Subjectivity

Let’s say you’ve executed your script perfectly – you have an original premise, your scenes are tight, characters are three-dimensional and organic, dialogue rocks and structure is perfect. But a reader picks up your script for a read and still doesn’t like it. Why? Because they just don’t like bears. Because they hate sports. Because they hate princess stories or science fiction or because they were mugged in Tijuana once.

Can that happen? Well – yes. Readers are paid to be professional and as professionals, we are making objective judgments about your script. Is the premise fresh? Is the writing good? Is the execution top notch? Was the set up compelling? Did the ending satisfy? But after we make those objective decisions, we have to make some subjective ones. Is this the kind of project the production company is looking for? Is the subject matter in keeping with the mandates of the company? Will this subject matter light up the particular executive I’m reading for? And then, try as readers might, after all the other considerations are made, a more personal kind of subjectivity does enter into the decision, usually subconsciously.

And Rouge Wavers – we just can’t control that subjectivity. While the thriller my writing partner and I wrote was making the rounds, we had some initial passes that went something like: love the writing, good story – but it involves bad things happening to children and I just had a baby, so – no. We had that reaction and variations on it from a few execs. Like the script but the subject matter creeped me out. What do you do with that? You just move on.

I read a script just yesterday that was not perfect but it had potential and I liked it. The writers have no idea how lucky they got. It was set in Memphis – I love Memphis! It was set in the 1950s and involved Elvis and Sun Studios – I love Elvis and Sun Studios, I’ve been to Graceland! In fact, I love the South and I love Tennessee and I love bluegrass and Mississippi Delta Blues and I love bbq and – these writers had no idea that their script happened to go to the perfect reader for them. No idea. But the opposite could have just as easily been true. And yes, it would have affected the read. That’s the ugly, little hidden truth about getting your script read.

For most writers starting out, the most important thing is to come up with a fresh premise and execute it well. And that is huge and can take years to nail. Even if you’re more experienced and execution is not a challenge for you – finding a really fresh premise with a great hook is never easy.

The more experienced you get as a writer, the more you understand that Subjectivity is out there and there’s just no avoiding it. Your work will not be for everybody. Because they just had a baby. Because they got a parking ticket in Memphis and then burnt their tongue on bbq. Because they failed history in college. Who the heck knows? As the writer all you can do is your best and if you’ve done that much, subjectivity or not – your script will eventually find its way into the hands of someone who happens to love that particular subject, setting or character type.

The only defense writers have against subjectivity is to know it’s out there and get okay with it and to compartmentalize a little bit; just keep writing more material and don’t get too caught up in who is reading your script and what they think. Good scripts will out and there are legendary stories of scripts that got turned down over and over again only to become great movies.

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Character Descriptions

I have read two scripts in the past week in which the writer(s) did not describe the main character – either by age – or by appearance. How very odd! Many writers actually do the reverse and over-describe their characters. I remember one writer who described a couple as they deplaned in Jamaica by telling us what they were wearing down to their shoes. I’m talking “light blue oxford shirt, unbuttoned a little, khaki slacks, tan socks and loafers.” And then there was the woman – everything, the color of her dress, the type of sandals, the way she wore her hair and the jewelry she had on. Folks, by the time I got done reading the descriptions I was bored stiff. And that was on page one.

So the question becomes – well – how much should you describe your character? You definitely need to tell us how old they are but you only need to describe their clothing to the degree that it reflects the character’s personality. Our couple might have deplaned in bathing suits – and then we do wonder – geez, what’s up with this couple? And - is the woman in a one or two-piece? Is the guy in a Speedo or in trunks? But the color of the trunks really doesn’t matter. How a character wears their hair is definitely an insight; but if you’re writing a businessman, I don’t really care whether his hair is parted on the side, curly or parted in the middle. But I would be interested if he had a crew cut or a shaved head. I’m interested to know if a character has a tattoo. I’m interested if a woman is wearing flats or stilettos.

What are you wearing right now? Seriously. Look down at yourself. And if you were to walk into a bank wearing what you’re wearing in this moment, how would you be assessed? As a crazy surfer dude? As a prim homemaker? We dress to give people impressions of ourselves all the time. And so do our characters. I am wearing a big turtleneck sweater over a funky hippy skirt. My hair is in a pony tail. What does that say about me? A lot. But it doesn’t matter what color my skirt is, does it? Does it matter that my hair is red? Yes. Or blonde? Absolutely. Because though this is not (necessarily) a conscious choice on your character’s part – it will make an impression on whoever they meet and similarly so, it will make an impression on the reader. Right or wrong, we judge by appearances. And most of us do it in the blink of an eye. Oh, a blonde – she must be pretty! Redhead? Fiery. Mousy brown – uh oh, a shy one.

What if your character is non-descript? Sure – that can work – as long as it is for effect. I have a client (hi Scott!) who has written a wonderful thriller and the main character is completely bland – until a crazy person comes into his life and forces him into a frightening adventure. But Scott purposely gave us a main character with very few descriptors. Because he is a metaphor for Every Man.

Some characters have signature looks: Dorothy with her pinafore and braids, George Clooney in O BROTHER with his pomade, Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION with her Medusa-hair. Are you starting to get the distinction between brief descriptions which tell us about your character’s psyche versus fashion laundry-lists? When you describe your character you are only drawing broad strokes and intimating much more than you are describing. You are giving us a snapshot.

SANDY (20s) a fit and cheerful blonde, straps on her running shoes.

Got it? Can you picture Sandy? Now, it could be that this is enough. I think it is. Unless Sandy is wearing head-to-toe, heavy, oversized sweats because she has bulimia and she hates her body. Or if she’s wearing next-to-nothing because she’s an exhibitionist. If you’re going to actually describe the clothing in any detail – you better have a strong character reason for doing so.

HOSEA (48) an intense businessman, straightens his Republican red tie and plucks a grey hair.

Do you get an idea of who Hosea is? I noted the color of his tie for an obvious reason – I am insinuating he is a conservative.

CECILIA (12) puts her mousy brown hair back with a pink barrette and runs her tongue over her braces.

Need to see what she’s wearing? Nah. Pink barrette, mousy brown hair and braces. I can fill in the rest with my imagination.

JUSTIN (23) lanky and thin, trims his soul-patch and grins. He tucks a skateboard under one arm and gives himself one last approving glance in the mirror.

What kind of shoes does Justin have on? Well, probably not loafers.

Similarly so, we don’t need to know what every object in your character’s car, living room or bedroom looks like. Broadstrokes. We can intimate a lot from just a few things. Sandy probably has a treadmill in her bedroom. I’m guessing Hosea has heavy walnut furniture. Cecilia probably has stuffed animals all over her canopy bed and some Lindsay Lohan posters.

Maybe you want to give us more detail about a character’s room. Sure, just break it up and avoid long, block-like action lines describing the minutia.
Cecilia sits at her computer. A Sims family awaits her. She glances out the window – an oak tree shifts in the breeze. Dialogue, dialogue, she slams the door on the way out to confront her angry mother. A soccer trophy falls of the shelf. Aha. Soccer trophy. You see, just give us these details little by little.

Descriptions are necessary only insofar as they tell us things we need to know or infer about your character. A guy with dreadlocks has just told us so much about himself. An adult with braces has too. So just give us those broad strokes and hints so we can make some assumptions and form some opinions about your character. Don’t micro-manage and describe every last detail. It’s unimportant, it’s boring and it will mark you as an amateur.

