I don't believe you really have to suffer for your art. I just don't buy it. So creating these cards shouldn't feel like your performing an apendectomy on yourself.
Here's what I suggest:
First, just write down every scene that you see. Hopefully this will give you 5-15 cards right off the bat, and hopefully you'll have at least one at the beginning and at least one at the end.
Also, these cards represent aproximately 3 pages each. So try to think of the action in 3-page chunks.
And your sub-sub genre gives you the story beats for some of your cards, even if you don't know specifically what those beats are.
An example:
Say you've only got one card: "Jenna and Michael make love in the park." That's the ONLY card you have. You want to write that scene, and that's the reason you want to write the script, to write that scene.
Okay, if your sub-sub genre is Romantic Comedy -- just off the top of my head -- then that structure insists upon certain scenes. "Boy Meets Girl", "Boy Falls In Love w/Girl", "Boy Can't Be w/Girl", "Boy Sacrifices To Be With Girl" and finally "Boy Get's Girl".
So with the one scene, then these obligatory scenes, you've got 6 cards right off the bat. More than that, these scenes suggest a loose structure that gives you an idea where your scene in the park fits into your movie. (My guess is that it's somewhere after "Boy Falls In Love w/Girl" and before "Boy Can't Be w/Girl".)
Okay, good start. Now it's Day 2 and you need 5 more cards, but you have NO IDEA what comes next.
Okay, first note that the schedule says "5 cards created or ALTERED" each day. You have the 5 generic story beats, you can try to make them more specific. How do Jenna and Michael meet? Why can't Jenna and Michael be together? Why are they in love? What will Michael sacrifice? Should it be Jenna who pursues and sacrifices for Michael instead?
Good stuff to think about!
Then, as you get to know Jenna and Michael and their situation more scenes will occur to you. As they do, make cards!
Don't worry about structure right now. Be mindful of it, because it will help you create more cards. For instance, you know that you need 2 Plot Points to end Acts I & II. You can simply write "Act I Plot Point" and "Act II Plot Point" on cards and that gives you 2 cards if you're having a particularly non-creative day. You can figure out what goes on those cards on another day, for today you've made your quota.
If you're REALLY stuck you can just right crap. Write something that seems like maybe tomorrow or next week you can turn it into something.
Like "Jenna works as a vet". Maybe when you come back to it in a few days you'll be able to think of a funny or charming scene with Jenna healing sick animals. Or maybe you'll realize that Jenna's not the vet, Michael is, and the way they met is that she had to bring her pregnant cat in for a checkup, because her usual vet was closed down for illegal squirrel trading.
You know, the sillier you get when your stuck, the easier it will be for your Creative Flow to unstick. Leave yourself notecards that will make you giggle when you re-read them tomorrow or whenever. This isn't school, it's supposed to be playtime! Unclentch and have some fun with your work... You're likely to do more of it and better!
Oh, another trick to creating cards is looking out for setups and payoffs. Go through what you've written and see if maybe you've set something up that needs to paid-off later. If you have, then that's another card!
Also, if any of your cards have moments that are supposed to be impatful, make sure you have the scene that sets that moment up. If a stranger walks up to you right now and says she's pregnant, you have to study her expression and tone of voice to decide how she wants you to react. Does she seem happy about it, or scared, or what? But if your close friend has been telling you about how she and her husband have been trying to have a child, but it's taking a while, and she's not certain it's ever gonna happen, and she really wants it to... And THEN she walks up to you out of the blue and announces that she's pregnant you know EXACTLY how to respond! In fact, you don't have to worry about it at all because you will naturally respond in the appropriate way, spontaneously.
Don't ask your audience to figure out when they're supposed to be excited or scared or charmed or laughing. Because they won't. What you want to do is FORCE their response. You create a scene (or scenes) that sets up the big emotional moment -- not foreshadowing or anything heavy-handed, but that sets up what everyone important in the movie wants and doesn't want to have happen -- so that when you spring your big surprise, the audience is not only surprised, but they feel somehoe INVOLVED IN what's happening.
You know why bad horror movies and bad action movies don't work? Because lazy filmmakers (sometimes writers, sometimes directors) are trying to make the Big Moments do all the work. They think a big explosion or a grizzly death will satisfy the audience. But if the audience doesn't care about the person being murdered or blownup, then they really aren't impressed with the sfx.
