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Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Giving Feedback – Do Your Job!

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Once, several years ago, after I’d completed a first draft, I excitedly solicited a feedback exchange in a social media group I was a part of. A writer who’d purportedly written and sold a script of the same genre volunteered to read it, I sent it, and a few days later I got this back…

Read the first 10 pages – with all do respect – can’t go any further – boring and uninteresting writing – no depth or imagination to the characters – nothing pulls you into the story on page one or to page 10 – go over ur [course] notes to see where you went wrong or buy

Anatomy of A screenplay and put your script on the rack

I would have to write many pages of notes to get you in the game

Best

Pretty harsh, huh? My favorite part is “with all DO respect”. I guess if you’re gonna ‘do respect,’ do it write! Sure, it’s dismissive and snarky, there’s a lack of DO respect, and it’s a half-step above telling me to give up all hope; but do you see the real problem here? In the long run, what really bothered me was that, as a writer who’d agreed to give feedback, he didn’t honor his commitment.

When it comes to giving feedback, there’s loads of great advice out there about the mechanics of script dissection and evaluation, but what I’m really talking about here is mindset. When the writer enlists you for this crucial task, they’re trusting you to aid in translating their vision from the subjective creative echo chamber of their brain to the objective world at large, or, more frighteningly, the market. You have a job to do. What is that job? First, here’s what it’s not… 

  • Making it all about you – Showing off your own screenwriting prowess by picking out everything you would’ve done differently, and then sending the writer something that reads like a “top 100 list of the ways I’m better than you.”
  • Being an unconditional cheerleader – The other extreme. Usually, this happens when it’s a close friend’s work you’re reading, so you praise every single word, even the misspelled ones, calling them a creatively quirky stylistic choice, and tell the writer they’re an unadulterated genius with nothing to improve, regardless of the objective quality, clarity, and impact of the writing itself. This may sound unrealistic, but trust me. That nasty note above notwithstanding, I’ve exchanged feedback with some real sweethearts.
  • Treating it like an academic assignment – marching through it with your red pen and a mechanical “correct/ incorrect” mentality (“Oh, your description got inside the character’s head here, minus five points!”), rather than a storytelling/ marketability perspective, and handing them back something that’s more “graded” than assessed for its narrative effectiveness.
  • Copping out – Telling them that after the first few pages you already know it’s not good enough and giving no real guidance or tips to course-correct, except maybe vague book or course recommendations. SEE ABOVE (More on this momentarily).
  • Faking it – Instead of taking the time to read it, just picking out a few random scenes and making a few comments about them to give the illusion that you read it; and turning over a few disjointed unhelpful comments. 

All of these amount to misunderstanding the central tenets of the feedback-giving mission: 

It’s an employment/ business proposition: Even if the writer calls it “friendly feedback” or some other gentle euphemism, you should still think of it as business. This will put your ego in check. In a job interview, if the HR person asked about your interest in this company, would you think of that as a juicy opportunity for a power trip to pick apart and harp on every aspect of the business you think is “wrong”? If so, how do you like living in your parents’ basement? The dynamic here is that someone is employing you to enhance their enterprise, thus… 

Join the writer’s team. By agreeing to give feedback, you’ve taken on an interest, however small, in the direction this piece will go. You’re putting, at the very least,  your trustworthiness with this writer on the line, and purporting to put your best writing know-how into picking up this script, wherever it is now, and carrying it as close as possible to the end zone as defined by the writer. This is a task not to be taken lightly. BUT… You don’t want to cross the line and start offering notes like “I think it would be cooler if right here this character did x,” and “I would like it better if this scene ended this way.” You’re on their team, but not their new writing partner. this hasn’t become your script, which brings me to my next point.

You’re a hired gun. This should provide just about the right balance between detachment and commitment.In reverse order, the hired gun is committed enough that he’s made the client’s enemies his enemies, and will risk his own life to kill them. Luckily you’re not being asked to risk your life, kill anyone, or make any enemies (if you are, maybe pass on this one). But you should take on the writer’s desired outcome as your own; whether that’s to get the draft ready for a submission, iron out an Act 2 lag, flesh out one or more characters, whatever. But… the hired gun is also detached enough so that there’s no personal investment or emotional dissonance to get in the way of accomplishing the mission. So you should not get so emotionally involved in the writer’s script that you do things like forego your own work, relentlessly follow up on how your feedback was applied or not after the fact, or get involved in the writer’s decision about the next step. A hired gun doesn’t really care, as the job is just a job he took on under certain very strict terms. He’ll do his part and then move on with his life. If he’s not ready to do that, he’ll turn it down, as should you, so…

Get all the way in, or all the way out. If you’ve got too much on your plate already, you really don’t care for script-reading, or for some other reason you just have a distaste for the job from the outset, don’t take it on just to be nice! Politely declining to read and give notes is far preferable to giving half-baked, disinterested, or even fake feedback (see above) that can set the writer on the wrong track moving further away from their vision. If you’re not ready and willing to do the job right, don’t do it at all. 

