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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!

Book Reviews

Review: Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process by Kenneth Atchity

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I’ve reviewed many books about the writing process, from the broad and overarching to the highly specialized, focused on a singular step of the journey. I’ve read the greats’ musings on everything from formulating the idea, to plotting it out, to emphasizing the emotional element, to remedies for writer’s block. Each is great in its own right, but what if I want a mentor to really make it personal, get in my head, delve into the intricacies of my own unique process, troubleshoot my pet neuroses that seem to chronically hold me back from reaching what I know to be my true potential, and clue me in on how to harness and optimize the writer’s most precious resource; time. Simple request, right? Simple for Kenneth Atchity, author of Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision – and Beyond.

This book reads like a writer’s counseling session (the constructive kind), in every sense of that term; from cold hard business prudence strategies to processing deep-seated self-defeating thoughts. It grabs you from the Author’s Note which, as with any great forward or introduction, does more than just preview what’s to come. Dr. Atchity‘s credibility is firmly established here. He lets us know that 1) he feels our pain, and understands what we’re going through as creative souls who want to be professional artists, and 2) he’s been around the block enough times to know how to get us to where we want to be.

Once we get rolling, Atchity dispenses with the BS right out of the gate and lets us know that, while writing might be based on intuition and creative passions, it’s a craft and a discipline that must be honed through a rigorous and deliberate regimen. But here’s the good news – he’s going to take you by the hand and lead you through the process of establishing a productive and rewarding routine, and he’s going to leverage your own psychology to do it, turning your debilitating issues and hangups to your advantage. The book takes a deep dive into the human mind, points out how its natural workings must be considered, accommodated, and manipulated to develop habits and tricks to make your mental apparatus work for you instead of against you in achieving your creative goals, and some of his strategies will really surprise you!

Atchity provides an intriguing illustration of the interplay between parts of the brain that activates the motive power of creation. Just as conflict is the foundation of story, so it’s also the spark that sets your creative will into motion – this is the conflict between your rational faculties (which he nicknames the Continent of Reason) and your free-wheeling intuition (dubbed the Islands of Consciousness). The original quirky ideas of the islands are translated into the comprehensible and relatable language of the Continent through the intermediary function he calls the Managing Editor. Getting a grasp on these dynamics allows us to work toward striking a balance between “tricking” our brains into action and riding the wave of their natural functioning to channel our mental energy into our writing. Sound intriguing? That’s just the beginning!

As the title indicates, Write Time charts a detailed path to writing success, leaving no stone unturned, from initial dream all the way to polished product. It’s a comprehensive guide to the creative, technical, business, and personal aspects of the craft. Sound too rigid and formulaic for your taste? What if I told you it entails A LOT of variation at the numerous stages, and more than a few mandated vacations? The aim isn’t that you match a prescribed workflow to the letter. It’s to show you a proven real-world model and leave you to dovetail what’s useful with your own strengths, fill in any gaps in your process, make adjustments, and replace what’s not working for you. This section is all about establishing a writing agenda that your mind is geared to stick to and thrive on, and how to not become a statistic who perpetually and eternally has a “work in progress.”

Of course, one of the main threads of the book is the teaching of time management. It’ll show that you don’t really lack the time to achieve your writing goals. The time is there, you’re just not coordinating your cognitive resources in such a way to generate the necessary output within that time. Maintaining a reasonable perspective on the work/ time relationship is paramount. There are methods of mindset, planning, strategy, prioritizing, and step-by-step exercises to optimize your available chunks of time (even if you have to steal them). This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

From there the writing process begins, and we’re off to the races. Here’s what’s in store as you make your way through Write Time:

  • Approaching drafting and revision
  • Style – how it comes about, and its rightful place in the writer’s hierarchy of values (pretty low, but valuable)
  • A sample step by step process of creating a nonfiction book, explaining the reasons for the order, actions, and method at each waypoint; with an accompanying comparison to fiction writing
  • The most important elements of fiction, and how to pack your story with maximum drama by tapping into your intuition to find its natural shape and structure (which has nothing to do with chronology)
  • What your main priority should be to succeed in writing (Hint: It’s not using big words and feeling clever)
  • A lengthy chapter on getting your book published. Don’t make the mistake of dismissing and skipping this one as irrelevant to the plight of a screenwriter. There’s a wealth of information here about…
    • Dealing with gatekeepers with respect and professionalism (in person and through correspondence such as query letters and emails)
    • Legal forms and contracts for deal-making
    • Handling rejection, and the higher pressure situation of handling acceptance
    • Seeking representation, consulting attorneys
    • Customizing your workspace.
  • The importance of understanding mythology for shaping and clarifying your story, with a striking illustration of how a film can go astray due to the inconsistent retelling of a myth.
  • Methods and tricks for getting in touch with your subconscious through dreamwork and other avenues, along with some brilliant case studies of psychological techniques employed by writers having story problems, that’ll leave you inspired and cracking up.
  • Overcoming psychological traumas of the past by channeling them into our writing and bridging the gap between conscious and unconscious.
  • Some nice practical nitty-gritty stuff on screenwriting – character development, structure, twists, layers of effective storytelling; all through the prism of the key questions on the minds of the producers/ executives evaluating and vetting your work for production and/ or broadcast.
  • The card system revisited, with workflow tips distinguishing the processes of novels vs. screenplays.
  • Insights about revising (keep a particular eye out for the “conflict or cut” rule), and how many revisions are enough.
  • The crucial golden Hollywood skill of pitching and how it must not be overlooked in one’s pursuit of a screenwriting career, with a really fun illustration of the pitch-to-production process (it involves a relay race).
  • A baker’s dozen of straightforward rules for breaking into Hollywood; covering the personal, psychological, mindset, business, and more.
  • A critical therapeutic chapter on Recapturing Creativity – what to do when your motivation to create (inevitably) wanes. A veritable troubleshooting manual for the writer’s perspective. Something to be revisited any time you feel you’ve lost your way.
  • He closes with an amazing collection of his favorite quotes from great figures to leave the reader feeling inspired, encouraged, and motivated to carry on with the struggle.

Overall, Write Time amounts to a rather economical mentoring session with a writing sage who’s been there, done that, and wants us to get there too. It’s a premium blend of tough love, advice, encouragement, clarification, and delusion-busting. It approaches the needs of the writer from every angle and gives us what we’re yearning for, whatever that may be. For the writer at any stage of the game looking for guidance, this one is not to be missed.

Inspiration

Concept to Script in 48 Hours!

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When it comes to completing a draft, I’m a big believer that perfectionism is the enemy. As I’ve stated before, getting it on the page, to be shaped and honed in the rewrite will get you out of that rut of stewing over the optimum execution of the current scene, which can hang you up for weeks, or months, or longer.

Here’s a great breakdown of a super-compressed drafting process by Tyler Mowery. He deftly illustrates this point by starting from zero and getting a first draft knocked out in two days! Here is his detailed video chronicle – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Inspiration

A Deep dive Into RoboCop!

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This is a pretty interesting look into the story integrity of an unlikely Sci-Fi Action hit from the Golden Era of Action Movies! Check out this retrospective of RoboCop!

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Derail Your Plot To Get It On Track!

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First, the bad news…

Recently, while trudging through a page-one rewrite (those are always a breeze), I found myself in a familiar (not to downplay its awfulness) predicament. In my steadfast resolve to knock out this draft from start to finish, I’d written myself into a corner, or several corners if the metaphor still holds ( I don’t think it does). It went like this – I had an idea of where I wanted my plot to go but didn’t see how the stuff I was currently writing could reasonably get there. I wouldn’t call my condition the dreaded b-word (you know the one), but I was definitely stuck. (No more parentheticals. I promise.)

This lead to me adding things, things, and more things. Entire expository scenes and new extraneous characters were popping up in my story to bridge logic gaps and steer the narrative in my intended “right direction.” The anatomy of my script became nightmarish. The core meaning of the story that had initially drawn me to this concept was getting buried under a muddled mass of fluff, to the point where it was becoming unrecognizable. The plot was wandering aimlessly. I was re-committing the same sins that had necessitated the page-one rewrite in the first place.

