rules

Dismantle, reassemble

Maximum Z adventure, characters, draft, editing, emotion, rewrite, rules, science fiction, screenplay, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, tone, writing , , , , , , , , , ,

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Sometimes when you’re working on a story, you just have this feeling that the way it’s being told is the way it should be told. It just feels right.

Even though I’d made some good progress with the ongoing revision of the sci-fi adventure outline, something still seemed…off. What I had was good, including several scenes that now felt necessary, but as a whole, not quite there yet.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep all the previous drafts of the outline and script on file –  you never know when some of that text will come in handy. The recent work on the current revision was accompanied by another tab on the screen containing the previous draft, serving primarily as a sort of roadmap to help guide me through this latest effort.

Despite telling myself that this new draft was supposed to be different from its predecessor, its siren call was a bit stronger than expected. There was just something about it that couldn’t be denied. Not to say that the newer version was no slouch either.

Parts of this one work, and parts of that one work. Why not combine the two?

Sure, this even-newer draft might occasionally take a somewhat unorthdox approach in how the story’s presented, but by gosh, I still like it. “Rules of screenwriting” be damned.

There’s nothing wrong with cherry-picking parts of the new draft and incorporating them into the previous one where applicable. Of course, it would have been nice to have come to this conclustion a few weeks ago, but sometimes that’s just how it works.

What’s really nice is that for the most part, save for a few problem spots, the previous draft is still pretty solid on its own. Nothing serious, and some of these new elements look like they’ll really rectify that.

Based on some extremely helpful notes, another factor that’ll help this time around is putting more of a spotlight on the characters’ emotions. Even in this kind of story, with all of its fantastical and extraordinary elements, it’s important to show how the characters are still people.

Lastly, all the time I’ve been working on this story, I’d forgotten how the initial concept and earliest versions were all written with a certain kind of tone in mind; something to really convey the vibe of what story of story this was supposed to be and how I wanted it to read. Somehow that aspect’s diminished over time, and I plan on re-introducing it for the next draft.

This is gonna be fun.

Your world. We’re just visiting.

Maximum Z exposition, genre, rules, screenplay, screenwriting, script, setup, story, storytelling, writing , , , , , , , ,
tour group
Ooh! That looks like a vital piece of exposition!

Since you’re the one creating the world of your script, you know exactly what’s going on within it. Or at least you should. This doesn’t just refer to the events of the story. It’s a bit more extensive than that.

You know the world in which your story takes place. We don’t. It’s up to you to show us how things work in here. Some writers write under the impression that everything we need to know is right there on the page for us to see. They do, so how could we possibly not?

Sometimes the information we need to follow the story is presented gradually, or it might be thrown at us all at once in one big info dump (which runs the risk of too much too fast, resulting in something being skipped over). There are also times when we get nothing, so we and the protagonist experience everything firsthand as it happens.

Who hasn’t read a script and found themselves confused about “how things work here” because it wasn’t there, or only got a fraction of what they needed? Without that, your reader’s going to spend more time playing catch-up while trying to figure out what’s going on, which will take away from them being able to focus on the story itself.

You don’t want that.

This goes beyond genre. While stories of a more fantastical nature will require a little more explanation and/or exposition, even a story that takes place in the present day with normal, everyday people will require some kind of “get us up to speed”-type scenes.

One counterpoint to this – the lack of filling us in is intentional. Part of the enjoyment of the story comes from the gradual learning of information. An ideal setup for mysteries, but that’s all I can think of.

Personally, I find it more effective to fill us in as we go along rather than just dropping us in the middle of this new environment with the attitude of “You’re on your own. Good luck.”

Make it as easy for the reader to be able to follow along with what’s going on in your story as you do. Potentially difficult, but not impossible.

The “sound” of your writing

Maximum Z craft, draft, reading, rules, screenplay, screenwriting, script, style, voice, writing , , , , , , , , ,
eavesdropping
No! Find your own style of writing. Don’t copy someone else’s.

When somebody reads your script,is there something about the writing that they can tell you’re the one who wrote it? Do you have a certain style or “voice” regarding how your material reads?

Each writer develops their own particular way of not only how they write, but how that material comes across on the page.

When you’re just starting out, maybe you play it safe and keep things simple and straightforward. Or you might try from the get-go to emulate a script or writer you really, really like, because if it worked for them, then it stands to reason that it will undoubtedly work for you in the exact same way. This is occasionally referred to as the Tarantino Syndrome.

There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a pro’s style, but for crying out loud, DO NOT try to duplicate it. That’s how they do it, which is not the same as how you do it. It also smacks of laziness. You want to make a name for yourself, right? So how are you going to do that by writing like somebody else?

Find a way that works for you and stick with it. Hone your writing skills with each draft until every script you offer up is undeniably identifiable as yours.

The more you produce, the more comfortable you’ll get with how you write, along with becoming more confident in your abilities. You’ve put in the work learning the rules, so now you feel ready to see how far you can bend them (but not too much! They can be very fragile at times.).

