was at the Louvre in Paris and I saw the Mona Lisa among others how much time did I spend with it a minute if I'd spent 3 minutes with it that would have been a long time if I sat quietly now for just a few seconds you'd feel how how how heavily time ways Keith no I'm just waiting for see if I get quite in for two seconds you get nervous in return and I don't blame you that's my that's my point I say sorry uh no no no not at all that's you help you you're helping me the the but the most we want from that's the least we want I have a deal with my wife which is if I start to nod out during movie she's supposed to let me do that unless some snoring and wheezing and spraying everybody around us and then bringing disgrace in discredit and humiliation upon us it's up to the movie to keep me awake and the fact that matter is that I used to like fight it if I started to drift during the movie I would fight it like you know hates so what a I got the breath and China you know petitions now I if I start to drift that's it I'm going to nod out in this one it just does not worth seeing you know I've walked into movies where I was really weary hadn't slept very well but it was a good movie and it woke me up so that's the least we want don't be boring and if that's what you do that's an incredible achievement but again that's the bottom that's what's the top and the top is I want my life changed completely the way great art does I want it turned upside down and transmogrified I want to be transported and that's what Breaking Bad did to me that's what the Sopranos did to me I just my life is different and you know constantly because of my exposure to to that that great art and that's what great art should do at the top end it should just change your life forever how do you know if you have blazing-hot material your phone is ringing people want to meet you they want to take you out for lunch they want to take you to dinner they want you to come over to the barbecue they want to buy your material or hire you to work on their projects there's a buzz about you in town if you don't have representation agents and managers are sort of knocking on your door everybody sort of kissing your butt and saying how fabulous you are and you feel really fabulous that's blazing hot material when you get traction that's how you know it's blazing hot and there's people that aren't in LA they're not in the business and they feel like I could write a fantastic script let's say and and it'll never get into the right persons hands if I'll never get discovered if you have blazing hot material that really will and even if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who can get your script to somebody it's like six degrees of separation if that material is blazing hot you will be discovered absolutely and what happens is if your material has been out in the marketplace for three or four months and nothing is happening you can fool yourself by saying you know what they just don't get it it didn't get to the right person but the truth is it's probably not ready yet it's time to go back to the drawing board and you wouldn't be the first person that that had to happen for that happens to most people because you don't come out of the chute being perfect I think that that's a lot of people's misconceptions especially screenwriters is my first thing it's going to sell it's going to be great again there's the Mickey Fisher phenomenon occasionally it happens but that's really rare that's really rare writing a really kick-ass script and putting it in front of somebody and making the first page so good that they have to keep reading to page five and making the first five-page is so good they have to keep reading to page 10 and making the first 10 page is so good that they never put it down until they get to the last page and they have to pick up the phone and call you as soon as they're done that's how good your script has to be and it can't be that good that you can't think it's that good all your friends have to read it and think holy [ __ ] this is the best thing I've ever read can I say that on your yippee we're on the internet right have you please little hands right for them okay and and then your friends have to show it to their friends and people who don't even know you have to read this and think this is the best thing I've ever read I can't wait to see this on television or in the movies and when you have a script that's getting that kind of reaction from your friends then you can walk into somebody's door and say here this is what I can do read this and you will hire me and you'll have that confidence to go into the room and exude that and if you have that confidence people will read that first page if you walk into somebody's office and you feel that way about your material and you know without a shadow of a doubt that this is a great script that gets across to people and they'll read your first page but if your first page is amateurishly written they're going to stop right there not afraid of being boring because I I just I I will jump off creative cliffs and I and sometimes I'll land really hard and break my neck and sometimes I'll lend exactly where I need to land but boring isn't an issue for me and it's interesting because I've been at this a long time now and I feel more unborn than ever I feel I feel creatively Unleashed some of it is I have nothing to prove I've got some cool posters and a couple of classics and all of that but I'm not I'm not ever worried about boring I am worried about good and that's a different thing and good that it's going to resonate and and and that people are going to feel it and that's a different thing not but not boring but being good I worry about every day when I write and I'm very I'm I'm my hardest harshest critic and sometimes that gets in the way at a little bit I I wish I could go to bed not analyzing and reanalyzing what I wrote that day but maybe that goes with the territory but yeah I always wanted I want to be better than good and and I wasn't you know and and again it's sort of silly and maybe arrogant as it sounds and like when I was starting Beatle just with Michael we're going to write a classic I want everything I do to be great and you don't always do that I'm not even pretending that you always do that but good isn't good enough ever for me and boring doesn't enter into it now let's just have some sexy sensual fun sure but you know what you're doing then you say okay now it's time to light candles important line and let's have fun but you don't you're not stuck in any particular place

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 352,505

Rating: 4.9305081 out of 5

Keywords: avoid writing a boring sceenplay, boring screenplay, how to write a better screenplay, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting advice, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting class, screenwriting lecture, best screenwriting video, screenwriting interview, filmcourage, film courage

Id: OBvusf6vn-0

Length: 102min 26sec (6146 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2017