So back to that love note I received,…

It’s fine to think my writing is crap. That’s just an honest assessment of the quality as he sees it. It’s fine to stop after ten pages. As mentioned, it wasn’t paid feedback, and ten pages is more than enough to get a feel for how the rest of the script will go. I dare say no script has ever been crap for ten pages and then morphed into greatness on page eleven (what a twist!). But what about that part where he said he’d “have to write many pages of notes to get me in the game?” Does he owe me that? Should he or any other generous offerer of feedback have to trudge through writing so bad that it’s hard to know what the intention was, and pen 120 pages of notes for a 90-pages script? Of course not. BUT… to read ten pages and then write a few sentences just saying it’s basically hopeless? Good thing this wasn’t paid feedback. What should he have done? 

Well, someone claiming to be on the level he did shouldn’t require this explanation, but here we go… He should’ve isolated one scene, or even one scene segment, that he felt was representative of a fundamental problem with the writing overall; missed opportunities for “depth or imagination,” description and details that were extraneous and don’t “pull you into the story,” whatever; and given me a few tips on what would be a better direction to take it. 

So, the lesson here is, in case it wasn’t clear or was too “boring and uninteresting” to follow (I’ve heard that my writing can be that way), NEVER give feedback like the note above. Actually, it’s too generous to call it feedback. He basically offered to give feedback and then withdrew his offer in a rather nasty, back-handed fashion. When a writer shows the respect and reverence to request your thoughts on their work, do your job!

Book Reviews

Review: Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science To Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron

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One of the most anxiety-inducing elements in all of writing is “structure.” We all go on and on about its importance, the efficacy of its numerous paradigms, and its elusive overall nature. It’s perhaps the most controversial concept of the craft. Many consider it an absolutely crucial roadmap, necessary to carry them forward. Without the guideposts of the inciting incident on page 15, the Act Two turn on page 30, the “all is lost” moment on Page 85, etc. they would be totally lost. To others, this is all nothing but a stifling roadblock that only serves to hamstring their creativity and subvert their inspiration as it tries to cram their square ideas (in terms of shape for the sake of this metaphor, not in terms of hipness) into these round-shaped predetermined inflexible plot beats. Sometimes we get so frustrated with a story idea that we can’t make fit into this formulaic scaffolding that we just want to throw out the whole concept of structure and tell the story we want to tell. Well, what if there was a way you could, while still adhering to a natural storytelling scheme that would churn out an effective yarn? Let’s have a look at Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) by Lisa Cron.

Cron comes at this storytelling thing from a whole new angle. Rather than the external plot, of things just happening in the world of your book or script, her contention is that it all stems from the internal struggle of your main character, between an ingrained desire and a self-sabotaging misbelief. Cron labels this dynamic the “third rail” of the story, that activates it and gives it life, thus literally every other component of the narrative emanates from it. So all creative decisions are made from the inside out, based on the (very Aristotelian) idea of “what would my character do next, based on what is happening and, very importantly, what has happened to him/ her in the past to shape how the decision of where to go next will be made.” So, this represents a total departure from the story structure-dictated dilemmas such as “how do I make a death moment happen for her?” or “I need to change his goal at the midpoint, so what should the new one be?” This is story composition off the beaten path, and it can lead you to some intriguing places.

The layout of Cron‘s book is extremely user-friendly, as it’s not all abstract prescription about story design, but it actually details the development of a novel from the ground up; one that’s being written by Cron‘s friend, author Jennie Nash. So we get a real-time case study of the thought process at work; every step, and misstep. The whole thing starts with why you want to write this story in the first place, then goes on to who your main character is, how he/ she got this way, and therefore what lead up to the impossible situation that will be the main conflict of your story. It goes into how to build one minor conflict onto the next, and eventually to the ultimate culmination, how to handle secondary characters, etc.

