The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen - Erik Bork [FULL INTERVIEW]

Film Courage: Erik, you have a book that's coming out right now we're filming this in August but by the time this airs it'll be September late September I believe and your book is called The idea: Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction. Curious what prompted you to write the book? Erik Bork, Author/Screenwriter: Yeah so I've been a screenwriter for like 25 years and for the last about ten years I've been teaching screenwriting I've been working one-on-one with a lot of writers as like a consultant or coach and I've been just reading a lot of scripts film and TV scripts many many many many many scripts right so you in trying to help writers and to try to kind of codify principles of writing which is always a touchy thing because sometimes people feel writing can't really be taught or shouldn't be taught you know I've really tried to figure out what are the things that one really needs and a story idea because people don't necessarily seem to know when they're writing but when someone reads someone's script they often are having negative reactions and what are the reasons for those reactions I really made it my business to figure out like what are the sort of essential things that people are reacting to not only when they read a script but when they even hear the idea for a script because the reason the book is called the idea is that I've really come to believe that the most important part of the process most writers bypass too quickly which is selecting the idea and understanding what makes a viable idea that is so important to the eventual success of any project and I mean that might seem obvious but the average writer myself included tends to want to get to writing they tend to want to just start structuring outlining and writing the script so you pick an idea you often don't vet the idea with professionals or friends or anyone you just kind of like I sort of like this idea I think I'm gonna write this and then you go about writing it whereas in the industry if you have a manager or an agent what I've learned is that they'll want you to run your ideas past them before you even start one they don't want you to spend your time and energy on something they don't think is viable in the marketplace to begin with so if you're trying to write for that marketplace if you're trying to get or maintain a you're an agent and move forward you know in like the Hollywood marketplace what's gonna happen to you is your representatives are gonna shoot down a lot of your ideas which has happened to me and they're gonna really stop you at the idea stage and want to hear the logline or the basic the basic premise or pitch so I as a writer having agents had to live that lifestyle of I got to impress my agents first right once I'm lucky enough to have one as someone reading people's scripts as a kind of consultant or teacher I now realized what my agents were thinking because most of the things people bring to me finish scripts the most of the notes that I have on their scripts are notes I would have had on the basic idea if they had just brought it to me when it was a log line or a 30-second pitch or a one-page synopsis the kind of you put in a query so but most writers don't kind of realize that because they haven't vetted the idea with anyone so I've been blogging for five to ten years now you know little tips and things that little pieces of wisdom that I feel I've come up with having read all these scripts and seeing the kind of things that I see writers are doing and the blog eventually led to the idea to do a book and the book is about let's focus on the idea what makes a viable idea it's not a book about the whole process of screenwriting it's not about story structure per se it's not about writing scenes it's not about navigating the business although all those things are touched on it is exclusively about what makes a viable idea and let's slow down writers and really work on getting the idea right before we you know write the script or even outline the script so what 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 with 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 theater 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 it so they all lined up with those seven letters that's great and and did you before sort of even formulating the idea for this book no pun intended go through other scripts and really hone in on what's the problem let's say some of the blockbusters or maybe even indie films what really is the core of this problem and then work backwards well yeah I do that all the time it's just a natural thing whenever I'm watching anything I am assessing what is the central 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 it's it tends to be better to let that stuff stay a little flexible until you've gotten the 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 they're you know every scene is typically about them grappling with and trying to resolve I love that you've chosen the word punishing whether it was just coincidence because it starts with P but because you're putting yourself in the protagonists shoes and it seems like if you're looking through life through the lens of that character that it is a punishment for you know that that they are enduring things that are unfair to them so I like that you've chosen that as because it really is sort of the journey of it of a character to see it as this is a punishment now I've got to prove that I'm innocent kind of thing thank you yeah I mean I I think even in 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 veep or Glo 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 for them you know even in even in the you know the the save the cat book the Blake Schneider book he talks about the fun in game section which is the first half of Act two in a screenplay in his world and I think he makes some great points but the fun and game section even in that section of the movie which he calls flooding games I'm all 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 two 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 ice 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 / 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 complicated 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 many 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 so you say that writers don't spend enough time making sure that the idea that they're sort of putting out there is viable wouldn't you you think that most writers are using an idea that's very personal to them in some sense even if it's the story's not really about them it's a core idea that affects them why wouldn't it translate if it's so personal and deep and rich to that writer wouldn't putting something so sort of deep and personal that the writer is choosing a focus on be enough to make the script viable well that's a great question first let me say when I talk about writers I'm talking about myself too because I'm a writer and that's still the main thing I do and I make these things that I might call mistakes so it's not me on HIGH saying oh those writers what idiots they hire its me saying we all naturally do this stuff I just wanna make that clear to your audience sure but that's a great question and and I've made I don't I wouldn't called a mistake but I've done this myself many times which is write something that is personal to me that I think I felt something deeply about so audiences will - and one often we know one hopes they can pull that off and there are some pitfalls in that approach that often happened one of them being that we so internalize what we went through what we were thinking and feeling and why it mattered so much to us in our life to put it actually on the page in a way that audience is looking at a character based on us having experiences based on ours for the audience to get those things that are internal to us is harder than it looks and often just because we felt it deeply doesn't mean that we can write a character feeling that same thing deeply and the audience will get it sometimes they will sometimes those are the best movies but a lot of times they won't and a lot of times that thing that we went through in our personal life that mattered so much to us doesn't necessarily have the ingredients of an entertaining to watch story for an audience like a movie or television audience a story that builds and complicates and gets worse and are really fun to watch way often when we're writing real life and this is any kind of true story and I've worked a lot on true stories and people come to me a lot with true story because I worked on Band of Brothers for instance it's it's kind of where I got my start professionally what I've really learned is that true stories are sometimes harder than fiction because you real life doesn't have story structure typically real life doesn't have the things that we writers have learned that audiences need to be really emotionally invested and entertained and to stay emotionally invested entertained over the course of an hour half hour or two hours it just doesn and writers have to bring a lot of manipulation to a true story to make it comprehensible to an audience and to make it be that kind of emotional journey with that kind of classic narrative build to it and entertainment value to it it just doesn't come naturally we have to kind of impose it so a lot of times the things we've gone in our own life we don't have perspective on them we can't see them from that third party person that has a very different life from us and how do we portray it on the page or on screen in a way that they will be really entertained and invested in this character like us and often we aren't able to write that character with enough perspective and enough clarity so that people will get what they're going through because to us it's already so obvious it's like a given it's inside of our head but getting it outside of our head and onto the page in a way that others will really get it I think it's harder than it looks and so when you're identifying an idea for a story coming from a place that is something passionate to you or that you have experienced I think is a good start but it's usually not enough you usually have to sort of test it by putting yourself in the shoes of a sort of third party anonymous viewer with a different life story than yours how do you make this something that's that's universal because our own pain in our own drama and our own situations don't necessarily have deep