Before A Screenwriter Types 'Fade In:' On A Screenplay

meet the prabha the most important thing is to understand what the elements are viable story idea and to make coming up with one your main priority and take the time and get the feedback necessary on your just ideas before you launch into six months or a year or even several years writing and rewriting a script because you can write and rewrite a script endless times but to make it somewhat better but if it's based on an idea that really was always gonna have a tough time moving forward no matter how you execute it a manager an agent would call that somewhat wasted time 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 I was a beginning middle and end it's going to about it be about a character who desperately wants something and something stands in their way it has to have a hook that gets people instantly involved in the story and and that is a huge part of the story itself and it's it's got to have a very strong character in the story that you care about and other than that it has to have twists and turns that lead to a surprise ending and like if I had to just say three things I guess that's what I would say the three things are every every story needs that because a story about nothing it's not gonna hold anyone's interest and and sometimes writers when they begin their careers think that they just if they just write they can write about anything but the truth is they need to write from their heart about things that matter to everyone and if they do that you can hardly go wrong because stories are really not about words or word choice or anything like that they're about conveying the power of a character facing a dilemma that you have no idea how he or she will will resolve and when you do that you've got everyone's attention stories in general are not plot we think their plot but they're not their emotions they're their moments that generate emotion so if you become more concerned with the things inside you that feel like they're emotional and you get those emotions on the page or in a scene then you can find ways to create the internal logic of a story to bring them together so so it's just shifting from plot into emotion really if you're a writer I think you have to realize identification has nothing to do with who we are in real life no it only has to do with emotion it only has to do with empathy because we are there's nothing in real life that would make me like Sully or whatever his name is in Avatar I'm nothing like Indiana Jones I'm nothing like the hero of Shrek but that isn't what that's not why we go to movies we don't really go to movies to become characters that are so much like we are we can see those people like going home yeah that's those are the people we want to get away from what you want to do is create that empathy using those tools so we become them on an emotional psychological level that's the fun of it so we become a space traveler 200 years in the future we become a soldier of fortune we become an ogre whatever we become a woman on the Titanic so those two things are really better thought of as disconnected completely I think yeah also also along that line I agree totally with what Michaels saying but then we can we connect with characters on an emotional level and if you take any of the characters that you've mentioned and Michael's mentioned and you say okay that person's life is nothing like mine I am NOT Shrek I am NOT Indiana Jones I'm nothing but my life is so much like him because I suffer and experience all the emotions that he goes through I have feelings of abandonment I have feelings of of pride I have a feelings of discouragement in other words I can identify with him emotionally not that I want to be him or be like him but I like to know that he is actually not that different from me in other words there is a similarity but the similarity is on the emotional experience all level not on the action level or the career level if you take like you mentioned Titanic there you have the two lovers on Titanic do we all understand falling in love yes hopefully we all do do we all understand being in danger yes do we do do we all understand fears of death and dying yes we do dessert have we ever been on the Titanic no or sinking boat and in other words we haven't been but what we can the experience is that these a good film will allow us to have with the characters with with this not identifying with the character except on the emotional level and that's where we get hooked and that that's how we we and but not only empathize that we project ourselves in into them and we play them when you read a script you play all the characters even when you watch a film you actually project yourself inside the character to go on not the adventure of Indiana Jones but the experience the emotional experience that right that's the ride you want to go on and that and that's what makes us connect potentially with this film on a very very deep level makes a viable idea so I came up with this little acronym of the word problem because I feel that every story is really about a problem and it's all about you know when someone's are reacting to your script or your pitch or your logline what they're mostly thinking consciously or not is okay what's the problem at the center of this story does this problem sound really compelling and entertaining to watch is an audience gonna care about this problem that this main character or these characters are trying to solve whether it's film television or even commercial fiction or theatre I think the same kind of basic premises of you know how story and ideas for story work applies to all them which is why the title mentions stage and fiction they're looking at what the problem is what's the nature of the problem or what's the nature of the goal for the main character right so I took problem and I created this acronym from the letters in the word problem and the book is basically a presentation of these seven elements that start with those seven letters and those are the elements that I think successful commercially viable stories that would interest an age and a manager a producer and editor etc tend to have you want to hear what they are so it's just quickly and we can go deeper if you want the problem at the center of the story needs to be punishing relatable original believable life-altering entertaining and meaningful so some of those words I could have used different words but they wouldn't fit the problem so I kind of made so they all lined up with those seven letters to me that's what the story is what's the central problem here we could talk examples if you wanted but pretty much any genre it's about characters who are kind of punished usually as they're trying to resolve some situation and so it's just becomes second nature to me to think in terms of what's the problem at the center of any TV series TV episode movie story in general and of course when I look at someone's script or I just see the log line even I'm like I said I'm looking at what's the problem here and sometimes the log line doesn't even make the problem clear or it focuses too much on the internal problem for the characters because sometimes writers confuse like internal character arc with external problem and great stories generally have both but the external problem is kind of the part that people really want to know about when they are assessing your idea it's like the external problem has to be really solid the internal arc is a little more optional but you've got to have that big external problem typically in a commercial type project and so that's what I'm talking about more than the