Enjoy making scene cards to map out your story? No problem! Cron has a system for doing just that, with a card specifically compartmentalized into sections with certain prompts. The answers to these prompts get to the heart of your scenes and bring out their ultimate purpose and utility in the overall plot. This excises a lot of aimless guesswork (speaking from experience) from beating out your story, and there’s virtually no question about the order or usefulness of scenes to contend with. The cards are split into rows that detail what happens (the external) and why it happens, in terms of the protagonist’s primary inner struggle (the internal), so they blaze parallel trails between your hero’s inner and outer journeys, keeping you honest all along the way.

“That’s all good and well for a novel, that can be all about a character’s inner thoughts and psychological struggles, but I’m a screenwriter, working in a visual medium, so it’s all about the external actions.” Not so fast. The ultimate object of Cron‘s cultivation of the characters’ inner conflicts is precisely to dictate their outer behavior. Story Genius leads us to tangible actions while providing a metric to keep them consistently in character.

A few things to consider when taking on the Story Genius challenge: Cron‘s “my way or the highway” position is laid out in no uncertain terms, and she doesn’t pull punches in taking the entire paradigm of story structure, and every one of its incarnations, right to task and enjoining the reader/writer to toss it straight out the window, not to be pondered again. So giving Story genius a shot involves setting aside some principles that may have become quite precious to you on your journey. But hey, don’t all significant leaps forward start with an open-minded approach and a step outside your comfort zone?

The Story Genius approach has also been particularly useful for me in rewriting a completed script. It’s provided some solid criteria by which to judge each scene’s service to the overall piece, as well as its logical coherence, so that it may be modified, shifted, or axed. Cron‘s standards have also planted some big red flags in character choices and behaviors that were misaligned with their core inner conflicts. This method has really streamlined and clarified my vision on more than one project.

If, among your writing woes, you find yourself meandering through your plot, waffling and indecisive about where to take it, and beating your head against the wall to decode its structure (again, experience), then I can’t recommend Story Genius enough. It’s been a game-changer (a term I don’t use lightly, and usually not at all) for my writing and it may just be what you need to get unstuck on a current piece, get going on a story idea, or straighten out a completed work that just doesn’t quite feel right. In other words, if you’re a writer at all, looking for a clear narrative direction to go in and the conducive thought process to take you there, Story Genius by Lisa Cron is not to be missed!

Inspiration

The Creative Process Behind Back to the Future!

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There’s a lot of good stuff here, including some specific plotting and structure techniques in how Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale constructed Back to the Future, one of the greatest feats of cinematic storytelling ever committed to celluloid! Enjoy!

My Story Theories

Don’t Underestimate the Logline

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We’re all familiar with it, and many of us dread it. It’s that terribly brutal chore of condensing 100+ pages of story into a single sentence. It’s often invoked as a necessary component of the marketing package of your script once it’s complete and ready to be shopped around. However, the depth the logline’s purpose and utility go far beyond that. It’s a mistake to overlook it as a powerful prewriting tool, guide, and measuring stick for a developing idea.

According to John Truby, most scripts fail at the premise level, meaning that the foundational concept isn’t adequately fleshed out before the writer opens up Final Draft and gets going. Forming a logline isn’t the catchall remedy to this, but it can be the ideal starting point for troubleshooting. It’s a super quick, super efficient device to gauge whether your premise or situation has graduated to the level of a story; and to get you there if it hasn’t. 

The logline lets you know if the bare essentials are taken care of. In its most common and basic form, it represents the skeletal framework of 1) protagonist, 2) protagonist’s goal, 3) antagonist (or antagonizing force), 4) stakes (consequences if the goal isn’t achieved), and maybe 5) world of the story if it’s unique and/ or vital to the narrative.

Example – Logline for The Dark Knight: A masked vigilante hero must stop a sadistic domestic terrorist before his attacks destroy Gotham City.  Loglines can undoubtedly vary in form and structure, and will usually be modified later when the objective becomes marketing and promotion, but most of the time they’ll look something like this at the outset.

See all five of those pieces in there? If you can’t roll call these elements and articulate how they operate together in one concise sentence, then you probably have some fundamental story problems; and these are much easier to take care of at the prewriting stage than after you’ve written 25 pages and don’t know where to go from there.

