storytelling

She kicks ass just right

Maximum Z action, characters, determination, feedback, genre, ideas, loglines, protagonist, public forums, screenwriting, script, spec, story, storytelling, westerns, writing
There were too many to choose from, so I opted for a classic example
There were too many to choose from, so I opted for a classic

Encouraging feedback on the western spec continues to roll in, with a recurring theme developing regarding opinions about the main character.

-“calm, cool and witty in the face of danger and indomitable odds”
-“a really great character to get behind”
-“actor bait”

Did I mention the main character is a woman?  More than a few considered that a major plus.

When I first started figuring out the story, which included seeking online help for the logline, anonymous posters on assorted forums pulled no punches in letting me know what a terrible idea they thought it was.

Yet despite all that negativity, I still felt this was a story worth the time and effort to tell. The West was a harsh, brutal place. You had to be tough to survive. Why wouldn’t the women be as tough as the men?

When I write action, I’m hoping to create a sense comparable to a thrilling rollercoaster ride; one that grabs you tight and pulls you along at top speed. Whether the main character behind it all is a man or woman is a non-issue. It really comes down to two things: an entertaining story with three-dimensional characters.

To me, this had both. Being a fan of the genre helped – I know what works, what doesn’t and what I as an audience member would want to see. And as far as I could tell, it was a story that hadn’t been done before.

So I wrote it, and now it’s all about the wait-and-see.

Not surprisingly, articles continue to pop up about how a female main character in an action film is still considered somewhat of a novelty, or that since an action film with a female main character absolutely tanked at the box office, logic can only dictate it was because the main character was female, and not because the story sucked.

Count me among those hoping these ways of thinking will someday not be an issue.

Caught in the ripple effect

Aside Maximum Z continuity, creativeness, creativity, ideas, opportunity, outlines, plot, problem-solving, protagonist, scenes, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, theme, writing ,
It starts a chain reaction you just can't stop
A chain reaction you just can’t stop

When I work on pages, I make a point of adhering to the story as it’s written in the outline. There may be some slight alterations here and there, but that’s not an uncommon thing.

At the moment I’m in the middle of a sequence, that, according to the outline, was all planned out. No problems.

Little did I realize that over the course of the pages before this, all of those slight alterations would drastically change the circumstances surrounding my protagonist’s situation in that sequence.

Without knowing it, I had made things much harder not only for him, which is how it should be, but also for myself, which isn’t exactly the greatest of news.  Most of the details now had to be thrown away.

And because I’m such a glutton for punishment, this sequence was slowly becoming way too similar to one from about 20 pages before it. How I didn’t see this while outlining I’ll never know.

So it’s not necessarily back to square one, but I’ve got some work to do. Looking at this from the silver lining perspective, this is actually some pretty good stuff:

-My protagonist now faces bigger challenges, which still advance the story, theme and character development.
-I’m forced to come up with better, more creative ways of depicting how things play out.
-Recognizing and handling the domino effect those earlier changes have made and will make on the rest of the story.

Fortunately, we writers are a hearty lot and not easily deterred.  Time, experience and constant rewrites provide us with the determination and intestinal fortitude to work our way through this sort of thing.

The story behind the story

Maximum Z antagonist, backstory, Black List, characters, conflict, guidelines, loglines, monsters, outlines, plot, protagonist, rewrite, screenwriting, script, setup, Star Wars, story, storytelling, structure, writing
Figure out how it works before you start, or things could get messy
Step 1: Figure out how it all works

A slightly altered holiday work schedule has resulted in more hours on the air, which is always nice, but less time cranking out pages, which isn’t.

So I make the most of the handful of minutes between reports with the always-reliable working on an outline. This time – the monster script.

Despite knowing the general playing-out of the story, there was something that wasn’t clicking. Most of the items on my mental checklist had been checked off.

Most. Not all.  What was missing?

It took the constant back-and-forth between the opening sequences of the two previous outlines to make me realize what it was: I’d never fully established what happened before the story started.

