Posts Tagged ‘Script’

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Red Planet Prize – Dress Rehearsal

Monday, July 26th, 2010

I had hoped to get this out much sooner, but better late than never.  I have before on this blog discussed my own troubles with those precious top ten pages. I have even looked at some examples of great openings.  The Red Planet Prize (and many readers) judge a script on the first ten pages (although a script reader friend of mine says you can tell bad script much quicker than that).  The top ten has to set up the characters, the conflict, the story, the goals, set up the world and establish the style.  It is a lot to ask for and it needs to flow.

In this meeting of the London Comedy Writers the main issues saw the principle dilemma of the script not being readily established, we were introduced to characters, but we had no idea what was at stake. In another script there was a rush to get so much information in that the lack of planning showed up, we were bombard with scenes that would have played better being shown over a larger sum of pages.  This is often what happens in a unplanned first draft when all the ideas are bouncing around trying to get onto the page.

The best example came from Robin Bailes‘ “Empire”, this was possibly one of my favourite things I have seen in the group in a while. In his first ten pages he fully established a world, what was at stake in the episode and set up the themes for a whole series. The flaw in the script was weighting of the stories, it was unclear who the main character was and what the main story was.  Since one character was so extrovert and controlling he tended to dominate the scenes taking focus from a character who had higher emotional stakes. For a successful script we need to be able to move beyond the mcguffin and identify what the emotional journey is, what does that character have to learn and what do they stand to lose if they don’t.

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10% insperation – 90% re-write

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Thinking we cracked the story at the end of my last blog post, it still took a few days to bash the story into shape and get a consensus from the holy trinity that makes up the writing trio.

Finally it was over to me.

Armed with an all new storyline fleshed out with emotional ins and outs I sat down to tackle the new A-story a gusto usually reserved for a last minute mid-night cram session. Throwing the other plots to the side I concentrated solely on the main story that had proven to be such a bitch to get right in the previous weeks.The first step was to take the last draft and throw it out. Start on page one. Start on a blank page. Starting rebuilding the script from the foundations up.

Thankfully, far from being daunting, it was liberating, I was free to explore new areas, new sides of characters and all new scenes. The fact that the re-writing went so fast and so effortlessly is always a good sign, suddenly characters that just reacted to events were now motivated to change them.

Taking the weekend to do other things I returned to the script fresh on Monday morning and read through what was now a faster paced, more emotive script. It was also a script that had about 10% of the last draft remaining in it. Having worked on the script for some months and thinking it was close to what it needed to be, it can be a daunting prospect but throw so much away. What made this easy was knowing that the script is better for it. I know these characters so much better now and just by putting them into a scene I know what they will do.

There is still a bumpy road ahead and there is every chance that many lines I have written will be dropped in favour of better ones, but I am pumped and ready for action. Speaking of which…

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Is Good, Good Enough

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

I was hoping to write a article that followed up on my previous blog that covered the importance of the first ten pages, but what at first seemed like a simple correction rapidly began to unravel.  The more the thread was pulled the bigger the hole became until the spine of the script collapsed and I was faced with the prospect of massive re-writes.

We quickly identified the problem with the script being related to not seeing a particular character’s point of view.  The original solution was to give her more of a voice, however this just led her to looking at the action and having some kind of emotional response to it.  She wasn’t really being active and she had no problem to solve or lessons to learn.  We took the story out of the script, writing each beat up and then tried to figure out the story based on what we already had. When that failed to bring about results we started to explore what stories we wanted to tell with the character. We threw up ideas, from the predictable to the bizarre, we looked at her wants, her needs, what we wanted her to learn and what dilemmas we wanted to place before her. Ideas that worked tended to be dull, ideas that were exciting were struck down for not being emotionally driven.  Often the stakes at risk were not big enough or emotional enough. For example do we really care if someone loses a job they don’t really like?

We often talk about how our scripts have to be the best that they can be and that ‘good’, is not good enough, but we have been at this for so long that we are rapidly getting to a point where we need to wrap this thing up. We had pretty much spent two weeks trying to figure this story out with all the false leads thrown in front of us until finally yesterday after another day of writing up possibilities on the board I started to think of the quote – “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”. Maybe good is good enough. I dismissed it just as quickly as I could no longer ignore the problem we had exposed, it had to be solved and a plaster was not going to cut it. Stuck with not even a hint of the right direction to go in, I suggested we go for a walk.  Group breaks are not something we tend to take, mainly because we are never ready at the same time, but standing at a dead end we all agreed.