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The Title

Choosing a title for your script can be tricky. Often something just sort of flies into our minds and it sticks by default. Some writers come up with the title first and inspired by that, write the script. Some script titles reflect a line of significant dialogue or an important plot twist, either directly or as an allusion.
I do know this: when a reader or exec picks up your script, naturally the first thing we read is the title. And based on that alone, we make a couple of assumptions. If your script is a comedy, the title should sound a bit funny. Owen Wilson has a movie in development called Stalker: A Love Story. If your script is a horror or thriller, the title should sound a little creepy. The title is a hint of what’s to come. Sometimes a title will simply be a bit intriguing; I’m not quite sure what to make of it. But I know that at some point in the script it will become clear to me what it means.

Titles can be poetic allusions, clever word plays or fairly straight up descriptors. Make sure when you title your script that you cover as many bases as you can:

Does the title hint at the genre?
Is the title as succinct as possible?
Does the title in some way embody the theme or dna of your script?
Will the title look good on a poster and will it intrigue passersby?
If the title isn’t clear immediately, will it rise to the surface within the script?

The title is the shingle you hang on your script’s cover. It says: Read me, I am a terrific romantic comedy. It says: Wow am I gonna look great on a movie poster – can’t you picture Halle Berry? It says: Check me out – I am epic. It says: I am a clever writer and this is a great script.

What if a title has been used before? Well, movie titles aren’t copyrighted but still, unless the movie was a million years ago and grossed $25 at the box office, you probably want to come up with your own title. Look up the title in the IMDB and see when the last time it was used and in what context. If you are really attached to the title and it was a TV movie in 1978, go for it. But if you have a moving family drama do not title it ORDINARY PEOPLE because that’s just dumb. Or even WILD AT HEART – audiences have long memories and so do execs. Come up with a variation of a title you love.

Make a list of the themes within your script and then brainstorm offshoots of those themes. Go through your script pages and look for significant dialogue that you love – can you pluck that dialogue out and use it? Think of AMERICAN BEAUTY – the way Alan Ball used the imagery of the rose throughout the movie but also the perfect, beautiful way it alludes to the plot from a thematic point of view.

A few great titles I have read at production companies:

Twice the Hero
Slanted and Enchanted
Napster: Downloaded
The Last Duel

Of course I have read spec scripts with terrible, clumsy, long titles that didn’t make sense. Or titles that just lie there limply and don’t tell me anything about the script and don’t even make me care.

But actually for the most part, I think you guys are doing okay. You may have never given much thought to the role your title plays but I encourage you to do so. Here are just a few titles off the top of my head that do a great job of describing the movie.

Pillow Talk
Operation Petticoat
How to Marry a Millionaire
Adaptation
Psycho
The Exorcist
Red River
A Bridge Too Far
Toto the Hero
Au Revoir, les Enfants
Fun With Dick and Jane
Being John Malkovich
Elf
Blades of Glory
Saw
American Beauty
North Country

Can Rouge Wavers send in movie titles that remain absolutely baffling even if you loved the movie? That should make a fun list.

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The First Five Pages

The first few pages of your script are crucial. Because it is somewhere on these pages that your reader will decide that they are liking what they are reading – or not. If you don’t grab your reader in the first few pages, their interest wanes and opinions begin to form. This writer can’t really write. This script will not be good. I’m hungry. I have two other scripts to read today. Let’s just get this over with.

Can you imagine if that is the attitude with which your script is read??? It happens every day, guys.

In the first five pages of a script, I want to have at least one good laugh, one really scary, surprising or unexpected moment. I want to say WHOA – and put an exclamation mark by something that happened that is delightful, intriguing or totally compelling.

Readers want your script to be an interesting read – oh how they crave it in fact. An entertaining script makes us love our jobs. We want you to make our day; we love the thrill of discovering a great story. We love saying to our friends or partners – you wouldn’t believe the script I read today. We remember your scripts when they are good. We remember good lines and good characters.

So come out of that gate running hard, Wavers. Make sure the first few pages are packed with voice, style and originality. Make sure that you make the reader curious and want to know more. If you start off with a scene of your character’s ordinary life, you better punctuate that with something pretty cool --and fast. Sometimes writers feel like they need to write a few scenes before the story really gets going. Wrong and wronger. You have approximately three minutes to make a reader think wow, this is going to be kind of fun!

Because readers read scripts all day every day we are pretty smart. We don’t really need to see three pages of the neighborhood and its denizens saying good morning. Commit this to memory, Wavers: readers have read every script in the world twelve times. WE GET IT. I can’t tell you how often I write “I get it already” on the margins of scripts. We get it, the girl is cute, we get it the guys at the bar are drunk, we get it this is a nice person preparing for their day, we get it this family loves/hates each other. Don’t beat it to death. Make your point and move on.

Embed action within your set up. Sure, you need to establish the world, whether that be an office or the neighborhood or the Command Center of the space patrol – but make sure that within that set up, we are being introduced to the characters and ultimately, to the DNA of the story we are about to see.

The opening sequence of THE TRUMAN SHOW is a great example of an opening that piques our interest intensely so – the world is recognizable and yet so uber-normal that we know something is wrong here – what is it? Think about the opening sequence of JAWS – wow, that made us sit up, didn’t it?

The more experienced the writer, the more they know that those opening pages are like the Kentucky Derby – a pistol shot, those gates swing open and they’re OFF! If your story plods out onto the field and blinks in the light – well, that just ain’t promising.

Don’t be left in the dust, Rouge Wavers. In the first five pages, set the scene, introduce your main character, show off your voice and style, establish the world and make sure it’s all as high octane as is appropriate for the tone of your story.

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The Hook

One of the first things an agent, manager or executive will ask of your material is “what’s the hook”? You may have wondered what the heck that is. The definition seems to vary by person but the upshot is that the hook is something about the script that is centrally very simple, very cool and very original. There are many different types of hooks but here are some likely suspects:


Character hook: James Bond, Shrek, Austin Powers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Bonnie & Clyde, Psycho, Batman, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, When Harry met Sally, Clueless. Think of this as the "you talkin' to me?" category. Movies that carry a character hook are movies in which the central character is so unique that movie-goers remember that particular character for a long time, quoting him or her, etc.

Plot hook: The 6th Sense, Identity, Gattica, Jaws, Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Saw, Speed, Terminator, The Island, Jurrasic Park, The Ring, Purple Rose of Cairo, 28 Days. Think of this as the "I see dead people" category. Movies that have a plot hook are movies that have a central plot or plot twist that we have literally not seen before; a giant shark terrorizes a town, two gay cowboys have a love affair, a bus that will explode if it goes under 60mph, a video tape that if you watch, you'll die 7 days later.

Cinematic and craft hooks: Memento, the Matrix, Crouching tiger, Jesus' Son, Trainspotting, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, The Ring, The 5th Dimension. Think of this as the "bullet time" category. These are movies that have a really unique look or narrative methodology that we have not seen before. A stylized look, CG effects, super-saturated footage, jumps in time; but more than simply a look or a narrative style, the execution is intrinsic to telling the story. It's not frosting; it is a delivery system without which the story wouldn't be the same.

…You'll notice some titles appear under more than one category. True enough. If you can get your script to carry all three hooks? You are golden. But that's hard to do. That said, writers should strive to come up with a hook, that I can tell you. Because having a hook is golden, my friends, it will move your script from the bottom to the top of the stack, it will get you meetings and it might even get you sold.