Not knowing how everything came about was preventing me from moving forward. I had to create this world before I could write about it.

Think of the opening crawl in STAR WARS (“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, etc. etc…”). It establishes what we need to know. Without it, we’d be too busy trying to figure things out.

Using that as an example, I worked out my own version of the opening crawl. It won’t be in the actual script, but it’s a pretty solid foundation for setting things up – a better realization of how this world works, what the antagonist wants and how that can be accomplished, the challenges the protagonist faces, just to name a few.

The work on this is far from being over, but developing this really helped. Some important blanks have been filled in and I’ve got a firmer grasp of how the story works.

Time now to start the latest version of the outline and see how it goes.

-Regarding the recent release of this year’s Black List. There appear to be a handful that sound pretty good, but the rest don’t really do much for me.

No doubt they’re all extremely well-written (why else would they be on the list?), but a majority don’t have that “Read me!” vibe. It probably doesn’t help that the writers are not the ones providing the loglines. I suspect that would make quite a difference.

Unfortunately, more of the same

Maximum Z Black List, Godzilla, movies, Nicholl Fellowship, originality, Pacific Rim, reboot, remake, Robocop, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, studio, writing
What? A new, original idea? That's crazy talk!
What? A new, original idea? We don’t know if our brains can take it!

“Don’t remake good movies. Remake bad movies and improve them.” – John Huston

As a writer and fan of original material, it’s quite disturbing how many remakes and reboots keep appearing or are announced, with no sign of it coming to an end.

Sadly, this is how the industry works, with most of the studios afraid to take a chance on something new and original, as opposed to something that’s already proven itself.

But apart from a few exceptions, how many of those trips back to the well have been successful?  On top of that, there’s no avoiding a comparison to the original, with the remake usually found lacking.

Putting this in perspective – I’m a huge fan of the original ROBOCOP, which will have a remake released in February. I have no desire to see it because the trailer doesn’t make it look that interesting, and I don’t see the point in remaking it in the first place.

Counter to that, the forthcoming GODZILLA remake/reboot looks great because it appears to be a smart, new approach to the story, and definitely feels like a significant improvement over the one from 1998. I really hope it doesn’t fall victim to PACIFIC RIM syndrome – big build-up, followed by big letdown.

Now they’re announcing Ed Helms as Frank Drebin in a reboot of THE NAKED GUN. Have they no shame? Apparently not.

The movie-going public wants, no, craves new stories.  Look at The Black List, or the latest batch of Nicholl finalists. This is high-quality stuff, people. Just about any one of them would make for a great film.

There’s a ton of fantastic original material out there, but all we can do as writers is keep writing and hope somebody believes in it enough to drum up the courage to do something with it.

Seeking the feng shui-ness of your script

Maximum Z characters, editing, feedback, outlines, plot, problem-solving, proofreading, reading, rewrite, scenes, screenwriting, script, spec, story, storytelling, structure, westerns, writing
A place for everything, and everything in its place
A place for everything, and everything in its place

Got some great notes for my western spec. Some of the suggestions involve significant moments I hadn’t considered – now I have to figure out where these should take place. A daunting task indeed, but also not too challenging.

It’s one thing to plot out a story, but knowing how to do it effectively is a little more complicated.

You can’t just throw stuff in there and hope it sticks. Information has to be doled out appropriately so it not only fleshes out the characters, strengthens and advances the story and the plot, and most importantly, keeps the reader/audience interested.

If you’ve put together a solid outline (as you should before moving on to pages), all the help you need is right there in front of you. Take a look at how your story develops. Do things happen the way you want them to, and do they happen when you want them to?

As you work your way forward, are you seeing potential opportunities for where something could be added or possibly changed? Would that scene from way back near the beginning work better somewhere later on?

Once you find somewhere that scene could go, is it a good fit within the flow of how the story’s developing? Does it keep that forward momentum going while providing us with some kind of necessary information?

Take the time to figure these kinds of things out. It may be frustrating now, but once you work your way through it, you’ll have a better script and wonder what it was you were so worried about.