and compelling universally relatable elements to them that any one or millions of people would be able to instantly grasp and be emotionally invested I use that term a lot of emotional investment because to me that's the key thing we're always going for there's an audience that's the key thing you want we want to care and a lot of this focus on the idea is about finding an idea that people you know people strangers millions of strangers will have a chance of really caring about this idea caring about this character these characters in this situation what makes them care and so these seven elements a lot of it is about me trying to put into words here are the qualities that I think are inherent in stories that can make an audience care and when it's coming from our own life experience a lot of times some of those elements could be missing and we may not realize it when a writer brings their work to you or even from hearing from agents who've had a writer bring work to them what sort of telltale signs appear when it's so deeply personal and you can tell that that writer doesn't have enough perspective where is when you can maybe tell that it's sort of loosely based on a multitude of people and there's a little more definition to the problem or maybe there's not and I'm just projecting that yeah I don't know if there are telltale signs because you never know when you're reading something is this the author's own life story I mean you can suspect it but you know some you know I would say the absence of some of these elements we're talking about the like the seven elements of what the problem you know the absence of those is the main thing that a reader is noticing that it isn't that entertaining to watch or it isn't the stakes aren't life-altering it doesn't seem like or the character isn't relatable or the problem isn't punishing enough or what's going on isn't believable enough you know those kind of things are what we're just noticing right away once we notice them we may speculate that oh this is because it's their own true story and their own true life situation doesn't have those elements but we don't really know for sure so I don't know that I can say oh I can tell this is like a too personal true story thing necessarily unless I really know the writer and it's pretty obvious that it's their life it's more that the sort of absence of some of those elements not appearing as strongly as we would want makes us less enthused about the script and it may or may not be because it was a personal you no story like that do you remember the first feedback you received from a third party that these elements needed to be more pronounced was that for you devastating and terrible in the first moment of my life of twit what I guess I had a pretty good life if the worst moment of my life is having someone you know tear apart a script but I mean yes some of the early scripts that I wrote I would probably cringe at now that I mean some of the stuff I write now I probably cringe at six months this is not an easy feel that's what I'm saying you always have perspective on what you're writing yourself and whether others are gonna respond well to it but you know I had people say there's just not enough conflict it needs more conflict and I in my early days thought conflict meant like people arguing or fighting or car chases or something like I didn't really know what that meant exactly and so I didn't write scripts and I didn't love movies that were all about people constantly arguing or fighting or car chasing right so I thought I was writing something that was the kind of stuff I would like but a third party reading it said you know you did some good things here I just felt it needed a more conflict I didn't really know what they meant now after doing it for years and reading a lot of scripts I know what they meant and to me conflict is synonymous with problem so it's not that your character has to always be in an obvious conflict with other people and expressing and fighting all the time or arguing it's that they have to be in conflict with their situation meaning they have to have problems whenever your character doesn't have a problem and isn't actively even and struggling against or trying to resolve a problem the audience tends to check out a bit right so that usually does lead to conflicts with other characters trying to solve a problem in life generally leads to some interpersonal calm because a lot of problems that are big enough for a movie that we want to solve or big enough for a TV show are problems that involve relations and interactions with other people so there will be conflict but it's not that limited version of what I thought conflict meant when I got that critique so the problem not being punishing enough which is like the letter P the first one in the you know the word problem in my book was probably the first thing that I grappled with in my own stuff of people saying it's just not enough conflict meaning it's not a big enough problem it's maybe not a life-altering enough problem which is the l word which is about the level of the stakes of the problem why does it matter that they solve this problem why does the audience care whether they solve it or not is it big enough and is it relatable enough which is the R word where the audience is starting to feel like it's our problem too we are standing in the shoes of this character as they try to solve this problem and we feel something about it we want it to be solved because it's kind of like it's us now that emotional engagement with the character is like the really key thing we're trying to achieve as writers that was not easy to achieve and sometimes writers don't realize that things necessary to kind of achieve that which is a lot of the kind of relatable stuff so my first critique of something not punishing enough was probably also wasn't big enough stakes why do people relate to this character because you didn't find that sort of universal hook that pulled people in the character didn't have those elements that make the audience just start to feel like I'm bonded with them which is such a key part for me like the beginning of any screenplay what save the cat calls the setup section I think the first 10 pages it's all about achieving that bonding with the audience and and you know people often talk about you know people put down a script in the first 10 pages if it's not grabbing them and writers tend to think oh you grab them by having really exciting spectacle in the beginning with really high stakes what action or entertainment value which is always helpful but to me the more important goal in those first 10 pages is to introduce your main character at some length and it's some breadth and some depth in such a way that the audience starts to see what the key things are that would make us care about them what makes them a compelling relatable person even before the main story problem has kicked in what makes us just kind of want to follow them you know I mean save the cat says they save a cat which makes us like them because they do something self-sacrificing and helpful that's a sort of semi joke you know premise I think that Blake Snyder came about just have your character save a cat but I think what he was really getting out was a really vital thing that writers tend to sometimes bypass or no understand which is give us a reason to bond with that character before your story really kicks in and so I probably failed in all those and other ways in my early scripts and maybe some later scripts that made people go huh needs more conflict so what about the opposite what if someone says well I'm never gonna get notes like that I'm gonna have it packed with conflict and then it's actually too much it's not subtle it's not under the surface like I'm just thinking of sharp objects I watched the first episode last night and you can see seeds planted that the conflict some of its obvious some of its not and you're wondering hmm there was a look at the end with this one character I think there's good you know and I like hints at it and then it keeps you hooked in because you're like I want to see something go down here but it doesn't yet yeah well I mean yeah it's like it's not that you have to hit over hit people over the head with with constant like you know screaming matches or fights or anything like that to me it's that there has to be a central problem and a central character faced with that problem that the audience buys into early on and says okay I care about this problem I want to see this problem get solved for this person by this person once you have them feeling that way then you can play out the resolution of that problem over a lengthy period of time you don't have to get right to it in a really you know sledgehammer kind of manner but the the problem has to be big enough to begin with it has to be grabby enough to begin with then how they evolved in dealing with the problem and how the problem evolves and if it's a mystery how the cards get turned over and the clues get revealed and the leads get followed up on that's part of the fun for the audience is that that stuff takes time you just don't want to have long periods where none of that's happening at all and things seem kind of fine that's what you want to avoid things are never fine in a story there's always that simmering you know problem overshadowing everything I think in a compelling commercial story where the audience is going I want to see this resolved the reason I'm binging on this is I want to see this problem or these problems get resolved but what they really want to see is they want to see how the problems build and complicated twist and turn and evolve and then later get resolved because you know once it gets resolved it's kind of over so if you're binging on 12 episodes or whatever it is you probably know no real resolution gonna happen til the end of the twelfth if then but on the way how its evolving is the thing that's fun for us to watch as an audience have you given notes to someone - hey tone it down this is too much right here it's too explosive and it's like almost like beating the the the reader over the head a little bit I don't think that happens very much unless what they're doing doesn't feel believable to me that's the sort of the be--and problem is you know believable and and that's a bigger more common issue than people might think where readers are reading their stuff and going I don't believe this character would do or say this or maybe it doesn't it feels contrived in some way it feels like the writer is