Don’t despair if you don’t feel as if your current script has a hook. Don’t shoehorn absurd hooks into your coming-of-age drama by making the main character a Siamese twin – just to be different. Let the hook come to you in an organic way. But remember this: coming-of-age, romcom, horror, thriller, fantasy – whatever the genre is, seriously every story has already been told. So how can you set your script apart? By lending to it your unique voice and by looking for creative opportunities to make a familiar story paradigm different enough in its details to provide unique entertainment. Audiences crave that which they are familiar with – there are genre expectations without which your movie will not succeed. It’s not always the what – it’s the how.

As you work through your idea, ask yourself: when an agent, manager or executive asks you what the hook is – what will you say? If right at the moment, the answer is a fish-eye stare, that’s okay. What opportunities lie within your story to create a unique hook? You may have to cast about for awhile to find something that really works but the rewards for you and for your script can be huge; fish or cut bait, Wavers. Aspire to create a hook that will net you one big, drooling executive - and a WGA membership card.

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Red State Blue State

I remember distinctly the evening during which a fellow student in my writing program was told that her premise "might be a little too blue state". It seemed absurd to worry about such a thing but the group of writers mused that there were some facts to consider: a whole lotta people live in so-called "red states" and while they complain about the "liberals" in Hollywood, vote for Dubya and hold conservative views, son of a gun if they don't see movies at their local multiplex in droves. Being that we are writers, we tend to have flights of fancy and roving imaginations that don't necessarily check in at the polls before we write. But should we?

More and more Christian production companies affiliated with various religious groups create direct-to-video entertainment for their core audience. Left Behind, the apocaplytic best-selling book and dvd series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is an interesting example of the hunger that some audiences have for this type of material. Should we judge this and make assumptions or live and let live?

Having just seen THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (which the Wave-inatrix highly recommends) I am struck by the dichotomy and hypocrisy when it comes to what is and is not acceptable at the movies. Audiences have no problem watching violent action movies but balk at movies which depict homosexuality, empowered women or alternative lifestyles and points of view. Between the MPAA and the belief that a wide swath of American audiences have a limited capacity for material that falls outside of the "norm", screenwriters can find themselves limiting their imagination in order to cater to the straight-up-the-middle normalcy that audiences can handle.

But is it really true that some audiences can't handle more sophisticated material or are we making unfair and uninformed assumptions? Where exactly are we getting this information, that red staters are somehow slightly less intelligent or otherwise in lockstep with conservative Republicans in Washington? Are we being manipulated to hold beliefs about each other in order to keep some kind of political status quo in place?

Material that pushes the envelope and makes audiences think is needed now more than ever. The nation is slowly emerging from a seven year slumber to find ourselves in a war that will never end, to find that the rights of women and immigrants are being eroded and to find that the Terminator is the governor of the great state of California.

Now is the time for writers, musicians and artists of every persuasion to register our discontent and agitate for a better tomorrow. We are the visionaries; let us not be constrained by imaginary borders, red states, blue states, political parties or the Department of Homeland Security. Let us chuck the Fear Pill out the window and write stories that resonate and inspire humanity to not only reflect on the past but to imagine a better, more inclusive tomorrow and a higher good for all. Let us collectively hold audiences in higher esteem, for it is the Wave-inatrix's suspicion that there are less differences between red states and blue states than there are between the People and the Corporations. One love. One world. Fight the power, Rouge Wavers.

In The Know: The U.S. Moat

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The Dreamer's Disease

Being a writer can be a singularly frustrating, unrewarding career. It feels like shouting into the wind. Weeks, months – sometimes years go by without professional validation, recognition or reward. And yet we keep doing it and we’re not sure why. Some days, we feel ultra-charged up; happy and excited about what we’re writing and about our prospects. We feel high – we probably are high – and creatively en fuego. Other days – and sometimes for days on end – we can barely get out of bed. It all seems an exercise in futility. The story isn’t working and we feel with a certainty that we are awful writers and that everyone around us is simply too nice to say so.

Many writers literally do suffer from depression. If you are one of them, welcome to the pantheon; the list of famous writers who have struggled with it is long indeed. Is suffering an inevitable side-effect of the writing life? Does it make you a better writer? The jury is out on those questions but the Wave-inatrix does recommend that if you really do think you have depression, see your doctor about it. It's not glamorous, it's debilitating and you can and should feel better and still be creative.

But let’s assume for a moment that it’s not clinical, it’s just the writing life that sometimes gets you down. The first thing you need to realize is that all writers feel this way sometimes. And secondly, this thing, this dream we’re chasing is ridiculous. But that’s why we do it and that’s what makes writers writers and artists artists. Because against all odds we continue creating worlds on paper; ideas flow into us all the time – we scribble on napkins and matchbooks, we eavesdrop on great dialogue at the diner, we read the news and imagine a scenario which springs from it, we love words, we type really fast and we sometimes spend more time at the computer than with other human beings.

Wavers, it is a well-known fact that the odds of selling a script are astronomically high. But they are zero if you don’t try. The Wave-inatrix recommends diversifying; don’t just write scripts. Exercise your writing muscles and broaden your writing world by trying short fiction, essays or poetry. Have many irons in the fire. It helps buoy up your hope, provides an outlet and helps take the focus off of the script you sent in to a competition two months ago. I have two short stories out being reviewed for publication right now, another I’m working on and a feature script in play as well. While I try to not think about those things but rather keep writing, it is somehow comforting to think that I might receive some professional recognition on several fronts. It’s kind of like mom used to say: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Wavers, when you feel yourself down in the dumps, when writing feels a Sisyphusian not to mention idiotic task, when you are sure you should give it up and take that job at the widget factory, take a deep breath and roll those shoulders. What you are feeling is what all writers feel from time to time. All writers – published and produced included. It’s part of the job description.

Know that it won’t last. Know that the impulse to create is an honorable one and that this uncontrollable urge you have to shape words into stories is something that must express itself. And during the dark periods when you just can’t imagine writing today because it’s so pointless:

Get out of the house
Exercise
Go see a movie
Cook something delicious
Go the bookstore and treat yourself to some books

And ask yourself…

Is there anything I’d rather do?

Recommended reads:

On Writing by Stephen King

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Rejections of the Written Famous by Joyce Spizer

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The Producers

The Wave-inatrix has had the pain/pleasure/fascination and supreme frustration of interacting with not one but four producers in the past two weeks. And Wavers, let me tell you – producers are a sweet and sour combination of personality traits. They are ambitious dreamers looking for the Next Big Thing. Producers don’t see story in the same light that writers do; they view story from a profit-based and ease-of-production point of view. A producer can change your life and get your movie made. But Wavers – oy vey, dealing with them can be like walking in a moon-bounce house.

See, it goes like this: anyone with some money in the bank can call themselves a producer. One producer who shall remain nameless is a very wealthy man who’s decided, late in life to make a movie. He had the story all thought through, he had hired a crew and actors. But there was one problem. There was no script. Which is where the Wave-inatrix entered the picture. I beat out a treatment and met with the producer to discuss writing the actual script. While I argued for the necessity of more than ten days to write said script (feature length, in case you were wondering) the producer mused, in his own parallel conversation with himself, about whether it would be hard to cast the midget and whether it might be cheaper and easier to hire an animal handler and use a chimp. It’s okay Wavers, you can laugh. And this is God’s truth, by the way. The conversation culminated with a impasse; The Wave-inatrix felt that the time constraint was unrealistic and the producer held up a DVD with a blurry and indistinct cover – “See this? I wrote it in one week and it’s *&%$ brilliant.” Which is when the Wave-inatrix wished Little Mussolini well and went on her merry way.

