scenes

Random thoughts, general musings, that sort of thing

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Nothing to do with today's post. I just love their chemistry.
Nothing to do with today’s post. I just love their chemistry.

-My western failed to make it through the first round of Scriptapalooza, which makes me 0 for 4 so far this year. I’m not counting the top 20 percent ranking for the Nicholl; that’s like getting Honorable Mention. At this point, I’ve pretty much written off its chances for Austin.

My problem was overconfidence in the script. I thought it was solid enough, but apparently not. It’s not the first time this has happened to me, but I’ll be more careful about it in the future.

I still believe in this script, which is why I’ve been so gung-ho about rewriting it. The past two weeks have been all about making it better. After completing the latest round of edits, it’s now 8 pages shorter, and still some further fine-tuning to do, which hopefully won’t add more than 2-3.

-Never realized how much my characters repeat things in dialogue. “I need you go to the store.” “The store? Why?” Must be the influence of listening to so much old-time radio. Cutting all of those probably amounted to at least half a page.

-I cut at least 5(!) separate situations where the Wilhelm Scream could be used.

-Had a great lunch-chat with one of my working writer pals yesterday. While he was very supportive and encouraging, he also reminded me of the almost insurmountable task of a new, unproven writer breaking in with a high-budget script.

“Your chances improve when you offer something that won’t cost a lot to make. A lot more people can get something made for under $5 million, rather than $50 million, let alone $100-200 million.”

As it should have, it got me thinking. Do I have any stories like that? It took the bike ride home and digging through some old flash drives to discover I did. Maybe about 5 or 6, all of them just a logline and not much else.

It’s a start.

-Movie of the Moment: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (2014). Loved it. Great story, great characters (and their development). Maybe my only complaint was the bombardment of exposition in the first 20 minutes. Other than that, a lot of fun.

Biggest pleasant surprise: Dave Bautista as Drax.

Biggest almost-catastrophe: Adam Sandler as a potential voice for Rocket. Somebody thought this was a good idea?

It’s really impressive how much of an effort Marvel puts into their stories and characters. I sincerely hope DC and Warner Brothers can take a lesson from this.

Deliberately avoiding referencing that song

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A great mantra, but a little tired of hearing it over and over
A great concept in terms of editing, but a little tired of hearing it over and over

As I work my way through the hack-n-slash editing phase of the western, it’s getting easier and easier to cut something and not worry about if I’ve made the right decision.

Whole scenes, parts of scenes and lines of dialogue are wiped from existence, all with a positive result. Tighter scene(s), better flow of story, all creating a stronger efficiency of words.

Added bonus – script is already 5 pages shorter, and still have Act 3 to go.

(Counter to all of this cutting, placeholders have been identified as potential chances to add in a few lines for some character development.)

Re-reading this script has also made me realize how much I overwrite, especially with dialogue. I try to avoid extra verbage, but don’t see that’s what’s happened until long afterward. By then, it seems more like padding, so out it goes.

A lot of writers are hesitant to cut material or make drastic edits. They just can’t bring themselves around to killing their darlings, because they figure everything is just right the way it is.

Nope.

As much as you like that scene or dialogue, you have to be as objective as possible about your own work. Is it absolutely vital to the story and advance it in the best way possible? If you took it out, would it make any difference whatsoever, or at least have some kind of impact on the story?

I’d venture probably not.

Don’t be afraid to put that red pen to work and cut away! The pain of having to do so is minimal at best and lasts all of a microsecond or two. It’s more than likely that the next time you read through what you’re working on now, you won’t even notice its absence, probably not remember it ever being there and hopefully think “Wow, this draft seems a lot better.”

A little depth perception on my part

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I can see so much clearer now!
I can see so much clearer now!

There’s no way to say this without sounding smug, so I’ll just come out and say it.

I think my writing has reached a new level.

I say this not out of ego, but from a sort of realization that stems from a discussion I had with a trusted colleague last week.

He’d read my western and had lots of praise for it, which is always nice. What he thought it was lacking was more depth to the characters. As it reads now, there’s a lot on the surface, but he recommended going deeper to get a better idea about who they are and why they do the things they do.

