John Truby's Top 25 Screenwriting Lessons

you'll learn a lot from other writers like there were writers on on man in the high castle who won Emmys or you know Martin Scorsese's best friend is another one like like you you want to really kind of learn from from the people around you and that just makes you better so I can't say that I have any set process although right now as I'm developing something I have to say I'm a big fan of the John troubie John troubie stuff I think he kind of hits a sweet spot for me genre is really the key to understanding screenwriting today and it comes from what I call the first Google apology which is that Hollywood doesn't bind so movie stars directors or writers it buys and sells genres now genres are story forms and more importantly that they are the all-stars of the story world they are story forms that have been told over decades centuries and in some cases like with myth thousands of years so they've already been worked out and they've been worked out very very great detail and they know exactly how their characters work they know what their themes are they know how the plot is going to work and so on so it's very very tight now in order to sell to a worldwide audience you have to use these different genres because this this is what the audience is really buying one when an audience goes to see one of the big summer blockbuster films they may not know it in their head oh that's a myth based film or that's an action film or a combination of the two but they know what they like and that's what's underneath each one of those stories Avengers Dark Knight so on these are all just basic story forms basic Jean with a unique skin placement on top so it's very important first of all for the writer to understand what genre is they are working in it's also very important for them to understand how to combine their genres because almost every film that gets made now is not a Singlish honor that was decades ago now almost every film that gets made not just in Hollywood but in worldwide cinema is a combination of two three and sometimes four genres now a lot of writers know this what they don't know they usually don't know is that combining genres is varied because each genre has its own hero its own opponent its own desire line theme and so on so when you start combining these typically you end up with chaos you end up with so many story elements that are unconnected that the script doesn't work so it's very important to understand how to put these genres together one final point about this when a writer is developing a story idea right at the beginning of the writing process they come up against the biggest decision that they will have to make which is what genre is this story the biggest reason that writers fail at the premise and by the way 99% of scripts fail at the premise line right the very first decision in the writing process the biggest reason it fails is not that it was wasn't a good idea it's that they used the wrong genre to develop the idea it used to be a very clear distinction between film and television film was the big I deal with the big spectacle massive numbers of characters the epic scale so on television was the intimate story very personal just a very few characters typically a drama but because TV has evolved over the last 10 to 15 years in such a radical way this distinction is now gone and in fact the biggest spectacle stories are now in television not in film you have a fantasy show like Game of Thrones which is as big an epic and spectacle as you can get far bigger even than say Lord of the Rings in terms of the number of characters the story weaves all the different storylines that are going on the literal scope of where this story takes place I mean it's a it's a continent essentially so and and it's covering multiple seasons this was the big game change which is that in television up to about 10 to 15 years ago when we had almost strictly what we're known as standalone shows detective stories are standalone shows where we introduce a problem in the opening scene and we solve it by the final descent and then next week we reset the whole thing and we do it again that meant that the the story scope was about 45 minutes long now about 10 to 15 years ago writers began to realize that the incredible power of the TV medium for story because they realized that instead of making the single episode the way that we demarcate this the story they realized it's the season that makes the difference we're gonna try to tell a story over an entire season and so we had the introduction of these serial shows as opposed to standalone shows it meant that the scope of television increased radically because a season is approximately 10 times longer than a single feature film so that allowed us many more characters it allowed us to have a much more complex plot and this changed everything in terms of the type of story ideas that we would have an television versus film one of the biggest mistakes writers make is in how they create character and they they've heard this about you know we need to care about the main character which is absolutely true we do want to care about that main character but how they go about it is often wrong which is they think that the way that you get an audience to care about a character is you make that character as detailed as possible meaning we give them as many character traits as we can this is not the best way to go because those tend to be very superficial elements of a person and that's not what makes an audience care about a character it's interesting that what makes an audience care about a character really comes down to only two things the weakness the fundamental weakness of that character and the characters gold in the story this is why in my my story classes it's always the first thing I talk about and they are by the way the first two steps of the seven major story structure steps that I was talking about earlier weakness need of the character in other words what is that personal problem inside that is hurting the hero and such a fundamental way that it's ruining their life it's very deep and the entire story is going to play out the soiling of that problem the way they're going to solve that problem is by going after a particular goal they don't know at the beginning that by going after this goal they will eventually deal with their great internal weakness but if it's a good story that's exactly how it will work you know I often talk about the what I consider to be the most important element of good writing the mark of a really good storyteller which is that plot comes from character now those are big words and a lot of people you hear that well what it actually does that mean it means a lot of things but the most important thing it means is that you create a goal for your hero which will eventually force that person to deal with their deep weakness if you do that the plot comes from the deep source of the character and you've told a great story what we care about is to see a character overcome a deep weakness now the audience thinks that this story is all about the hero achieving his goal right because then we've got success and that's important and in most stories the hero will accomplish his goal by the end of the story but that is not what the audience is most interested in they can't tell you this but we know from lots of