Not all producers are alike but one must be cautious. What is their experience, what is their depth of understanding about story and most importantly how much respect do they have for the writing process? Working with a start-up producer can be an amazing experience for a writer but equally as much it can be a nightmare. Producers are budget and time-minded. While the writer is discussing concerns about the third act and character arcs, the producer’s mind is spinning in multiple directions. The communication gap can be profound.

Wait Wave-inatrix! What about being repped first?! Yes, that’s a better idea. This discussion is aimed at those writers involved in indy fare and who are willing to spin the wheel and be adventurous. Is it better to be repped before dealing with a producer – absolutely. And the Wave-inatrix would rather all Wavers did precisely that. However – there are exceptions and opportunities that might make working with a small, independent producer just the thing for some writers.*

*side effects can include: nausea, bleeding from both ears, experience, a produced indy film and a very small paycheck.

If a producer approaches you about a project of your own or rather, in a writing capacity, first make sure you are on the same page creatively. Wavers, if you think that agents or managers intimidate you – wait until you deal with a producer; they will simultaneously seduce you and put you in a camel clutch with their knee on your back. Make sure they actually do have a budget and a time-frame. And get paid in advance.

God love producers; without them, movies wouldn’t get made. But for sensitive writers, producers can feel overwhelming and intense. More experienced producers have a bit more panache and understand that the story and the writer must be treated with a modicum of respect. Newer, greener producers may move a bit fast and get ahead of themselves. And certainly, there are reasonable producers who fall somewhere in the middle. I have a producer I am currently working in partnership with to bring a script to several major production companies and he is professional, funny, passionate about the material and boy does he do his homework.

Because the Wave-inatrix wishes to have lunch in this town again, she shall refrain from going into detail about some of the other producers but suffice it to say that caution is the order of the day; Wavers if something pings for you, if you feel a producer is going too fast or not quite hearing you or not ponying up the promised funds – better to walk than to allow your project to get hijacked.

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The Importance of the Scene

If in a coverage you get a note that your scenes need work or that your “scene work” is not so good – you’re in some pretty deep poop. I have never seen a compelling script with an entertaining premise also suffer from poor scene work. Scenes are the microcosm of the script. If you can’t write a clean, compelling, unique and crisp three pages, I have to assume you also cannot be trusted to write a clean, compelling, unique and crisp script. Don’t get knocked out of the game on page one.

What makes scene work bad enough to be noted in your coverage?

Misuse or overuse of sluglines
Dense, boring action lines
Misuse of matchcuts or intercuts
Scenes that are too long; anything over 3 pages is suspicious
Scenes that are too short and exist for no apparent reason
Scenes that start too early and end too late
Scenes without a discernable point

When scene work is done well, readers don’t point it out because a good scene does its job insidiously; it entertained, it moved the story forward and it was so artful and seamless that nothing about it distracted me or took me out of the story even for a second.

A writer who has no command over his or her scene work is like a dentist who cannot operate the chair or who fumbles with the Novocaine. No good can come from it.

Make today a day in which pay special attention to each scene in your script. Pull a scene – any scene – and ask yourself:

Is there a lot of “black” (dense action lines) or is this scene pretty easy on the eye?

Does the scene start at the latest possible moment? Or is there a lot of “business” in the scene preceding the real meat of the moment?

Are you sluglines clear and correct?

Does the scene end just a little early so that the next scene can “land” more effectively?

What happens in this scene? Does the plot move forward and do characters reveal more about themselves?

Is this scene entertaining in and of itself? Is it visual, cinematic, scary or funny not just utilitarian?

Is this scene necessary at all?

And Rouge Wavers, if the answer to that last one is no – then please refer to Killing Your Darlings and plunge a wooden stake into that sucker. Do it. Do it now.

A great scene is an art form unto itself. You should be able to pull any scene from your script and admire it for its streamlined, effective, evocative and compelling beauty. Don’t ever waste a scene or write a “throw-away” simply to get us from point A to point B.

Scenes are the pearls that make up the necklace, ending at that golden clasp which holds it all together.

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World

What exactly does “world” mean when we talk about scripts? Well, world means the environment, physically, tonally, logically and otherwise, that holds the events in your story. PLEASANTVILLE, for example, is a script in which we are to believe you could possibly walk right through the television and enter a fictional, black and white town. We buy it because the tone and trimmings of the script make it something we can be comfortable with. How about BIG? Zoltar literally spits out the fortune that will enable the little boy to wake up looking like Tom Hanks the next day. How are we to buy that a carnival fortune telling machine could do this? Because Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg set up the world of that carnival such that we bought that brief moment of illogical magic. We not only bought it, we loved it.

In JURRASSIC PARK we are in a world in which DNA can be used to recreate prehistoric creatures. Sure, it was a lot of blah blah Ginger science but Spielberg set it up so beautifully that we bought it hook, line and sinker. Because, Rouge Wavers, audiences want to buy your world. That suspension of disbelief kicks in almost immediately when the lights go down. Going to the movies is wish-fulfillment; audiences are begging you to take them on an entertaining journey – in fact, they’re paying for it like an E ticket ride. We only need to give the audience one convincing poke and they’re off – fallen over the edge of suspended disbelief, believing that animals can talk, that cars and buildings can explode and Tom Cruise won’t get hurt, that there are Oompa Loompas behind those factory walls!

However, if the backdrop, dialogue, characters and tone of a script is say, very RESEVOIR DOGS in nature, then you give the audience chocolate rivers and Oompa Loompas – you run the risk of creating a schism in expectations and putting a major crack in your world through which the audience can see the parking lot which leads them to think about what’s for dinner.

It’s psychology, really. The reason we wake up in the morning and put our feet on the carpet and not into a pool of hot lava is that we expect the floor to be there. If we woke up to strobe lights and carnival music, we really wouldn’t be sure what our feet would land in but the environment would give us a strong sense that it wouldn’t be the carpet.

So what writers need to do is prime the reader (and ultimately audience) to buy what you are going to throw at them. To prepare your audience, on some level, for the magic or illogic, violence, passion or whatever will follow. I have a dear friend who has a lovely family comedy set in a quirky, slightly surreal world. Not totally surreal, just ever so slightly Tim Burton-esque. She made sure that from page one on, evidence of that quirkiness was there so that when we see on page six that champagne flows from the town’s city park fountain, we buy it.

In BLUE VELVET, David Lynch sets up the tone and world immediately with the uncomfortable close up of the human ear in the lawn. But not before he showed us the white picket fence and cute neighborhood. The tone shifts artfully and quickly. Lynch set up his world so that we know when we watch BLUE VELVET that very very bad things are going to happen – human ear bad. Had Lynch made that shift on page twenty-three he would have left us on the side of the road.

Normally a reader won’t really say anything about how well you set up your world unless you blow it. Blowing it takes the reader right out of the moment.
Contextualize your story within the environment you create, don’t shift gears on us suddenly because you’ll leave us behind. Make sure to imbue your world with the tone, images and sense of what’s to come. If one of your characters has a face which is a bunch of writhing tentacles and he simply goes to work at his law office and grabs a doughnut in the breakroom before he argues a case, I’m completely thrown – how do I contextualize Tentacle-Face? The entire time I'm watching your movie or reading your script my mind is racing - why does he have tentacles? Will other characters have tentacles? And I'm not listening to his court case and I don't care because I am irritated that I don't get the tentacle thing until or unless you contextualize it for me. And STAT. The Neanderthal in the Geico commercials makes sense and very quickly because it's a context I can grasp quickly - irony.