So there are some cards for you to create right there: What are your Big Moments (that make the audience gasp or squeal or cheer or whatever) AND what are the scenes that will give those Big Moments emotional meaning for the characters?
Okay...
When you have your 40 cards go back and review structure basics, this time with an eye toward which cards you've already and how they can be rearranged or altered in order to fulfill the inherent structural requirements of a feature-length screenplay.
See, THIS is why you want to do the cards first... It's SO MUCH EASIER to rearrange and rework general (or even specific) notions of a scene than to discect dialogue and action decription that you're all in love with. PARTICULARLY if the action and description happen to flow well from scene to scene. If you're a good writer, then the seams between scenes will disappear and it will be harder to take one scene out of context from another.
But when you're just shuffling cards around, you feel free-er to play and experiment.
Also, when you've got the 40 cards in an order that you like, start looking at the flow in 10-card intervals. Look at the first half-hour of the movie, then the second, and on. How do the 20-card units work? Are they mini stories within themselves? You don't want Act I to feel like it's just a half-hour setup for Act II. And youdon't want Act II to feel like you're killing time until you're ready for Act III. Every section of the story should be fun (in it's own way) and fascinating, and you should be excited about it before you sit down to write the actual pages.
In fact, you'll KNOW when you're ready to write the pages. You just will. You'll see the whole movie in your head by the time you sit down to type the first "FADE IN:". And the whole movie, and every scene in the movie, will be REALLY COOL! And you'll be all proud of yoursef, and you won't be able to wait to finish writing the script to show your friends -- but not because you want them to tell you it's good, you KNOW it's good! They don't even have to tell you. You'll just be excited for THEM. Like when you see a great movie and you tell them "You HAVE TO see this movie!" It'll be like that... You'll feel as though this isn't even YOU'RE script, just some great script that... Well, that you get to PUT YOUR NAME ON! :D
Anyway...
I'm spent for now. If I think of more, I'll make another entry.
BTW, as I type this I'm on schedule with my cards. Are you?
Look, Stephen King will tell you to just write your story until it's finsihed, and then fix it in rewrites. M. Night Shamalan and Joss Whedon learned to write by just writing drafts upon drafts upon drafts of a screenplay until they were ready to move on. If you're reading the free advice of a screenwriter who has sold nothing and has no credentials AT ALL, then you don't havethe patience and/or dedication those guys do.
Neither do I.
And that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Screenwriters have to be able to write FAST. And the secret to writing fast is KNOWING WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE BEFORE YOU WRITE IT.
So put away your keyboard and rip open a fresh pack of 3x5 index cards. This is where the REAL work begins.
Now, the entire reason for me writing this section of my bog is my frustration with professional screemwriters and/or professional screenwriting gurus and what they DON'T tell us. They give us wondeful information about how to make a bad screenplay good, but they tell us shamefully little about how to get the bad screenplay written in the first place!
THIS is why you're reading this blog! You've got an idea for a movie and you want to know what comes next.
Okay, well what comes next is you make your 3x5 cards. THEY tell you what comes next. And if it's not GREAT (rmember what I said about being your own Bullshit Meter?) then YOU CHNAGE THEM. If the story beat is great, then you move it. If it's weak, you replace it with a better one.
Here's the deal: Writing books tell you to set a peson goal for how much work you're going to do everyday, and then stick with it. If you're like me (and if you've read this far you probably are) you're having difficulty with that so-called "Discipline" thing, but you're dedicated enough to seek out my advice. (Hopeing against hope that SOMEONE will show you another way! Well, here's you Other Way...)
Okay, J. J. Abrams utilizes a techique of filling up 40 3x5 cards for feature-length stories. 10 for every half-hour. (If you can't do the math yourslef, that's 10 cards each for Acts I & III and 20 cards for Act II.) Despite what Syd Field says, you can pack those cards as full as you want to, but you have to have 40 GOOD ONES before you can start writing your screenplay pages.
The point is this: How much does it suck to be joyfully writing dialogue and description, t=and then suddenly curse and explain "What the fuck happens next?!!" Ever have to write an article or email or even sign a birthday card and just be startled catatonic because you don't know what to say?
This stpe prevents that from happening while you're writing pages.