internal what the character needs to learn and how they need to grow stuff which is the arc or the theme or the flaw you know that kind of stuff sometimes we writers tend to focus a lot on that and make that drive all of our efforts and what I've learned is its it tends to be better to let that stuff stay a little flexible until you've gotten this sort of external problem worked out and even kind of structured out a bit because sometimes your sense of what the theme is or what the characters growth should be will change and shift once you've really explored the external problem the external challenge that there you know every scene is typically about them grappling with and trying to resolve what is the fear that is crippling in some way the character at the beginning of the story and how do they find the courage to overcome that I talk what I lecture about the terms I use our identity in essence because to me this isn't present in all screenplays you could have a big action script that doesn't involve a character arc but for most of the of the stories that are layered the character is suffering from some moon something happened in the past before the movie began that was so painful that they believe they've dealt with it but they've they sort of suppress it they haven't blacked it out they know what happened but they think that doesn't bother me anymore so in Shrek it was his rejection or in in Titanic it was rose getting drummed in by her mother the idea if you don't have a man to take care of you you're not going to survive so though those wounding experiences created this deep-seated fear and that stuckness that I talked about at the beginning is just them living under that fear and it's preventing them from really doing what they need to do to be fully to be fulfilled then as the writer what you have to do is you have to give that character a goal you have to dangle a carrot in front of your hero that is so enticing either because it's such a big reward or it's to prevent something horrible from happening that they are desperate to go after it so that's the plot of your story is the journey as they go after that goal but the inner journey is about them in pursuing that goal realizing I'm never gonna get it unless I can find this courage that I don't have because I'm too afraid of this moon from the past of so they start in this identity this false self and they have to find a way to get to their essence in who they truly are as they gradually find this courage to achieve the goal and the rule is they can't get the goal in the end of the movie unless they found the courage and if they do find the courage they've got to get there they've got to win they've got to get the girl or find the buried treasure or stop the serial killer or whatever that goal might be so it's that intertwining of that outer journey of the plot and the inner journey that the hero takes of transformation that really interests me when I talk about story and script even in comedy series on television one thing I often find myself reminding myself in my own projects and telling other writers that come to me and want feedback and stuff is that your characters should really be in hell and under siege pretty much all the time like even if you watch a show like 30 rock means they're slightly dated references now but like Everybody Loves Raymond but I could also talk about like V or glow or current series if you really look at what's going on for the characters that we're following it's basically their suffering they're under siege they're in a sort of hell and they're trying to get out of it pretty much every episode for us as an audience it's fun to watch it's fun to watch their reactions to things and just sort of how their characters operate and interact in a comedy in a drama or a thriller it's fun a different way for the audience it's fun for us it's never fun for them you know even in even in the you know the the save the cat book the Blake Snider book he talks about the fun and games section which is the first half of act 2 in a screenplay in his world and I think he makes some great points but the fun and games section even in that section of the movie which he calls flooding games I'm often telling people I don't think your characters should so much be having fun or enjoying the situation your characters are kind of under siege even in the first half of act 2 they're kind of struggling suffering being punished by the situation they're in the upside-down world they find themselves in the problem or goal that they're trying to resolve which they're an underdog and they're overmatched and the world is not giving them what they want that's pretty much every story in my view in every genre so it's it's it's interesting how often writers tend to write scenes of characters kind of getting along and kind of having victories and I and I usually say that you know in a story the victories generally only come at the very end if they come anywhere other than the very end they're usually very short-lived and often overshadowed by the bigger problem that still demands resolution because what keeps the drama or the comedy moving is that sense of there's a problem I'm trying to solve this problem there's this goal I'm trying to reach this goal problem and goal are kind of two sides of the same thing some stories the goal is just to solve the problem in other stories the goal is its own positive thing and the problem is I haven't reached the goal so it's kind of like problem slash goal I think of it as like the same thing but that being difficult and unresolved and also changing and evolving and usually getting worse and more over the course of the story or the TV episode or the TV series is kind of this key thing that I'm always looking at medic audiences and certainly industry professionals are looking at and evaluating consciously or not do I feel the problem is compelling and big is it getting worse you know are the characters struggling is it changing and evolving but generally in a direction of worse and more difficult until the kind of final battle at the end where the resolution finally happens so that's why problem is that word that I think I'm always referring to when I'm talking about a story right up front is what is the story what is the movie story or what is the TV story that's where the logline comes in that everybody is so happy to talk about but it really is a one sentence expression of your intention if you can't get that down you might want to go back in and and really re-examine you know is there something to right here so first of all ask yourself what is that one sentence expression once you have that then you want to ask yourself you know well what turns you on about that idea okay based on what excites you about that idea now ask well what are the scenes that express that excitement you know that really really show those beats that are that you have to show on screen you know and then keep working backwards from there okay who are the people that populate that scene what do they say so if you start big picture and then you keep sort of breaking it down to the things that excite you the people in it what they say I think I think those are the questions to ask you as you're writing what's the genre as it's studio or independent who's your protagonist what's their goal with their flaw who's the main relationship with what's driving this story who's your audience who's the antagonist what's their goal in their flaw you know what's the narrative question driving the film so like every story you should be able to sum it up in one main question like so like dial if I was diehard would be like you know will