On the walk we discussed what wasn’t working and why we couldn’t crack this story.  We boiled it right down to the most basic story.

Act I – Perfect world

Act II – Shattered world

Act III – Repaired but new world

Understanding that, we tried to elaborate on these ideas and things quickly started falling into place.  We got back to the whiteboard and threw up the ideas and started to flesh things out.  We ended up using many of ideas the we had discussed over the previous days, but we identified the wants the needs, we knew the moments of choice and stakes for the first time seemed high.

We are still not there.  The second act still needs more exploration and elaboration, but we certainly have a beginning, middle and an end.

Of course we will rack our brains for reasons why this took so long.  Were we too tied to the story, or the restrictions of the plotlines that follow in future episodes? Were we too close to the characters or the script? Did we talk too much, did we get to complicated, too abstract, did we not take breaks to allow our minds to process information? Were there too many cooks? Who knows. When we nail that story lining will be much, much easier.

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Ides of March

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

So with time to catch up on what we wished we had done over Christmas tonight we all exchanged scripts which makes for some interesting reading and a reality check.  As the agreed deadline approached the heads bowed and the laptop keyboards received more abuse than they had in weeks.  “Can you guys touch type? Because I totally can.” was one of the few utterances in otherwise concentrated silence.

Deadlines do work damn it.  Maybe we should have hourly deadlines to encourage this frantic pace.  For the first time in a long time all three of thought we did a good day’s work. Yay us.

Not only that, we are also talking major deadlines for completing this thing. We are now publicly stating this thing will be ready in March.

Tomorrow morning we will sit down and have good read. Hopefully we will see a great story arch spanning 3 episodes and we will know we are one step closer to closing the gap on the structure issues and we can move on start putting in the gloss and sparkle.

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January 2009 – A Flashback

Monday, January 4th, 2010

About one year ago we returned from our Christmas break, December had been a relatively unproductive month, but before we parted we set some homework.  It was light homework, basically each of us had to write up in detail one storyline. Now the hard work had already been done, the story had been fleshed out into bullet points, so it was just a case of expanding on that.  When it came to Monday morning I panicked, I had done nothing.  I quickly sat down at my computer and tapped away so I would have something to show.

When we all met up I handed it over knowing it was piss poor, but something that could be built on.  Damn, someone had written it all up, but phew someone hadn’t. For me that was a turning point, I felt I had let the team down by not putting in the required effort, the fact that others had put less effort in didn’t help either.

So out of frustration a couple of us sat down and crafted a contract jam packed full of our hopes and dreams for what working in a group should really be like. Some of the stuff sounds crazy and may only have relevance to one of us; seriously “refreshments that match people’s requirements” relates to soya milk, hows that for picky.

  • WORK HOURS
    • The day starts at 10.30 and finishes 5.30.
    • Lunch break is 1 hour.
    • Breaks are permitted and rightfully needed, but shouldn’t get out of control.
  • HOME OWNER RESPONCIBILITIES
    • Sets the schedule for day.
    • Keeps order and times breaks.
    • Takes notes (as best as situation allows).
    • Provides refreshments that match people’s requirements.
    • Provides 1 meal a week.
    • Makes sure that everyone synchs up at end of the day and that notes are cleaned up and e-mailed that night (after all, they don’t have to spend the next ½ hour getting home)
  • SEMANTICS AND DISAGREEMENTS
    • In the case of ongoing disagreements someone may call “Semantics” in order to get the point resolved.
    • Disagreeing parties must listen to the mediator who will give each person time to express there point before making a ruling.
    • The ruling does not have to be agreed to, but must be honoured and respected so the process can move forward.
  • DEADLINES
    • Mini deadlines must be set on a regular bases.
    • Deadlines must be agreed on by all parties
    • All parties must do their best to reach said deadlines even if this means longer hours or homework.
  • HOMEWORK
    • On occasion homework may be set, either to help reach goals or because independent work must be set.
    • Homework must be presented without excuse.  Even if the work is incomplete it must still be handed over to fellow writers so they can keep up to date with the progress.
  • WRITERS BLOCK
    • The primary aim is to keep writing and keeping hitting deadlines. Even if work ends up not being great it must still be carried out so that least there is a base to build on.
    • When all seems lost the writers should call a “fuck it day” where they get out do something totally unrelated to the script to clear their head and have fun.
  • NETWORKING
    • We must build and maintain contacts within the industry, this includes writers, directors, producers, agents and actors etc..
    • This is also linked socialising and seeing screenings, talks and other networking opportunities.
    • Maintain a database of contacts, what we know about them, what our relationship is and how suitable they are to the project.
  • FUTURE GROUP PROJECTS
    • The ground work for future projects must run in the background of the writer’s mind.
    • Keep notes of any new ideas or expansion of old ones.
    • This should over time build into collection of treatments that are ready to go if requested.
    • Future projects must never come at the expense of the current project.
  • EARNING MONEY AND SIDE PROJECTS
    • While the project is important, earning money and fulfilling other creative outlets should not be ignored.
    • There has to be an understanding that time may have to be taken out for work.
    • These dates should be stated as early as possible to aid with future planning and forewarning of any extensions should not be left to the day.
    • There should be a clear understanding of the stake in any creative outlets and what everyone’s roles is how they are expected to be involved and treated.  Unlike the main project where everyone has equal footing side projects can be weighted differently, but never outshine the main project.
  • CONSEQUENCES and REWARDS
    • Failure to meet any of the above criteria will be met with a negative mark
    • MVP awarded to anyone who has gone above the call of duty will result in a positive mark.
    • At the end of the week the writer with the best rating gets to pick his/her choice for days at their own house.  Second place gets to pick two days and the loser gets what is left.
    • Trading for days is also allowed at the discretion of the individual writers.
  • SOCIALISING
    • In order to remember why are doing this we must do things other than work.
    • Orange Wednesdays – seeing films on regular bases.
    • Seeing theatre.
    • PS3 tournaments.
    • Sunday Roasts
    • Playing games.