I mean think about it: You LOVE writing! There are few greater thrills for you IN THIS LIFE than allowing words to trip cleverrly off your fingertips onto the keyboard! So why DEFILE that joy with multiple memories wherein the words simply wouldn't trip?!!
You want to be a writer? Then hold sacred the memories of writing. Allow that ALWAYS to be a joy for you!
And the answer to "What the cuck happens next?!!" is simple: Plan it out first.
See, the reason I'm even bothering to write this sction of my blog is that books and teachers have told me how to schedule my time as I write -- 5 pages a day, or 10 pages a day, or 2 hours a day, or however-much-time-I-can spare a day -- and THEN told me that Preparation Time is invaluable... But they never defined what Preparation Time was. Then I'd hear Creative Screenwriting Magazine interviews wherein professional screenwriters would tell me that if they had 6 weeks to deliver a draft, 4 of those were spent in Preparation Time. (OR, in the very EXTREME case of the main screenwriting team for X3, they were given 6 DAYS to complete a draft, but were able to do it because they had "an extensive outline" of the movie to work from...)
But they NEVER elaborate on the preparation Time schedule!!! Obviously THAT'S where the "magic" happens! How about sharing some of that Magic Fairie Dust with THE REST OF US? And letting US fly, too?!!
So I made up my own 3x5 card schedule.
Like I've said in previous entries, I have all the tools a professional screenwriter has (all but the MOST IMPORTANT one, EXPERIENCE) and I know that because I recently wrote a short script that I KNEW (remember what I said about your Bullshit Meter?) before we submited it to a CSM short screenwriting competition is GREAT. (Best Short Ever? We'll see after it's made... But it's GOOD, and I KNOW that.) I observed the process of writing that with my brother and one of our director/producer best friend/collaborators, and I saw how that came together -- with an amazing ammount of ease and effortlessness -- and I know the tools I used and how I used them.
But since it was a short, it didn't have the inevitable weight and cumbersonme-ness of a feature film.
So, if you trust me -- and if you don't stop reading, because the fact that this workshop is free necessitates a certain degree of trust in me for you to get more anything more than your money's worth from it -- then you'll trust that I've developed some proficiancy with my own Bullshit Meter, and have at least SOME basis for my judgement calls.
So anyway here it is...
Based on what I've read/heard about professional screenwriters' habit, I came up with the following 3x5 Card schedule:
Create or Alter 5 3x5 cards a day.
You want to do this until you have 40 GREAT 3x5 cards.
Now, if you don't know "What comes next?" then simply thing about it in the time you have alloted for writing, and give your best guess. The cards you create don't have to be in order. Just think about what Story Moments or Story Moves you need and write them on a 3x45 card. "Hero gets taken" is a perfectly acceptable card.
And here's why...
You won't be able to write the pages until you can envision the movie. And YOU KNOW when you can envision the movie well enough to write the scene/sequence.
So until you can write the scene for EVERY SINGLE CARD, you "alter" it. You think about HOW it will play until you can write a new card with more detail, or -- if you see every beat of the scene already -- you rearrange it among the other scenes until it plays with the most dramatic impact.
OR... replace it with another scene that both fulfills the story obligation and the emotional Moment the audience needs to FEEL the movie.
The point is that with all the detailed thinking you're doing about the movie, you're keeping it in Broad Strokes, which means that you're more willing to sacrifice a scene for the betterment of the WHOLE STORY than you would be if your were writing the pages. ("But how can I cut this scene?! Did you read that LINE?! That line's gonna be in the traikers!!!") You're managing the story from a perspective that makes the whole story more managable.
You feel like you don't know how the sentecne "Hero gets taken" is gonna play precisely? Okay, then write the scene. But DON'T SAVE IT. Write the scene, parse it for the main thrust of it, then create (or alter) your 3x5 card. But don't commit yourself to the specific words and.or s=actions you used to create the scene. You're exploring right now, PLAYING. You're having fun and flexing your creative muscles. Don't marry yourself to the specifics yet... There may be something younger and hotter and more nubile out there when the time comes. Write the pages, captuer the most important parts on the card, then delete the pages.