you know New York cop trapped you know will this New York cop free his wife and hostages from some European terrorists you have them trapped in skyscrapers like it's like one question right like so what's your narrative question driving this story and what's your theme and what's your theme attic question like what's why are you telling us that the ematic question is like the question you pose to the audience it could be a moral question it could be or something else but some question you want them to think about like it is family really just people you're related to or is it something more you know it could be a fee Matic question it's it's not overtly stated in the story but it's kind of like in the film subconscious it's like what you know the film is really kind of about and then your theme is how you answer that question by the end that's your theme your your story so like what are those things and I might even be missing a couple ayat but off the top of my head those are like a lot of and if you can't answer those questions or if those questions don't make sense together a lot of times there's the problems with the story so for example if you say your protagonist goal is my private protagonist goal is to grab the banana and what's your antagonist goal to grab the orange well they're in two different movies they're never going to intersect there's no conflict great your protagonist grabs the banana and your antagonist grabs the orange movies over and that's a very simplistic example but those are the kind of things but on a deeper level we look at my goal wall here there's a few things that aren't making sense you say your main relationship is character and character BB or antagonist character C then I even I mean your main relationship that's moving the story forward so why are they your why are they your antagonist the 12 questions is a great sort of reset okay let me square away I mean you know even if I've done this a hundred times every story is different in a lot of times you miss those those important details and once I think that twelve questions are are making sense now and things are tying together like oh now see how the protagonist goal ties into your theme okay now that being starts puzzle pieces start making sense then I say okay now now let's work out a synopsis three or four paragraphs you know first X 2nd half 3rd ad or whatever just so we can say ok now let's make sure from just a broad story standpoint that all those questions are being addressed and then from there you can expand it to a full treatment scene outline and it's then you start writing your script cuz like I explained to them a lot easier to develop the story in a synopsis form or a treatment form than it is to keep rewriting the script when there's fundamental problems in it you don't start building the building it's slanted I will start taking out some bricks and try to get sure you work all of that out on the design phase and the blueprint phase and so that's what I try to get them to do that and the 12 questions is to me is like okay that's that beginning that organic seed that we need to plant to make a healthy tree grow the best questions a screenwriter can ask themselves to make the story better one thing is is how is this my story how is whatever this story is how does it relate to me so that I can use my emotions to go through to tell this story better because what the weirdest part about being a screenwriter is that we sit in a room alone we are isolated from society we basically are cut off from emotional situations we hate conflict we hate all of these things that then we're going to use those are the elements we need to use to make our story passionate and and emotional and all of those things so all the things that we sort of fear to deal with we now have to deal with and so basically look at the story one of the things with assignments that I have to find a doorway into an assignment so if I am offered a deal I'm offered some thing that I read a book whatever some assignment where they're gonna hire you to write the script I have to look at that and go how is this story my story so I can tell it honestly because if it has nothing to do with me then I'm just taking money and typing and the bad part about that is the script will not work the worst part about it is then you may have to do it a couple of rewrites after that on a script that becomes torture it's like I'm just typing this I'm just writing it I have no connection to the story so then it becomes work and you know if any of us you know wanted to be wanted to do work we wouldn't be writers powerful stories ask questions so they they work in such a way that the audience is constantly wondering why did that happen or where is this taking us and and as soon as you and you have tit you can't ask the question and then I answer it at the end you have to ask a little question you have to answer it in the next scene or the next chapter or whatever it is but then you have to pose another question and so really a powerful story is one that continues to ask questions and deliver meaningful answers and and satisfactory answers I don't remember who said that but it's something that I've definitely followed in my work and it's a way that I a tool that I use to keep the audience engaged and I was with two other groups and they were asking questions that you could have found through research through reading a book for reading the Tom Clancy book I was asking questions about if you're on a submarine for four months what's it like what is your life like how these relationships between crew members go you HOT bunk on a submarine so you don't even have personal space your bed is your bed for 12 hours then it's another guy's bed for 12 hours and so you don't even have your own bed and so I was asking questions like what if the guy that you're sharing the bed with stinks and you know the answer was dude we all stink after a while you know and it's like you just have to get over it and if they talked about I asked about the smells on the submarine because imagine living in a porta potty for four months and that's kind of one of the elements of living on a submarine so I got all of the personal stuff that was how their how their lives are affected by their job because the technical stuff I could read but that stuff you can only get from people so that's you know when you're doing research you've got to talk to the people you know do the police ride-alongs you got a you know and when you're on the police ride-along ask questions that are weird because you're gonna lot you're liable to get a good answer if you ask normal questions you get the what they're going to tell you you know they sort of have the the generic answers ready but if you ask the strange questions then you get the this stuff I think who my audience is you know it's the story interesting enough usually for my horror stuff it's like is there enough is there enough stuff in here to care about the characters but am I also coming up enough scare so we haven't seen before those are the kind of things I ask myself like it's interesting cuz I love doing it and I've done it for so long that it's it's definitely it's not easy work at all like people because people don't understand like again they especially when you're threading a script together and you know dissecting and making sure that everything kind of lines up in pieces together you want to put your best foot forward but you also realize that a lot of times that once you sell the script and it's out of your hands a lot of that stuff just goes out the window so that's why I'm not as harsh when I see a movie I like that I reserve