trying to force something that isn't organically coming out of the lives and desires and emotions and personalities of the characters so on to some extent the characters do have to drive the story everything they're doing has to feel like it could and would really happen they could or would really say or do those things in those moments so it's not that I'm ever saying oh there's too much conflict you're trying to make the problem too big per se unless in doing that it's straining believability because even those stories have easily something exaggerated about them or even sometimes a fantastical element that they're based on like there's a zombie apocalypse or there's vampires in the high school or whatever even though they have that kind of stuff sometimes and even in a comedy you're exaggerating characters a little bit for comedy I believe there still has to be this basis of reality that we're seeing human beings that we can accept seem real doing or saying what we think they would really do or say in those situations and a lot of times in a lot of scripts there will be moments and scenes and characters that don't feel that way that feel over-the-top unbelievable reacting in ways that seem forced for the sake of more conflict or more comedy or entertainment value or more action so that's where I might sometimes feel that something needs to be toned down so that it feels like it's all coming from a real place when in doubt always I say go for the real I heard somebody say this once a professional writer at at a panel and it's so true you hope that your concept is compelling enough people are gonna care there's something entertaining at its core but as you start plotting it out I always say start with what's real at every moment in the story what would each character be really thinking feeling doing at this point given their situation how do you make them do things that feel totally believable and just totally real audiences love it when it feels real but still is entertaining and compelling and all those other things and achieving that level of realness that feels really authentic is is difficult but it's really special when a writer is able to just write with like authenticity that is just like I absolutely suspend disbelief you absolutely have me I believe these people are real I forget that I'm watching something fictional so when you can do that in the context of having these other elements of a story then I think you're really in good shape can you think of a film in particular that there was like one of the first that did that for you well I mean I think most really great and successful movies and TV shows do have reality do you have that basis of reality which is why they work if they didn't have it I don't think they'd be successful so I think you see that in most successful things that there is that sense of I believe these people and what they're doing I believe the reality the situation's the writer has set up having said that there are certain shows certain movies that I can think of maybe not the first that did it but that feel they did it to a really extreme level like the wire on HBO that series you know to me kind of made every other cop show that it ever come before seemed almost kind of like cheesy or fake in comparison because it felt so real and when you can achieve that level of realness audiences critics agents producers they all respond to that if you have these other kind of elements of story in place that level of realness can really make your stuff special so that's one example the spray was also a show that even though it was a real as the wire when I would watch The Sopranos I would kind of like just buy it for some reason that was a show that I felt like I don't feel like I'm watching actors and writers and directors I feel like I'm watching these like real people that are really living in this subculture at its best which i think is the reason why shows like The Sopranos and The Wire are voted like some of the best written shows of all time because they obviously did that for a lot of people even Forrest Gump I mean I could I could think that that is a real person that if you go on Wikipedia though oh there he is and you know yes and he beat this person in ping-pong and I mean it's believable enough as wild of a ride as his life was that that could be a real person there's just something about the the writing and and drawing you into this sort of innocent world yeah I mean I think you're right I mean it's yeah it's a very opposite example where it's a very fanciful story but somehow it convinces the audience for those two to three hours that this is a real thing and nothing is making them go okay it's not real anymore I don't get I mean they're people who don't like the movie but I don't think there's much that makes people just check out because it doesn't seem like it could be plausible you know the characters once you establish who they are they behave in ways that make sense based on who they are and what their psychology and their backstories are and what their current desires and situations are and that's where it's like the writer Eric Roth in this case is going for the real I think is taking you know the situation the people where they're at and saying what is real to have happen next and plus he's throwing in some very damaged supporting characters you know Jenny and Captain Dan and things like that around it and so as perfect as Forrest might seem and that he kind of just is always able to you know run through no pun intended sort of situations he has some very sort of damaged people around them that are very real and that that part is also interesting yeah I mean I think if you look at Lieutenant Dan or Jenny in Forrest Gump they are they are playing out their psychology their family history their their problems their worst tragedies that have happened to them and they feel like it's psychologically real and that's what I mean when I say Real Estate's like psychologically based on who they are think a writer kind of a fiction kind of has to be a little bit of a psychologist because you're saying given this person's history and what they've been through how would they be now how would they react in this situation how would they go about pursuing whatever they want in their lives and you know it's gonna vary greatly based on where they come from and what led them to this point so yeah it's not it's not easy to do that really well but when you do I think audiences respond by totally buying in and being compelled by this psychologically real feeling person that you're putting on screen or on the page I'd love to hear your story in terms of was there a certain film that made you want to be a writer your choice in your college major yeah when I was in high school the film the world according to GARP had a big impact on me it was about a writer whose mother was a nonfiction writer and my mother was also a kind of aspiring nonfiction writer very different from that character but still that that movie was the first movie that I was like there's something that I related to in that movie that was different from any other movie I'd ever seen it made me think about you know somebody wrote that you know which was a phrase that writers guild used in an ad campaign once to get respect for writers somebody wrote that they had all these lines of dialogue on billboards you know don't forget a writer wrote that an actor didn't just come up with that set but anyway the world according to GARP had an impact and I think when I went to college I I knew I wanted to pursue something creative that involved writing whether it was fiction or screenwriting or maybe even music and so after a year or two I settled in on on becoming a film major and and maybe trying to become like a writer director because a lot of my favorite movies at that time were writer director movies like you know Woody Allen movies of that era like late 70s early 80s and so I did I pursue being a film major in my undergraduate in Ohio which is my home state and got a four-year degree BFA and motion picture production which of course guarantees you a job in the industry immediately when you show up with that and I just thought I was gonna move to Los Angeles and become an assistant because I kind of knew you know that whole starting the William Morris mailroom kind of thing that I knew that that was a thing you could do there were people that had moved out to LA from Dayton Ohio where I was from before me who'd gone to my film school before me who had these kind of jobs working as assistants at the studios and stuff so I decided that's gonna be my path I'm gonna get it my day job will be one of those kind of jobs where I'll be like a secretary and I'll just be writing on the side and so that's what I pursued and was lucky enough to get into the Fox Studios kind of in-house temp pool where somebody in the human resources department had all these temps that every day they would assign to these different jobs throughout the studio where they needed somebody to fill in for a day or a week or a month or whatever because some assistant was on maternity leave or out sick or had just left and they hadn't replaced them yet so I got my taste of all these different kinds of jobs throughout 20th Century Fox and the Fox Network you know everything from like legal department to accounting and finance like very corporate departments but also some of the eventually the more creative side where you're working on a TV show or working for a production company which is of course what you really want if you're an aspiring writer and so I did that for a number of years and eventually got assigned to Tom Hanks his production company just as a temp which turned into a full-time assistant job working there where it was basically him and his his main assistant who went with him on location and had been with him for years and me I was like the guy in the office like answering the phone and opening the mail he was off shooting Forrest Gump for like five months at one point you know on the East Coast and I was the only one there in the office kind of holding down the fort so to speak at his little production company that was based at Fox at that time so while I was doing that I was writing scripts on the side and I had worked as a writer's assistant on the show picket fences right before I work for Tom Hanks and got to know other people at my level other assistants which is a really helpful thing to do you know they say do you have to move to Los Angeles to be a screenwriter you don't have to it