experience hundreds of years of storytelling that the cave the real fact is not does the hero accomplish the goal but this is the hero overcome the great weakness because that's what makes us care about that character we see them in pain we see them in trouble right if they're already successful if they're already a good and in some cases a perfect person where do they go all right there's nothing for them to overcome so that's why it's so important that we show in the very opening pages of our script the great internal weakness of our character now we may also want to give them qualities that are likable qualities that the audience can also hook on to but those are not nearly as important as establishing the weakness upfront in the story rewriting is one of the most misunderstood of all of the major writing steps partly because of that famous line that you just stated writing is rewriting there is no question of that if you want to write a great piece of storytelling you're going to have to do a lot of rewriting but that concept that writing is rewriting often makes writers make a huge mistake right at the beginning which is they think that my first draft just get it on paper right to overcome a whatever writing block just get it down on paper don't try to be perfect right because that just will just stop you from writing entirely alright okay so they get the script down on paper and then they think okay I'll fix any mistakes in the rewrite except that they don't fix the mistakes in the rewrite what people don't realize is that first draft turns into concrete when you've actually written it out and it's on paper in many ways in your mind it solidifies in such a way that it is then very difficult to break that apart and to make the key structural changes that need to be made this is why in our writers are shot when I tell them this for most scripts the second draft is worse than the first draft and it just gets worse from there and that is because of the approach that they take to the script in the first place because when you write that first draft some fundamental things are going to be embedded in that script this is why it is so important that writers do a lot of prep work before writing the first draft starting all the way back with the premise I always tell writers it is so important to take a tremendous amount of time exploring your premise line taking weeks to look at just one sentence right my one line one sentence log one because you can find a lot of the inherent structural problems in your script that you're going to encounter right there in the first sentence now that also means we do a lot of prep work in creating our characters figuring out our structure learning the end point of the story before we begin writing so on and so forth that doesn't mean that you're going to again try to make that first draft perfect what it does mean is that you're going to be looking at what are the embedded structural problems in this story and try to make the fixes before you actually write the draft and most of those fixes will occur if you do your prep work you can get a very good story in the seam list the scene sequence now this is in many ways a lot of type of writers don't realize what an important step this is in the writing process the seamless the scene sequence because this is the last place before you actually write scenes to see the architecture of your story for example I do a lot of story consulting work and my preference is don't give me a full script give me your scene sequence I can spot 90% of your problems and come up with the solutions right from the scene sequence because if I see it as it is a first draft of a script I've got all that dialogue I've got a lot of undergrowth that is hiding the bones of the story and it's keeping me from saying what is not working and how it could be fixed so this is why it's so important to do your craft homework before writing the first draft and in that first draft it will then make the rewriting process so much simpler and it will guarantee that your second draft is better than your first draft one more point about rewriting because it is so misunderstood most writers don't understand that rewriting is a set of tools just like plot character and soul and one of the key tools about rewriting is the order that you rewrite for example most writers the first thing they fix when they're doing a rewrite it's the dialogue it's the last thing you should touch when I work with a writer on a script we don't talk about dialogue for the until the third or fourth draft because it's all about getting the story right and that's what you want to focus focus on in your rewriting here are the steps of finding the structural problems and the first step in finding the structural problems of your script is go back to the desire line of your story make sure that you have a good strong spine you have a desire line that will track and drive this story from beginning to end when I give classes the most common question is all about how do I sell my script they wouldn't know there's an implication in that question which is I already know how to write a good script the only thing I'm not able to do is sell it not so 99% of writers you know they will always talk in Hollywood about it's all about the connections all about whom you know that's so overrated 99% of writers when they finally meet somebody who is a useful connection they don't have the story tools to make that connection payoff then we have the Kraft foundation so it's all about you know this this ability to treat writing as a profession and part of that is I can never know enough about how this craft works and partly that's because every story is different I'm talk to professional writer friends and we're always amazed we think okay it's going to get easier now it doesn't it gets harder because the better you get the higher you set the bar for yourself on your script Evaristo cracking a story is always hard no matter how much you know because every story is totally new yeah there's certain elements that you can use that you can hang your hat on you can you can get it a way into the story and so on but everyone is tough so that's why this is having this professional approach to being a writer being a storyteller is so important it's the only thing that eight makes you successful but B gets you through I almost tell writers this you can have a lot more ideas on this life than you ever have time to write the full-length script or not so always write a story that you both care about and that you think will have an appeal to a larger audience it can always be done it's all about is it on the page one of the advantage that we have as writers / actors is that we don't have to what dishing in person right they don't have to reject us personally right it can be on the page I can be writing on Mars if it's on the page I don't care where you're from I don't care what you look like right if it's on the page and it's a good script and this is another reason why it's so important to prove yourself on the page to prove that you've got the correct and I always tell writers if you have a script that is rejected it isn't necessarily rejected because the quality of writing wasn't there most of the time it is rejected because that producer didn't simply didn't like that story idea didn't feel that it was a commercial idea for what they