This is coming from experience. I had an idea for an action thriller that I was so fond of, it seemed as if the entire story just played right out in my mind. So I just dove in head-first and started cranking out pages. Somewhere around the end of Act I, I hit a wall. Some glaring logic issues started creeping into my head that needed addressing before I could move on. A fellow writer, much more experienced than I, suggested taking it back to the logline to ferret out any missing pieces.

“Logline? Those awful one-sentence summary things they harped on in filmschool? Isn’t that for the pitch phase?” I’m not proud of my mentality or writing from those days. Anyway, I took his advice and the missing link came jumping off the page at me. 

I had a familiar but unique protagonist, with a clear goal, and his polar-opposite-in-every-way antagonist that had perfectly organic reasons to oppose him. The bloodbath finale between them was the image that made we want to write it in the first place.

BUT… 

Those logic problems came from one central notion: why wouldn’t he just walk away from the situation before said bloodbath ever ensued? There were no stakes. So many other building blocks were so clear, and so many of the plot points practically wrote themselves, that I’d developed a total blind spot when it came to the stakes. Who cares why he has to be in this situation? If he’s not, my awesome story can’t happen! That’s why! Well, I don’t think that’s going to cut it with a producer or manager.

This is where things really got interesting. It’s just stakes. No big deal, right? Just contrive some reason that explains his plight and traps him in it. I’ll have this script back up and running in no time; awesome story still intact. Not even close.

The narrative corner I’d painted myself into couldn’t have been a better arena in which to learn the indispensable nature of each of those logline components. It dawned on me real fast that they interconnect like the cells of a Rubik’s Cube. Change one, and you shift several others with it. The most precious ideas in the story were so dependent on certain choices by the protagonist, that the introduction of every type of stakes I brainstormed threw them off. 

I’d reached a storytelling impasse. My premise needed stakes, but the addition of stakes altered it into something I wasn’t so excited to write. So I shelved it, extracted some of my favorite aspects, and put them into a new script; one with a complete logline.

Is that idea dead forever? Of course not. No story issue is insurmountable, and it may just get another look someday. But the point is that looking to the logline allowed me to avoid digging deeper into a story that had already failed at the premise level and direct my time and effort toward something with a greater chance of success. So when you’re getting a newly-formed story concept off the ground, bypass this step at your peril.

What do you think? Do you agree that the logline is an important guide? Let us know!

Movie Reviews

Halloween 2018 Review: Murder by Exposition

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(Spoiler-free)

Alright, this review is admittedly late to the party, but there is a method to the madness. I’ll get to it shortly…

First of all, this is a solid sequel and worthy addition to the series. It takes a purist approach by following the groundwork laid in Carpenter’s 1978 genre-creating classic; it doesn’t set arbitrary values for itself like “higher body count” or “more exotic killings,” it doesn’t add extraneous and tangential plot detours to desperately contrive enough story for a new movie, and it doesn’t eat up copious screen time pursuing answers to questions that nobody asked.

All in all, the plot, cinematography, score, and acting effectively elevate the film to such levels that they compensate for some of its lesser qualities and make for an enjoyable watch that’s uniquely worthy of a trip to the theater.

Big deal, you say. That reads like all the other reviews for this movie. So now we come to the reason for this one. There’s a screenwriting elephant in the room that no one seems to be talking about, and I think deserves some attention. Many of the script choices in this movie are highly questionable, and some are just plain weird. Some subplots don’t go anywhere, some “twists” are merely plot contrivances to serve convenient ends, etc. but these are relatively negligible and even forgivable as they tend to fall below the line of suspension of disbelief. My beef with the writing lies elsewhere.

More brutal than the stabs to heart or claw hammers to the skull is the dialog that lands squarely on the nose. And I mean RIGHT on it. Let’s look at one brief exchange from the trailer…

When protagonist Laurie confesses that she hoped spree killer Michael Myers would escape from prison, and she’s asked why; her stunning reply is “so I can kill him.” Now, trailer dialog always entails the caveat that we’re hearing it out of context, so we’re left to think that maybe there’s more to this conversation and it’ll play out much better in its totality. But, no. Like virtually everything from Halloween’s trailers, what we see is what we get.

As a friendly reminder, I liked this movie and Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance in it, but there is no measure for the awfulness of this line. The dramatic punch that the circumstances suggest it’s supposed to have falls miserably flat due to its blatancy, total lack of nuance, and utter failure to do its job of delivering the emotion of the character with a certain eloquent poetry that would never be uttered by a gruff old vigilante speaking of shooting a slasher in the face, but is called for in the name of satisfying storytelling.

