More About The Cards...

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?