wanted to try to sell you can't get as the writer you can't have any control over that the only thing you have control over is the quality of writing on the page if you do your job and master the crap so that you get that quality on the page at some point you will break through I true I believe that 20 years ago I believe it now and again for most writers they think that they've done that craft work on they really have right lock of course is a big problem that writers every writer faces at some time or another I think it's a big misconception that writer's block comes from some kind of a psychological element that we face of that oh I'm just not in a creative place right now you know I've been working on the story for too long whatever the reason that we come up with I find almost every time writer's block comes from not understanding the true structure of the story you're telling and buddy when I say true structure I mean not only is it hitting those key story beats that I referred to a little earlier but is it kidding the story beats that are unique and right for that story and almost always it comes down to that main character because the main character drives the story and the key to having a truly creative script a truly creative story unique from anything that anybody has ever seen before including the writer is that unique main character because that's the person that you know this is a unique individual and that's the unique individual that will drive the story so whenever I see a writer who is running into creativity problems running into writer's block of some sort I always say go back to your main character find out what is unique about that person that you haven't thought of so far and find out what is unique about that character that you are passionate about why do you want to tell this person story once you focus in on that character and the unfolding of that character over the course of the story then you will get back in touch with your real creativity and I find almost every time that that will break the writer's block and break very quickly it's always important to have a sense of writing for an audience in other words I'm not just writing for myself I'm not just writing for my immediate family I want to write a script that a lot of people want to see but it's very tricky in terms of what steps you take based on that as I mentioned earlier it's not about predicting a trend it's not about predicting what it's going to be hot with an audience it's once you determine certain basic elements that oh this can be a commercial story an idea then it's all about forgetting that and getting to what I call the gold of the idea getting down into what is totally unique about that story idea keep mine the biggest reason is script fail match that 99% of scripts fail at the premise one when we've only written one sentence and the biggest reason that they fail is it wasn't an original idea in the first place right yeah the writers make all kinds of mistakes when it comes to developing that idea but if you don't start off with the original idea in the first place it's not going to be an original script and although it has no interest in that right why are they gonna pay the kind of money that it's paid per scripts for something that any number of a hundred a thousand people could write so and and what most writers don't realize is because it's so difficult to dig into an ID and finally is truly original about it most writers come up with a premise that is a copy of a movie they saw six months ago or it's a copy of two movies that they put together that they saw six months ago right that's that doesn't make it original so it's very important that once you have that idea that you explore it very deeply find out what is original about it and if the idea is not original it's important that you're not right now this is counter to what most writers do most writers when they come up with an idea they immediately start writing script pages it's one of the clearest marksman amateur and what happens of course is they get 15 20 pages in that write themselves into a dead end they just remembered another idea now over years and years of experience that I've had as a writer story consultant I have found that most ideas should not be written the scripts and it's exactly the opposite of when I started when I started I thought there isn't a story idea that I can't make work as a script but I can't make work as a full-length story over years of experience have found just the opposite is the case that the real value of exploring your premise taking time to make sure its original taking time to find out what the structural problems are inherent to the idea the big value of that comes from finding out that nine out of ten ideas that you have should not be written because the single biggest choice that a writer makes in the entire writing process what story do I write not how do I write it yeah there's a lot of decisions that go into that but the most important decision is what story do it right in the first place most stories are so full of structural problems that are embedded in the idea they will not be solved I don't care how good you are at story you will not solve those problems so why take months and months and a lot of pain to write that as a full length script just to find out oh I didn't solve those structural problems after writing the script and I knew what they were ready to be getting right the premise idea that is one of the most important things that you want to figure out not necessarily right at the premise line but pretty close which is what is the structural endpoint of my story and a lot of writers ask me to say so look you know I like to be more creative as the term that they used as though figuring out the end point of the structure is uncreated in fact the opposite is the case the better you are in structure the more creative the script because what structure does is it allows you to know what will work and what won't work so that you know oh I can take this really cool creative twist here because I've got the structural scratch scaffolding underneath it to support it or I don't have it right so that's why knowing that end point is one of the I'd say five most important techniques in all of stories keep in mind that that every story is a journey of learning that the hero takes over the course of that story and in any journey you take you cannot take the first step unless you know where you're going to otherwise you're gonna walk around in circles same is true in the writing process and just because you figure out the structural endpoint of your story doesn't mean that you can't change that down the road it just means that it is going to give you a focus point for every other structure step that that story is going to take coupe anger is a very important technique in television and cliffhanger is simply a moment in this story when the hero is in maximum danger but instead of playing out that event to its conclusion we stop it right before it gets resolved typically with the hero at their weakest point they are hanging from a cliff right and so why would we have a cliffhanger what's the value of stopping that scene right there and going to a different storyline the idea is we're trying to hold the audience so that we can get them to come back this is why we often get cliff hangers in television right before