All in all I think we stuck to most of this and it really helped solidify our commitment to each other and the project.  We met up again today after our Christmas break and it will be interesting to pull this out and reaffirm our commitment to one another.

Looking at the contract now it still embodies my hopes for the project and our working relationship. anyone who says that working other people is easy, are filthy filthy liars. It is hard work, you need to swallow your ego and when everyone has an opinion that is hard to do. You need to take the time to understand what is happening their lives and know that perhaps getting this monster done is not the most important thing in the world.

A year on we are still hard at it. Looking back at the trails, tribulations, fears and tears I can say that it was worth it. Although we may fight, bitch, argue, back stab, hair pull, these are a couple of my finest friends.

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New Year’s Revolution

Friday, January 1st, 2010

So December with all its glittering Christmas distractions made the end of the year slightly unproductive, which even when looking at what we have created over the past year it was still a downer way to end the year. Although I could blah on about last years regrets and missteps, I think that sort of thinking is so the Noughties.  We are in the… Tennies(?) now.

So here is the deal, the coffers in the kitty are low and I am really looking at 3 months to make this series happen. Don’t worry I am not so deluded that in those three months I think we will finish everything and sign a lucrative deal for 5 series with the BBC.  However, I do think we will finish the scripts, get real readings done, put together a kick ass pitch document and blitz anyone with money, power, vision and talent.

So this means no more slacking, focus all the way.  To help I have brought on a mentor of sorts.  He has one role and that is to demand pages everyday and slap me round the face when they don’t come.

In our small group we have often mentioned this lack of an authority figure as one of the problems we have had in not getting work done at a pace we feel we can realistically achieve. We look at the days where we have been mega productive and ask why can’t we do this everyday? The bottom line is we are our own bosses, and unfortunately we are the bosses you would love to have.

Want to start work late because it was cold outside? Fine.

Need to leave early to get ready for that dinner date at 9? No problem.

Want to sit around and play computer games? Excellent idea, we need to take a break from all this work anyway.

All of that aside, it takes a lot of discipline to do what we have done on spec. We could have rushed this through, but then it would be the same sort of stories and characters we started this to avoid. No one is paying us wages and yet we have found a way to scrape by to fulfil our dreams of being writers.

So roll on the Tennies and may they be far more productive and lucrative than the Noughties.

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Questionable Character

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

After all the work we put into developing our series, we are still surprised by the revelations we have and the mistakes we made.  First we had to re-write a major A story in episode 3, episode 1 needed re-constructive surgery on the first ten pages and the main character in episode 2 was woefully underwritten.  Since I have already blogged about episode 3, today I will turn to episode 2.

Episode 2

On reading the new draft we were struck by how absent the main character was in the script. So we went back over the pages tracking what the character did and how he was feeling in each scene and how he moved the story forward.  Taking those story notes a redraft was done and we still had the same problem. Using Final Draft’s statistic feature we were able to identify that that main character was talking for about 10% of the script, while his friend clocked in at 20% of the script.  Imagine Robin over shadowing Batman to that extent and you understand why this is an unacceptable situation. Now we started to question whether we had a bigger issue, did we need to rewrite the storyline or were we missing something.