Setting up your world enables us to flip the switch that says: in this 2 hours, talking elephants, flying pigs or chocolate rivers are normal. World, in essence, is one big buy for the audience. If you don’t set up the world, then the audience won’t buy a thing in the store.

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Los Angeles: a necessary evil?

Thinking of moving to Los Angeles to further your screenwriting career? Imagining that it might take say, just over one year here before you’re signing confusing WGA membership forms and choosing which cocktail party in the Hollywood Hills to attend first?

The days of stepping off the train in Hollywood, eyes alight, clutching a satchel full of dreams are a sepia-toned memory. The entertainment industry has grown too big and too competitive for sentimental stories of being discovered at the gate of Warner Brothers or at the soda fountain. In fact, the starry-eyed, very young writers who uproot from afar and land in LA specifically because they think the act of simply being in Los Angeles will help launch them breaks the Wave-inatrix’s heart. There they are, hundreds if not thousands of miles from home, in a strange city where everyone is hustling something and the cold truth is that the city doesn’t give a damn about your writing ambitions and now visiting your folks on the 4th of July is a serious consideration because airfare is so expensive. Rouge Wavers, don’t put yourself in this position because you’re guaranteed to be lonely and disappointed.

Los Angeles is most definitely not for everybody. But Wavers, if you are craving an adventure and willing to give it as long as it takes, it might be the move for you. I’ll tell you what my experience has been:

Raised in Northern California, the Wave-inatrix was suckled at the teat of Hating Los Angeles. Or Smog Angeles as we used to call it. Or Smell-LA. And now, much to the dismay of my nuclear family and some friends, I live in the midst of the most shallow, smoggy, over-crowded, vain, pointless place on earth. And I love it. Back where I used to live, the tree-lined streets and brown-shingle homes, the organic bakeries and cheese co-ops all gently bathed in the fog that drifts in off the San Francisco Bay held me in its thrall for many years. In fact, somebody just remarked that I have a “Berkeley vibe”. I take that as a compliment. But Wavers, as Randy Newman said – I love LA.

I know it’s wrong and that it runs counter to everything I was raised to believe, but I recently realized, four years after my move here and after dozens of conversations during which I defended LA to its most ardent haters (New Yorkers and Northern Californians) I stopped in mid-defense and realized – but that’s just it – LA is a mess! It is a big, sprawling, dirty, crowded mess! And Wavers, after having spent the majority of my adult life in the Bay Area, it is refreshing. I know – that sounds odd. I love the Bay Area but there’s something a little provincial about it at times. It’s so clean, so ordered, so - well – somebody has to say it – precious. Now settle down! The Bay Area tends to take itself pretty seriously to which I say – get over yourselves! Nobody can argue against the fact that San Francisco is the greatest, most beautiful city in the world. Or that the Elmwood neighborhood in Berkeley is not the epitome of intellectual, laid-back, funky coolness.

But for me, living in LA feels like living a little closer to the bone. I like the busy freeways and streets in the morning as Angeleno’s head to work and face another day. We all face the same dry, smoggy heat, the 405, the constant, hovering helicopters and the imminent threat of a major earthquake. We all deal with the tourists on Hollywood and Highland and the flying palm fronds and runny noses when the Santa Ana’s kick up. We are all living together in this huge, sprawling, strange city, side by side.

In the past when I lived in the Bay Area and visited LA, all I saw were strip malls, clogged freeways and blondes with plastic surgery. Now I see the Armenian store in the strip mall, which sells six kinds of feta cheese and tarragon flavored soda. I see the murals and graffiti on the streets of East LA; I see the Latino, Armenian, Persian, African-American and Asian communities living colorfully and nervously side-by-side. I see the surfers and the actors and the people who work at my local 7-11. Yes and there are the studios and Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this town after four years but it’s clear to me that LA is way too big to be utterly defined by The Business.

As for those who cast aspersion on LA, everybody needs something to beat up on to make themselves feel better. Which is not a philosophy the Wave-inatrix has much regard for. We all hold certain beliefs about the world and we create experiences to prove our beliefs correct. I believe Los Angeles is a city as full of vitality as variety and as populated by surfers as by teachers and truck drivers. I believe there is a certain creative energy here which is palpable and I believe that Fazel at the Rose Market has the best feta on the Westside.

The bottom line is you don’t have to live in LA to be an aspiring screenwriter. That’s why we have email, the phone and the internet. But it really is an advantage, make no mistake. Relationships are everything in the entertainment industry and being here enables you to build community and to thusly network. However, the Wave-inatrix also believes there is no substitute for determination, whether you live in Kansas or Dubai or the UK; so don’t consider Los Angeles a necessary evil or a stumbling block.

Do not buy a bus ticket to Los Angeles thinking that your mere presence here will guarantee career success. There are no guarantees after you arrive except that you will develop a white-hot hatred of the 405 freeway, a deep curiosity about the line at Pinks and a keen interest in the air quality charts.

But for many, being here makes one feel like part of a struggling tribe; there’s a certain camaraderie in the collective dream seeking.

If you choose to come to LA, come for the creative opportunities and stay for the life experience. If you’re too settled in your current life for a move or just can’t imagine living here, then by all means stay where you are and find other ways to build community – whether that means plugging into your local creative community or whether you can manage to attend the Creative Screenwriting Expo, The Writer’s Studio (through UCLA) various pitch-fests or other opportunities out here in LA.

The fundamental truth is that you need a fantastic script – whether you live in Silverlake, Santa Monica or Poughkeepsie. Write joyfully and ardently, Rouge Wavers, and live in an environment that makes you happy.

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Make Nice to Assistants

Rouge Wavers, I’ll say it once, right here, up front: Today’s assistant is tomorrow’s executive. Making nice with assistants is not only a matter of courtesy and basic human decency, it can be a career move. Assistants are the gatekeepers. And they have pretty tough jobs; they work inhuman hours, they don’t get paid much and they often have “difficult” bosses. I think we are all familiar with SWIMMING WITH SHARKS.

If you could zoom through the phone and live five minutes of an assistant’s day you’d sent them warm cookies and milk. Assistants live on the phone and have to learn how to suss out the Important Call from the Bullshit Call in a nanosecond, plus monitor the mercurial mood of their boss(es) and make sure the soy latté is hot and on time – or it goes in the trash and another hellish day has begun. Some assistants are quite warm and polite – others – yeouch. Don’t take it personally. It’s not about you.

If you find yourself needing to speak with an assistant for any reason – to find out where to query, to ask if the manager or producer is accepting unsolicited material, to firm up the time of your meeting – be not only polite and understanding, be sincere and treat them like the hard-working human beings they are. It won’t go unnoticed.

After the call, write down the assistant’s name for future reference. When you call next, refer to them by name. Yes, yes, assistants cycle in and out and by the time you call next a new person might be there but make an effort. It will be appreciated and you will be remembered.

Just last Christmas I delivered gifts to two assistants and some executives at two first-look prodcos on the Fox lot. The assistants were happy to be included and when I recently spoke with one of them, he was friendly, he gave me some skinny and passed my message on to the exec so quickly that she called me back less than ten minutes later. Assistants grease the wheels and they have the skinny like nobody’s business. Skinny, Rouge Wavers, is golden in this town.