I took stock of what I was writing and I wasn’t sure whose material this was, but it wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t sure who was writing it, but it wasn’t me. There was a severe lack of “me” all the way around this thing. No, this was some other guy, who was writing a term paper of sorts, in strict chronology, with mandatory requirements imposed by… someone? And what was his tool of choice to fulfill those requirements? Plot contrivances employed to rationalize other plot contrivances! I got into such a tangle that I started asking those questions that can be lethal to a writer’s motivation: Is every word I write taking me further in the wrong direction? Do I need to go all the way back to the concept phase and rethink my whole idea? Should I maybe scrap this piece altogether and start that other one I’ve been pondering? Am I really cut out for this writing thing?

But it wasn’t time to hit self-destruct quite yet.

And now, the good news…

Having already wrestled with creative roadblocks in several forms, I’d found that taking a short break from the process to reboot my perspective was usually in order. So, while catching up on my consumption of Better Call Saul, cookie dough, and Bourbon; my decompressed mind conjured up a way out of this abysmal slump that might just help you too.

Interestingly, my instinct to go back to the source wasn’t actually wrong in principle, only in content. The solution simply involved asking BETTER QUESTIONS, the type that everyone should ask when they lose their way: Why am I doing this? Why do I want to tell this story at all? Why this one instead of another of those creative bugs infecting my brain? The answers were just as useful as they were reinvigorating. They got me unstuck and in a better flow than I had before all this happened, when I was writing insincere fodder with blissful ignorance.

Why am I doing this? This one’s easy. I’m doing this for the enjoyment of it, for the unparalleled excitement of having my creative impulses pour out through my fingers and take a form that some like-minded (and maybe even some differently-minded) readers can recognize and appreciate.

Why do I want to tell this story at all? This one isn’t so hard either. I wanted to tell this story because I have a perspective on life that’s uniquely mine, and by putting these characters that I have in mind in these situations that I’ve conceived of, I can try to express that perspective in a way that connects with people to make their experience of reading/ watching my work as satisfying as it was for me to create it.

At this point, I realized that scrapping the idea was no longer on the table, and the tougher question with the more actionable answers was to soon to follow…

Why this one instead of another of those inspiration bugs infecting my head? Because I was excited about this and that particular sequence; the moments that would be a true pleasure to write, where the characters were pushed to their limits and forced into the actions that would define them and make them memorable, the points where the audience and the characters thought things were going one way, and then they take a sudden turn, and the plot unfolds in a surprising and satisfying way to subtly convey my theme.

Once I realized all this but didn’t see it happening the way I wanted, I just snapped and said, “I’ll write that scene that really needs to be in there to keep me excited about this thing, and even if I jettison the whole thing, it’ll be fun to write that scene. And that’s what this is all about, right?” So I did exactly that, and, it came together nicely. But what about when that scene was written? Where to take it next? And what about this big timeline gap standing between where I’d gotten stuck, and this completed scene?

Rinse and repeat. I thought, what’s the next most important scene for me to include in this sequence, to make this a story I’d be interested in as a writer and as a reader? It was a scene that takes place a little down the road from the one I’d just written. That scene was also a blast to write, and some unexpected gems found their way in there to enrich it as I went. I did this again and again, without regard for what came next, only what came next in importance to me.

After a few more scenes were done, I’d worked my way down to one that actually occurs between where I initially got stuck and that first “priority scene.” So, instead of being lost near the start of the journey, not knowing how to get where I wanted to go, I now had a series of waypoints laid out in front of me, and I just had to figure out how to connect them. This took some adjustments and alterations, but that was part of the fun too! And in the course of this, I really got the feeling that I had overcome something.

Things continued to happen in the process that surprised me. The characters told me what should happen, and each sequence came out a little different than I’d planned it. Most importantly, this all rejuvenated my enthusiasm for what I’m doing.