judgment on the writer until I see read the actual screenplay because you just never know what changes from page to screen but for me it's usually especially with it's always horror films it's like you know do I think this is also do I think this is going to strike a chord to people like you know final destination dealt with death which is kind of a universal fear so I try to think of concepts that will tap into something that's will reach a wide audience you know I'm not gonna lie about that like I do try to you know you you want to hit as many people as you can I think with your concept but that's what I love about horror the horror genre I think themes are you know the fears that we have most people are universal fears that aren't you know regulated to like one region or one part of the world or or any you know I think we all kind of have the same fears deep down so that's one thing I think I love about horror is you can kind of tackle a whole bunch of different kind of stories and still have it play well it around the world members 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 were 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 now people will ask questions of 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 did 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 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 the 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 that's like one of those things that you don't think about anything about guys work in an assembly line you don't think that there's going to be this thing that's going to affect their their romantic emotional life and those were the stories the great story day one you would start with obviously the idea what's your concept so I think concept is important once you know your concept and there's ways to make that concept appealing the class I'm teaching tomorrow morning will be on concept how to make sure your concept is high I mean by high concept I don't you know there's a there's a term for I concept in Hollywood but for me it means that there is high appeal meaning that as soon as you had the idea you go oh there's something about it that just like hooks you and you go wow I want to find out what it's about or how it's resolved so that's what you should at first the next thing that you should think about for me and I know there's controversy about that whether you do that first or later for me I need to know what it's about you know is what I mean this whole story will be a reflection of what you're trying to say like what's your theme what's the meaning of your story and if you don't know what it is well you could try developing a story and write many drafts and then and then you figure out what it is you go ok that's possible a lot of writers do that and that's okay but I always use paddy Chayefsky x' quote which says lucky is the writer who knows his theme from the beginning because once you know that you you've got I always suggest you write it in big letters and put it in front of your computer so you see it at all times because most of your characters most so you've seen your whole story will be a reflection of what you're trying to sell your theme and so it's better to know it right away it'll save you a lot of time from trying to write many drafts and then come back to it and cut what doesn't work and create you know new things but if you know themes so so for me it's concept then theme and then once you know your theme then you can create your characters because your character will be a reflection especially if your character has an arc will be a reflection of that theme and so you know where your character is going to start and now you know where character is going to end and then you can figure out your scenes and your story in terms of all the stuff I'm talking about character connection and motivational and stuff those are details that you can add later but what I'm talking about is what the foundation of stories which is what is your story about and how does your character transform to reflect that theme that you're trying to convey and yeah that's the foundation when I sit down to write something usually I start with a concept I'm very concept driven just because I think that's working at a studio for so long I know that the concept is what's going to get people's attention or not get it so I start with using a concept and then I think of some scares as well and then start you know with building a story around the concept is how I approach but I know a lot of people start from like characters and some people start from a story so it's everybody's got their own personal kind of creative style and how they on how they work but for me I always I always start with the concept of the story and I try to think at least some concept that's kind of high concept that you can kind of if you tell somebody in a minute and they're like oh that sounds cool you know so that's that's kind of where I start off when I'm writing so I tried to think a lot about whose story it is and I'm fine if it's not just one person's story you know like I think I tried to think about the point of view and because these leads me to think about the emotions you know so I questioned myself a lot how they feel you know and then I usually try to find like a time frame that's something very important like in this beginners course it was three days in now like with the they were film it was three months summer you know so for me it's important to kind of find yeah it's a this timeframe you know and then I think a lot about also about the backstory of the characters because there is something that I I love to portray a specific moment of the lives of these characters I like when you feel that they have a lot of things that happen between them before you know so so it's like basically we as a human beings are who we are because of all of our backstory you know so I love observing people like in real life and see how their relationships work you know and and I always wonder why you know so I try to kind of imagine their backstory so that's that's like my little game with the people I mean you know also so that's something that I really liked as well when I started writing and thing okay so the audience is gonna see this moment by what's behind that like what's before all that you know I have inside out writing and outside in writing and the outside in will tend to be something where there's kind of an external story and then so you're kind of you've got the container a little bit and then you're figuring out all of the ways that you're furnishing and arranging what's in that container and generating some new stuff but and then when occasionally I I have the luxury of doing kind of what I call the inside-out where you just you have almost nothing you have like you woke up in the middle of the night with like an image in your head or you know you're just kind of this very fragmentary thing like a grain of sand and and then it's like you're making stone narrative stone soup you're like here's the pebble and then you know do you know the story of Stone Soup you know they go around they get the meat and the carrots and and everything and then it's more like it's like found art like just pulling all of the the things from your life your memories and what's going on and and you're kind of building it out from from this little thing and it becomes something where you really didn't have much of an idea what it was gonna be at all and so that's that's pretty fun I like to sit and think about the idea and then I like to think about the character who that woman or man is and what they're like and what their world looks like