In the words of Christopher McQuarrie, “think of what you want to say, and then don’t say it.” Dialog is never just a filmmaker-to-audience conduit for story information. It should be an ornament that adds flavor and style to the film, while covertly imparting exposition under the viewer’s nose. There is no more exigent situation for heeding this advice than this moment from Halloween. Countless preferable responses could have elevated that moment into something like what it was intended to be. Let’s explore a few…

Laurie: Do you know that I prayed every night that he would escape?
Hawkins: What the hell did you do that for?
Laurie: So I can kill him. So I can finish what Dr. Loomis started.

Or

Laurie: Because what he needs can’t be done while he’s locked up.

Or

Laurie: Some animals shouldn’t be caged. They have to be put down.

Or

Laurie: The cops and shrinks don’t know how to deal with him. I do.

Or

Laurie: Because he doesn’t deserve to die of old age.

See? None of these are great. They’re the product of about three minutes of brainstorming, but I’ll stand by any one of them as superior to that black hole of subtlety that made it into the film.

After really harping on that one line, I hate to say that it’s not the least bit rare among this film’s dialog. Every spoken word either serves to explain the plot to us or intimate precisely what the character is thinking, leaving absolutely nothing for us to decipher for ourselves. Need further evidence?

Martin: We’re here to investigate a patient that killed three innocent teenagers on Halloween, 1978. He was shot by his own psychiatrist and taken into custody that night, and has spent the last forty years in captivity.

Laurie: I need to protect my family. You have no security system, Karen.
Karen: Mom, you need help!
Laurie: Evil is real.

Laurie: He is a killer. But he will be killed tonight.

It is certainly true that Loomis had some musing monologues in the original that were borderline clunky (and would have been laughable if not delivered by the likes of Donald Pleasance), but that can be at least partially chalked up to breaking in a new kind of character in a new subgenre; and it doesn’t nearly approach the awkwardness with which the speech in the latest installment comes across.

What’s troubling here is that so many other features of the movie are so good, and this one is so easily fixed with some quick and easy tweaking. Oh well, perhaps this will be addressed in the inevitable sequel(s).

What do you think? How did you find the dialog; and the movie in general? Let us know!

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Writer’s Bliss: The Creative Breakthrough

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Rewriting is, by and large, problem-solving. We clip the stuff that isn’t necessary, add the things that are missing, rearrange and refashion the ideas that aren’t being expressed with maximum clarity and effectiveness, and generally engineer a narrative that will hopefully instill in the reader/ audience the same roused fervor that incited us to write it in the first place.

This means a lot of whittling and fiddling. We spend hours contemplating solutions to ideas that aren’t working and sentiments that aren’t coming through. We list the alternatives, draw out mind maps, watch or read the greats, stare at the wall, etc. Maybe we get flustered and step away to reorganize the DVD collection, clean the bathroom, or think about starting another script. It’s a fight to push through all this resistance and commit to the trial and error of making those needed alterations and get the story going in a more cohesive and engaging direction.

I think the best of us revel in this process, regardless of the individual’s workflow. As exhausting as it is, the wherewithal to inflict this mental, emotional, and intellectual self-torture on a regular basis separates those who could have a career and those who become a statistic.

BUT…

There are also those moments that come along and remind us why we do it, and why we fancy this more than anything else. Those precious nuggets that make the process – not only not miserable – but a great pleasure in itself. The pinnacle of these is the creative breakthrough.

This is a different animal from the typical hard-won story fix that materializes from the aforementioned grind. These are those ideas that spring forth, maybe as a result of some serious brainstorming, perhaps after spending some much-needed time away from the piece, or most intriguing of all, without warning while we’re focused on something else. And they have some amazing attributes that truly set them apart…

They’re simple: So many story logic issues, overwritten tangents, flat sequences, disagreements between character or plot actions, etc. necessitate a bunch of explanatory fluff as a vain attempt to square those circles. When a breakthrough hits, it irons things out, streamlines the operation, obliterates the anomalies (and the fluff right along with them), leaving action and dialog that are more intuitive, coherent, visual, and concise, which brings me to my next point…

They’re economical: Early drafts (mine, anyway) carry a compulsion to explain every last feeling, motivation, gesture, and tick to combat the bugbear of “they won’t get it.” What’s left is a 145-page eulogy to the human imagination. But after one of these amazing boosts of inspiration, we’re left with a more intriguing sequence, with more for the reader to decipher, at a lower page count. It’s a fantastic moment for a fledgling writer when the true meaning of “say more with less” really hits home.

