screenwriting

Title? We don’t need no stinkin’ title!

Maximum Z Bad News Bears, Filmsack.com, hockey, Lake Tahoe, loglines, Lost In Space, movies, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story, Triggerstreet, Veronica, Walter Matthau

Okay.  I’m back from a rousing hockey tournament at Lake Tahoe, where V’s team came in 3rd out of 6, including their 2 wins with her in goal.  In fact, she was awarded the MVP puck for their 8-1 victory on Saturday night.  Overall, it was very exciting.  Cold, but exciting.

Just before we left, I was introduced to Triggerstreet.com, a screenwriting review/forum website (Kevin Spacey is one of the founders). Part of the way they work is having members review other members’ scripts.  I haven’t submitted anything yet, but plan to in the near future.

But it was the forum that especially intrigued me.  I decided to take the plunge and posted a question about my logline for LUCY.  I did that on Thursday afternoon.  By the evening, I had a few responses and something like 75 views.  What’s cool about the set-up is that you can opt to get an email notification that somebody’s responded to your post.  A lot of the drive up to Tahoe was spent checking them out.

I have to say I got some really good feedback, and even better, got what I feel is a stronger logline for the story.  I thought about posting that 3 Stooges one just to see what people think, but I’ll hold off for a little while.

Speaking of which, I sent in the old LUCY logline and the 3 Stooges one to the logline contest.  Neither one won, but honestly, I don’t really think that much of some recent winners.  I may try again with the new LUCY one.  It’s a wait-and-see situation.

-As much as I thought/hoped it might happen this weekend, I didn’t get a lot of work done on the outline.

So now that I’ve got an outline I like much better, I felt I had to start over with it, albeit with a few minor changes.  But as I was looking it over, there didn’t seem to be much I thought had to come out.  There are still a few places where I may have to make some slight readjustments, but it may not be as daunting a project as I originally thought.

And I may have stumbled onto a solution for moving the story along.  All I have to do now is figure out how to incorporate it into the story. Which I think I can do

Movie of the Moment:  A few to go over. First the original BAD NEWS BEARS. The other girl on V’s hockey team owns this, and we watched it on Saturday afternoon.  Watching it now as a parent is a lot different than when I was a lot closer to the age of a lot of the cast.  It was really weird watching Walter Matthau, especially since I’ve seen more of his work in recent years.

But the story and the writing still hold up.  Some good jokes sprinkled around here and there, but more would have been nice.  It’s also really weird to have a PG movie from the mid-70s have so much mild cursing in it.  From a writing point of view, the character development is strictly textbook, but effective.  What was also clever was that only a handful of scenes are set inside; a majority are set at the ball field.  And you get to know almost all of the kids on the team; just a handful don’t serve much purpose.  I know they made a remake with Billy Bob Thornton a few years ago, but I don’t see the point.

The other movie was LOST IN SPACE, only because it was on TV today while I was working.  I saw this in the theater back in 1998, and enjoyed it.  Not a lot, but worth the $6 for the matinee.  Incidentally, this would be a great choice for the Filmsack guys.

But looking at it today, it really drags in some places and the dialogue doesn’t really do much for me.  I still don’t understand why they didn’t just kill Gary Oldman’s Dr Smith.  He tried to sabotage their mission and they still let him live?  Ridiculous.  And don’t get me started on the cgi monkey alien.  Lame.

Akiva Goldsman, who wrote it (as well as BATMAN & ROBIN, but also A BEAUTIFUL MIND – go figure), has become more of a producer and has thankfully let his writing career diminish.  While I love the concept of the movie, this one just felt forced and could have been a little shorter.  Still, to me it’s one of the slightly better 60s-TV-show-based films, as opposed to that big ol’ chunk of cinematic Velveeta known as WILD WILD WEST.

Now just try to get that gigantic steampunk spider-tank out of your mind.

You’re welcome.

A little better

Maximum Z Lucy Steele, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story, subplot

After wielding my mighty editing pen, I went through a previous outline and cut out everything I didn’t want to use.  It helped.

I also kept a lot of what I’d written in the previous draft, but after the editing, it seems to flow along a little smoother.  Nice.  Today’s effort got me to around page 41 or so, which means I’m a few pages from the page 45 twist, which I’m still going with, based on my plot points.

Unfortunately, right after that the assorted storylines need to start intersecting, but I’ve got a few ideas.  I’m also concerned about the villain’s storyline.  So far, he’s only been shown once.  I’m trying to avoid having him be Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW and only show him at the end.  Can’t do that.

While I work on the main storyline and the bounty hunter subplot, I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate the bad guy subplot so it not only feels natural, but also helps move the story along, builds tension, etc.

It would be nice if creativity whacks me upside the head sometime over the next couple of days.  I could use it.

Is this uphill climb getting steeper?

Maximum Z hockey, Lucy Steele, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story, Veronica

So I got to around page 22 or so today on the outline.  It’s slightly different than the previous version, but something still seems…off.  I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it’s like you know there’s something important you have to do, but can’t remember what.

I still like the way the story is developing, but since I’m essentially eliminating one of the subplots (for now), it makes moving ahead a bit harder.

I also seem to keep going back to the previous draft, and that may not be helping.  Especially since that’s what I’m trying to move away from.  That may become more evident as this draft advances.

It also doesn’t help that I’m not plotting ahead enough, so to speak.  I don’t like just taking a stab in the dark and seeing what could work.  I really need to figure out where things are going and how to get there.  I already developed the plot points, and now need to fill in the blanks between them.

Surprisingly, the only version of the previous draft I have is a hard copy from about 2 months ago.  This was the super-detailed one, where each scene breakdown was about 4-5 sentences long.  Even though I won’t be using all of them, some of them I had completely forgotten about, so seeing all that detail and characterization was quite the pleasant surprise.

