plot

I can see clearly now

Maximum Z anime, editing, Heather Hale, Miyazaki, plot, Radioslot.com, reading, rewrite, screenwriting, story, The Script Adventurer!
Ahoy! Rewrite dead ahead!

This week’s installment of The Script Adventurer! featured an interview with the multi-talented Heather Hale.  She’s worked as a writer, a director, a producer and as a consultant, so she definitely knows her stuff. (Mark your calendars – the show re-plays Sunday at 7PM on radioslot.com)

I always like to know what key piece of advice a professional or working writer would offer to the rest of us.  A thought or phrase to jot down on an index card and attach to the wallspace in front of your working area.

Heather named two.

1. Clarity is king.

You may know your story inside and out, but if the person reading it can’t follow it or is confused as to what’s going on, then you’ve got a problem.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the most brilliant concept ever.  The plot and story have to be clear so anybody can pick up the script and know exactly what’s going on.

It’s up to the writer to make their story as easy to follow and comprehend as possible, or else the reader/audience will get lost in the story, and not in the good way.

2. The reader is never wrong.

You think your script is perfect. The reader knows better. It’s their job to go over it with a fine-tooth comb and look for flaws.  And unless you’ve attacked that script from every conceivable angle, fixing any potential problem you can think of, they will find them.

The reader really does want to like your script, but if you give them any reason to say no, there’s no reason to be bitter about it.  They know what they’re talking about.  Look at this as an opportunity to make your script better or stronger than it was before.

-Movie of the Moment: Three over three days!  It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and two were actually in theatres. Wow!

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012). I read the book last month, so it was pretty fresh in my mind. I liked it, although it could have been a little shorter. I can appreciate a strong female protagonist, and it’s easy to see why Katniss has caught on.  She’s tough and doesn’t give up.  Congrats to Jennifer Lawrence for doing a solid job in the lead.

I also really enjoyed Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, the blue-coiffed TV personality with perfect teeth. A great accomplishment in casting.

My only complaint – Katniss doesn’t always drive the action forward. She’s more reactive than active in some scenes.

-THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETY (2010). Another animated gem from Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, based on the classic books THE BORROWERS.  A recurring theme in a lot of their films is the main character’s coming of age. And this one is no exception. If it weren’t for 3 of the characters being 3 inches tall, this could easily pass as a stage production. Good for all ages.

-RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011). Smart and well-written. Easy to see why this was a surprise hit last summer. Especially fun if you’re familiar with the original films. K made an interesting point in that you’re rooting for the apes to win, which would mean the eventual downfall of humanity.  Count me in the camp of those who think Andy Serkis should have gotten some kind of recognition for his mocap work as Caesar.

Less really IS more

Maximum Z editing, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story
This scene consists of TWO short, spot-on lines of dialogue

It’s always recommended that when you finish a script, you should put it in a drawer and not look at it again for at least two weeks. That way you can look at it with fresh eyes.

That’s what happened with the LUCY outline. Since I’ve been so pre-occupied with the DREAMSHIP rewrite, I haven’t looked at it since around Halloween.

I thought I had to get to a certain plot point in Act Two, but I’d forgotten I already had. A pleasant surprise, and it just needs a little tweaking.  Nice.

Then I read the rest of Act Two.

Oy.

What was I thinking?  Way too overwritten.  It drags, taking forever to get to where I want/need it to be.  A lot of unnecessary scenes.  And worst of all – my protagonist isn’t driving the action.

Strictly amateur hour.

I now see this as a challenge and opportunity to not only make some major fixes in this section of the story, but to do a massive overhaul in terms of editing and trimming the whole thing down.  If I can cut something and it doesn’t impact the story, then it shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.

This will also have to happen with DREAMSHIP. My midpoint’s on page 60, and that’s around 5-10 pages too many.

Time to get creative and kill some darlings.

here we go again

Maximum Z mystery, plot, screenwriting, story, thrillers, writing gigs
Seeking out clues to a strong script

I had a very interesting chat last night with the director of  my new short project. His latest venture: a whodunit/thriller.  Materials so far include character descriptions, a scene-by-scene breakdown and a one-paragraph synopsis.

I’ve never written an out-and-out thriller before, but am always up for a challenge.  Even more so when I’ve got a maximum time limit of 25 minutes.  I know this isn’t going to change cinema as we know it, but it’s fun to try.

He’s a very nice guy, but I worry he’s too influenced by what’s out in theatres when he comes up with an idea. He referenced some aspect of the recent release ANONYMOUS as being particularly well done, and thought it would work well in his story.  I haven’t seen it, and think it’s already gone from theatres, so there’s not much I can do with that.

This happened when we were putting together his previous short. He was concerned his story was too similar to INCEPTION, and feared people would think he was ripping it off. I had to reassure him his script was nothing like it, and just because something was done in a certain way in Nolan’s film, didn’t mean he had to follow the same rules.

Reading over his materials, I noticed a few potential red flags in terms of the story (in this case, the structure of a mystery) and voiced my concern. What did he want to do about this? How did he want to handle that?  A few times, he sounded a little caught off-guard (which I’m not faulting him for; I suspect he’s not that experienced in this genre), but said nothing was written in stone and I could make changes where appropriate.  I doubt major studios are this lenient with writers, so I’ll take my breaks where I can get them.