helps and but one of the main reasons it can help is if you're the kind of person that gets a job in the business like that where you're around people doing what you want to be doing and you meet people at your level who are also trying to do the kinds of things you want to do and you can sort of help each other and that certainly worked out for me because I switched from writing features on spec to I took a class at UCLA extensions writers program where I have taught now in recent years myself on sitcom writing I started writing a spec script for the show Fraser in that class and then when it was done I showed it to this friend I'd work with on picket fences he was a fellow assistant but also an aspiring writer who had just gotten an agent and she liked the Fraser and was willing to show it to her agent and the agent liked the Fraser enough to want to sign me so I got this agent while I was still working as an assistant for Tom Hanks and this agent function kind of like managers do now managers weren't such a thing back then where she was giving me notes you know she signed me off it but then she immediately wanted me to rewrite it with all these notes she gave me before she would send it to anyone and so then she had me after that was done she had me start my next one which was a mad about you and after that of friends so I was like pumping out these sitcom spec scripts because in those days when you wanted to work on staff on a show in the 90s they more valued specs of existing shows whereas nowadays it's its original pilots that writers tend to use for writing samples to get into TV writing you know a staff job like that which is normally how you get in is you know you get hired as like a staff writer on a show if you're one of the lucky few fortunate few so that's the direction I was headed but I still had the the Tom Hanks really great sort of assistant day job but I was really starting to think eventually I'm gonna be a professional writer now I mean I have an agent she's sending my stuff out I got some meetings here and there but then things took a funny turn an amazing turn which is that one day Tom Hanks read one or two of those scripts because his assistant who I worked kind of under I think right amended oh you should have Tom read your you know it'd be fun whatever I don't know I was never gonna ask him to read my stuff or help me in any way cuz I knew this is my job this is he's not there to help me do that and he apparently liked the one or two scripts he read and decided that I had talent and he told me my talents are being wasted and he offered me this like amazing life-changing promotion the week of my 30th birthday I had a wife and a kid and she was a teacher and I was making seven hundred dollars a week I think or something like that so it was a really a good time to get a promotion where I was gonna help him basically help him develop this miniseries he had sold to HBO as an executive producer which was from the earth to the moon which was about the Apollo space program he had done the movie Apollo 13 and was a life long space junkie and at this point was the biggest star in Hollywood he had gotten to that point by then and so he was able to sell this idea for a miniseries of very expensive 12 hour miniseries where we would dramatize and recreate the entire Apollo program right all these other missions you know so I then helped him kind of figure out the sort of outline for that and like find writers to write the episodes you know professional screenwriters that were already established unlike me but eventually I got to write one of the scripts and then eventually that script became a decent script because it took a long time and then I got asked to help rewrite some of the other scripts so by the end of that production from the earths of the moon I had kind of been an apprentice producer on the whole thing so I got a co-producer credit on the whole thing and I had writing credit or pieces of writing credit on several episodes and I just like learned all this stuff from just being on it from beginning to end and being able to be kind of in the middle of it because I worked for Tom and he was the executive producer so I was on the set in the editing room and did everything or watched everything and so when it won the Emmy for Best miniseries and all the other big awards I got to share in those awards because I was one of the producers so that was really how I got my start I was very fortunate and that the first thing I wrote professionally not only got produced which you know most things the writers get paid to write still don't get produced right you can make whole career writing things that don't get produced not only to get produced but I was a producer on it and one these major awards for being that so it was kind of a fairytale beginning of a career that hat that I owe to Tom Hanks and to you know this is a cutting which you wouldn't think translates into historical drama about the space program but I somehow managed to figure out how to how to write for that series even though it wasn't the kind of stuff I was doing on my own from the time that you got to Los Angeles from Ohio to then you know working for Tom Hanks and and being part of these projects was there a moment where it hits you where you're like wow this I'm actually doing this like was there some type of a anything that happened you're out maybe getting lunch where you you know it's easy to lose sort of focus in LA and you're so busy trying to do something and looking for a parking spot or an apartment whatever that it's easy to get lost in that you're really actually doing what you set out to do was there a moment where it hit you I think there were a few moments it does things tend to happen in a gradual way and they build one one on top of the other so it's like my first day I'm working at a movie studio exciting I'd get to drive through the gate they let me in whatever but then that becomes just an everyday normal boring thing right and so then the next thing and the next thing but a series of things that were the big things probably what I told you about when I was offered that promotion was probably the biggest thing but there were moments I mean even as an assistant when Tom Hanks one is back-to-back Oscars for Best Actor I was the guy that took the statuette to the Academy the next day to get the nameplate put on because that's how they did it I know if they still do it that way so like driving in my beat-up Toyota with a Oscar for Best Actor on my seat that was a moment for sure there was a moment during the filming of Band of Brothers where I got to ride on a private jet from from London to LA with just Tom Hanks Steven Spielberg and me we were the only three people passed and Steven was like showing Tom these both of us these like Stanley Kubrick movies and giving commentary because he was close friends with Kubrick you know that was definitely I mean I was already like a sort of producer on the project and had meetings and I've worked with for years by that point but Stephen was a new thing to be around him and the two of them and just be us was definitely a moment that you you know ten years later will be telling people on YouTube or 15 years whatever it is but yeah there are a lot of those moments I mean I've got got to meet and work with you know some very well known successful great people and got to be you know you know just see different levels of hey I've done this now and I've succeeded at this or this has happened certainly getting to go the Emmys and go on stage it's part of the group it was it was a big moment you know of course that was a moment that everybody back home was like oh you've really done something now that's definitely Valu validates what you've been doing when you have that you were on television on award show next to Tom Hanks kind of thing in a talks yeah and it talks yeah do those jobs still exist anymore in terms of you so there was a temp pool and I'm not sure how plentiful sort of this temping is anymore I think they still exist I mean certainly that path where you become an assistant like generally right out of college in your 20s working for an agency or a production company or just a temp at a studio I think that definitely still exists I don't know if the studio still have in-house temp poles in the same way they did then I think they might have moved more towards outsourcing it with agencies in those days they did both but there's definitely a number of temp agencies that service the entertainment industry specifically and if you just google temp agencies Los Angeles Entertainment that front page of Google will pretty much have them all on there and I think it's probably still fairly easy to apply to those agencies because they're always looking for new temps and I don't know what what testing they do I mean I know I had to do like typing speed tests and can you use Microsoft Word and this and that they probably still do a little bit of testing and interviewing but to get registered with one of those agencies I think is that probably the first step and not so hard of a step with at least with some of them and then hopefully they assign you places where you like it and do a good job and that gets you going let's talk about the hypothetical spec script let's suppose I want to get on a show what would be my method to doing that would I write about an episode that already exists you know at a continuation of one yeah in television these days to get to be in consideration for getting your first writing job on staff of a show which means you didn't sell your own original show you got hired to write for someone else's show which is still the much more likely scenario for a new writer right people are writing original pilots and hoping to sell them and get them you know on in front of an audience of course and there's always a chance that that could happen but it's of course very rare today you know people writing original pilots you know within the industry people that have managers and agents writing original pilots if they don't already have a big track record writing for television or film and a lot of success they're probably writing that as a writing sample to try and get a job on staff of a series and what has changed in the like twenty years since I was doing that is that back in like the 90s and before the traditional way to get hired on staff of a series was to write what they would call a spec episode of an existing show just what it's just some successful relatively new show that people in the industry liked and respected