And even better, I may be able to salvage some of those for this latest draft.  Which would be cool.

V has a hockey tournament up at Lake Tahoe this weekend, so what I’m hoping is that during some of the downtime, I’m able to make some good progress.  Because Lord knows, I don’t plan on being outside if I can help it. A high of 30 degrees?  Are you kidding?

As long as I come home with all my extremities intact and functional, I’ll be fine.

At least it’s something

Maximum Z conflict, Lucy Steele, Marx Brothers, outlines, plot, screenwriting, Star Wars, Turner Classic Movies

The past few days have not been kind.

I thought I made some good progress with some slight revamping of the major plot points, at least in terms of my page 45 and midpoint.  The problem was getting from what I had already developed to this new set-up.

I couldn’t figure out what to write.  And when a writer doesn’t know what to write, it’s very frustrating.

It probably didn’t help that I read those two Black List scripts.  The writing in those was really impressive.  Mine?  Not so much right now.

But I also reminded myself that those other scripts weren’t first drafts.  I bet they had the same kind of problems putting them together that I am now.  And that actually help me feel better.  I know this will all come together in the end.  It’s the gettin’ there that kills you.

Today, I was determined to make some kind of progress and move forward.

One of the things I always use as a placeholder during the outline process is a note to myself in a scene to WORK ON THIS or EXPAND! or DEVELOP.

Which is exactly what I did.  I had a general idea of what I wanted to happen in one sequence, tried to play out the scenario in my mind and put it on the page.

And it worked.  Which is nice.

Even better, I changed something in the scene right after that one that presents more of a challenge to my main character.  Before, she was able to figure something out too easily, so I made it really hard for her.

Since conflict is vital to a good story, one of the best questions a writer needs to ask him or herself: what’s the worst thing that can happen to your character to make achieving their goal that much harder?  If Luke and Co just stroll into the Death Star, get Leia and leave, that wouldn’t be much of a story, would it?

Before, this sequence came across as too easy for my heroine.  Now, she really has to pull herself out of a really deep hole.

And now the fun really begins.  I need to figure out how to have the three separate subplots tie together, and about 8-10 pages to do it in.

And I can do it, too.  Not quickly, but I can.  And will.

No Movie of the Moment right now, but V discovered the magic that is the Marx Brothers courtesy of Turner Classic Movies on New Year’s Eve.  If you don’t laugh during the mirror sequence from DUCK SOUP, then something is wrong with you.

Our campouts were never like this

Maximum Z analysis, Black List, Boy Scouts vs Zombies, characters, comedy, horror, movies, screenwriting, story, zombies

Finally got to read BOY SCOUTS VS ZOMBIES, a horror comedy that ranked on the Black List.

The concept: A troop of Boy Scouts on their weekend camping trip must protect an island town after a zombie outbreak and save the local girl scout troop.

Personally, I’m getting a little tired of the whole zombie thing (although ZOMBIELAND was fun), this sounded interesting.  Seeing as how I was a Boy Scout (big surprise, right?), I wanted to see what the writers, Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuko, would do with it.

First and foremost: A really fast read.  I zipped through this thing in about 90 minutes.  The whole thing really moves along.

I was also surprised how just about all the characters veer into stereotypes. The somewhat bland main character who’s too shy to tell the girl he likes her, the too-cool friend, the fat slob other friend, the mama’s boy, the overenthusiastic scoutleader, and so on.

It was a little difficult keeping track of all the characters, especially since the first half really focuses on the boys, then really adding the girls into the mix around halfway.  It was also pretty easy to tell which characters were going to be the token redshirts.

Once it settled into ‘will they survive or won’t they?’ mode, I was trying to figure out which characters would be the surprise death.  Surprisingly, that didn’t happen.

And the subplot about the top-secret lab where the whole thing starts seems to disappear after they decide to send out the commandos to neutralize the situation.  Some kind of follow-up would have been nice.

I’d also like to add that technically, the zombies here are the “infected with a virus that simulates zombie-like characteristics” type rather than the truly living dead.  This seems to be the go-to reasoning behind a lot of recent zombie stories.  I guess that’s easier than figuring out how to really raise the dead.  George Romero used radiation, so why not something similar?  But I digress.

Some of the jokes fell a little flat, but there were a handful that made me laugh out loud.  I especially liked the line after one girl turns zombie and tries to eat her friends, one says “Jenny! No! You’re a vegan!”  I also liked how even as everything around them is going to hell, the scouts try to take care of things via the Scout Handbook.  Again, I’m biased.  I don’t know if the guys in my troop would have been able to keep their heads like this.

I wasn’t crazy about when the wide margins would say something about the characters that should really come across in their actions and dialogue (“Matt’s dad has great expectations for his son, and they don’t involve fat slackers and comic books.”)  I always thought this sort of thing was frowned upon, but these two writers were in Disney’s Writing Program, so maybe there are exceptions.

I also wasn’t sure about the idea that a zombie can do the same things they did when they were alive, like a rock climber who turns into a zombie remembers how to climb a cliff.  It seems a little weak.

I really think with a little tweaking here and there, this thing could be fantastic.  It’s already been picked up for production, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it.

Would I pay to see it in the theatre?  Probably not.  But I’d definitely put it in the Netflix queue.

This is my last post for 2010, and since I haven’t seen that many movies in the theatres this year, I don’t have a list of my top 10 picks.  I’m just happy to be able to watch so many good flicks, and still plan on my own stuff being part of that someday.

Have a great 2011, and feel free to drop a note once in a while.

p.s.  Almost forgot.  If you’d like to take a look at any of these scripts, let me know and I’ll forward it to you.