Before sitting down to write all our storylines we spent many weeks crafting well rounded characters.  Sadly for you, our technique is a trade secret that shall only be released when I am drunk and good luck trying to understand me then. However, put basically we try to explore what the character would be like in different situations. So meeting someone for the first time would he be cocky or shy, when things are going well what are the things the character does to ensure that state. All of that provides a great tool when writing, but a problem arises from characters who are more introverted. For the character in question we had used words like ‘shy’, ‘avoid’, ‘ wet’, ‘doesn’t speak up’, ‘good listener’, ‘doubting’, ‘sensitive’ to describe him; many of these words are very inactive making it difficult for us to do much with the character. So we went back to drawing board  to explore ways we could make him active.  So ‘avoidance’ became ‘avoidance by distraction’, ‘doesn’t speak up’ became ‘ struggles to speak up’.  Then knowing the character is heavily defined by his imagination we looked at how that manifested itself in good ways bad ways.  So his imagination when used for good becomes ‘enchanting’, when used for bad it becomes  ‘makes a crisis out of drama’ or he becomes a ‘romantic fantasist’.  All these new words gave us more character to play with making him drive the plot rather than just getting pulled along by the louder characters.

So all that sounds easy, but what you miss is how much we fight over words. ‘Enchanting’ for example was a big battle, we came up with words like ‘captivating’, ‘enrapturing’, ‘magical’ but none of these words said what we wanted.  The idea was that character’s imagination is not for show, but people are drawn to him.  The other words suggested hinted at manipulation, we didn’t want people trapped by his imagination, rather we wanted the mesmerised, they could leave any time, but they don’t want to. Take that debate and now apply that to every word we came up with and you start to understand why takes a day… or not.

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Against Nature and asorted sketches

Friday, October 30th, 2009

We have a format at the London Comedy Writers that goes sketch, sitcom, sketch; occasionally we will play with the format and it is a success – such as Sketchageddon. Sometimes we bend the rules for regular members and read a play or the first 30 pages of a film script and for reasons that are not clear, it never works as well.

This week we bent the rules and allowed the first 40 pages of a feature length screenplay and it didn’t work. The main reason appeared to be that it was not a reading script, it was a shooting script loaded with shot after shot of visual details that were insignificant to the plot. Narrators kill the pace of scripts as actors rarely had a chance to build a back forth before being interrupted with more visuals. Furthermore because “smoke rings kissing the skylight” was given the same weight as water ski washing up on the shore which turn was given the same weight as pubic hair plucked from the couch the audience have no idea what is an important detail and what is glitter.

As rule people watch films and listen to TV, so it is understandable that a film script will include far more visuals than a sitcom. However, unless you are a great writer and in demand neither the director nor the actors care when you think someone should put their arm around someone else or when the camera should focus on a skylight. If you feel so strongly about these choices then you might as well direct.

The other problem with film scripts in this forum is that the audience does not get a full sense of the story, even with the last 100 pages summed up, it is not as satisfying as a reading where we get to hear the ending performed. In a way it’s sad, but we will close the door on feature scripts, it is still something I would like to explore in the future, but the LCW just is not the venue for such ventures.

Sketch wise we were on form with the tightly written Pirate Day, it knew the ending and wasted no time getting there. PC Hulk explored too many ideas and doing so lost its sense of purpose.

An interesting meeting to be sure and the feedback from those in attendance was some of the best thought out and delivered I have see in a long time.

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The Fallen Soldier

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

For many months we all worked together every day, bashing out ideas, storylining, brainstorming, writing, editing, arguing, fighting, stabbing… well you get the picture. The important thing is that we were working as a team.  Then we assigned individual episodes and we went our own way. We all locked down to focus on our own scripts. The expectation was that one of us would rush ahead, speed write and return with a Lord of the Rings style epic, one of us would plough through without proof reading leaving a script that might have been 5 pages longer had all the missed out words been included.  The final one would be slower going, but practically perfect in everyway.

The reality wasn’t too far from this, the first was finished ahead of the others, the second was missing words and the other… well that was taking time, because perfection takes time. So when second drafts were being produced for the first two scripts, a first draft was still in the writing for the third and but then life was getting in the way with the most selfish acts of nature adding an extra burden. What does it matter when the first two scripts are going great with third drafts and rehearsed readings on the horizon?