Look, you're gonna rewrite this script 3 or more times BEFORE you sell it. Then God only knows how many times the Studio/ProdCo will have you rewrite it (for pay), so just GET USED TO the fact that you're gonna be rewriting this thing! (If you can't get use to this idea, then go be a novelist and -- sincercerely -- good luck to you; but don't forget this 3x5 card thing because it can help you out there, too.) Right now the best way for you to envision a scene is to let it play out on the page, and that's fine! (Really!) But don't dellude yourself into thinking that EVERYTHING you write is golden. Some stuff you write is just "warming up" and that's what these pages at this stage in development are.
So write them, create your 3x5 card, and delete them. If you wrote anything that's REALLY genius, you'll remember it. (Hell, make a note of it, if you really want to; Just do it in a notebook or journal, something that doesn't MARRY you to those words/phrases.)
So your schedule is 5 cards created or arranged a day until you have 40 cards that REALLY ROCK all together.
When you have those, join me for the Next Step.
Btw, this is the stage I'm on as I type this, so it may be a while before I join YOU in the Next Step... Just thought I'd let you know. ;P
My brother and I have access to financing to make our own movie -- with our 2 INDESPENSIBLE director/producer best-friends/collaborators -- WHEN we have a finished screenplay worth shooting.
So he's working on a comedy and I'm working on a comedy and a horror, and even though we're helping each other we both keep running into Writer's Block. (The dreaded "What happens next?!!" question.) He knows McKee and he's read Iglesias, plus he's listend to me ramble on about all the shit I're read and heard for 14 years. He's even heard Joss Whedon, William Goldman, Karl Iglesias and David Koep speak IN PERSON, and he STILL bumps into Writer's Block. (If you don't know who ALL those people are, go find out. I'll be here when you get back.)
And then I remembered something I had read from a few different sources: Write what you know.
Now, when Stephen King says it he's talking about jobs and people and situations you're familiar with. (He's a novelist primarily, with decades of experience under his belt, so he doesn't write the same way you and I do.) But if Shane Black or Joss Whedon say it, their talking about Genre.
Joss Whedon says that he doesn't know how to write otuside of a genre -- despite the fact that he's famous for his ability to blend genres in the most impactful ways -- and I believe what he means is this: Genres contain very specific needs and cliches. When audiences go to see, for example, a horror flick there are certain NEEDS you as the writer have to fulfill and certain CLICHES you as a writer MUST avoid (lest you be scorned by any true fan forever).
Now, the camp version of a genre is different in that you WANT TO hit those cliches and really play them up. If you're a writer of camp, go away. Now. I can't talk to you. I'm serious, I may become violent. If you can't emotianlly commit to and revere a genre, then STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THAT GENRE!!! And stop annoying us true fans!!! You bastard!!!
Sorry...
Anyway...
Now, of the movies you watched growing up and watch avidly now, many will fit into a specific genre AND into a specific sub-genre. THAT is the genre you know. No research necessry, you are an expert on the sub-genre.
For instance...
Of the 3 movies Brian (my brother) and I are developing, 2 were comedies and 1 was horror. Those are their genres.
But Brian and I are still trying to work out the sub-genre of his movie. It could be called Sci-Fi Comedy, but that's not nearly specific enough. He still wonders what to do with Act II (which is the meat and potatoes of every movie... That's what the audience goes to see. That's 1 hour out of 2, the second hour being divided between Act I and Act III.) But since he doesn't know his sub-genre, he really doesn't know what to write to fill up 90 minutes-2 hours.
Same with me.
I have an Ensemble Comedy, but I haven't watched enough of them to know their essential necesry story beats or the cliches I have to avoid, or turn on their heads.
And my other script, the one that fits loosely into the Horror catagory, I don't know "What comes next?!!" I have a GREAT beginning, but I don't know specifically how to end it or what the middle hour is.
So then I remembered about Whedon not being able to write outside a genre (and by that I think he really meant a "sub-genre" or even "sub-sub genre") and I decided that Brian and I might do better if we wrote a Slasher Flick.
The Slasher Flick is a 1970s/1980s sub genre of the Horror Flick. It deals with a group of young people trying to escape a vicious killer. THAT'S your Act II. Act I is setup and act III is payoff. But Act II is young people trapped somewhere and a vicious killer is pursuing them.
We know those beats.
We know the cliches.