like Seinfeld was the big show to do like during it's like second seasons about the right time where people are writing these their own ideas for an original Seinfeld episode that hopefully reads like a like a really good episode of Seinfeld like you read the script and you go this feel like it could be on that show it would be a really good episode that show they captured the voices it's very funny etc etc not easy to do really well easy to do mediocre ly not easy to do well enough that people go wow which of course that's what you want when you're a screenwriter it's like to get that WoW is rare and sought-after right so back then very few people wrote original pilots if they weren't already established cuz there was nothing to do with them they weren't looking for original pilots as writing samples as much they want to know that you could write in another writers voice an episode of a show that already existed which of course is what you would be doing if you got hired on staff for some reason in the last 20 years that is shifted a lot what I've heard anecdotally is where in those days 80% of it was specks of existing shows nowadays it's more like 80% our original pilots that people are writing and that is what is getting the managers and agents and gain them their first jobs on a series on a writing staff people still do write specs of existing shows I think you definitely need to write them to get into some of the big fellowships that some of the studios and networks offer which are great ways to try and break into TV writing but what's much more in vogue is writers writing original pilots for series that they came up with and those pilots become their main writing sample or samples that they use to try to first get a manager and then get an agent which you usually kind of have to go step by step and then have their managers and agents sending them to production companies showrunners executives at the studios and networks and streaming services to try to get you noticed as a potential TV staff writer and so how long would these spec scripts be I mean so it's gonna be like half our content or it's gonna be this would be the same length as a typical script for the show you're writing for well if it's original a show of the ilk of what you're writing in other words if you're writing a one-hour clearly a network style drama it's gonna be about you know it's gonna be like a 45-minute because there would be commercials and then how many pages that translates to you know they say and then the page you can go a little long in a spec I would say a one-hour pilot maybe like 60 pages would probably be the max you would want to go for for an original pilot you're really trying to sort of like copy what successful shows that are similar to yours would do in terms of length so it's really helpful to read scripts not just watch episodes of the kind of shows that you inspire you that you would want to you know write something in that genre whether it's like an HBO type show or a Netflix type show nowadays those services have shows that can have different length episodes and different length scripts so that they're not a standard like 20 one-minute half-hour comedy on ABC kind of thing it's a little more there's some flexibility I think so you don't have to be too nervous about the exact right number of pages but generally you're emulating what is standard for the kind of script that you're writing why do you say it's so hard to make a great spec script it's easier to make a mediocre one what's the well when you're wearing a spec episode of an existing show I think it's it's easy ish to write something where the characters talk kind of how they talk on the real show you know and you have the kind of jokes that you can imagine they would kind of have but maybe they're not great jokes but they're just kind of like sort of okay jokes and the kind of story and kind of behavior of the characters that is their typical behavior like it's not so hard to sort of mimic that it's hard to mimic it in a way that's as good or better than the actual produced show is because really for one of those scripts to stand out I was always told it has to actually be better than an average episode it has to feel like why haven't they done this episode it's like a great idea it's perfect for the show it's really funny it's really memorable if it's a comedy obviously you're going for the funny and that's just hard to do really well it looks it looks easy which is why I try to do it it looks easy to write a show that you know that's a good show you come up with your own ideas for stories for an episode it but to do it on a level that would that someone would hire you based on it is not easy and and normally the show you wrote it for is not gonna hire you they're probably not even gonna want to read it they probably will be tougher on it than any other show would because they know their show so well and they probably aren't looking for writers because they're already on the air and a hit so typically when you're breaking into television you're breaking in with a staff writing job on a brand new show that no one's ever seen before you may not even love the show but it's where they offered you a job based on reading your stuff and it may be a show that gets cancelled in its first season because most of them do but that's kind of like the life of a what they call baby right or a writer breaking into television and working on staff but most of that doesn't apply as much today because people are writing original pilots instead of specks but obviously it's really hard to write an original pilot that impresses people to perhaps harder because now you're coming up with characters and a whole situation that they don't know anything about and you have to make them you know care about these characters be entertained being treated and all that kind of stuff and all the problems of the show have to be really compelling whereas if you're writing a spec episode of an existing show a lot of that has already been done for you right you just have to write a variation on something that someone else has already established maybe that's why nowadays those aren't valued as much because people can say well you didn't have to do as much to do that on the other hand when you write on staff of a show a big part of your job is mimicking the voice of the showrunner being able to execute the show in a way that they would like the way they would have done it which is a not a skill that every writer has so to show you can write somebody else's show in their voice really well I think still is a very valuable thing but the industry is more interested in original pilots for writing samples despite that I think these days but you say it's rare that let's suppose Seinfeld I'm writing you know it's still in existence that I'm writing that that I'm submitting this to and thinking that I'm going to be in the writers room for Seinfeld know I'm submitting it for friends or something well you're submitting you're not even making for friend you're submitting for some show that hasn't been on the air yet I mean that's the reality because you you know you're your agent would be the one doing all the submitting right so first you have to impress an agent enough to get an agent but once you have an agent they're gonna be submitting these these new potential writers to all those brand new shows that just found out they got a series order and now they have to staff up shows they've already been on the air they already have a staff they may have one person leave and they fill one vacancy but basically they're already there so you're never almost never gonna get on a successful existing hit show that you love or that you would have written a spec of you're gonna use that spec to get on some brand new unknown show that you may or may not love or may or may not be right for but it's they thought you were right for it based on your script so there you go so Eric we've taken some questions from some viewers that have been willing to leave them on our community table for YouTube we have so many here and apologies to those we don't get to one of which is from Melissa rose and Melissa writes is there one thing you feel is essential for a screenwriter slash writer to know before beginning before starting well there are a lot of things but I mean I think that the reason I wrote this book about you know making the idea process a priority is really based on my feeling that need to know that choosing the idea that you're gonna write is so important and so essential and not easy to pick an idea that's gonna be a worthwhile thing to write worthwhile meaning it would have a chance at you know moving you forward in the industry it's always worthwhile to write and have the experience perhaps for yourself and your own learning and growth but from a from a commercially marketable can move my career forward standpoint to meet the probably most important thing which is why the you know I wrote this book about this is is to understand what the elements are of a 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 so that's probably my first obvious self-serving answer based on my book being about what makes sense maybe we can go back to actually some more of the words in this um problem acronym so original you know we hear so much of that it's got to really have this writers voice and all that and and and got to be this fresh sort of but hasn't so much already been done it seems like it'd be very challenging today to have something quote-unquote original 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 witnessed 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 story 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 eighth 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 Authentics a better word 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 if you look at 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 right I'm not thinking of pretty and pink so so that first sort of you know our generation that was sort of the the misfits movie especially female character and just what would that still work today but yeah you add in the vlogging element and I haven't seen eighth grade that's on my list but something where you know she's in this sort of town and she sees like the sort of the the Scioscia and I know associated it's it really used these days but and sort of that went looking up and looking to aspire you know and so I think anybody can relate to that that's that's a universal thing but yeah you throw in the vlogging element the social