So episode 3 arrived, and you can read about the issues here. Put basically the main story wasn’t working and although there was no finger pointing at the time, as the episode headed for its first rewrite it was noticed by everyone how quickly it was getting re-written. This script was receiving a 75% rewrite so why something that took months to originally write was now nearly finished in a fortnight was turning heads and causing us to ask, “Why wasn’t it this fast last time?”

The truth is, as we know, the main story didn’t work and writing a story that doesn’t work is nearly impossible. So as the writer fell further and further behind, there was no cry for help because they should be able to fix this problem. Meanwhile the other writers running ahead didn’t look back to see why the fallen soldier was struggling to keep up, maybe that writer is just lazy or procrastinating.

After months of working together on everything we split apart and became selfish about our own work. We didn’t ask each other for help, but then no one asked if we needed help either. Episode 3 arrived after a heavy rewrite and there was no doubt that it was much improved. The new storyline worked a treat, the characters and the action was more active and although it was not practically perfect in every way, the fallen soldier was up and running with comrades either side giving a helping hand to mount the obstacles.

———-

Of course things are not always as simple as they seem and I have left many nuggets out of this story to make it palatable for you readers. I am sure my writers in crime have a slightly different opinion of what took place before, during and after; but they can bite me.

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Back to the Drawing Board

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

I started writing this blog after countless months of character studies and storylines, so I never got write about those head banging processes, just the tasty side of writing, the dessert if you will. But this week we were hit with a depressing revelation, one of our carefully crafted storylines in episode 3 (also know as the Widow maker) just wasn’t working and what hoped would be a quick fix turned into rewriting the storyline from scratch.  On the down side we had to go through that stressful process again, on the plus side it is fresh in my memory so I can write about it.

Day One

We identified problems with the main story, the ending wasn’t working… and the beginning was struggling, luckily we all agreed on those points… this consensus would be  rare treat over the next few days.

Day Two

Realising that there would not be a quick fix we turned to our trusty whiteboard (quite possibly our  most useful tool in writing this series). We started by writing up the beats of the current storyline, brainstorming ideas what we could do to the fix the problems. We examined character motivations, looking for a way to make a story about subtle manipulation more active, we threw in new devices, altered the story around the plot points we liked from the original. There was loud debate as we all tried to inject our emotional bias into the story.  After several hours of head banging we finally ended up with something 2 out 3 of us were relatively happy with. However, this is not how we roll, if there is a dissenting voice, that voice must be heard and quelled. On this occasion it was my dissenting voice, I looked at the storyline and could not get past the fact that what we had ended up with was half our original story and half an all new story. At that point we were at the end of the day, tired from fighting and decided to pick it up the next day.

Day Three

Sitting down we looked at the board, we read out the story and since nothing had changed from yesterday I still wasn’t happy.  Whether we like it or not we needed to start from scratch rather than building a new storyline on the bones of an old one. So we started again, this time we knew our in point, we knew the emotion of the our end point and we knew that we could only use 3 characters, since others were busy with their own stories.  We wanted Character A to have something over Character B that would be so powerful it would make Character B do Character A’s bidding.  We had really struggled to find something we were all happy with, then someone remembered a storyline that we tossed around in the very early stages of the game.  The device was perfect and from dissent came universal agreement. The storyline very quickly wrote itself, with the same heated and passionate discussion, but with an agreement that we were all heading in the right direction. It had been another day, batter, bruised and tired, but we were certainly feeling better about it.

Day Four

We looked over the storyline again and were feeling pretty good, it was certainly better than the one we had before, more active, higher stakes and more personal. The ending still needed work and again heated debate came out. One of us can get particularly passionate guy and in the heat of debate he doesn’t phrase himself in the best way (we all have this problem, so I’m not picking on him… well I am, but just in this instant, to even it upm one of us can sound condescending and I sit silence being negative or not contributing anything… apparently.), so sometimes two of can find ourselves arguing with a passionate person who sees is projecting their own feelings on to another character who would not act the same way.  In arguing with him about that character we ignore that genuine concern. In this case he could not understand how Character C would not be angry at what Character A had done to Character B, but Character C is mellow and forgiving, it says it right there in his bio next to “hugger”.  This was an obvious win for us, but their was a point.  Character B would not understand how Character C could be so forgiving and that would need to be conversation those two characters would have to have and it was a beat we had ignored and were not hearing.

And Finally…

Ultimately the writer had mixed feelings at the end of the day, she knew the story was better, but she now faced a 70% rewrite of her script. It is bitter sweet, but hopefully endemic of why this writing has taken so long. Never settle. No matter how frustrating it maybe, we don’t settle, we don’t fudge, we don’t turn a blind eye. When all is said and done this should be the best we could have made it.

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