and then I just start to think about what the movie might look like in my head and once I sort of start seeing the movie itself in my head then I start writing it I don't know how it's gonna end necessarily unless it's a thriller if it's a thriller I need to know how it's gonna end so I can know where I gotta go if that makes sense you know because you always want to have that ending that people go call so you think of the ending first what would be a cool hall and then okay now how do I get there so I go backward if it's a thrower if it's not a thrower if it's just a story about people and life and love or whatever it is then I don't really think that much about what's gonna happen I just sort of think about the people and where they are and where I want them to be what the world's like what they enjoy there's usually a lot of wine involved because I enjoy some wine I think the first steps when I when I begin to write is a lot of thinking about thinking about it like I don't I'm not really good at just sitting down and starting to bang it out and I don't really oftentimes I don't write an outline it's not like I have to make an outline first and then write the script so for me usually it's a couple of ideas that just won't go away and so if those ideas won't go away then that means that there's something hopefully there's something there and I just let it percolate and it has a sort of magnetic if it's a good idea and these are rare cuz it's not like I have like never been one of those guys that just like you know I was able to spin a good yarn and have a million stories I want to tell but in the case of search and rescue it was just a couple of ideas started to sort of bind together and I think some of them were ideas that I had for other movies that didn't go anywhere like in other words they were that's and it's now that I think about it they were there were several different ideas and characters that had been I had been developing for other movies that didn't sustain themselves they were good but they didn't for some reason they didn't belong and whatever movie I was think I was trying to make and so it all started to kind of combine into this one film but you know what I you know that's specific to this particular movie and every writing every writing process is different you know if somebody comes to me and says I need you to write megashark versus giant octopus in two weeks that's a different that's a different process that's when you sit down and you know figure out you know okay act one this that should happen then this should you know that's when I do that so so you know work-for-hire that has to be of a you know I think that's easier as a simpler genre is easier to do than this but I really did have to think about it and I really did have to draw from a lot of things that had been dormant ideas that had been dormant that sort of all sort of coalesced to form this thing that's how it started then I did then of course I had to sit down and write everyday like everybody else you have to write it you know you can think about it all day woman but you have to write it for me I let it sit for a while you know I let it sit for a while and I I tend to what I've learned for me over the years from my own personal kind of instrument is that when I first started I would get excited about an idea and I would tell everyone about it I would call my my brother I would tell my friend I would tell I would call you and tell you I would call him and tell you know and then because because you're excited about it and I think that's a good energy to have when you have a story to tell but what I do now is that I don't tell anyone about it and I think that's important for me because I think you wanna it's almost like a boxer you want to get into the ring with as much energy as possible so that when the bell rings you're coming out you know swinging and and what I discovered over the years is that when you spend all your energy telling people about it and then you get in front of the computer you have no energy you're done telling people about it right so for me I keep it all bagged up I get excited about it and I talk to myself about it and I think about it a whole lot and I get it to the point where it's about for me it's about seventy percent done I never want to get to the point where it's hundred percent done because you want to allow for some room for inspiration and changes so I give it to it for me I get it to the point where it's about 70 percent figured out and then there's all this kind of energy kind of boiling and then I wake up really early in the morning have my coffee and I just sort of like spend all that energy getting it out onto the page and then it's on the page and then you have a little bit of you know kind of security and then you can maybe tell people about one scene or whatever but you know III think it's good to keep the energy wrapped up well it depends on which script depends on the story the story is coming from generally speaking I don't have a backstory beyond a sentence or two okay you know I don't know what they you know what they were like in sixth grade or anything like that I just kind of take from people in real life or combine people in real life or think of people I know when I again I just bounced these characters off each other knowing that this one is you know sort of feisty and this one is sort of mellow and this one is sort of this and then you can add on the second and the third adjectives sort of as you as you go but I think in the beginning if I'm gonna introduce a character that I've never in my life you know I say you know Joe 25 persistent you know I don't know I'll say two adjectives and then I'll just move forward that's it it's real real quick and then I don't necessarily have to deliver on those adjectives if I feel like it's going in another direction maybe he's not persistent maybe he's maybe he's lackluster maybe he's lazy I don't know I have to like write him out a little bit I have to let him talk in order to know but the dynamic between characters is important in the chemistry so I always start there that's where I start and the story and the concept I have as like you know a sentence it's just well it's not an outline it's not an it that's not detailed or in depth the first draft will be detailed to the absolute to the extent it needs to be in order to be concise to the point and not dragging anywhere where we don't need to be in in particularly in the action so we enter this room am I gonna tell you that it's got blue walls and a couch no because the characters are what are important and the room is for the director that's not my job on the screenwriter the room is for the director to decide and if you're the director and the screenwriter a great or whatever but you know people respond to characters first and foremost and so that's just really the most detailed part of my screenplays the action I would say is the briefest part of my scripts I will spend quite a bit of time outlining before I even write the fold like I usually have a complete full outline and then jump into the story so I'll have a really specific idea of the objective of every single scene and ultimately it saves me time when I first started writing I was anti outline I kind of had the attitude you know it's the young attitude of just like you know I'm just gonna write and my my guts gonna tell me what's right and what it's meaningful and stuff like that and that works for a lot of writers but I noticed that I would hit a lot of dead ends and I became emotionally attached to those dead ends and then it became really hard to rewrite until I just drove my stories off