And coolest of all…

They fix other issues: This is the magic ingredient that let’s us know we’re really onto something. We get one idea out of the crapper and it touches on other story elements that were either missing or not doing their job, and sets off a chain reaction of plot repair.

I’ll use this example of a recent breakthrough I’ve had to illustrate my point:

Problem: I have a character in my script, a friend of a friend to the protagonist, who is a doctor, and ultimately ends up giving our hero the help he needs to fight his ailment, complete his arc, and achieve his goal. Since this doctor is a relatively small (but important) supporting character, she seemed to just show up when needed, do exactly what was required to progress the narrative, then disappear, rinse and repeat. So she wasn’t a character at all, but a flimsy plot device. I had developed her relationship with the hero’s friend, but the dynamic between her and the hero was an afterthought, and it showed. In trying to round her character out, I had fabricated a bunch of plot interruptions where he had to visit her for help, and attempted to justify it with convoluted discussions and circumstances.

Breakthrough: Turn her against the protagonist. Make her hate him and resist helping him at every turn.

Once I made this change, it did so much to straighten out my story. Now this character wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Their interactions have become terse, conflict-laden, and they keep things moving, because they come up much more organically as the consequences of various accidents and calamities that befall the main character, and neither of them is happy about it. These new hardships and obstacles subject him to a great deal more suffering through the middle of the movie, creating a much more interesting series of events.

Without my initially realizing it, this also filled in an element that was missing before. The main conflict of the piece arises from a mistake made by the protagonist, stemming from his main flaw. While a sense of guilt slowly builds in him throughout, there was no one to hold up a mirror to him, force him to take a hard look at himself, put him at a dramatic low, and make him realize he needs to change. But now there is. This character now dovetails so nicely into this task, it seems as if I’d planned it for her from the beginning.

Oh, and as a casual aside, she now feels like a real person that has a rightful purpose in the film. Her contentiousness toward the hero, contrasted with her protective affection for the friend, adds a realistic complexity to her that makes her someone the audience would (hopefully) like to get to know. It also allowed for a much-needed arc for their relationship, in that (you may have guessed) he manages to earn her respect and a certain amicable understanding develops between them. This, of course, also added another layer to him.

This kind of beneficial butterfly effect from one snap flash of inspiration can’t be expected to happen all the time. Perhaps even the opportunities for them recede over time as greater experience precludes one from leaving such gaping chasms in the story that require this type of drastic solution. Whatever the case, these occasions bring a true thrill to someone in the early stages of exploring their creativity.

How about you? Has something like this happened to you? What have been the biggest leaps, bounds, and setbacks in your process? Let us know below!

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Don’t Cross the Themes!

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There’s no point in writing if you have nothing to say. (It sounds self-evident, but a quick glance around at what’s being produced these days reveals that this mantra doesn’t stop a lot of aimless schlock from slipping through the cracks. Anyway, pre-success bitterness aside, let’s get into this…)

It’s all about the theme. What do you, as a writer, have to say to the rest of us about what we’re doing wrong (or right, but usually wrong)? Perhaps focusing on this aspect of the craft, rather than “ya know what would make a really cool movie?!…”is the mark of a mature writer. Maybe the ideal balance is “I believe I have a new take on this or that idea, and ya know what would be a really cool way to state it?!…”

There’s a lot of debate about where theme should rightfully come from. Is it the proper starting point of the whole process, or is it more creatively organic to just start vomiting narrative chunks and let the theme naturally unfold and present itself when everyone, especially the writer, least expects it? We all know the correct answer here, right? Who cares? The all-time greats are all over the map on this one, so there could never be a definitive key to how and why the theme(s) should emerge. I think the usefulness of this debate lies in the mind of the individual writer, as an introspective exercise.

But how about this…

As I’m rewriting and contemplating what comes out, I’m coming across numerous threads that point to multiple themes, on varying levels of complexity and consequentialism. This is bound to happen to some degree, but if I remain a little hazy as to whether my story is about my protagonist’s need to grow up and become self-reliant, the obligation we all have to fight an evil despotic force rather than wallow in apathy, or the idea that risking one’s life for someone they love is not a sacrifice at all, then is this an indicator of a confused and convoluted story in desperate need of being pared down?