But now let’s come back down to earth. This wasn’t a magic bullet that just launched me into the stratosphere. I’m not writing this post poolside at my new place in the Hollywood hills, where John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart once arm-wrestled to decide who would eat the last cigar butt. But it did generate a wealth of inertia that continues now and has me barreling through this draft with renewed confidence that I will complete it, my only limitations being time constraints and the fact that my typing skill falls somewhere between infant and nineteenth-century Santa Fe pack mule. If I hit another snag, I know that I’ll handle it, and it may very well involve another joyous discovery!

So… if you find yourself similarly confounded; take a step back, consider your grander purpose for all this, let go of any overly-rigid “plans” that might just be stifling your inspiration, and move forward according to your priorities. Let us know how it goes!

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!

Book Reviews

Review: Story Maps: TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Daniel Calvisi

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A well-written film these days is a beam of sunlight punching through a dark cloud of disappointing, unengaging fodder. There’s an abundance of CGI-laden spectacle, pretty digitally de-aged people in pretty computer-enhanced places doing fancy things (inspiring surprisingly little emotional response), but where have all the complex characters navigating twisted challenging plots in the tensest and most gut-wrenching situations imaginable gone? Well, they’ve gone to television. It’s no big revelation that TV is where visual storytelling is at its peak in recent years. It’s now become commonplace for the biggest Hollywood stars – actors, directors, and definitely writers – to suddenly turn up working on TV series. This move that was considered a step down in decades past is now looked at as an upgrade in many ways, certainly in terms of pure narrative quality. So, more and more of us are turning our sights from the big studio lots to the staff writing rooms and looking to break into television writing.

The good news is that in this “Second Golden Age of Television” overlapping with hyper-expanding technology broadening the possibilities for the viewing, broadcasting, and production of series content, the opportunities are numerous and growing for the aspiring TV writer. The bad news is that, after so many years of motion picture dominance, there’s a relative dearth of information out there about how to write for TV, particularly in terms of “beat sheets” and general structural guides. Everyone can name numerous essential classics detailing how to structure, plot, and characterize a feature screenplay. And while a lot can be found in that sphere that applies to all formats of storytelling, with TV you’re talking about an entirely distinct business model with very different goals and markers of success than movie writing. When I embarked on the daunting journey of writing my first television pilot (first episode of a series) a few years back I felt kinda lost as to how to go about structuring it. My saving grace was Story Maps: TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Daniel Calvisi.

Like the shows we want to create and write for, Story Maps: TV Drama is multilayered and multidimensional. On one hand, it’s a quick, economical, streamlined primer to get you up to speed and ready to churn out your original pilot in short order, yet at the same time it contains enough insightful material to allow for an extremely thorough and in-depth study of deeper nuanced narrative devices behind some of the greatest and most successful pilots in recent TV history.

The book is arranged deductively, general to specific, starting with an overview of the character and current state of the television industry; particularly the parameters, vernacular, and qualities that distinguish it from the movie business. Calvisi also offers some insights on TV’s fast-evolving and ever-flexible nature, elucidating the growing possibilities for new writers and the prudence of steering your career in that direction. Then we’re onto the mechanics of writing the pilot. This section begins by laying out and detailing the foundational components that seem essential to a strong pilot. Each one is brought into focus in terms of its uses and service to the overall episode, and grounded in accompanying references to what’s worked in a diverse hand-picked array of great series. These citations continue throughout, serving as fantastic guideposts illustrating the validity, varying techniques of implementation, and range of possibilities for each element covered.

From here it’s time to start mixing the ingredients into more and more detailed Story Maps, assembling the pilot’s skeleton and squaring away the technical issues of getting a teleplay written. As the steps get finer and more nuanced, it funnels down to the meat and potatoes of the book: the Beat Sheet.

Prior to discovering Story Maps, most everything I found online concerning a one-hour TV episode’s structure offered simply a traditional three-act feature film’s beat sheet, but diced into more acts to allow for commercial breaks, each concluding with an essential cliffhanger “act-out.” If I was lucky, they might also throw in a few pointers about the importance of elevating the subplots to “B” and “C” stories and suggestions for how to balance them. Gee, thanks a lot, guys. I guess you get what you pay for. Calvisi’s Pilot Beat Sheet delivers on the promise of its title. It’s a lucid, illuminating roadmap. It absolutely adheres to the “form, not formula” mantra, maintaining creative flexibility (more on this below) while showing the vital waypoints on the path.