the cliff and so little by little the more I you know honestly that Ron Media 24-point thing was huge because it was so simple you could literally sit there I just plot out a story in an hour and you'd have a really good idea of where I was going and then from there you're you know that's to me that's when you go from like you know discovering your story to actually becoming craftsman or a crass person where you're working on the story and taking control of it and then you start to take a step back and then you know it's almost like a render machine you're rendering your story before you ever sit down and write it so then the script really just becomes kind of a secondary artifact of all the work that you've put into it so yeah I spend a lot of time outlining it it's and it's you know a lot of people feel like it takes away from the creative process usually that's kind of the writer saying well I want to be in the audience too and I want to experience and be surprised by it but outlining doesn't take away from that because what happens when you sit down like you've outlined you've got your outline right here and then when you're writing you put yourself in the moment you're you're in the skin of the writer or the character and you you're experiencing it and then if your gut tells you to try something different try something different see where it goes so you're still you know the whole Gardner versus architect the pan servers a plot or kind of thing I call it what is it the the assassin versus the Berserker basically the idea that like the the planner versus the person that just sees what happens next and I think it's important to to understand the consequences of the choices you're making but the whole process of writing is an experiment art is an experiment and the out the only thing that rules it is do we make it emotionally resonant for somebody else and as artists we get to decide how much that is like how we build that relationship so for me it feels like it's like like a map you're zooming in and you know you can do the the street view where you're in the character and you're just driving along and you're like yeah I feel this I'm going through this Street and that's when you're writing but then you pull back you zoom out and you see the overview of where you're going and that's the outline but generally speaking the average person would benefit from taking the time to plan out where their story's going to go have a good idea of how it's going to end and then you know work toward that well I'll come up with an idea right or I'll come up with a character or come up with a theory and most of the time for me it's like it it's a thesis it's something and I think that might be because I I read I love to read so much literature and I'm gonna kind of come from philosophy that I develop a thesis or something that I want to say and then I find characters that I think I can embody that purpose and that that can function in a story kind of carries this idea throughout it so I can communicate what I want to say in a story and through characters so always come starts with an idea or a thesis or a theory that I want to talk about and the characters in the story kind of all fall in line from there then I'll just you know kind of binge watch a bunch of movies that apply and I'll just write you know I carry a little notebook around me everywhere I go so cuz I don't really type that much I mean I type but I I don't really write my script until I've written it handwritten in a bunch of times and it's a bunch of different ways and I've kind of flushed out my characters and that only then do I write the plot because I think that Lisa right now and the stories that I'm trying to tell it's the characters motivate the plot rather than the plot motivating the character so I want to really know my characters like they're friends of mine like they're my best friends my childhood friends and so once I know them I kind of know the world once I know the world I know the story I think everyone is different sometimes you'll get just a logline sometimes you'll see an image sometimes you'll get the name of it but not know specifically what the story is yet usually what I try to do is like as I strike I have like this what is it called speech notes I think it is there's a app called speech notes and so I'll start to get information little bits and pieces about a story I'll start jotting them down in my phone and usually once I kind of have a good idea of what that story is I always start with the outline like I anytime before I write a script I always outline the entire script scene one scene to scene three and then I'll have like a couple of a couple of lines of information to describe the dis de'cine so this is how I like avoid writer's block like I always outline the entire script from front to back so when I start writing I just write from from from that those script notes but yeah I usually start there I start with just a an idea outline it I always decide early on what the lighting is gonna be how the camera is gonna move the color everything like before I even go into pre-production like I I am I have a full idea of the style the look of it the pacing of it the tone of it and yeah once I do that I start writing the script I have a team that I work with and I usually tell them pretty pretty early on like what the what the concept is and how I want to approach it and yeah I sort of go from that I will say one thing that I think could be very interesting to people that are writers is is what I do is I outline a script very meticulously and my outlines are about 25 pages to 30 pages long and then when I go to write the actual first draft I will not read one word of what I've written until I've written the whole script so for my first pass on a screenplay I start from the beginning and then I just go and I go all the way through until I'm done without having read one word of it and it takes about three weeks so in three weeks I've written a whole draft and it's a lot of fun because there is no judgment whatsoever I'm just writing straight through and then I go through and very meticulously work through the scenes and that takes two to three weeks and then in six weeks I have a draft but it's really two drafts because I've done one straight through and then one this sort of meticulous work through and I we'll say that the second phase of it the meticulous works roof phase is the least enjoyable part of the whole process because it's the most critical we're at just for a couple weeks it's just I have to work through these scenes and and and then but I just do it and then after that I have a draft to work off of and then there's many drafts after that but it's it's I have this nice foundation staring at the blank page because by the time I'm ready to write a scene I've already had like pages of writing I can't it's like the slingshot you're just like slowly like preparing like getting all the scenes getting the character getting the plot the conflict you know what every character wants so when you sit down you're ready to write you let go and you're just flying you know but it's but it really comes down to everybody discovering their own process you know and I'm not a purist like lots of people don't outline and they're very good writers are very successful and a lot of that's the tuition or their experience that informs it I don't have writer's block I don't it's not a very dramatic thing there's no inspiration I don't wait for inspiration I say inspiration is for amateurs amateurs get inspired professionals just go do it and and it's not even very dramatic anymore I mean I just go and I know I'm gonna