We GREW UP on Slasher Flicks! I was a Jason Voorhees fan and he was a Freddy Krueger fan. We both watched ALL the movies in our respective series, including the REALLY CRAP ONES and we both know why the bad ones didn't work and -- often by contrast -- what makes the great ones great!
The problem we are bumping into with these other stories is this: We're Creative People. Creative People tend to want to work outside their comfort zone. We want to grow and strecth and do something nobody's ever seen before.
But the problem is that sometimes we stretch too far. And we either bulldoze our way through it, or we get Writer's Block.
If you're reading this, I suspect you're a victim of Writer's Block.
So take it down a notch. Yeah, people might revere you more if you wrote the most original movie EVER CONCEIVED... But be honest with yourself about your abilities. Maybe you're not ready to write that movie. Maybe you have to watch and familiarize yourself with more Most Original Movies Ever Concieved before you can contribute to that sub-sub-sub-sub-sub genre.
What do you KNOW?
Like, BY HEART?
The last time you saw a movie and the audience gasped in shock, but you saw that Move coming, what sub-sub genre was that? THAT'S what you KNOW.
Write THAT.
Look, we want to be spectacular writers, obviously. We want to be the best in our field, natch. We want to be the Rod Serling or Joss Whedon of our generation, of course! But they started somewhere. And they DID NOT start at the top.
Right now, we want to be PROS... We want to get paid for our work. We want to be paid to do what we love to do. (Love it so much we'll spend 14 years and $1,000s studying it.) Turn on your Bullshit Meter now because you won't get there wandering off into territory uncharted by you.
"But what if I get pigeonholed as a Slasher Flick (or whatever genre you know by heart) writer?"
Then you take the money you made writing Slasher Flicks and you start up a small business that allows you do do something else you love. You think KISS always wanted to be KISS? Listen to MUSIC FROM THE ELDER; they wanted to be Pink Floydor The Who for a while. But then they realized what they do WELL and they decided to get back to it. If (dear God PLEASE) you ever find yourself stuck in a rut because you're TOO SUCCESSFUL doing a specific thing, check your gut and make a decision. Switch careers or get abck to it. Life is too short for regret or indecision.
So find your structure -- like being a writer, your sub-sub genre has probably already picked you -- and get comfortable with it. THIS is how you make a great screenplay that people will enjoy reading and will make you your first fat paycheck. (Well... fatter than any paycheck you've seen so far, anyway.)
When you've come to terms with this, join me for Step 3.
Okay, if you're reading this, you probably have a concept. Use the tools I provide to make it GREAT. If you don't have a concept, that sucks for you. I'll give you tools that will help you develop one, but the heavy lifting is all you. (It always is when you're a writer. And if you've made it past my Introduction, you're a writer. Sorry to be the barer the bad news, lol.)
Karl Iglesias suggests that our concept needs to be UNIQUE and FAMILIAR. AND he tells us how to do it.
The unique part is the Main Problem of our movie. A New York Cop is trapped in an L. A. sky-scraper by terorists, for instance, is the Main Problem of DIE HARD. An archeaologist is sent to find and obtain the Arc of the Covanent is the Main Problem of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARC.
Think about 3 of your favorite movies right now, and locate their Main Problem.
Do it. I'll wait.
Okay, now the familiar part is -- according to Iglesias -- the central Emotional Struggle the protaonist has to endure while solving the Main problem. DIE HARD: The New York cop's ex-wife (whom he still loves) is in the skyscraper, too. Indiana Jones has to rescue the Arc of the Covanent before Hitler and the Nazis use it to take over the world.
Okay, those same 3 faves of yours, track down the central Emotional Struggle. Go.
Back already? Cool.
You need to be able to condense your concept into 2 sentences that grab the attention of anyone you tell it to. TWO sentences. If you can't do that, you're not ready to start developing your movie.
Stories are made up ove Plot Moves and Moments. The Plot Moves (or "Moves") are the cool scenes where the audience jumps or cheers or cringes or whatever. The Moments outline your character's emotional journey through the story. Moments are WHY the audience jumps or cheers or cringes or whatever at the Moves.
If you don't know this already I don't think I'm going to be able to help you much, but the CORE of your screenplay -- what will make it GREAT (and will make it SELL) -- is the emotional journey of your characters. Film is an emotional medium. Iglesias calls us, in essence, Emotion Dealers. The audience watches TV and goes to the movies to experience intense blasts of emotion.
