A Plot to Take Over the World

Man, I suck at this.

But not as much as Blair, who hasn’t posted in I don’t know how long.

We love you, Blair.

Here is how bad I am at blogging: I posted an entry when I was at 110 pages on the most recent script, but I failed miserably to say anything at all when I finished the damn thing a few days later.

At 147 pages, it was a notable achievement, but did I get out the blogging tools and carve my triumph in netstone?

Nope. But I did give it to my mom to read. Take that, Other, More Consistent Bloggers!

So it’s been a couple weeks (and more) since that time, and I have a choice in front of me.

I could start work on draft 2 of The Other Woman (as it is currently labeled). Or I could continue fixing the plot of How to Date Your Cousin, on which I have been spending much thought.

I had some talk with Greg on the subject of said plot, and I feel as though I fixed a fundamental character issue that sparks further possibility for the script.

Here is the problem with this, however. While some people can spit out plot points and setpieces as if chewing raw story tobacco, I am not some people.

I have problems with plot.

I especially have problems with funny plot. Stupid romantic comedy.

You would think that with some great character types and a really quality situational premise, it would be easy to come up with some hella-funny scenes, but this is actually quite difficult for me.

So I could spend all my time thinking about this desperately ailing plot,

OR

I could bump it back into the subconscious to work on the thing for which I actually have ideas.

What to do, what to do.

I’m Back, Baby!

Over a month since I last posted. Eek.

I have excuses. I do. Travel. Hectic work schedule. Girlfriend. Sleep deprivation.

But I won’t use them. Because the truth is: I just haven’t felt like blogging.

This happens to me every few months. And you shouldn’t feel slighted, Blogger. My other blog hasn’t seen an update in an equally long time.

But things are calming, and I’m working on scripts again, and so I feel better about myself in general, which brings a return of the blogging urge.

Have continued work on The Other Woman, which has now reached 110. I’m still disappointed that this draft did not progress as quickly as the last six-day miracle. But I have an excuse that helps me sleep at night (not that I need the help).

You see, this script is all about conversations. Sure, there’s action. And plot. Things happen, macro and micro. But the story is about characters processing together an event common to all.

And I didn’t plan this processing. I planned the outcome of the processing. But the actual words that would be said … I left them to be determined in the moment. I put my effort into creating the characters that would say the words.

And I’m finding that, sometimes, those words come slowly. Of course, being sleep deprived contributes to that.

But now I am at 110 pages, and most of the long, difficult conversations are behind me. It’s a teensy bit more downhill from here. Still, I expect this script will go long, so I probably still have 30-45 more pages in front of me. Several nights work at least.

After that, it will be rewrite time for How to Date Your Cousin. I’m very excited about that, because I think the rewrites will go just as quickly as the draft. Since I’m an optimist, I hope to reach shipping date on that script by the end of the year. That’d be a great way to end 2006, yes?

Again, I love my job.

Quantity is Job 1

I did no writing tonight. Wednesday night is when I have the most paperwork and other crap to deal with at work, so I busied myself with that and then gave myself the last two hours to blog instead.

However, after another 4ish hours last night, I have 50 pages on the script (now tentatively titled The Other Woman), averaging close to 5 per hour. It would be more, but I stuck myself in a bit of a plot rut last night and took about an hour to decide what I was going to do.

But I got back on the horse, and the thing is progressing nicely.

I’m already starting to get ideas about the rewrite for it. Like, I’m pretty sure that the main character hasn’t been set up helpless enough. Too late now, but it’ll have to be done at some point.

I’ve also been trying to come up with ideas for the next project. And today I realized, I have a great idea that I’ve been ignoring for a while.

And that is mostly because I already wrote it once.

That’s right my friends, the first script I ever wrote still languishes in rough draft form on a lonely hard drive. I didn’t rewrite it because I was much dumber back then and couldn’t think how to go about it.

But the premise was great. I still remember that premise, and it was pretty suave (I think). And now I feel I’ve grown enough as a writer that I could start to do it justice.

So I’m going to read it tonight and try to get a feel for what needs to be done. It may actually turn out to be a page one. But that’s okay.

I also have another idea that I started to write before I had the good sense to realize I didn’t have a strong enough plot. I’m not sure the hook for that one was good enough, but we’ll see when I re-read that one.

Anyway, should be fun figuring out where to go next. Makes me excited, like the little girl that I am inside.

I’m All Talk

Some writers are all talk. They say they’re writers. They say they’re working on something. But when it comes right down to it, you start to notice after a while that they haven’t actually produced any work in quite some time.

There are times when I’m one of these writers. But now is not one of those times.

Right now is draft time, baby!

Ah, draft time. Truly ‘tis a wonderful season in the writer’s life, when the desert of planning and research and note-taking is finally crossed and the thirsty writer arrives at the oasis of putting pen to paper, or as times have it, fingers to keyboard.

But, to get back to what I was saying, the way in which I am “all talk” is not the way I have just described.

No, what I’m referring to is the nature of my current writing.

I felt pretty proud of myself this time around because I spent many hours planning and doing character development, so that by the time I actually got to the plot, I felt pretty grounded in my characters.

So when I did my outline, I put in several scenes in which I knew that the characters would talk at length to each other. I even knew (sometimes) how their conversations would end. But I didn’t plan the actual content of those conversations.

Robert Rodriguez once asked Quentin Tarantino how he got such good dialogue, and Quentin said, “I just start two characters talking, and even I’m surprised by what they say.”