do it I mean I know I'm gonna get stuff done and it's very productive to be honest with you I find that that I get a lot of writing done because I don't make a big deal about it I don't it's not this big dramatic thing for me I just show up and then I just get going and like I said it takes sometimes an hour an hour and a half to actually get started occasionally two hours and then we and then I just start going and I try to be non-judgmental of it and I don't sit there and question it or think that I'm not talented or I just try and do it and then and then there's a phase when you have to edit it and go through it and that can be more you know that's a more critical part of your brain but I do my best to not beat myself up about it and if I don't like something I just change it I just keep working on it and working on it and not turn it into some big melodramatic artists struggle I don't I don't view it that way at all I don't necessarily have like a list of screenplays like read these screenplays and then you're gonna be an awesome screenwriter it's more give yourself exposure to a lot of different styles of writing a lot of different genres I love Aaron Sorkin obviously right so the social network that's one that's a screenplay that I've read over and over again I really love Alex Garland's ex machina that's one of my favorite films it's a really well-done screenplay again it's you know a theme and a genre that I'm interested in lately I have actually I've been revisiting the truman show that that screenplay because when when that came out it was it was very you know novel it was a very interesting idea and it actually shaped me in a lot of ways because either you have those moments where you're like at my on The Truman Show like how powerful of a screenplay to be able to do that and to create like a psychosis everybody says you have to write and read every day because it's true if you're if you're writing every day you know the next day you're gonna you're gonna write a little better than you did the day before and in four years you're gonna be a much better writer than you were four years ago and I think a lot of writers you're waiting to for the world to give you permission to pursue your craft and you just need to you need to give yourself that permission you need to show up and say okay I'm gonna do this and I might not be very good right now or you know maybe I am great and I don't know it yet you won't know either way unless you put yourself out there and sitting down every day whether that's you know for an hour in the morning an hour in the evening somewhere in between the timing doesn't matter and it really doesn't even matter you know if you're writing a thousand words or if you're writing fifty the important thing is that you're writing so when I wrote my first screenplay I didn't know this is the difference between writing a screenplay and when I was directing before work my first screenplay of course see if is is like you know you I don't think as a screenwriter I don't think that you can really be assigned a screenwriter if you have a study state feels you know in vibrate a lot of screenplays a tons of screen planes before I even started writing screenplays I read see if is booking I've continued to read his books you know but tons of screenplays so when I first bought my first screenplay you know and that's not that you know it never got produced of course and I took it out people Randy he's like that's pretty decent but it wasn't good it wasn't good so only I were it was only after after writing at least 10 screenplays before I actually decided you know if I actually produce more stuff they should have beside them a list of the 100 most recent screenplays that they have read the published ones the successful ones ok I'll give you a break make it 50 you are not ready to write until you are very well-read and well-versed in the literature you are proposing to create and in this in this place it's screenwriting I would say systematize your organization the first thing you have to do see a really bad habit that most screenwriters have is they've got a great idea and they're cooking and they just start writing screenplay I'm writing screenplay pages oh boy and it's fun but it's going nowhere ultimately without a plan and a very well thought out the hard work is in the outline and it has to be a very complete outline and you have to have confidence that all story problems have been addressed so the first thing you have to do is the dirty work the outline write yourself I would say here real goal sequences because I happen to think it and I happen to know that it works but however you know beat sheet however they do it have a very complete outline and then good bloody luck it's it's it's a lot of work and then I would also say yeah you write it on a little piece of paper and tape it above your desk write badly with pride know no writer's block none just write badly with pride write a piece of piece of junk you know if you haven't if you just sitting there staring at the wall for an hour okay what would you write if you were just really writing trash really writing garbage go for because you never know yeah when the real idea is the depth of what you are doing will be sparked you just don't know you don't know what that story is and and you know it's not that cliche write what you know because I've never written what I quote unquote know I 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 fun because they were so god-awful but the ones that got really exhausting and really enervating is a script reader who's sitting there and has to read a script synopsize that write a comment about it then pick up another one and read it and so 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 Betelgeuse is a personal movie it's an intensely personal movie it was intensely personal for Michael and 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 and so so the there's a I like to think that my work has a sense of heart and a sense of compassion and a sense of humanity in it no matter how bizarre it is no matter how weird the worlds get and and you 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 it's not an easy job and and I personally can't imagine saying well this was a hit now so I'm gonna I'm gonna write my version of 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 the beating yourself up and I have no talent or this is terrible or I'll work with a writer and they'll say oh that was and I said don't don't worry about it don't worry about if it's good or bad just let's just take a look at it and see what what could be improved there's no reason to be so caustic and hostile about the material it's just words on its screen you can change them it's just changing so that's very much something that guides me and in my work it is tough I think to be really original and you know it goes back to your question about writing things that are really personal to you you know sometimes the most original things do come from taking your real life or taking something you wit or experienced and using that as fodder for materials so there there is there can be a value for that if you can also do what I talked about which is find a way to have perspective on it so you can make it viable entertaining compelling to you know millions of people that don't know you it's not an easy thing to do but you know originality is it's a tricky one because you can only be so original because if so many things have already been done right so many types of stories and genres and types of story situations I mean I just saw eighth grade last night yeah which you know it was a very original voice