commercial because we'll want to try to hold on to them so they don't go to another show using the remote control now the way is written into the script you don't of course say well this is a cliffhanger you don't need to write anything differently to say that's a cliffhanger it is a cliffhanger by virtue of what happens in the action so the real trick here is not how do you write it in the script the real trick is how do you set it up in the story and to do that what you have to do is have at least one other major action line that you can cut to you cannot have a cliffhanger if you have a single story line so where you get it is in a show with multiple storylines that are unfolding simultaneously and then at the crucial moment you stop one story line jump over to the next story line then you take that to a cliffhanger jump back to the first line resolve the cliffhanger there and take them to the next step I like to talk when I get my class I like to talk about the story elements that are found in hit films because writers don't realize that in order to sell a script they have to write the script that Hollywood is looking to buy now to understand what that is you have to understand that what Hollywood's basic marketing requirement is which is they are selling to a worldwide audience now for years now it has not been the u.s. audience that they're most concerned about it's a worldwide audience and it turns out that to sell to a worldwide audience to have a blockbuster know there are certain story elements that are in those blockbuster scripts and a lot of writers don't realize this they think that well it's a blockbuster film because it has movie stars or because it has a lot of special effects and so on well not so Hollywood has not been a movie star based system for at least a decade even though most people think that it still is all about the movie star no it's about the script and it's about the story elements that are in the script now there are certain story elements that writers have to have in their script to appeal to a worldwide audience because we have to get beyond those cultural differences those national differences so the first thing that you realize when you look at these hip films it is that they're almost always based on the myth genre myth form is the most popular story form in the world and has been for many years and in the case of both Hunger Games and The Avengers we have myth based stories which have then been updated now in the case of the Avengers we have another really good story element that they use which is the concept of the dream team the All Stars that are brought together and this is a very popular story form when you combine that with a myth based story you've got a big hit on you and by the way that's the main reason that Disney bought Marvel comics in the first place was to get access to what I call the character Bank which is a number of characters that are already established have worldwide appeal and which we can then use in any number of films ad infinitum in the case of The Hunger Games you have a very good adaptation I think of a book in the sense of that once again we have this myth Foundation and in this particular case the novelist is really the person who brought all those myth elements together very similar to the way JK Rowling did in the Harry Potter stories you get this element of the young female Archer that this is right out of Greek mythology Artemis Diana character you get the William Tell story with her shooting the arrow through the the apple and so on but she brought together all of these classic myth elements and put them in a story which he then modernized using a science fiction form so again we get a very powerful combination of myth and science fiction that again made for a worldwide hit it goes back to that first rule of Halloween which is that Hollywood marketing is based on selling genres now that means that everyone who has any sense of how Hollywood works now knows that if you want to be in the game you have to write a genre based story now they're not that many different major genres they're twelve major genres that 99.9% of Hollywood films get made from typically in combination of those twelve now there's the problem which is that if everybody is writing a genre script and genres of course have essentially had anywhere from 8 to 15 basic story beats that must be present in that script if you are writing that genre script properly if all you do is write that genre in its normal way you're going to write a script that everybody else is writing that has no chance to sell and this is why in my class I'm constantly talking about these are the beats of the genre which gets you in the game well I've referred to it as paying the dues hitting the beats of the genre but then you got to go beyond that which gives you have to transcend the genre you have to write above it you have to twist the genre in such a way that the audience hasn't seen before which means that you take those 8 to 15 basic beats and for each one of them you do them in a unique way that the audience that surprises the audience and notice that what you get there when you transcend the genre is you get to have you taking you to two which is you give the audience all the genre beats that they're coming to that movie to see but you're also surprising them you're putting a different skin on those bones in a way that they haven't seen before so they get that pleasure and that is the only way in my opinion that a writer can break through from the crowd and have their scripts stand out I found over many years of experience in working with writers that the biggest mark of an amateur is the inability to take criticism now it's certainly understandable why somebody would not want to hear that criticism they have put their heart and soul into that script and in many ways what is in that script is blame themselves bear for the public and this is a scary thing and so if somebody doesn't like your script they don't like you but that is not the way to become a great writer you have to be able to listen to criticism because I don't care how good a writer you are you cannot write the perfect script you have everybody has weaknesses in their writing everybody has weaknesses in a particular script so the trick is if I'm going to improve that script I have to be able to listen to outside criticism now then the very important thing comes into play which is who is giving you that criticism right most people are not capable of giving a writer useful criticism either because they do not have the structural tools or because they are too to personally connect to that writer right if I give a family member my script what kind of comments am I going to get back right it's not going to be a they're going to be afraid to be negative and B they're not trying to give me the kind of feedback that can actually make a difference in my script now this includes a lot of people that you know in the executive suite that that are going to be giving you feedback on a script producers agents and so on unfortunately a lot of them are not trained to give a writer commentary that can truly improve the script and a lot of times they will give commentary that is contradictory they'll tell them the right to fundamentally opposite things and the writer cannot do them both right there they're opposite so it's so important