It won’t be long before a one-time assistant is on the other side of the desk from you and they will long appreciate your professional, polite and friendly treatment of them way back when – oh – nine months ago, when they were starting out.

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The Representation Myth

The most ardent wish of new writers is to get a manager or agent. This, they believe, will open all doors. And it does. Kind of. Wavers, I know from experience how much representation feels like a brass ring and how deeply we pine for it. I know it so well that a few years ago I actually accepted representation from a manager who, while she did live in LA, usually had a barking Chihuahua in the background and who, as it turned out, never got my work to anyone that she mentioned she would. I never met her in person, though I offered to fly down at meet her several times (I lived in San Francisco at the time) and was naïve enough to be surprised when, a few months later, a loud whump on the front doorstep heralded the return of all my work and a note which read: Wave-inatrix, I am done representing you. Had I done something wrong? Was it something I said? Was it that my work sucked? Wavers, I had done something wrong all right. I had chosen a bad manager indiscriminately because I was desperate to have one at all. If this manager were still working, I’d mention her name so you could avoid her but it doesn’t matter, really. Bad managers are bad managers. And they prey on writers desperate to be repped. They might charge fees for representing you. You know, to cover the copying and postal fees incurred. They talk a very big talk but aren’t actually known or respected in the industry. But you have no way of knowing that. Because all unrepped writers see is a blurry, moving target somewhere in the middle distance. And beyond it – Valhalla.

Today I am indeed lucky enough to have a respected and connected manager who has been running a marathon with a script written by myself and my partner. He believes in the script like nobody else does, through thick or thin and he never gives up. But it took me a long time to find such an amazing professional.

Rouge Wavers – two things: 1) Be selective about who reps you even if the search is long and arduous. A bad rep is worse than no rep at all. Remember, your rep serves YOU not the other way around. For some reason that is lost in the mists, this concept has been turned on its head in the perception of many. It is not thus. You should not beg to be repped. Your rep should be thrilled to have you. 2) Know this. Being repped will not necessarily change your life.

The difficult thing about this business, dear readers, is that it is a highly dichotomous one. Hope and fear. Success and failure. Possibility and things gone wrong. Creativity and cold hard business. I would be lying to you if I said that getting a rep isn’t a huge step and that it could change your life. But I would by lying by omission if I didn’t point out that it might also get you and your material absolutely nowhere. It happens.

Oh – what a depressing post, Wave-inatrix! Geez! Ah but Rouge Wavers, here’s the thing: your career is in your hands. Nobody else’s. Take charge, be the master of your own domain – I mean, destiny. Say you’ve gotten a reputable manager or agent. Fantastic. Reason to celebrate. Go out to dinner. You’ve earned this. I am in no way diminishing the level of the joy you should feel.

What I am saying is that the same powerful belief in yourself, your writing, your goals and your purpose that infused you when you wrote that great script should continue to infuse your every business decision and action going forward. Question your manager, give him or her feedback and suggestions. Continue to be vigilant about the market, suggest particular actors or producers. Be a partner in the process. Because at the end of the day – it is your material, your career and your life. A manager or agent is, at the end of the day, a broker. A friendly one, maybe even a snarky, Ari Gold one, but a broker, nothing more or less. You are the creator of the item being brokered. Don’t give up that power, stay in the know and do not rest on your laurels.

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The Second Act

Rouge Wavers, welcome back from a blessed three-day weekend after which the Wave-inatrix trusts that you feel uplifted, rested, renewed, restored and sick of chocolate bunnies and matzo. Today we jump in by considering the second act.

The second act can often feel like a vast, empty field with your various elements bivouacked, huddling for warmth around tiny fires. Your first act went well, you know what you want to happen in the third act, but oy, that second act – so much empty space, so many pages to fill. Have another chocolate bunny.

There are a few things to remember about the second act which will help narrow it down to something more manageable and one of them is that the bulk of the entertainment that you set up in the first act, will appear in the second act. The second act is most of the movie, in other words. The second act of BIG has lots of scenes that show a kid experiencing life inside a grown man’s body. That’s the upshot of the promised entertainment in BIG. So whatever your promised entertainment is – you’re going to pay that off in the second act. With lots of scenes that show: an unlikely couple falling in love, or nurses battling vampire doctors, or passengers dealing with snakes on a plane. SNAKES is a lesson in high concept for all of us, incidentally.

While the Wave-inatrix freely admits that calculating a tip is a task that requires ten minutes and a calculator, for the sake of argument, take the golden 100 page script. Your midpoint is on or about page fifty, yes? This means that, in rough terms, you have 30 pages in your first act, 50 pages in your second act and 20 pages in the third act.

The second act can actually be divided into two parts: the first half of the second act which is punctuated by the midpoint and the second half of the second act which is punctuated by the second plot point which leads us into the third act. Most screenwriting texts will tell you that the midpoint of a script should be a very big reversal or complication; the point of no return, the point at which your character will have to completely change tactics in order to reach their exterior goal.

The advantage of viewing the second act in two parts is that you no longer view it as a huge, sprawling part of your script during which god-knows-what-will-happen but rather as mini-acts unto themselves. We know that in a screenplay each scene builds upon the last and introduces or foreshadows the next. There is a causal relationship between scenes. Well, the second act is no different in context. Things. Must. Ramp. Up. In fact, here’s a quick rule of thumb, from page one on – tension is always building. Whether that is comedic, dramatic or anything else. It is headed up up and up just like a beautiful balloon. Which will burst right around the second plot point.

The second act is the real meat and potatoes of your movie in the sense that it is here that we will see the essential action, drama, romance or battles that you the writer promised us in the first act. The second act is where you get your writer on. The second act is where you show us your chops. How great will those battle scenes be? How snappy or funny will the dialogue be as the story escalates into wilder and wilder setpieces? How emotionally invested will we be by the second act?

Fear not, Rouge Wavers, the second act need not be a dark, barren expanse littered with the dead bodies of what would have been your script. The way is lit for you: the second act is bracketed by plot point one which concludes the first act, the midpoint and the second plot point which propels us into the third act. Those guideposts, along with understanding that the second act is divided into two parts, will help make the second act a more digestible, less intimidating part of your script. Set forth with courage and confidence into the charted territory we call the second act.

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Budget, Rating and Box Office OH MY

These are the three dark riders that lurk menacingly on the edges of the dreams of writers. Should we let box office potential dictate our imaginings? Or the rating our story might get? Or the cost?

If you were to write a script based on recent trade news and box office, you’d write a movie about old guys on motorcycles that talk, being chased by naked CGI Spartans who are ultimately foiled by Eddie Murphy in a fat suit.

Rouge Wavers, this is no way to write. At the same time, it is true that writers should be aware of the realities (and vagaries) of the business. To trot out that old, tired trope: they don’t call it show friends. Movies are commerce.

The Wave-inatrix feels that the act of creation and the impulse to write is almost a sacred thing. If the spirit moves you to write a sci-fi/fantasy mega-budget epic then you should write it. But be aware that the fact that you are an unproven writer trying to sell a huge budget script will most likely rule out a deal. Never say never – the annals are full of stories of movies that shouldn’t have been made and yet they were. But as a new writer trying to break in, there are a few things you should be aware of.

Production companies, unfortunately, play it safe. They are, for the most part, looking for straight-up-the-middle PG-13, medium budget crowd-pleasers. Art-house, independent, riskier material has a different market and that is a subject for another day. I am speaking to the mainstream market that most writers aim for. Writers who would like to see their work at the local Cineplex.