So all the shit you've got blowing up and all the cool gadgets you've created, they mean NOTHING without the emotional ride. Don't believe me? Go watch BATMAN & ROBIN, then watch BATMAN BEYOND. I mean, yeah, BATMAN & ROBIN is gayer than gay, but that's not why it fails. It fails because you're not emotionally invested in the characters. I read the novelization of the movie before it came out and LOVED IT! I saw the movie and (knowing what the screenwriter intended versus what the director actually provided) enjoyed it a lot more than any of my friends.
Another great example: SERINITY. I took my Super-hot Best Friend traci to see it and she has NO INTERST in sci-fi for sci-fi's sake! But she didn't hate the movie!!! She enjoyed it, actually. Sje wouldn't seek out the dvd to watch it again, but if anyone aksed her "You think SERINITY's gonna be good?" she would say 'Hell, yeah! Go see it!"
The reason is that Joss Whedon understance the importance of the emotional journey, and its relationship to the "cool scenes". He KNOWS that the emotional journey is what makes people think that the cool stuff is cool... and without it, the cool stuff is silly or even boring.
So...
Now go do some thinking and/or reading and join me for the next step.
I'm going to do for you what NO ONE ANYWHERE would do for me: I'm giving you a free online screenwriting workshop!
You wanna write a script that sells?
Okay, let's do it together. I'm calling myself a first-time screenwriter because I have yet to write a script that sells, and have only written crap screenplays read by my friends or, on a couple of occasions, by screenplay competition readers. But I can say confidently and without fear of arguement that I have NEVER written a QUALITY feature-length screenplay. I've written a couple of good shorts, but not a feature.
So if I've never written a decent feature, then why do you want to follow my workshop?
Did you read the title? It's FREE. But more than that, I have been studying screenwriting -- THOROUGHLY, probably more thoroughly than you -- for 14 years. I've read all the greatest books on the subject, and most of the mediocre-to-poor books as well. I possess all the tools to be a GOOD professional screenwriter, I just haven't written that first great screenplay yet.
I believe I have just begun it now.
And, frustrated by the fact that the people I have paid to help me haven't gotten me there yet and therefore I have to do it on my own, I've decided to bring you along with me.
If you want to come.
I require a few things from you, though, and if you're not willing to conceed to them then stop reading now.
I need you to turn on your Bullshit Meter. YOU have to be THE BEST judge of your own material. If you think it's good but desire someone else's verification IT'S NOT GOOD YET. This is a lesson that took me YEARS to learn, and something professional screenwriters varified for me AFTER i figured it out for myself.
When your work is good enough, you KNOW it... You FEEL it. So if you're looking for critiques, you either know your work is sub-par and are hoping to hear that it's not, or you know your work is good and you're just looking for praise. Both are wastes of time. I'm not kidding you and I'm not being harsh. If you listen very, very closely you will "hear" within you whether or not your work is good enough. (This is our first feature, so "good enough" means "better than we've ever done so far". In other words, good enough to be GREAT to someone who can't, themselves, write a feature-length screenplay. We, sadly, will never be 100% satisfied with our own efforts. It's the nautre of being human.)
I will also require you to be your own hand-holder. I am not available to tutor you or offer you moral support beyound whatever I end up writing in this blog. I've got my own script to write, and a little bit of a life outside that, lol. Besides, you're the one who wanted to be a writer! You knew this was lonely work when you chose it... or, rather, when it chose you. We are in this together in a spiritual sense, not a practical one, lol.
Besides, where are you NOW, as I do my work by myself?
Finally, I need you to play Cacth-Up. I only have time to tell you what I'm doing as I do it. I don't have time to fill in any gaps in screenwriting theory that you have. I'll tell you what I'm doing and why, but if you don't fully understand it it's up to you to read the works I'm refering to.
It sucks, yes. Sorry about that. I believe that when I started this blog I listed some great resources to give you an exceedingly firm grasp of writing theory. Track that entry down and get ahold of whatever you haven't read yet. Trust me, even if you end up buying 20 books and reading them all to keep up with me, you will not have spent a tenth of the money or time I've spent learning to write like a pro.
If you don't believe me, don't read me. There's no reason for you to.