media but yeah that's sort of the high school party that everybody cringes that you go to and and and hope to be noticed but you know they don't really see you and you sort of blend into the background type of the thing do you feel that it's still possible though to do that story over and over again I know you said you've you've added in the or they they've added in these new things the the social media and the things that are current today but that that story is very universal whether it's male or female yeah I mean I I do I think it is possible and Bo Burnham proves it with that example that you can do this thing we've seen so many times you can instantly call up other movies that have that same component I mean it has that high school party that the character walks in and is petrified and doesn't get noticed or gets noticed in a negative way it has that very scene but it has a unique version of that scene we've never seen before that feels real and feels very well observed and is very entertaining and emotional to watch so to me that's the key thing don't try and reinvent the wheel in terms of genre or types of story problems but bring something fresh specific real and original to your treatment of that of that sort of genre element that we know is universally relatable because that's one of the really hard things is to make sure that what you're putting out there is gonna be relatable to millions of people and the kinds of story situations that are going to be have probably been explored many times before because there aren't an infinite variety of them there are certain core elements that you tend to see repeated over and over again in successful stories that's why I love Blake Snyder's tens on resent the cat it's my favorite thing about that book and I always work with those 10 John Roos when I work with writers writing screenplays because I think he really pinpointed like the kinds of human situations that we've seen work over and over again in successful movies and there were variations on each but there are certain key core elements that are present and to sort of realize which one you're going for and then to really try and fulfill its elements I think is a really helpful tool for writers coming up with ideas for films well so the last letter in your acronym for problem is meaningful so taking let's say eighth grade or Napoleon Dynamite or pretty-in-pink or whatever in that sort of that high school you know not fitting in genre what would be what's the meaning that's a movie like that could give because you could just see it as well it's just yeah hey everybody I had a tough in high school it doesn't matter if you were popular it doesn't matter if you were bullied everybody had it tough in some degree so where's the meaning in that so I think if you walk away going what everyone had tough in high school what's the big deal that means that movie didn't affect you very much and it probably wasn't meaningful to you right so meaningful to me is when we talk about like theme and what's a movie really about underneath its its surface plot what's the message or what's the underlying issue being explored or issues and also what the audience takes home with them do they feel impacted by do they feel it had some meaning to their own lives as opposed to I just watched these people have this thing happened and I sort of forget about the next moment or it doesn't really nothing that I saw feels like it impacts me in my view of the world and people at all it's just a fictional story and when it's over it's very forgettable so meaningful in some ways is the most optional of these seven elements that I put in the book because certain movies like let's say transformers or something don't necessarily to be need to be so meaningful and have such a strong theme like that and I'm not dissing transformers or saying that it doesn't have any theme or meaning but certain kinds of movies if they're so entertaining and they have such a punishing problem that is relatable enough to a universal audience which when you have life-or-death stakes you usually have that one covered you know life-altering stakes what's the other one original and believable if it's executed in ways that do all those things you could have a hit movie on your hands even if it isn't that meaningful but what most writers trying to break in are trying to do our movies that do have a lot of meaning because that's often what writers are most attracted to is the theme and the character arc and that kind of stuff that tends to give something meaning I also think we talked about the originality and the whole executing something in a brand new way that feels very specific and well observed and real that helps give it meaning to people because if they feel like they're just watching this contrived thing that was just there to entertain them but it nothing about it felt real or felt like oh and my life and my kids are my memory of childhood I can I went through that or it like touches me then it's not going to be meaningful to them so meaningful is maybe the most optional and the final one of the seven to consider but it can be the most important one in the end that like puts you over the top because if your script makes people really feel something and almost makes them think about their own lives in some way even as you know a hardened professional reader in the industry if it really makes them feel like I didn't just watch these remote people but I connected and it feels like it explored something about the human condition that's relevant to me and everyone that's really powerful we'll go back to another viewer submitted question and this is from wicked West films nice name by the way what advice would you give to a writer to make their stories stronger with more depth and meaning well we kind of just talked about meaning a little bit and yeah well I mean it's gonna sound kind of but it's kind of like these seven elements to really understand and explore each of them try to like hit each of those is what makes to me makes things powerful like when you make sure that what you're writing is a punishing problem it is relatable universally relatable situation for your characters there is something original something believable the stakes are life-altering for the characters all of that is what makes something powerful you also also want to be entertaining and it's gonna mean something to people if you're exploring something that is not just your surface story plot but is something that has some depth for the characters it's like if the characters feel something deeply and are going something going through something that the audience connects with emotionally and feels like they become bonded like we talked about with the character where they feel like it's happening to me you know what they're going through I feel like I'm experiencing it that's what really gives it a powerful impact so but all of these elements of story are all ways in which you achieve that because like the bigger the problem is the more important it is to solve the more of the characters under kind of siege trying to solve it the more you're gonna have a better chance at the audience connecting that way so so much of it has to do with your choice of idea and the kind of the genre that it's in and what your basic premise of your story is to make sure that it's going to have the ability to have that powerful impact so the save the cat moment or this relatability does this have to happen in the middle toward the end in the beginning I mean even in the sharp objects there's just a moment where amy adams stops for a gentleman who's about to cross and they had this quick exchange and she gestures for him till i go ahead and he says kind of like no you go ahead and then she nods she's not like stubborn about it or no no no go go go she's like and you you see okay I trust her I like her in that moment but then there's a lot of things that happen that where you're like mm not quite quite sure about this person but that little moment right there and that happens fairly soon makes her relatable I think it does help classically in the beginning if the character if you're all about making the character be someone that the audience can connect with in the very opening pages so that that can have to do with them being a nice person like that but it can also have to do with them having problems that we can instantly relate to and feel something about so we even if they're not that nice like in eighth grade she's not necessarily so nice but she's going through such just terrible problems that most people can relate to you can't help but start to get emotionally connected so to me it's that it's a combination of likeability and the problems the less likeable they are the more immediate obvious and big the problems need to be for the audience to have something to grasp on to emotionally I think when in doubt it's good to also be likable but there are certainly some stories that succeed with characters that aren't necessarily classically likable but I would say it can be very counterproductive if you're if your character starts the movie kind of a jerk because you're trying to arc them into a nicer person at the end if they don't have really massive problems they're facing that make us relate despite them being a jerk it can be hard for the audience to want to engage and stay with in my opinion a character that's just kind of really unlikable it's it's rare that that can work I'm not saying never but it's rare and I do see a lot of scripts where that's the the the choice the writer made to make the character unlikable in the beginning because they're so focused on character arc but it can undermine the story if they're so unlikable that we have no reason as an audience to really want to stay with them it's not as easy to get an audience to want us to join you on that character's journey as you might think you kind of have to make them want to I think so so establish that fairly early I think interesting okay okay because those kind of those first few that first impressions count kind of yes interesting so we have another viewer submitted question from leo hi Leo how would an inexperienced writer enjoy writing if their writing skills aren't spectacular but they love the idea they have how do they not get discouraged and lose motivation afterward well that's a definite challenge for all writers is getting discouraged and losing motivation you know it's it's really a mental or psychological game to stay with it in the face of maybe other people not being excited