There are some traits of a few characters that present a challenge to work with, but he seems pretty set on them, so I’ll do what I can.

My deadline for an outline is Dec 4th, which is fine by me. He also mentioned how he likes how I’m pretty good at fast turnaround.  But another hurdle is now how much time to I can allocate to all of my in-development projects (which I get a certain thrill out of saying. That’s projectS. Plural.).

I can get the outline done, but also want to be able spend time on DREAMSHIP and LUCY.  Overall, no complaints whatsoever. Every writer should be this busy.

Fitting the pieces together

Maximum Z 500 Days of Summer, Dreamship, Movie of the Moment, Nicholl Fellowship, plot, rewrite, screenwriting, ScriptQuack

While I was working on the last quarter of Act Two today, I realized I didn’t have any hard copy of the previous draft: outline OR script.  Which means I didn’t have anything to really reference as part of this rewrite.  I know how I’d like to move forward, but once again find myself streamlining how that’s being accomplished.  A lot of unnecessary fat is being trimmed away. For the better.

An interesting side note  to all of this is that I took a look at my notes from the fine folks at ScriptQuack and discovered I’ve put a lot of their suggestions into play, which in turn renders a lot of their notes irrelevant.  I should probably X out all the parts I don’t need anymore, which would enable me to focus on what I haven’t used yet (or may not need at all).

This heading toward the end of Act Two is really presenting a challenge: how to best have the situation increasingly worsen so that all definitely seems lost for my hero.  I’ve got a few ideas to work with, but I’m not in a rush, so this can be carefully planned out.

-Nicholl deadline has come and gone. I’m glad I didn’t try to rush through this; it would not have yielded good results.  Better to give myself more time for next year.  Very interesting to see some critique comments on Facebook.  Who couldn’t read those and hope it was their script being praised?

I’m sure a lot of people enter only one or two contests a year, if that often, the Nicholl probably being one of them. Have winners of less prestigious contests ever gone on to fame and fortune?  Not that I know of, but I don’t research them that much.

-Just wondering – I get more done on a script when I’m where I really shouldn’t be working on it (read: actual paying job).  Does this happen for other writers?  I can get some work done at home, but the creative juices really flow when I can spare a few minutes between on-air reports.  Again, just wondering.

-Movie of the Moment: 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.  We watched it over 2 days, despite it only being 95 minutes long.  I didn’t really know what to expect, and that I’d heard good things about it.  One line in particular stood out for me in the beginning: “This is not a love story.”  Boy, ain’t that the truth.

I liked it, despite how sad it is.  Like they set out to make an anti-romcom.  It was kind of refreshing to jump past the meet-cute and avoid any kind of wacky hijinks and cut straight to the beginning of the end.  The whole jumping-around-in-time aspect was also well-executed.  I had a little trouble keeping track of things when the jumps were significant (Day 348 to Day 22, etc), but it was better than just letting it all happen in a traditional linear way.

Another benefit to that is how it doesn’t treat the viewer like an idiot, which is always important.

From one grind to another

Maximum Z characters, Man of the Century, Movie of the Moment, plot, screenwriting, story, writing gigs
Yeah. Something like that.

And I’m back. My script rewrite is now in the past tense.

Maybe not an out-and-out rewrite per se, but taking a script and reformatting it into script form.  My instructions were to work my magic on the action lines and leave the dialogue alone. Mea culpa – I tinkered with some of that too.

I’ll start off by saying the idea behind the story was good, and there were faint glimmers of potential, but I had lots of problems with the execution.  I don’t know if this was a first draft, but it sure looked and read like one.

-Huge blocks of text in both the wide margins and the dialogue.

-Starting a scene in one room, then having it go to one, two or more locations, without starting a new scene

-Not giving the reader any idea who the main character is, nor establishing what was at stake, if anything.

-Characters who disappear for long stretches of time.

-Tons of unnecessary and unfilmable details.

-Story details that come out of nowhere based on nothing the reader has already read.

-Dialogue that’s pure exposition.  Sometimes repeated several times in several different scenes.

-Scenes without any conflict, or at least nothing to move the story forward, that drag on and on.

-Characters saying each other’s names over and over and over again in each scene.

-Using the same verbs and adjectives throughout the whole thing.

The whole time I was working on this, there were quite a lot of times I couldn’t help but roll my eyes in disbelief.  But the main point is: I’m done with it.

The Nicholl deadline is next week.  No way am I going to make it.  I figure I can work on the DREAMSHIP rewrite, then pump out a first draft of LUCY.

Movie of the Moment: MAN OF THE CENTURY.  A fun, small independent film from ’99 about a man who lives in then-modern NYC as if it were the 1920s. I’d heard about it when it was originally released, which was for about a week in the arthouse circuit.  If you get a kick out of the early days of talkies, or at least the dialogue, then you’ll enjoy this.  Only complaint – they never explain why the guy is like this.

Turns out the star and director also wrote it.  They must have spent a lot of time researching the slang and catchphrases of the day, because they’re prevalent throughout the whole thing.

I was also impressed with how they had about eight different storylines each tie up nice and clean in the last five minutes.

I’d love to know how they got Frank Gorshin involved.  I thought he was in it for a cameo, but he was one of the subplots.

-I got to read a phenomenal action script yesterday.  It was fast-moving, exciting and just a blast to read.  It’s what I hope LUCY can be like.