Soon you’ll have no hesitation to start putting your own spin on things; little touches here and there. Although the usual challenges and obstacles will still be there, you might discover that your overall process of writing has gotten just a little bit easier.

An education most painful

Maximum Z budget, characters, choices, entertainment, exposition, guidelines, movies, narrative, payoff, plot, rules, scenes, screenplay, screenwriting, script, setup, simplicity, story, storytelling, structure, writing , , , , ,
scared
Please don’t make me watch that again!

Once again, your stalwart author makes the necessary sacrifices so you don’t have to.

This time around, I had the misfortune of watching an extremely bad large-budget movie from the semi-recent past. It was painfully obvious that a larger percentage of the budget should have been diverted to hiring quality writers, rather than on everything else. A pipe dream, I know.

But trust me. It was bad.

What made it so bad, you may ask?

Oh, where to begin.

My biggest problem was that too much of the story felt glossed over, with vital elements explained in a very lazy and haphazard way, if they were even explained at all. It felt like they were trying to force events to match how they wanted the story to play out, rather than deftly setting things up.

Reasons why something would happen, or were supposed to have happened, seemed to have simply been thrown against the wall, and whatever stuck, that’s what they went with. Did it matter if it fit within the context of the story?

Nosireebob.

Once again, there were too many questions raised that were never sufficiently answered. When this happens, it simply takes away from the movie-watching experience. The only reason I knew the film had to have been around the midpoint area was because of its running time, and NOT because of what had transpired over the course of the story.

I could say I had a vague inkling of what was supposedly going on, but was just never sure, since the story was being told in a very sloppy and unorganized way. It irked me to no end to be see such terrible writing so prominently displayed. And apparently I wasn’t alone in my opinions. The film was a major flop at the box office.

So what silver linings can we extract from this pitch-black cumulonimbus that stole away just under two hours of my life?

-Write a story that’s easy to understand. Keep it simple. This doesn’t mean dumb it down. Keep us informed, unless withholding that information is absolutely necessary.

-Let the story play out organically. Don’t try to force it because that’s what you want to happen. It’s easy to tell when that happens, and it ain’t pretty. If you didn’t put in the effort to figure it out, why should we?

-Have things happen for a reason. “Because it looks cool” is not one of them. Would it drastically change things if it didn’t?

-Set up, pay off. If something happens, we want to see what happens as a result. Don’t leave us hanging. And counter to that, don’t suddenly spring something on us out of thin air. It reeks of desperation. Audiences don’t like that, either.

One of the things I always strive for in my scripts, be they big or small budget, is to respect the intelligence of the intended audience. That is one lesson I believe the writers of this abomination should have kept in mind.

The unscientific term would be “gut reaction”

Maximum Z blog, craft, criticism, development, guidelines, instinct, logline, perseverance, persistence, pitching, query letter, reading, rules, screenplay, screenwriting, script, Star Wars, story, storytelling, structure, theme, writing
trust your feelings
Learn to trust your feelings. Even with the blast shield down.

I’ve had the experience of working with some writing, both my own and other people’s, that required a second opinion. For some of them, I was the second opinion, while the others involved my work being reviewed.

An experienced professional asked me to take a look at another writer’s script, accompanied with their excitement and enthusiasm about it. Upon reading it, I found it severely lacking in a lot of screenwriting fundamentals (bad structure, shoddy character development, etc.), and said so as part of my notes of what was needed to improve.

I like to read a script twice before giving notes on it, and it took a lot of effort to get through each one – especially the second time. That whole time I was wondering “Where is this enthusiasm coming from?” This person knows what a good script looks like, and this one, to me, didn’t meet any of the necessary criteria. And if they felt this way about this script, could I trust their judgment on others?

Last week I’d been given the offer to have my query letter reviewed. I put it together with the elements I considered vital: quick one-sentence pitch, logline, reputable contest results. As fast a read as possible.

The response read like something churned out by a machine. Their recommendation was to follow “their blueprint”, which involved a lot of fill-in-the-blanks, how it’s similar to successful films (the more recent, the better!), telling the story from only the main character’s point of view, and concluding with “why I think this will be a hit” OR the underlying theme. The end result is several big unappealing blocks of text.

All of this felt totally and absolutely wrong. If I were the intended recipient, I might start reading, but would most likely lost interest very quickly and be very hard-pressed to want to continue, let alone finish it.

(With no intention of ever actually using a letter written following their guidelines,  I put one together and submitted it for review, just to see what they would say. Their follow-up comments reinforced my doubts, but that is a topic for another day.)

As you probably guessed, I’ll be sticking with my original format.

The takeaway from both of these experiences is that a writer must not only develop their writing and storytelling skills, but also the ability to trust their instincts. Know what works, not only for you, but in an overall sense.

Don’t always assume the other person is in the right. Sometimes they’re not.

Everybody will have an opinion about something. You might agree wholeheartedly or think the other person has no idea what they’re talking about. It takes time to learn how to determine which is which. You will make mistakes and bad choices along the way, but make the effort to learn from them so you don’t do it again.

Like with writing itself, the more you work at it, the better at it you’ll become.