How in the heck do you know what kind of budget your script would call for? Well, think about this:

Locations: Are they exotic? Are there several locations? This costs a great deal of money for production companies.
FX: Does your script contain a lot of special effects? Are there expensive car chases, explosions or dangerous stunts and sequences?
Cast: Is the main character going to sink or swim based on whether the role is given to Russell Crowe? Stars drive up the costs of movies considerably.

What is the box office (or commercial) potential of your material? Should you care? Well, yes you should. Again – it’s called show business. You are asking a production company to spend potentially millions of dollars to make your movie. And what do they want in exchange? A return on the investment - box office dollars. But how do you predict whether your movie-to-be will draw crowds?

When readers are asked that selfsame question from a production company after we have reviewed a script, we ponder the blank space entitled “Commercial Potential” and we think to ourselves…

Is this a high concept script? A highly entertaining central conceit that is so simple, so beautiful and so fun that it’s a slam dunk.
Is this a tentpole? A star vehicle, big adventure with the whiff of franchise?
Is this a Sunday afternoon genre? Drama, romance, period?
Is this material HOT? Very zeitgeisty or provocative?

Rouge Wavers, examine your material with total honesty. Who is your intended audience? The Wave-inatrix actually feels strongly that you should ask this question of your material while you are developing the idea – not after having written the script. Often, I read scripts and I wonder, in total disbelief, who did the writer think was going to see this? This is material that is “soft”, dull, self-referential, weepy, navel-gazy or otherwise adolescent and it is plain that the writer didn’t get out of his or her own head and remember that audiences are wide and varied and that you have to write something universally resonant. This is a Wave-inatrix pet peeve – I call it the Self-Absorbed, Myopic Writer Syndrome and it makes the Wave-inatrix really really frustrated because movies are for AUDIENCES full of STRANGERS not YOU, your FRIENDS and your MOM. Hold on, I must wash down another sedative with my coffee.

All right, sorry. I’m back. Think calm thoughts. Blue, blue waves. Fluffy clouds. Serene fish. Swimming. Serenely.

At the end of the day, Rouge Wavers, if you feel absolutely driven and convinced to complete your NC-17, black and white, self-biopic about your struggle with sex, therapy and tapioca, the Wave-inatrix says – follow that crazy muse of yours and go for it. With the awareness that the road to develop and finance your material may be a long and lonely one. Don’t expect to be taking any meetings on the Sony lot.

Writers in the throes of trying to make it over the wall of the Citadel must rely on many sources of self-soothing to maintain the stamina required. The short list might include drinking, smoking and neurotic ranting. But writers, we need something else – the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Pluck that apple and take a big, juicy bite!

Follow the trades; watch the deals going down. Develop and awareness of trends at the box office. And then, Rouge Wavers, use that copy of Variety to line the bird cage, make another cup of coffee and write your beautiful/crazy heart out.

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Killing Your Darlings

What exactly does that mean? Oh, come on Rouge Wavers, you know. In your heart-of-hearts you know. It’s that character in the crowd scene, plot twist or bit of GREAT dialogue you just can’t let go of. It’s that scene that is just so freaking brilliant that you roll it up and sleep with it under your pillow every night. It’s that opening sequence that ROCKS and that you wrote while on vacation in Tijuana and that would RUIN your script if it got cut!

Try sitting across the desk from an executive who smilingly tells you to kill one of your darlings. It sucks, no two ways about it. But, Rouge Wavers, the experience is freeing. Because it’s usually one of these darlings that is actually gumming up the works and disallowing you from moving on and writing the scene or opening or ending that the story needs.

The story is master and the writer is the servant. Everything is always in service to the story. As in other areas of life, your resistance to killing a darling – the sheer, vein-popping, hackles raised response at the mere suggestion of it – is usually completely relative to the need for it to happen. Quid pro quo. It’s the cycle of life, dear readers.

Darlings are usually scenes or bits that you love but that nobody else gets. They have emotional importance to you – because YOUR dog from growing up used to do that exact trick, or the house in the opening sequence looks just like your grandparents house or the music you’ve written into the closing sequence is the same one that you danced to at homecoming in 1978!

Listen to your outrage and defensiveness when someone is brave (or stupid) enough to question your darling. What is that telling you? Something I do is to save two versions of my script. The one that I am currently working on I set aside, and then I go ahead and make the stupid change that some know-it-all-who-is-dead-wrong suggested. Just to see how the script responds to the change. I have been writing scripts for almost ten years and have not yet seen an instance where killing my darling did not improve the script.

How do you tell if the item in question is a darling versus a legitimate creative choice? Same way you tell if you’re on the way to becoming a professional writer versus an ego-invested hobbyist; a professional writer will listen calmly to the advice, check it out, try the page with or without the item in question, and make a measured yet flexible decision about the integrity of the moment. A hobbyist will FREAK THE HELL OUT. They become like those parents who scream spittle, red-faced at their 6 year-old’s soccer match. When you feel the blood pressure and resistance going up…stop right there and take a step back. You're probably having a darling-moment and it brings up a lot of insecure ego and fear issues. Certain Rouge Wavers are thinking oh there she goes again with that California b.s. - "issues". Rouge Wavers, I work with writers every day, all day, approximately six days a week. Believe me, we have issues. But. I digress.

As my good friend Gabriel says: When I am afraid of something – I go straight toward it.

Remember, as intimate as your script is to you, it’s not your baby once you set it out into the big bad world. A script has to stand alone independent of you and your peccadilloes; it’s very personal and yet not personal at all.

Get out your shovel and try killing a darling today. Your script will thank you and you’ve taken a crucial step toward becoming a professional writer.

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Writing the Setpiece

A setpiece is an exciting, emblematic, action-filled, breath-taking, very funny or otherwise extremely memorable moment in a movie. Setpieces are the trailer moments, the money moments, the scenes that execs look for when reading your script. When you pitch your script to an exec or producer, you will most definitely describe some setpieces. Setpieces contain the essence of your story; they are, in layman’s terms – the good parts.

Here are a few examples.

The Matrix: The battle on the roof, in bullet time
Austin Powers: when Austin is thawed out and pees at length
Jerry McGuire: Show me the money!
The Great Santini: You gonna cry?
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: I can’t swim!
40 Year Old Virgin: When Carrell gets his chest waxed
Apocalypse Now: I love the smell of Napalm in the morning!
The Departed: When Di Caprio gets his hand re-broken
Bowfinger: Gotcha, suckers!
The Graduate: Hoffman underwater in his parent’s swimming pool
The Shining: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
The Breakfast Club: the rocking out in the library moment
Ordinary People: It’s not your fault.
Little Miss Sunshine: running to get in the car each time
Zoolander: the “walk off”
City of Men: the backward-driving car chase scene
Notes on a Scandal: Blanchette headed to her son’s play while Dench has other plans
The Host: the creature charges up the beach overturning everything in its path.
Rear Window: the flashbulb defense

Really great movies are literally full of setpieces. Try to name just one good setpiece of THE SIXTH SENSE – you can’t – there are too many. How about THE GODFATHER? Too many. BLADES OF GLORY – paved with them. BIG FISH – nothing but wonderful setpieces.

Setpieces are the scenes that people talk about on their way out of the theater. Wasn’t it cool when…Remember how he…..I couldn’t believe that scene where…. Some movies have far more setpieces than others. Broad comedies like AUSTIN POWERS, BORAT, BLADES OF GLORY, etc. are almost exclusively made up of setpieces; which is appropriate for the genre. Make ‘em laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Keep asses in seats.