but it's about something that we've seen four million examples of which is a kind of misfit teen who the popular people are mean to trying to find their way in the social universe of school like is there anything that's been done more often than that but yet you watch the movie and because it felt authentic and real and specific and vivid and done not in exactly the way we've seen it before and it had some currency because there was a whole social media aspect to it where she has like a vlog and she's on Instagram all the time you know it feels like it's very much about that problem for today's 8th graders in a certain setting so you update it you make a current you make it specific I think that's the thing it's not that it has to be an idea that is so out there and different and special because sometimes that can be a trap if you try to be too original sometimes you end up writing things that are contrived or hard to believe or hard to understand because your focus is on it has to be different from everything else when a writer focus too much on originality I wrote in this book sometimes they're doing at the expense of these other important elements of what makes a viable story idea like it may not be as compelling or as entertaining or as relatable or these other things because they're mainly focused on yeah but no one's ever seen it before doesn't matter though if no one's ever seen it before if it doesn't grab the audience or the reader and the ways that great stories always have so you always have to balance the need for originality with those other elements that being said you're right that an original voice is highly valued in a new writer but it's like finding a way to have that original I think authentic that authenticity where things feel so real so believable but so like well observed and unique and we haven't seen it quite this way before because something in this writers way of seeing the world and people came up with this version of it that is very memorable even if it's within the context of something that is somewhat familiar you know like a like you people get Napoleon Dynamite in its day kind of the same thing very original voice but it's about an awkward teen who doesn't fit in and people you know push him into lockers you know kind of thing but when you watch it you're mainly focused on the authenticity the originality of it not noticing that this is a story form or a genre or a type of story problem that we've seen endless variations on before us it's kind of like you're taking something that's been done in terms of a genre usually but you're putting a very fresh unique current specific spin on it I'd ask them if they had an idea and then I would just say pull out your laptop or your notebook with your pen and start writing it I wouldn't I wouldn't even tell them about format I would just be like described a movie everybody knows what a movie is everybody knows everybody's seen it they're like our visual vocabulary is so high especially now 2018-2019 I mean you know anybody can describe it that the problem is we still when we start educating people we're like read six books six books take this course do this stuff watch this video you know like it's like but not this video yeah yeah no I need you to watch this video but that's what I would do if somebody was like I want to write a movie and I don't know anything about it I'd be like what do you want to write about like what's your idea and they'd probably have the idea they're not like well I don't know what the idea is though they're gonna be like well actually I want to write off this guy who wants to do this thing and I'd be like okay start describing it just describe it and then I might say something like Trudeau don't talk up don't describe their thoughts and don't describe their feeling any character don't describe the insides just describe what you would see on them on a movie screen you know just like and you know exterior house day man walks across and gets in the car drives away you know do not care about doing anything wrong just spill your guts just tell us the movie write down the whole movie we'll figure all that other stuff later you can figure out where things are supposed to be later you can figure out everything I mean you know there's so many stories about that where they didn't know what they were doing you know they wrote bridesmaids that way they didn't know like they brought they bought screenwriting for dummies or something like that right so it's like that fresh voice it's like ah it breaks my heart thinking about all the people that have that think they have because we've created this industry where it's all coded and they got to go take oh you got to learn you have to learn structure you have to learn this you've got to learn all these things you don't know what a screenplay is man you got to know what the rules are before you break them that's all crap to sell books and all sorts of stuff it doesn't it's if we god please bring them in that don't know anything about movies and maybe we'll have better movies I mean that's the problem it's like it's like all this other stuff it's like bringing that person it's just like I have as a teacher I have had people come in with formatting that's just like doesn't ah they don't know what they don't have access to final trap I don't know what they're writing and it's the most authentic slice of life funny succinct observational genius stuff and they don't know and if the reason why it exists is because they haven't learned anything about screenwriting yet and then once you start teaching them then all of a sudden they they don't know what they're doing then they don't then they lose their emotional connection they lose that story four-year-olds know how to tell a story they know how to tell a story ask a five-year-old what happened today at school well we went in beginning middle and end the inciting incident you can tape it you can go citing it sit so you guys should film car interview a friggin ten-year-old and then put the little flags in and be like wow they know all the structure already so I don't have to go to so-and-so person's course or I don't have to take Gordy's class or anything you know you don't have to spend any money and keep your voice that's the most important thing I was at it's like don't lose your voice don't lose your instincts your childlike instincts for telling stories it's like that's what guides us and I always go back to that I'm like I don't care the thing I just wrote for somebody that in all likelihood people who are watching this video will see I don't know what the structure is I don't know where the act breaks are at it and it's over a hundred and fifty pages okay it was a writer I mean and it's probably gonna be seen by people watching this video directed by a very very good top director this is going to happen and I have no idea what the structure of that is I literally just took my ideas plotted out the thing now am i following the rules of character and emotional engagement to like develop and everything things you can reflect back on it be like how do I make this better but when you're telling me when somebody's like what's the five-minute version of like somebody wants to write a movie that's they watch this video what I just said you

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 25,724

Rating: 4.9689522 out of 5

Keywords: Starting a screenplay, Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, writing a screenplay, how to write a movie, story structure, filmcourage, film courage, interview

Id: gRQwbRtsebw

Length: 68min 6sec (4086 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019