that you not only be open to outside criticism but that you're getting criticism from people who know what they're talking about because the only criticism that actually works for you that is not destructive is structural criticism in other words looking at the bones of the story and telling you what is not working and I have found that writers who get constructive criticism structural criticism they love that because it's not personal it's about the craft and it's only the craft that can make that script better and unfortunately very few people are able to give that kind of structure of prison this is also why I always recommend two writers form writer groups preferably with the best writers you know because then you're going to be talking the same language you're gonna be talking this structural language because any writer has been writing for any length of time and is really concerned about improving their craft they know this they know that it's all about the structure and so when you are in a writers group within getting feedback from other writers you know that you're getting the stuff that really makes a difference under the surface that the average audience member the person cannot give you typically when an audience is giving you feedback it's it's a lot of it is about the pace a lot of it is about it's all some version of it was slow here I didn't like that character I didn't like that scene so on and so forth what they're really talking about is that the sequencing of the scenes the building of the story is not right it's not working for them but last year was was part of a screening in a film that I worked on and we found from the audience that they were having a lot of problems especially with the final third of the film and we realized we we had for various reasons we had a big hole about two-thirds of the way in the film and we thought we needed those beats those scenes because to tell the story but the audience showed us that we did not need those and so what we did was we basically cut out about five or six scenes that we thought had to be in there for the detailing for the building of the character over the course the story turned out we could pull out all six of those scenes and boom which would give us the drive into the final part of the story and didn't cause a problem at all and instead it gave us the pacing that we needed to bring the audience along all the way to the end of the story so typically that's it's some version of that because there's a feeling that the audience has they again they're not they're not trained to specifically know why a story is not building they just know it's not working for me keep in mind - I've seen a lot of films and they may not be able to speak in the language of the writer of the filmmaker but they know what is not working for them and so if you as the writer or filmmaker can listen and be open to that I have found time and again getting really good feedback from from an audience just the normal audience out there that was very helpful because it goes back to the old concept of the custard the customer is always right right you you can't if you're writing a script you can't you know and and and a reader says oh this didn't work for me you can't say well let me explain you what I was trying to do if you if they didn't like it it's your fault it's not their fault so it's very important to be open to to any kind of criticism and if you know how listen you can often find out some very good things about a script or a film that you did not know going back to that premise line and it's also again it goes back to crap one of the things they spent a lot of time in it in Miami story master class is techniques for breaking down the premise there are actual techniques that you use to see is this a good story idea it's not just oh I'm excited about that I did know it's about okay how do I find out how this is going to work as a hundred to 120 page script right that that takes technique to be able to jump ahead again we only have one line here I need to be able to figure out how this is going to work as a hundred two hundred and twenty page prep so that requires a number of techniques give you an example you look at that premise idea and the first thing you look for is there a desire line embedded in this idea that can track 100 pages that can extend for on your pages most premise ideas don't have that no thing you look at is there a main opponent in this idea who can fight with the hero over that length of time and can create ongoing conflict for the entire story most premise ideas don't have that either so this is again going back to having the tools get word to do your job and at the same time CPUs to save yourself a lot of pain and wasted writing that kills most writers I mean you write a few of those scripts in a row where you go through all that trouble to write the script only to find out that the script is not going to work no matter what you do you have to be writing for very long right it's one of the biggest reasons right excuse me one of the biggest reasons writers give up these character is far what I call the in-between characters of the story because we have on one side the hero and the heroes allies on the other side we have that main opponent and any secondary opponents that you may have in the story right these are clear characters in opposition but one of the keys to plot if not the key to long is surprise revealed we want to not only surprise the hero over the course of the story we want to surprise the audience that's essentially what plot is the question is how do we get reveals how do we get surprises we give them a lot of different ways but one of the most important ways is with these in between characters character who appears to be an ally that is real an opponent somebody who appears to be an opponent but it's really a moment every time the audience sees that somebody they thought was one it turns out to be another that's a review that's a plot beat and that's what the audience goes oh yes that was really great thank you that's the power plot and these characters are one of the main ways that we get these surprises for the audience now to see the value of this character take a look at the Harry Potter stories and of course most obvious example of this is Snape who switches back and forth between a parent Ally and a parent opponent for seven books right that's how useful this character this type of character is because every time he switches we surprise the audience she was able to sustain that source of plot for seven full books this is one of the ways that we know that she's a master it's just that technical long cheap course many many others that she was used but that's more most important knowing your genre is extremely important in television just as it is in a film because the genre that you're working in gives you the primary beats the unique story beats that must be in your script if you're going to be doing that show properly now as I mentioned before television now covers all of the major genres from detective and crime all the way through the fantasy science fiction horror soap opera legal drama doctor drama so on and these all work in radically different ways each of those genres has its own set story beats and this is why in all of the classes that I teach including the television class I spend a great deal of time going