about the stuff that you've written which I think all writers go through I certainly have gone through and still go through at times with stuff that I am writing so you do have to you know it's this weird combination of following your passion and your beliefs and your instincts and what's interesting to you while also listening to sort of feedback and guidance about what makes them a compelling story for others now some people I suppose can enjoy writing and not care that anyone else ever gets it or likes it in that case you're you don't have such a problem because you just I'm writing because I enjoy it I don't necessarily even show it to other people but most writers don't want to just do that they wanted to show it to others and have others like it well that's where it's out of our control suddenly because others are not us right so it's easy once others don't respond well to get discouraged but the reality is every script that anyone has ever written probably didn't impress many people on its journey to wherever it got to in other words it's just hard to write something rare to write something that people are gonna give you the reaction that you wanted from it for most people starting out that's an elusive thing to get to that place so it's kind of like you you have to have this kind of almost as an approach of I'm just doing this anyway I'm learning and growing and I'm going to get there and like not let anybody's criticism derail you from that intense focus on this is what I want to do and I'm gonna continue to follow my voice but my voice or my instincts are going to change somewhat when I study the craft and when I get feedback from others and I just look to make that feedback useful as opposed to devastating you know what is the thing that maybe is missing for people in my work based on the feedback I'm getting and can I wrap my head around what's missing and why and apply that understanding to either the next draft or the next thing I write for most people it takes many scripts over many years to get to the point where you have a chance at the stuff you're writing really being successful with others who might matter to you so I think just also knowing that writer goes through that and there's this book called the war of art by Steven Pressfield that's a great one for this because he really talks about how a part of us is afraid and resistant to just doing whatever it is we said we want to do and we'll use any excuse to not do it including others criticism or our own self-criticism and it's kind of like to be productive and to stay with it you just have to sort of push all that aside and just continue going and turn the criticism into something productive instead of letting it get you down including your own self-criticism which is really the hardest the hardest thing I think is to be able to kind of put that aside use it when you need to critique and analyze your work but not always be in the critical mode because you're in the critical mode you're not in the creative mode it's kind of like you have to switch one off to get to the other the creative mode is a more loose free open relaxed trusting mode where ideas just sort of come but in your if you're in that mode of what's wrong with it and what do other people say is wrong with it and what do I think is wrong with me ideas generally don't come that are good ideas in that state so you almost have to like work on managing your own emotional state and your own viewpoint in order to be able to get to your best material I know I've mentioned this before but are not updation the two the two Nikolas KITT you know Charlie Kaufman and just that the one that's just invents lightning and the other one that that just over thinks everything and how paralyzing that is yeah yeah Donald Kaufman the brother has a may not be writing the greatest material but he's got a positive attitude toward himself and others that is infectious and leads to a lot of ideas coming that do end up being successful in the context of that movie right but I mean it's a great because we've seen that so many times in life where that really does it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in either direction and so and I think writers are especially prone because they're always in their heads and they're overthinking things that's the nature of why they're writers in some sense angry at but it also can really handicap them way so do you remember when you sort of let up on yourself even if you still deal with you know I mean we all do seeing ourselves whether it's you know on tape or whatever is is always sort of a cringe-worthy moment for everybody I think but do you do you remember when you sort of were able to come to more of a Zen place with that it's an everyday practice every day it's a challenge to feel like to sort of put on the the right mindset to be creative and to be sort of like allowing and trusting and letting go and not being self-critical to self-critical so it's not a one-time thing that you get to and you're just like oh I don't do that anymore you may get more used to how you can shift your kind of energy into that other mode and so you have a way to do it but I like what the war of art would say is that that resistance that's in you is like trying to stop you and it will do it every day it's just like there's a part of us that's going to be self-critical to the point of paralyzing or counterproductive or self sabotaging so I really do think you have to learn how to everyday sort of fight the battle or you know see it for what it is and not let it just take you over completely in your thinking so that you have a choice and can get to that place where you can move forward but I don't think it ever like completely just goes away we had a question come in from a viewer Jacob he writes how do you share your ideas without getting run over by other writers or bullying them without getting run over by them or bullying them how do you share your ideas yeah I'm assuming that it would mean you know like people kind of poking holes in your idea and and allowing them maybe to sway you from your voice I'm just assuming sorry dude that's the tricky part yeah I mean you can't avoid I mean pick who you share it with wisely and pick the time that you share it and the reason why you're sharing it and what you're looking for from sharing it and what you tell them you're looking for when you share it but even if you do all those things other people are out of our control and they might come back to you with opinions and reactions that are very you know unhelpful to you or emotionally discouraging or devastating to you and you mean be able to avoid that I mean you can certainly work on handling your own reactions but you can't control what they're gonna say much as you might try but if you're conscious about all those things and sort of being targeted and who you're sharing and why and all those things and also noticing that they may say things I don't like and I don't have to let it destroy my opinion about whatever I'm writing however I am open I'm doing it because I'm open to hearing other opinions and I want to have a sense of how others are reacting to it any one person is not enough though it's probably you need a consensus of people and people who know something about what you're trying to do people that understand the craft are a more valuable opinion than just kind of friends or even other aspiring writers may not be as valuable of an opinion to you so you always have to take what others say with somewhat of a grain of salt I think while being open to if I get a lot of the same opinion maybe there's something worth looking at there I think it's a lot of it is you have to be like a detective who's interested in knowing what are the things that aren't working for people and then I'll figure out why and I'll figure out how to solve them if they say you should do this other thing instead don't listen to that don't try to do there fixes but listen to what their issues are which they may not even be articulating cuz people try to be helpful and tell you what if you did this instead what you really want to know is why do you not like what I did do and people sometimes don't want to say it because it's too hurtful like I was bored I didn't care stuff like that or they may not even know how to articulate they just might know I didn't like it you know which isn't helpful which is why we try to codify some of these things of what makes someone like or not like something right so we can learn from that so I think it's um you know trusting that your own voice has value and that you will find your way to address whatever problems you decide you agree our problems takes the power away from the other random subjective people who are gonna say whatever it is they're gonna say I like that I like becoming a detective and trying to solve it because in that sense you're taking out some of the personal feelings from it almost you're almost you're acting as if you're a third party and then it's less you're you're less upset about it yeah that's excellent so you're not something that you're able to practice on a daily basis I know you know 6 a.m. hits and it's it's a new day for all of us in many different things that we deal with but is that something that you try to really implement yeah I'm very careful and selective about when I share stuff and who I share it with because I know I'll have a tendency to get very upset depending on what people say and sometimes it can threaten to derail me from whatever it is I'm trying to do or thinking there's any value in it so I've really learned to be to really be careful and to do it with the right people at the right times for the right reasons at the right times interesting at the right times in the process cuz sometimes you're ready it really helps if you've moved on to another project and you're not even thinking about this one anymore to then show it to people because then if they don't like it as much you already have this other one that you're now interested so I'm a big believer in putting one down maybe not even show it to anyone right away work on something else come back to the first one and you'll have new perspective and you'll see things you want to change so you make your own changes you never had to show it to anyone at that point right but eventually when you do show it maybe have a couple other things that you're working on so that that one scrip isn't your whole world anymore right because when you're in the middle of it it's your baby and you better not have your baby get abused