Countless classic stories have multiple intertwined themes, but is it more than a new writer can chew? Is the thematic volume greater than the scope of my script? Is the effectiveness of one of my underlying statements undermined by interference from the others?

If all the themes are to stay in, how are they to be managed? I have some semi-educated guesses about this one:

  • There’s seems to be a natural hierarchy that’s conducive to their harmonious execution, with one over-arching theme that the others should serve in some way, or at least be subordinate to.
  • Multiple themes seem to work better when distributed over the story, residing within the choices and actions of different characters in separate story threads.
  • It feels ill-conceived to have a theme pop up once, never to be seen or heard from again. Each one should be interlaced through a substantial segment of the plot.
  • And what seems most important is that they compliment each other philosophically, so I shouldn’t cram “no man is an island” in the same yarn as “you can only rely on yourself,” even though they could each work quite well on their own.

Those were easy enough to write, but I’m still working on developing the sense to know if I’m following them. Also still struggling with this question: Is it possible to have “too much theme” and become preachy?

So what do you think? How do you manage the themes in your writing, and how many is too many? Let us know below!

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Moving Forward With Backstory?

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A screenplay is not a novel, right? Especially for us spec (unpaid until and unless someone likes your work) screenwriters, page count is a huge consideration. While many of the current top-earners at the box office are running well over two hours, we’re still hammered with the notion that 120 pages (at one page per minute of screen time) is too long. 110 is better. Under 100 is ideal.

So, after we’ve strived to keep the description terse and make the dialog lean and to-the-point, comes the brutal rewrite step of “killing your darlings,” “love cutting,” whatever cutesy phrase you want to use. It’s time to remove everything that isn’t absolutely crucial to getting the story across. This puts a lot of pieces on the chopping block, and according to many, one of the first things to go should be extraneous backstory, which frequently shakes out to mean – any backstory at all.

Backstory is the childhood trauma that made it impossible for her to trust anyone. It’s the toy his father gave him at age 5 that he would kill to hold on to. It’s that “thing” that happened in the war. It’s the “what” from the past that supplies the “why” in the present. And therein lies the problem. Its purpose is to tell the audience something, which we should always avoid in favor of showing them. (Like in a flashback? Come on, get serious.) And what’s worse, it’s telling something that’s outside the story’s timeline. Can you hear the guillotine dropping?

It’s said that backstory is essential knowledge for the writer, in properly fleshing out the characters before the writing begins, but that’s largely where its usefulness ends. Little if any of it should make it into the actual script. The character’s traits guide his/her/its actions, which drive the plot, which tells the story, or something like that.

So, I’m thinking that backstory should only creep in to plug any logic holes about why a character is taking certain actions, and only if leaving it out would render the character under-developed and lead the reader/audience to start asking those horrible “why would they…” questions. But just where is that line of necessity?

Is the fact that there’s a certain burning question on the audience’s mind about the origins of certain relationships, attitudes, and current happenings enough to justify the inclusion of slivers of backstory? What if these characters are in a peculiar situation, doing and saying unusual things, and something in their collective past will explain it all? Is such curiosity a handy, if a little sadistic (which I’m not against) tool to keep them engaged in the story? Or will it just be distracting and frustrating?

I know we should never aim to answer every question and tie up every loose end, but I’m wondering if too much is left unsaid about how these people got to where they are, and I wonder if a little more background is necessary to get the audience emotionally involved in what they see happening in the present.

Anyway, I’m about to send it out for the second round of notes, and I’ll let them be my guide. For now I’m sticking with convention and erring on the side of omission, for the sake of my instincts and my page count. If I’m getting consistent feedback from multiple sources demanding answers the the same chasms of information, I’ll sprinkle some more in there.

What do you think? How much backstory should go in there, and how much should be withheld? And how much do specific factors like genre, style, and idiosyncrasy play a role in this? Let me know below!

Inspiration

Tarantino’s Writing Process!

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Love him or hate him, this guy is one of the most influential screenwriters living today. This is the best peek at his process I’ve ever seen.