Then nearly half the book is dedicated to one of those devices that we often wish for, but rarely get – a satisfying nexus between reading the script cold and having a conversation with an industry insider about it – there’s a detailed breakdown of each selected pilot teleplay by Calvisi showing his beat sheet in action. This is where the aforementioned flexibility is really highlighted. He elucidates all of the deviations, variations, resituating, rearranging, and occasional (well-reasoned) omissions of the beats, giving us a look at how the scripts differ from the final product, how different genres and moods call for different approaches, how artistic risks can pay off, etc. He does this for Scandal, Mr. Robot, True Detective, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Mad Men. The experience of watching these pilots, with the script and Calvisi’s breakdowns handy, is about as close as most of us can get to sitting down with the writers and picking their brains.

The only caveat I would include with this one is that it does seem geared toward those of us with some prior knowledge of storytelling and screenwriting, particularly of features (for which there’s also a Story Maps installment), rather than for total newbies. But if you have some pages under your belt, and writing for TV is indeed in your sites (and if it’s not, think about it!), this one is indispensable. Check it out and let us know what you think!

My Story Theories, Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Is Your Protagonist an Attention-Hooker?

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If we contemplate all of the possible failings a story can have, it becomes clear that nearly every one of them is some permutation of “losing the audience.” Naturally, the surest way to lose them is to never have had them in the first place. Since the spine of most narratives entails a protagonist on a mission with some goal in mind, it’s often said that we have precious few pages to get the reader on board with our hero. If we don’t, then nothing – not the coolest action-packed scenes with the wittiest dialog, the sexiest character dynamics, or the trickiest twists and reversals – will save it from the deep clutching quagmire of audience disinterest. It’s not enough to give them pretty things to look at, they must be along for the ride, with some kind of emotional investment in where it’s all going. That’s what keeps them reading and watching.

So how do we accomplish this? What’s the “right” way to set up the protagonist to get the audience involved? There’s an entire school of screenwriting named after the idea of having your hero “save a cat” as an introduction, to get the reader on their side, but of course, there’s a lot more to this issue than that (which is duly acknowledged in the Save the Cat literature). We’re often told “he/she doesn’t have to be likable, just interesting,” but what does that really mean?

One important component is curiosity. The audience is sitting down to watch the movie after having a great deal of the plot leaked to them through the promotional materials, in addition to their general cinematic expertise of all the genre conventions and tropes. So in those first few minutes (pages), you must fight against this foreknowledge and create some questions in their minds as to how things will turn out for our hero. And their desire for answers should be emotional, not purely intellectual.

Again, how? Well, the good news is – it’s not a rigid rule, but a spectrum of emotional engagement. Your protag just has to be somewhere on it.

The Emotional Engagement Spectrum

This range of interest, to the best of my estimation, runs as follows. At one end is total sympathy, in which we genuinely feel for the protag and want them to beat the odds (another necessary ingredient) and achieve their goal. Toward the middle would be empathetic support, in which we have a fairly shady and corrupt anti-hero who is surrounded by much worse specimens who make him shine by comparison, and we want to see him defeat those whose wickedness outdoes his own and possibly achieve some kind of redemption in the process. At the “low” end would be morbid curiosity. Here we follow a despicable individual with no redeeming moral qualities, but there’s something intriguing about his/ her character in relation to the goal that makes us stick with them to see if they achieve it.