by other people right so it helps to get that distance from it and a lot of it is you get your own distance from it you'll be able to give yourself notes that you couldn't do when you were in the middle of it and you finished it to some extent whether it's um it's the first draft right where it worries you're not you know I'm gonna throw this thing away forget it someone so said this because you've you've actually gone through it so that's that's interesting and it's almost like a form of protection in a way it is yeah it's another thing I got from the war of art he talked a Steven Pressfield somewhere I noticed him saying he would like finish a project every six months I said to myself a while back I'm gonna write two scripts a year to the point where I feel they're they're kind of finished they've gone through multiple drafts of my own notes maybe no one else's notes have yet come into play but they've really been rewritten significantly based on my own notes and the way I get there is by taking a pause moving coming back a couple months later to like finish one but always have multiple scripts in the hopper so some are done some are semi done some you've just started and so it becomes a little more of a factory as opposed to I have this one project I've been working on for three years and it's all I ever think about every day and if someone doesn't like it I'm devastated you know that is not the most helpful way to go and I've done that so another viewer submitted question from Nolan Putnam what's the most helpful habit you've created in regards to screenwriting that's allowed you to become a professional that's a great question is there one habit that's been the most helpful probably we've talked about most of them probably the most important perspective has been to see it as something I'm always learning and I'm always growing and that's okay it's not like I'm supposed to know it all and be perfect at it and the things that I write are gonna just be great automatically and others are gonna love them to see it more as it's an ongoing quest of kind of a self development self education I'm learning with everything that I write what works better and and and not as good so that it's like it's like this this journey of development that you sort of like are gonna enjoy the journey as opposed to I have to get to a certain place which it's easy to feel that way because the world works that way where I have to get the agent I have to get the sale I have to get something produced I have to raise the money and make my movie like there's all these goals we might have in the world and a lot of times they're out of our control and if you focus only on those goals like what I can get what I can achieve instead of what can i express how can I just do what I decide I want to do which is be a writer and be learning and growing and find some satisfaction in that journey because when you turn it into there have to be these quantifiable results in terms of money or others reactions or whatever then you're putting all your power in this thing that may or may not ever happen that you can't for sure make happen no matter what you do so I think that attitude it might seem counterproductive because it's like well to be six you wanna you know professional you want to focus on the professional goals right well you you do to some extent and you are open to feedback and you are listen you know you are educating yourself I didn't say just go in a hole and just do what you want to do and never and shut the outside world out I'm saying engage with the world with feedback with education with trying to understand and get better so its growth but making it a positive growth for yourself that is about making me better and making my writing better not making my results better because when you focus on how do I give more how do I write something that's really going to impact people more how do I do that how do I figure out how to do it how do I get better at it you're then about giving to other people and you will achieve success I believe more when you succeed at giving more you will get more automatically as opposed to how do I get the success how do I get the breaks how do I get the right person to read it how do I get people to like it it's more how do I create something so wonderful that people will just automatically like it I'm not even concerning myself with that so it's like taking the power into your own hands and being about how you can improve your stuff and yourself as a writer having that approach I think is a is a strong or healthier approach that's gonna lead to success more than if you do it the other way yeah that's amazing because I mean especially to if you do live here in Los Angeles which you said that you know necessarily have to but it definitely helps you're bombarded every second with reminders whether it's billboards or someone going by you of somebody else that's higher up on the proverbial sort of food chain and it's kind of thrown in our face and it's it's really wonderful to think of the unplugging from that because that's almost the anti sort of culture here and and then I mean was that something that was always a part of your makeup or you had to learn oh no I have to learn I mean I still it's again it's like an everyday practice that thing again right an everyday practice of being about I'm just about the purity of expression and growth and learning and improving as opposed to the how do I get the result that I want from others it's because we don't naturally do it that way we have to sort of like decide that's how I'm going to approach this instead right and I guess to in the last few years and not to get too morbid but we've seen people who have achieved tremendous success obviously not be happy and then you have to ask yourself within why am I doing this yeah you know and it has to be essentially and is is sort of you know follow your bliss as it sounds you know sort of bumper sticker on the back it has to be about that because you know we do see so many people that have achieved these amazing results and the end result for them show that it wasn't enough I do think it really is about making the daily practice journey writing whatever enjoyable being at peace enjoying what you're doing each day finding a way to make it that way so that the journey is a positive journey and not be so caught up in the destination because if you enjoy what you're doing you're going to do it more you're gonna do it better you're gonna want to learn more but it comes from a certain level of confidence and trust that it's gonna it that it's what you're doing is worthwhile and if you measure that only in like money or career statistics you know you may never get there and you may always be insecure about that so but people that want to write usually there's more of like a passion more of a purity of I just want to do this for some reason and so if you can really hold to that as opposed to thinking that what what the results are of doing it is what matters so much you probably have a better time doing it you'll be happier you'll be more productive and prolific and the results usually actually will follow from that just real quickly when you before you chose your major for film and television what was your goal before that what was your major when I first started college I I experiment with being an English major and you know thinking of writing fiction poetry I because I experiment with being a music major briefly but I pretty quickly you know I took some of the introductory film classes and I realized this was the the medium that I really wanted to try to write for and and you said just that festivals really aren't about the laurels I think I heard you say in another interview I thought that was actually beautifully put but maybe I don't know maybe say you didn't say it but that goes back to what we're talking about that the end result you know it is not really what it should be about and I know it's easy to theorize that it and and say these things and when then we all have to kind of live in a reality that is life and you're competing with people all the time and that's something that happens in preschool and that happens in adulthood but to really have something that we get from it that's more than an accolade I think is do you think that's what keeps you going in terms of why you continue with it I'm not sure what keeps me going to be honest I mean I think that I keep going like most writers because just like what I do it's what I've decided I do what I want to do and I have the I'm engaged with the challenge of getting better and and writing things that really fulfill why I wanted to be a writer there are the kinds of things I loved that I wanted to create more of in the world and yes part of that is well to get out in the world I'm gonna need other people to help me do that and finance it or whatever but it's it's kind of like I haven't achieved yet what I wanted to achieve even though I've worked on some big things and won awards and made a living as a writer and stuff there's there's a lot of the kinds of projects that I always got into this because I want to do that I still want to do those and there will probably always be more of those so I think there's just this desire to create an express that never seems to quite go away and it's also just a chosen field in a career at this point so it's it keeps me going because it's just the path that I'm on and and have chosen I have no reason to unchoose yeah I mean I could say the same for film courage and it'd be great to have videos get this amount of views but at the end of the day it has to be about you know the conversation like today's conversation and that's worth it for us that's what we do this for so I can see even though I'm not a screenwriter you know how it has to be there has to be something else aside from you know we're hoping Eric's video gets you know millions of views or whatever it has to be that did the process of it was enjoyable which it has been so thank you glad here yeah great wait as well yeah

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 86,543

Rating: 4.9276896 out of 5

Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting advice, screenwriting for beginners, how to get a screenwriting agent, writing for television, screenwriting techniques, craft of screenwriting, how to write a script, how to write a story, writing a mini series, Erik Bork, filmcourage, film courage, interview

Id: 8s45pNvEBIc

Length: 89min 8sec (5348 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2018