In some ways, I thought I already had a somewhat firm grasp on how to do this, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what he said really rang true.

While I may be adept at putting the basics of a story together and making it entertaining to read, I still need to work on further developing the characters, or at least more than I do now.

Like I told him, it’s a little intimidating to look at the work as a whole and think “I have to fix this. But how?”

So the rewrite is underway, albeit with a little more attention being paid to..well, everything. Which is as it should be.

I’ve always been a staunch believer in the idea that you should write scripts for movies you would want to see. I was already excited for this one, but now that I feel like I have a stronger grasp of how to be a better writer combined with the actual process of making it better (he said with fingers firmly crossed), the anticipation levels are shooting through the roof.

-Also got this from another set of notes: “It’s clear you have a sense of fun…One weird deficiency I see from a lot of amateur screenwriters is that they forget it’s their job to be entertaining.  You get that, and it’s very welcome.”

Nice.

Here’s what you need to know

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Not THAT kind of exposition
Not THAT kind of exposition

As the rewrite/polish of the mystery-comedy continues, it suddenly hit me that while I knew the backstory of what came before, somebody reading it for the first time would have no idea what was going on, or at least how we got here.

A little exposition was in order.

But among the many problems with writing exposition is when it’s out-and-out obvious.

“You mean your brother John, who went through a terrible divorce, ran off to join the circus and became a cross-dressing serial killer?”

Sometimes it’s done very effectively, but unfortunately, a lot of the time it isn’t, resulting in a blast of information crammed into one scene.

No thanks.

Rather than go down that road, I’m exploring the potential of doling out the details over several scenes. A sentence or two casually placed here and there so as to not draw attention to itself, all for the purpose of helping you learn where everything is coming from and how we got here.

It’s a work in progress, so we’ll see how it goes.

Here’s the windup…

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lincecum
I admit it. Local bias.

Interesting discussion the other day with a professional hyphen (writer HYPHEN director HYPHEN script consultant) about my western.

They wanted me to pitch them the story, but without notes. Pretty much without any preparation whatsoever.

This way, they explained, it comes across as “more natural” and “less rehearsed”. I don’t necessarily agree, especially because I despise those momentary pauses which make you rely on saying “um” while your brain races to come up with the next words out of your mouth.

Despite not really having thought about the story that much over the past few months, I did my best to work my way through it and think I did okay. Maybe B-plus/A minus territory. Not fantastic, but not bad operating with pretty much no prep time whatsoever.

I made sure to include key story points and not go into too much detail, and tried to sound excited and upbeat while describing the high-octane action.

After I’d finished, there was a dread-inducing silence that grew with each passing second (maybe 3 in total, but felt more like neverending).

“Hmm,” came the reply. “Not bad.”

Not exactly a standing ovation, but I’ll take what I can get.

They listed what they liked and what could use a little work. Surprisingly, they felt the ending was a little ‘soft’ and their explanations why, to which I calmly disagreed and gave my explanation why.

Even more surprisingly, they then revealed they’d only read up to page 15 and wanted to hear my pitch to see if the rest of the story warranted continuing.

(Just to set things up, this person claims to have given 3 pages of notes just on the first page alone for other scripts. Apart from a few comments about the dialogue, they didn’t really have any for mine, and that when they usually get to around page 10, they jump ahead to the middle, then to the end. But mine they wanted to keep reading. Make of that what you will.)

After hearing my rationalization for the ending, they admitted that they should “probably read it to see if they agree.” In theory that will be happening this week, but we’ll see.

Our discussion then turned to my experience and some of my other scripts, 2 of which they requested to read. A victory, no matter how you slice it.

Looking back, I could have done a much better job at pitching my story – if I’d known I was going to have to do it. Still, if I’m going to be sending out queries about it, I should be prepared to talk about it in a moment’s notice.

So while I while away upcoming hours engaged in the rewrite of the mystery-comedy spec, I’ll try to make the most of potential down-time and re-read the western and maybe put together some kind of FAQ/cheat sheet in case this kind of situation arises again.

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to do the same for those other two – just for good measure.