Let’s have a look at some examples:

Andy Dufresne

Why does The Shawshank Redemption – a prison movie with no gunfights, no car chases, and no romance; that was a box office failure – have such enduring appeal? There are many virtues here, not the least of which is Andy Dufresne. Has there ever been a more likable and sympathetic protagonist? Remember how he was set up? When we first lay eyes on Andy, he’s sitting in his car, on the verge of tears, swigging whiskey from the bottle, with a gun. Though an armed man clearly stalking someone, he has the look of prey more than predator. Through a purely visual presentation, we already get that he’s an underdog, pushed to desperate extremes, experiencing what is probably the worst night of his life. All of this is confirmed When we start intercutting with his wife and her lover, and his testimony as he’s tried for murdering them. Here he also shows great poise, earnestness, and even some cleverness as he professes his innocence to the prosecutor. Then he’s condemned to two life sentences. So we have an innocent man, sentenced to a literal lifetime (two!) of undeserved suffering, victimized by a ruthless system in a cruel and unfair world. In less than seven minutes of screentime, we’re on Andy’s side and want to see him get out of this.

Léon

In The Professional (entitled Léon outside the US), the titular assassin is set up with an oft-used (for good reason) technique of giving one impression of the protag, and then spinning it in a new direction to subvert the audience’s budding notions and add texture to the character. Léon is briefed on his next job by his employer Tony. A few seeds are dropped here that Léon isn’t your garden-variety scumbag hitman. While Tony has a bottle of hard stuff in front of him, Léon’s drinking milk, and being told that he’s to give an unreasonable gangster a talking-to on behalf of a more reasonable one. He delivers the message, with a blade to the guy’s throat, after unceremoniously wiping out his entire entourage of bodyguards. Afterward, this certified killing machine goes shopping for more milk, then home where he has an unexpected encounter. He meets his twelve-year-old neighbor Matilda, shows genuine concern for the bruises on her face that obviously came from her abusive father, then subtly agrees to keep her smoking a secret. So we have this fierce and able warrior with a soft spot for his weak, innocent, defenseless acquaintance, whose family, we soon find out, has mounting trouble with some very dangerous characters. Who wouldn’t want to stick around to see how this shakes out?

Louis Bloom

As we creep to the lower end of the spectrum, we come to Lou Bloom of Nightcrawler. His opening few minutes consist of him stealing materials from a construction site, trying to lie his way out of it when he’s caught by a security guard, and then assaulting and robbing the guard. For all we know at this point, we’re meeting the antagonist (which isn’t entirely untrue, I suppose, but that’s for another post). But, once again, things take a turn. When Lou sells his stolen goods to another construction company, he doesn’t just take the money and run. Lou applies for a job. He asks to be taken on as a construction worker right there on the spot, and he pitches himself pretty hard. He even offers to start as an unpaid intern! Of course, his sociopathic tendencies precluded him from spotting the imprudence of offering to work for someone you just sold stolen goods to, and Lou is turned out to seek employment elsewhere. But here we have an unstable criminal, but with a sincere desire to get a legitimate job and earn his keep. We may not particularly like the guy, but anyone can identify with the hopeless feeling that no one will give us a chance to show what we can do (aspiring screenwriters, anyone?), and from here we’re left wondering if Lew will get his chance, and what else he’s willing to do along the way.

Patrick Bateman

And now we come to the bottom of the barrel. How can you get any lower than a narcissistic, psychopathic, Wall Street executive serial killer? I give you Patrick Bateman of American Psycho. After a series of atmosphere shots around a trendy hipster restaurant to set up the world and introduce the theme of runaway shallow materialism, we settle on Patrick and his “friends” gossiping about colleagues, ribbing each other about their personal lives, and generally wallowing in their frivolity. But then we get the first hint of who this story is about when Patrick goes on a sarcastic rant about world social issues that’s ironically intriguing. It shows that he’s completely cognizant of mainstream moral values and willfully rejects them. His only goal seems to be “to fit in” (as he expresses later). Then he truly distinguishes himself among his superficial, borderline sociopathic cohorts when he goes to the bar and issues an extremely graphic death threat to the bartender for refusing his drink voucher and making him pay cash. Here it goes from a question of stability to one of self-control, and we hang with him out of pure morbid curiosity to see how long he can maintain it, what’ll happen when he loses it, and what the ramifications will be in this fairytale world of delusional excess.