through all the beats of each one of those genres in the case of television though it's also this I wish it was simpler but it's not but in television is not just knowing the beats of that particular genre that you're working in it's also understanding how those beats are changed by the fact that is on television not in film because keep in mind again the difference the primary difference is in film we've got a two-hour unit that's all we have to do with TV the key feature is what I call extendibility we need to be able to take a story form and extend it not only over one season potentially 24 episodes of one season but over five seasons so it's got to be and that that changes the genre itself because then what you can do in that genre is very different when you're having to do it in two hours versus over five years the advent of serials has totally changed not just how story works in television but how viewers react to that how yours experience television now binge viewing of course doesn't exist when we're talking about say a detective show a standalone show you wouldn't sit there and watch ten episodes at the castle because every one of those is essentially the same story binge viewing happens when you have a serial whether it's in drama or in comedy and these Netflix these sorts of shows are a good example of that I remember last summer they AMC put on Breaking Bad from the very beginning to their most recent episode now when Breaking Bad first came out I wasn't interested in watching and I thought all this is another show about a guy who who sells drugs you know who needs to see this it's gonna be the same old thing well when they put it on in one a day which essentially allowed me to binge view for you know for a month and a half on Breaking Bad the experience of that show was totally different because what I was able to see is not only why this is one of the greatest TV shows that it's ever been done but I got to see why it's one of the greatest shows ever done and it had to do with the ability of that writing staff to not only write great individual episodes but to sequence the episodes of the course of the season and ultimately over the course of the entire show and it was almost like wine tasting and I think that's what what binge viewing is like because when you're wine-tasting you immediately get to compare these different wines and it becomes very clear why this line is better than that wine when you do binge viewing you get to the links in the episodes become much clearer and you see the true artistry of the storytellers in their ability to build a series of episodes to the climactic final episode of that season and then to with whole certain things that have to be withheld to set up the opening episode of the next season and so this this whole use of the serial writing is causing people to have an entirely different experience of how they watch television and how they appreciate television because they think this is also one of the places where people are realizing that the best story work in American entertainment business is in television right now and and by the way do classes all over the world the single biggest interest wherever I go is to talk about and understand American television because they understand that the quality of American television is the highest it has ever been it is the best in the world and they want to know how can they do it too over the years writers have taken total control of the medium and in my view this is the single most important reason why the writing in television is better than any other medium in American entertainment writers have control the medium not directors not producers not movie stars and the result is plain for everybody to see it used to be that film was thought as the little brother the you know oh well if you can't make it in film well you can maybe try television well that's completely flipped now and again it's because of this fracture audience film still they're trying to appeal to a worldwide audience that's even bigger than 30 million people they're trying to get people all over the world which is why the differences of what we see in film are now the narrowest it's ever been would basically have out of Hollywood superhero movies that's it yeah at Oscar time you'll get maybe the five films that Hollywood made that year that are dramas that are serious works of art that we then get to nominate for Best Picture and then everybody forgets that for the whole you know other 11 and a half months of the year they're putting out superhero movies comic book hero movies that's because that's that that's that story form that genre which is essentially myth plus action appeals to the largest number of people in various cultures around the world TV doesn't have that requirements so you can do things as different is Breaking Bad Game of Thrones Downton Abbey The Good Wife and so on and the quality within those genres on TV is so high if you look at say the nine major TV genres you could argue that want seven of those not we have the best show of that genre right now on that we've ever had that's phenomenal well first of all you've got to have a really good spec script and what a lot of writers think is that the big obstacle is sending the script in and that certainly is an obstacle because you do need an agent to get it through the door to have somebody look at it but by far the bigger obstacle of that writers face is writing a spec script that's good enough to be sent in in the first place and this is where learning the craft is so important and we're writing a spec script of a particular show and executing it really well is so important keep in mind that when you send a spec script in it will be read by someone of oh whatever shows they send the spec script to it will be read by somebody on that show and what they're looking for is did you execute the way this show is done because each show has a very specific set of rules so we do these things and we don't do those things and if you don't know that and you make the mistake for example some shows do not have cliffhangers they won't do that and if you write cliffhangers in your episode it's out they want to see can you write this show because remember that that's very challenging for writer this is not something that you are creating from scratch as you would with a spec movie script this is you are writing a story for a show that's already been created for characters that have already been created can you get your voice into that show that's what they're looking for and can you tell a great story one of the things I always talk about in the TV sitcom class is that the perception of writers trying to break in is that a sitcom is stringing as many jokes as you can get in 22 minutes it's all about the jokes can you make people laugh when they read the scrip certainly the jokes are important but any producer on any sitcom on the air will tell you that what they look for in a spec script is the story they can add the jokes later they're not worried about that what's hard to come up with is a sitcom story that will be appealing to the audience that can be the structure the framework to hang the jokes on and that's a talent most writers don't have so again I'm just trying to get the focus onto the real problem that has to be solved if you're a writer trying to break in which is write a great spec script