Dramatic movies have great setpieces too but the audience is also experiencing higher highs and lower lows than they might with a comedy so their behinds aren’t going anywhere. Suspense, action, supernatural and thriller movies have tension built into the story so there's little chance of an audience member checking the parking meter in the middle of your movie. At least - they better not. Or Houston - we have a problem.

Setpieces establish a rhythm. Check out your average horror movie: set up, HORROR SETPIECE, narrative narrative HORROR SETPIECE, narrative HORROR SET PIECE …and so on.

I’m sure we’ve all seen movies in which the trailer was the best part. Movies, in other words that were so setpiece dependent that the actual meat-and-potatoes of the script was obscured; movies like this feel as if they have no substance. So make sure, when you think about these highly entertaining setpieces in your story, that they are high points which underscore the story rather than blot out or subvert it.

Make no mistake: you need setpieces. Executives will flip through scripts looking for setpieces.

Setpieces are little golden nuggets for the audience to enjoy, they are the marshmallows in the Lucky Charms, they are the bits you go home and talk about. They can be chase scenes, they can be confrontations, they can be climactic moments and they can be throw-away comedy without which the story would be unaffected. Yet taken all together, setpieces define a movie. So what is the point today, Wave-inatrix? The point is, my dear readers, that you should make sure your script is loaded setpieces which are emblematic for your story; funny, outrageous, moving, sad, nail-biting and most of all, memorable.

Setpieces make your script…wait for it…EFFING ENTERTAINING.

For today’s RW time killer, I invite Rouge Wavers to leave comments describing their favorite setpieces.

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Just Effing Entertain Me

One of the most memorable moments of the screenwriting program I graduated from a few years back was when the ah – temperamental - founder of the program was pacing behind the classroom, chin in hand, listening to a student’s convoluted, complicated premise line. Suddenly, he slapped his hand on the student’s desk, and shouted JUST #%$# ENTERTAIN ME!

Setting aside the poor, boring student’s near heart-attack, Rouge Wavers, the lesson learned by all of us that day was huge. That's why it stands out above all other lectures and exercises I have ever participated in. So put down your Syd Field, your McKee and your Vogler for a minute and consider that you have one job to do when writing a script: just make it effing entertaining. That's all. Simple, right?

What does "entertaining" in this context mean? It means that regardless of genre, the reader (and ultimately exec) is turning the pages with a slight smile; they are lost in concentration, their eyes move quickly over the lines, they do not hear the phone ring, they do not care about anything else. Everything from the action lines to every word the characters say is entertaining. The premise is entertaining. It is engaging, in other words. The pages of your script are lively, quick, original, remarkable and delightful.

I’ve said it before, let me say it again – this is bread and circus, Rouge Wavers. Earn your bread. Dance for the reader. Dance as if your life depended on it. Dance so that the reader will not want to put your script down even for one minute.

I read a script so dull the other day that it took me three days to finish reading it. Because I couldn’t read it for more than 20 minutes at a time before my attention wandered so badly that I had to read other scripts in-between. When I read a script that entertains me, I read it in maybe an hour flat. Time stops, I care about nothing else, I am completely engrossed in the material.

Discussions about the art and craft of screenwriting can become very academic. While I honor, respect and through experience have absorbed a great deal about all that bookish stuff, I also know that the entertainment business is paperclips and glue; it is cue the moon and lower the skyline just so. It is art, it is commerce, it is Just Effing Entertain Me. If there is one fundamental principle that guides the business of making movies it is: keep asses in seats. If your script, no matter how properly executed, is dull, it bears no promise of that.

You want to earn a lot of money and see your movie grace the silver screen? You want meetings and an article about you in Variety? You want a WGA membership and to quit your day job? Then keep up your end of the bargain: write colorful, original, entertaining stories. And when you finish one and it wasn't good enough to get you over the Citadel wall - do it again. Dance, Rouge Wavers, Dance. I do it - we all do it. Keep your understanding of the business simple: it's right in the name - The Entertainment Industry - ShowBiz - Hollywood.

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Give Yourself Permission

As a script consultant and coach, I find that I play many roles. Story analyst, editor, d-girl and therapist. And what I find, consistently, is that writers are awful hard on themselves.

Good writers write bad stuff. It happens. In fact, it happens a lot - and Rouge Wavers, today the topic is giving yourself permission to write badly. Sometimes the spirit moves you and sometimes it just doesn’t. The important thing is to keep writing until you can coax the muse back.

Writers who don’t believe that they can and do write badly set themselves up for a lifetime of bitterness when they are only sporadically rewarded for their brilliant writing. They are full of a terrible combination of hubris and self-delusion. Then there are writers who are deep into the self-loathing thing and believe that everything they write is crap; it’s just that some crap is slightly less crappy. Whine, whine, whine.

Yes, the more time you spend writing – as in years – the more your writing improves. Your writing muscles become lithe and firm. But particularly when it comes to a screenplay, not every idea, character or scene you write will be golden – quite the contrary. You want to have a safety in place so that you are evaluating your work each day so that you don’t wind up with an entire script which is an embarrassment. But these are your pages and you are entitled to write ridiculous dialogue or scenes. Give yourself permission to toy with a really bad idea until it becomes apparent that it was a really bad idea. You need that process.

Something I learned a few years ago to cushion the moments when I just didn’t know what I was writing was using “placeholders” which is to say that when you arrive at a given scene in the new script you are writing and you just don’t know exactly what will happen in that scene, just slug the scene and write something like: “They argue here.” And move on to the next scene. Placehold it. You can come back to it later. You can placehold scenes, you can placehold dialogue in a scene, you can placehold just about anything. You’ll come back to it. Writing a script is like the birth of an island far out at sea. It emerges little by little, with more and more showing. Layers of lava create more substance. It takes a long time, dear writers, before that island (go with me) is the verdant, tropical paradise you had imagined. Yes? We know this.

So during the process, allow yourself to not know all the answers, and allow yourself to write some bad pages. In fact, it could be the entire script is a bad idea. It’s okay. All artists are entitled – if not expected – to sometimes create a heap of dung. Recognizing that it happens is not a problem for most writers; obsessing on it is. Let it go. Use placeholders. Know that your writing will improve with time. Yes, writers do need to check in with the reality of the market, public opinion, etc., this is not a carte blanche, damn-the-standards endorsement.

Recognizing that the material is not so good is the key to growth as you move forward; the inability to recognize it is death. So get notes from friends, get a professional opinion and/or give yourself the distance to view your work with a more critical eye.

Some say that writing is rewriting. So what does that make the writing part? Groundwork. Take the beach first. Your lumpy, rocky, little Dr. Seuss island, steaming with lava and smoke may just yet become a lush tropical paradise. Where others see terrible mistakes and a really dumb idea – you will see creative opportunities and new vistas. Or maybe you’ll see something that needs to sink back beneath the waves without further ado. Don’t judge yourself so harshly. Bad writing happens to all writers. The important thing it so honor the impulse to write - without judging the work ahead of time and the trick is to acknowledge that the material isn't so hot and to simply move on, without self-condemnation.

So make another cup of hot coffee and damn the torpedoes – the very act of creating something out of nothing is heroic and beautiful.

For more inspiring words treat yourself to zefrank at www.zefrank/theshow and search for Bittersweet - it's tops!

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