Now let’s have a look at a few films that fail at this:

Patience Phillips

Who can forget that 2004 masterpiece known as Catwoman? Sure, it’s easy to scoff in hindsight, but this movie had quite a bit going for it when it was announced; One of the hottest actresses in Hollywood at the time, who had already proven she could blend sexy with badass, would be playing a beloved character from the Batman mythology with a built-in fanbase. What could go wrong? Let me count the ways. We first see Patience floating face-down in a stream, presumably dead. Not a bad opening image, but simultaneously the awfulness starts. We’re treated to a clunky, expository voiceover telling us how unremarkable, monotonous, lonely, and unfulfilled her life was to this point. And this voiceover follows us like a persistent mosquito as we cut back a few days, and Halle’s been outfitted with a painfully unconvincing costume of stringy hair and baggy clashing clothes to show us she’s “nerdy.” Her boss reprimands and nearly fires her, then issues her a tight deadline in a confusingly heavy-handed and unnatural exchange. From here, things really go off the rails. She fails to quiet her noisy neighbors (gee, I wonder if this is a setup for later), then there’s an extremely awkward scene where she climbs out her window to save a stray cat (must’ve read that book) and gets rescued by a handsome cop who thinks she’s a jumper. Then, as she races to meet her deadline, she stumbles into her boss’s secret shady meeting with criminals and “hears too much.” From here, she gets chased and shot at by guards and falls into the chemical waste-filled stream, and we’re back where we started. So, what can we make of this mess? Well, the character did encounter several hardships and misfortunes that put her in a precarious position, but the situations are so oddly illogical and unbelievable that they invoke the wrong kinds of questions from the audience, those dreaded ones that start with “Why would…?” It’s really difficult to develop an emotional connection to a character whose plight 1) is explained rather than shown, and 2) entails a stream of occurrences that defy all logic and aren’t in any way believable, even within the fantasy-based story world.

What? Bad example? Too easy a target? Okay, let’s look at a “film” that succeeded at the box office, but failed at engaging the audience with its protagonist…

Sam Witwicky

Once we finally meet Transformers‘s protagonist, after some prerequisite explosions, Sam is introduced as the quintessential high school geek whose classmates include the jock bully who’s inexplicably fixated on harassing Sam, and who’s dating the hottest girl in the class, who inexplicably can’t take her eyes off Sam. Yawn. Sam’s getting his first car and is upset that his dad’s about to buy him a used one instead of a new Porche. (His dad drives him past the Porsche dealership first as a joke that he totally falls for. Hilarious, right?) Then he “gets chosen” by the 1977 Camaro Transformer Bumblebee, which he drives to a lake party where he runs into Jock Bully and Hot Girl, who inexplicably breaks up with Jock Bully at a really convenient time and Sam is able to give her a ride home. Bumblebee tries to get him laid by breaking down and playing sexy music, Hot Girl offers to fix it, then just bails. That night Bumblebee starts and drives himself, and Sam chases after him, thinking his car’s being stolen, and we’re pretty much off to the races. Here we have a clear-cut case of failure to arouse any curiosity whatsoever. We may enjoy watching Sam’s adventures for the visual spectacle they deliver, but is there anything the least bit intriguing about him that we haven’t seen in a hundred other “high school geek” characters? Not only do we not wonder if he’ll get the girl and save the day, but we can confidently predict an awful lot about how he’ll go about it. So what’s there to care about?

By looking at these examples of failed protagonist setups, a few things become apparent. It’s obvious that these filmmakers understood the necessity and even the conventions of setting up the protagonist, as both of them “went through the motions” of endearing their main characters to the audience, but it takes more than a few cookie-cutter “good deeds” or “underdog” scenes to evoke any kind of emotional concern. We have to ride the line between enough uniqueness to make them feel like a person rather than a plot delivery device and enough relatability and logic to root them in our universal understanding of the human condition. Too easy, right?

So, hopefully, you gleaned something from this take on engaging the audience with the protagonist. As we can see from how these pros pulled it off, there are many ways to skin (or save) this cat. You can go about it by a variety of methods, but two things you can’t do are is skip it, or gloss over it! If you do, you have a dud on your hands (at least from a storytelling standpoint). So what do you think? Got any insights about how to get the reader hooked into the protag’s journey? Let us know below!