because this is the calling card that makes all the difference that is what makes or breaks your career if you want to work in television do you have to know that show top to bottom and that's why as I was saying earlier one of the ways you determine which show to write for is it's not just a show that's highly respected by the critics that's popular with the audience it's a show that you love that you watch religiously so that you really know how that thing works that's what they're looking for under the surface the fact is that creative writing is the loneliest job in the world no matter what medium you are working in it's just that the pace of television writing is a hundred times what it is in any other medium whether it's writing novels film whatever it might be and so the the downside of that is that your you know the the requirement that you generate good product in a short period of time is intense the pressure on these people is intense but there's some positives one is you don't have writer's block right because with those kind of deadlines writer's block disappears and you find all of a sudden when you have everything you do has an intense deadline that luxury of writer's block just disappears you're gonna have to write something the other great advantage is that you are writing on staff and writing snaps of a very interesting animal especially for the psychology of the writer because even though writing is extremely lonely and the sense of self-criticism is intense for all writers when you work with the staff it's all about cracking stories because we have to come up with a new story every week and we have to have that story worked out beat for beat literally figure out every scene every story event before it goes to script and the way it's done is it's done with everybody's in the room together cracking stories together and that's why in in a writers room every wall is filled with the board's the big boards and the three by five cards that lays out every episode of the season and all of the story events in every episode and so that we wires tremendous brain power all working together and the the great part about it probably the best part about it is that you were in effect working in a band you're playing in a band you and this is these are some of the best story people working in the world and when you're in a room with these kind of people at that kind of quality it and it's and it's all working well it's Reiter's heaven because it you know I equated it's like playing with the Rolling Stones it's that's how good these people are they're all graded story they're all graded script and so you get this cross-pollination of ideas these these these spitballing sessions where they break down a story and it appears before your eyes and it's just phenomenal just to go through that process especially if you love story you love writing as much as I do there is no preparation for the psychological difficulty of working in that environment yes the the the fun of creating story with these other story champions is tremendous but the politics is intense the competition is intense sometimes there's backstabbing that goes on you know I think anybody's worked on staff will tell you that there is a tremendous very clear hierarchy that you're dealing with starting at the top with the showrunner and how that showrunner runs the staff makes all the difference in the world but you have to be able to attach your ego to the larger world to the larger goal of making this show and every episode of the show work and that means not only being part of the team and especially when you're starting out being at the low part of the team it also means the requirement to be able to write other people's characters and not every writer can do that that is probably the most difficult part about it because you have to in you have to absolutely submerge yourself into that the show creators vision and if you can't do that then you don't want to be writing for television it's only at the beginning you're a small part you you your part will grow but your part is really B it's it's tremendously egalitarian in the sense that whoever comes up with the best story idea wins so you can have a tremendous impact on any show that you work for as long as you know your story skills that's what I always tell writers that's what you're really training for it's become great at story because that's what that's what they're dying for that's what they have to generate so fast but where you have to really mold your ego is to understand that anything you create even your own scripts will be changed dramatically and oftentimes a script that you write that has your name on it when it finally gets to fill it doesn't have a single word of what you wrote and if you can't handle that again you don't want to write for television essentially 24 hours they eat sleep talk story and write story all the time I remember the we used to have to show up by 10:00 a.m. they said well that's a late start except it we the earliest we got out of that room was midnight and typically in 2 to 3 o'clock in the morning and then you go home you get some sleep just enough time to wake up and go back in do it for another 12 hours 12 to 14 hours and a lot of times seven days a week again it depends a lot on the showrunner certain show runners they want to make it a livable experience they don't want it to be hell to work on the show and so they try to be very organized and they try to give you at least one day off a week and so on but if the show is not that organized or the showrunner doesn't work that way then you're you're in it you know for 24/7 there's a bit again the upside is that that would be the greatest training in writing that you will ever get and once you've gone through it you are completely changed as a writer because the again the psychological shock is your biggest problem because there the requirement to produce quality material that fast is something you have no matter how much training you've done in the past no matter how many screenplays you've written whether you've written novels plays and so on it will not prepare you for what you're about to face and the psychological hit is the thing you've got to be worried about especially right at the beginning it so it's like being a rookie and anything when you first get their first break in the adaptation that you have to do to what's going on in that world is and on the writing level is intense but it's also you have to adjust to the psychology of the fact that you literally have no time for personal life and and especially if you're writing for a network show where you have up to 24 episodes per season by the time you're done with that season that about nine months you you are this close to being dead I remember it at the end of the season on Jump Street the head of the studio came to the showrunner and said this was one of Fox's early shows and it was it was in many ways created Fox it made Fox happen and so Jump Street with Johnny Depp was super popular and so the executive came to the showrunner said we need two more episodes well we'd already done 22 23 24 episodes and the showrunner said sorry the horses are dead we can't get anything more out of them they just cannot go any farther that was the kind of intensity that one season produced on the staff you are crafting or serial television are they all the