Software Reivews

Save the Cat! Story Structure Software 3.0 Review

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For the present day screenwriter, the notion of a writing workflow devoid of software has gone the way of, well, the typewriter. Not only is a screenwriting application absolutely vital to proper formatting of the script itself (only a crazy person would type it out on a standard word processor and manually tab, indent, and capitalize to fit industry standards), but there are software suites available for practically every component of the process; outlining, plotting, word-smithing, character profiling, location visualization, you name it. Each of these steps can be ironed out more smoothly and efficiently with the aid of a specialized program as a guide or assistant. Of course one of the most important and challenging bumps in the road from idea to movie is story structure. In this area, many of us can use all the help we can get. It would be great to have a software program to organize, plan, strategize, and map out our structure in a clean and orderly way. Enter Save the Cat! Story Structure Software 3.0.

Let’s get this out of the way first thing. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! books are the subject of some controversy in the screenwriting world. Some find STC’s accessible and grounded approach of applying proven story principles derived by reverse engineering some highly successful blockbusters to be extremely useful. Others call it rote, overly-formulaic, and stifling in its rigid “rules” of screenplay construction. Regardless of where you stand on this, the STC Story Structure Software is a truly modular tool that can provide some monumentally time-saving hacks in getting you to your destination, wherever that may be. How rigidly you stick to the method and philosophy detailed in the STC books is entirely up to you. This program is a great boon to anyone, including those who choose to abandon Snyder’s approach altogether.

The only “mandatory steps of the process” are the first few, which involve filling in a title, logline (for which templates are available), genre (which is an interesting classification unique to STC, not your typical genre labels), and approximate page count. These can be quite helpful to start on the right foot, or they can simply be fudged for later modification, and then you’re off to the races…

There is also an outlining, or “beats” area, which many find a helpful starting point. In addition to listing the beats, you can produce, edit, and update catalogs of characters, locations, setups, and payoffs. You can easily toggle between these lists for referencing, rearranging, troubleshooting, or whatever you need to do.

The main thrust of the software is that it serves as a digital means to plot out your script on a set of virtual index cards laid out in the “board area.” This practice was first made famous in Syd Field‘s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, and while I agree that there’s no substitute for real, physical cards, their editable electronic counterpart is a welcome supplement. There are a number of valuable features added to the layout here. Each card is an interface that can be marked with various story devices, such as the emotional arc of the scene, setup and payoff bridges between scenes or sequences, and which plot (A,B,C, etc.) is served by the particular card. This all allows some hyper-meticulous plot planning, if that’s your thing.

We all know that the writing process entails “killing our darlings,” or removing anything that doesn’t serve the story, even if we’d rather not do so. For all of those elements that we know we should cut, but see some chance for their resurrection in a different form or maybe a different scene later on, there’s the “Litter Box.” Here you can temporarily discard scene cards, while keeping track of where they came from in the structure. Simply drag and drop them in.

If you can’t wait any more, and those perfectly planned-out scenes are screaming to get out of you, there is a script window, complete with sluglines generated from the scene headings courtesy of the cards on your board, where you can begin to write the screenplay itself, and at any time you can export it to Final Draft and continue there. The downside here is that the formatting, while not completely manual, isn’t quite as automated as in Final Draft or other screenwriting programs. It takes a bit more work on your part to keep it straight (lots of pressing “tab.”) If that works for you, have at it!

Now we come to the window where I’ve admittedly spent most of my time; the general notes section. This is simply a digital free-hand bulletin board where you can place infinite, color-coded, virtual post-its to organize your thoughts, store referential materials, and basically pour your subjective process out onto the interface in whatever fashion you choose. External files in nearly any multimedia format can be attached here, and linked to scene cards in the board to customize a story logic web, attach research data to your outline, or just keep yourself on track with simple self-generated reminders. It also includes a “Greenlight Checklist,” formulated by Snyder in Save the Cat!® Strikes Back: More Trouble for Screenwriters to Get into … and Out of, of factors that he deemed important waypoints in the story. You can refer to it or not, but it’s there!

And there you have it, folks. These are the main features of Save the Cat! Story Structure Software 3.0. Some of the big-picture features include the option to backup and retrieve from the Save the Cat! online storage cloud for use on multiple devices, a special function to send and retrieve it from your iPhone version of the app, and the ability to import from and export to Final Draft.

I have found this program hugely helpful in my writing process, and it’s always open in the background as I’m banging away on my script. It’s what I look to in order to stay on course, and where I log my progress, sticking points, and session agendas. One minor gripe is that it’s not the most intuitive software I’ve ever used, and took some getting used to in terms of usability. But, beyond that point, it’s been a key contributor to my process. Regardless of your method or objectives, I believe it can be the same for you.