Book Reviews

Review: The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction by Erik Bork

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One of the most prevalent and vexing feedback notes we can get is “it’s just not working,” thus initiating the never-ending punishment and agony of “making it work” (more on punishment and agony later). But a real pro can always whip a story into shape, bringing whatever concept he’s confronted with, whether his own or inherited from another writer, to a working and engaging plot, right? Well, not so fast.

I’ve actually received the comment that I’d done a respectable job buttressing unworkable plot points with the circumstances and exposition that made them almost dovetail believably into the story. Of course, the troubling part about this was that we both knew it wasn’t a compliment. Applying a tourniquet doesn’t close the wound.

Maybe what separates the pros from the up-and-comers is their ability to discern a workable story idea from one that’s just plain deficient at its core, and, in its present form, can’t be made to work, no matter how many hours or how much grief the writer is willing to throw into trying. This is the skill that’s explored in The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction by Erik Bork.

In his assent to screenwriting prominence, Erik Bork started as a dude from Ohio who made the big move to LA, wound up temping for 20th Century Fox, where he was assigned to assist some actor guy you may have heard of, named Tom Hanks. He was in on the development of From the Earth to the Moon and Band of Brothers, both of which he helped write and produce. On the latter, he worked with some producer guy you may have heard of, named Steven Spielberg. This experience sounds, on one hand, like a dream atmosphere in which to develop one’s career surrounded by first-rate mentors; and on the other, a brutal thrown-into-the-deep-end scenario. Either way, the author’s credibility doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Bork opens the book with an insightful briefing on the modern market. He professes that the more things have changed, with greater capabilities to create content on modest budgets and resources, the more they’ve stayed the same, with the continued need to get past the gatekeepers if you want to put your stuff in front of a sizable audience, thus turning it into a career. He then lays out a catchy blueprint on how this can be achieved through the proper vetting of your idea.

As we all know, at the heart of every story is a problem, so Bork has couched his quick and concise guide into an acronym that spells out the most crucial elements of a story concept in the following way…

  • P – Punishing to the protagonist from start to (almost) finish
  • R – Relatable characters and situations we can empathize with
  • O – Original: “give us the same but in a different, unique way”
  • B – Believable logic/ character actions, even in an unreal world
  • L – Life-altering stakes should be involved
  • E – Entertaining material that fulfills genre expectations
  • M – Meaningful enough to leave a lasting emotional impression

Don’t be turned off by the neatness of how these factors fit the acronym. Bork didn’t’ choose them lightly, and backs each one up with solid hard-won wisdom about its vitalness, how it operates alongside its counterparts, and its place in the hierarchy as far as how much wiggle room you have with it.

As you may have gleaned from my previous review, lately I’ve been delving into more specialized books that cover specific components of the script or steps of the process. If there’s an ideal go-to reference that you should crack first, it would be The Idea. Once you run your concept through Bork‘s gauntlet, and you’ve got all of the cylinders firing, then you can more confidently move forward to the mechanics of plotting, character development, twists and turns, etc. with far fewer headaches and self-loathing contemplation about whether you should just throw in the towel and sign up for an online typewriter maintenance course, or is that just me?

As mentioned, The Idea is a short read. However, despite being dense with useful content, it’s also an enjoyable journey through the PROBLEM elements. It’s laid out in a way that’s extremely accessible to writers at all levels, usually detailing the most common ways that new writers tend to fall short in each of the techniques, the mindset that led them astray, and how these can be remedied.

The story concept is where it all begins. If you want to create great fiction from the ground up, then giving this component its due attention and scrutiny may be the single most valuable habit you can add to your craft. Several of this book‘s insights were immediately actionable for me, and the impact it’s had on the quality and my experience of writing, is immeasurable. If you’re having trouble with your process that isn’t easily identified, chances are it can be traced back to the issues addressed in The Idea, but don’t just take my word for it. Pick it up and let me know!