same be and the answer is no they're not and this is both one of the strengths of the serial and one of the problems for serial with stand alone the beats are always the same how you fill those beats are different so for example we always have a murder committed in the opening scene right and then we're going to go through the beats of solving that murder by the end of that episode with serial one of the major ways that it's different structurally from standalone is that each episode will be much more diverse to be you can have episodes within a serial that are radically different than other episodes and it all comes down to one of the keys structurally for how you write television whether it's standalone or serial which is the desire line what did the heroes of that episode want in that episode now in standalone that desire line will be very restricted for example the detective it's to solve the crime in serial because we have so many more characters each with their own desire line what when we segment each of this of these season long experience into individual episodes what those characters want at any one time will be radically different and this is the the downside of that is it's unpredictable for the audience and if you like that standalone experience this is just too much change and difference and I don't know did we win on this or did we lose what what happened here but for people who love the serial form they like that diversity they like the fact that they can't predict what is going to happen one episode was it's totally based on cross-cutting among all of these different characters each with their own desire line I have seen so many movies and read some these scripts that couldn't even begin to count which one I've done more of but they're both very important if somebody wants to write screenplays professionally and I say that for two reasons first of all when it comes to watching film that's really where I learned my training as a writer and where I developed all my techniques having to do with how do you write a script that will make a great film what I did was for about a three year period I went to classic cinema and watched to you know really high level films a day and took notes in the dark and what I was looking for were the patterns what were the elements that were found in every great film do such elements even exist and I found that they did and from that I was able to develop really the centerpiece of what I talked about in story which is the seven key steps of every great story from that I also then developed the more detailed 22 steps of every great story these are steps in every good script no matter how long no matter how short no matter what medium no matter what genre and these are really the keys to successful story tell now it's also important that writers read a lot of scripts because it's only by reading a lot of scripts that you get a sense especially of the pacing that a professional script has and you only see that when you've read a lot of but once you've read a lot of them you see how quickly does this story get established in the script because keep in mind that the reader the person that we need to get through in order to sell that script the reader has read many many scripts and their normal response to a script is no so we have to break that pattern in their mind now they form that know in their head in the first 10 pages and so reading a lot of scripts gives the writer a sense of what do I have to have accomplished in those first 10 pages to keep the reader reading and to give them a chance to say yes this is one of the common and most important distinctions that is often made when we're talking about writing professionally but there is a basic misunderstanding that's going on there that is putting them these two things in opposition to each other and in fact way I like the way I like to look at it is that understanding the craft of writing a big part of that is dealing with it in a businesslike way now when most writers think about the business of story whether it be in film or television they're thinking in terms of writing a story writing an idea that can sell big mistake nobody can predict what will sell nobody can predict what is commercial and if you try to do that you will always fail and you'll you know have a constant frustration for the rest of your life through like the rest of your writing like instead what I try to purge writers to do is to approach their craft in a businesslike way which means first of all learn the craft learn the craft don't think it's all about who I know no it's all about is it on the page did you write a great script but then treating your craft in a businesslike way also has to do with do I can I create this script in a particular genre that the entertainment business is going to buy there are certain genres not story ideas that are commercial there are certain genres that are more commercial than others there are certain genres for example that we get in television that we get a lot of for example dr. dramas legal dramas detective stories so in treating your craft in a businesslike way it means how do I take the steps that I need to take to have a career as a writer to be paid as a writer professionally over many years in fact in in my TV class the entire TV class is structured according to the steps that the writer has to go through to make a career out of writing for television and that includes things like how do you write your spec script which show do you choose to write your spec script for what must be in that spec script what are the beats of the genre that you're gonna have to hit for that spec script to work and so on that's you can see that the in all of those things craft and being businesslike are the same and the big problem that I always have with writers who have this tremendous desire to write professionally is they think in the old romantic tradition of it's all about getting that inspiration from above and somehow just creating this perfectly written or well-structured well-written script and that has nothing to do with how a great script is written or be how a great script is sold so that's why I put so much emphasis in my classes on taking a businesslike approach to your craft if you want to write professionally and I always love this metaphor you know I would love to be the starting point guard for the Lakers right but I can't walk onto the court and say hey you know Kobe's injured now so I really like to play just because you really want to do it doesn't mean you get to do it those players have years of training and they've approached their sport as a crap where they learn all the skills they practice them ad infinitum and now they're ready to perform on the at the professional level storytelling for film and television is at least competitor as professional sports so you have to have that same approach in order to succeed

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 75,789

Rating: 4.9215283 out of 5

Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, screenwriter, screenwriting, selling a screenplay, screenwriting help, john truby, anatomy of story, how to write a screenplay, how to write a story, story, filmcourage, film courage, interview, john truby top 25 lessons, screenwriting 101

Id: vo5dL-8-RPo

Length: 79min 52sec (4792 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017