This is the method I am attempting for the current project.

I just finished writing the conversation right before the break into act two, and it was pretty fun. There will be many more like it, where I just sit some characters down and see what comes out of their mouths.

Then I’ll read it later and find out that all the dialogue needs to be rewritten.

Well, we’ll see.

As a final, semi-related note, I’ve been working on this script for 6.5 hours.

And I have 27 pages. What is that? A little over four pages an hour, average. Not too great, but not too shabby.

Draft Time, Baby!

So after not a few weeks of sitting around and thinking (see previous post), I finally thought I had a plot for the “Polygamy” script. I proudly packed my little notecards together and went off to a meeting with Greg, ready to pitch the hell out of the thing.

I pitched. For twenty-five long minutes I pitched.

Greg interjected. He made suggestions. He had thoughts.

I got to the end. He didn’t like it. I didn’t like it.

I saw it coming. I really did. I knew when I wrote the beat card for the climax that it just didn’t feel climactic.

Greg and I both blanked on how to deal with it. One meeting and a whole weekend later, neither of us had any solutions.

Then, early Wednesday morning, I’m at work. More sitting and thinking. And it hits me.

I solved it. I called Greg, mere hours before he was to fly out to LA (this is how I steal time from people). He agreed. The ending works.

And how did I solve it?

The main characters of the story meet two people at the third act break. First a wife, then her husband.

I switched the order. They meet the husband, then the wife.

And now it works.

Stories are weird.

Anyway, it’s draft time now, and this is where the crazy third-shift job really works for me. Wednesday night isn’t the best. There’s lots of work to do around the house. But I still managed to squeeze in two hours of productivity, and I got eight pages out of that. Tomorrow, should get at least six hours of writing, and we’ll see where that takes me.

I’m back, baby!

Slacking

You think that I’m a huge blog-slacker, but I tell you that what I really am is just a plain old slacker. I haven’t blogged because I haven’t done anything.

I’ve sat around and thought.

I’ve made a couple notes.

I talked to Greg over the phone.

But that’s it.

Got some notes from Blair about the draft I finished two months ago. If I can get some notes out of Greg about it, maybe I’ll go back to that.

I finished my preliminary character development for what I’m calling the “Polygamy” script (see above sitting around and thinking). I’m just starting to plot it out. I might have been further along, but it’s been an absolutely insane week at work. Don’t get me started.

Tomorrow, meeting with Greg again, now that he’s dragged himself back into town. Maybe something productive will come of that.

And I’ll get something done. Or pretend to get something done. If so, I’ll post more.

But don’t get your hopes up too high.

Infanticide

There are two preferred methods of killing unwanted children. The first, of course, is to just kill them when they pop out. But this really doesn’t involve enough tempting of fate for my taste. I prefer the old tried-and-true Roman adventure of taking them outside the city and leaving them to die, risking the off chance that someone else will come and pick them up, thus giving them the opportunity to grow up and later kill me at unawares.

That last bit may not quite fit the metaphor I’m creating here, but certainly I am killing one of my babies at the moment, scriptographically.

My regular readers (hey Greg!) will remember that I finished one draft and finished a plot outline for the next. I think I even made some remark about how guilty I felt that it was another romantic comedy.

Well, I sat down the next night at work to start writing a synopsis so I could get on to developing characters and banging out another draft, thus giving myself reason to gloat over my other screenwriting friends (hey Greg!). This is obviously the only reason to engage in such an unrewarding process as screenwriting, apart from the great salary.

But I got about three paragraphs into the synopsis and started to hate myself, and even more, to hate my newborn child. All of a sudden it was just too cliché, too by-the-numbers, too … Save the Cat! to keep in my family of works-in-progress. I got disgusted with myself and spent the next four nights falling asleep while pretending to write and finally abandoning pretense in favor of watching movies.

Then I read this year-old script by Greg and instantly loathed myself even more. I’m beginning to think that bastard churns out better work the less he plans for it. Meanwhile I plan and plan and plan and plan and then don’t even like my plans enough to carry them out.

Wow, I look at that last paragraph, and any doubt I had that I am a writer just disappears. The sheer, undisguised artistic jealousy and self-loathing is the tell.

Anyhow, while I was complaining to Greg about this over the phone, he recommended leaving the story out to dry (or as I prefer to think of it, dying alone on a hillside) for a while and working on something else.

So I have this road-trip girly-movie idea (that’s right, girly movies are all I have) that Greg and I both agreed was marketable, and I’ll be working on that for a while now. It should be out-of-the-box enough to not make me angry. I watched Thelma and Louise last night as preparation for this endeavor.

I’m realizing I don’t owe it to an idea to develop it first just because I had it first. I have a strange, relational tendency to be loyal to my ideas. If I was a paterfamilias in ancient Rome, I’d have no respect from the other landed citizens (hey Greg!). So I’m practicing leaving the unwanted ones on the hill to die, at least until I run out of better children to whom I can give my attention.

Or until they grow up in someone else’s care to be sold for \$2 million and ruin my life.

***UNRELATED NOTE I WANTED TO INCLUDE IN THE POST BUT COULDN’T FIT IN THEMATICALLY***

Also, I posted a logline for one of my shorts on Inktip.com, because it’s free to do that. One day later, I have an email from a cinematographer asking to read it because he’s looking for a short to produce. So tonight is also about getting the script into shape for him to read. I like attention, however trivial.

Outlining and Other Development-y Goodness

Read ‘em and weep, bitches.

[media lost]

This is the outline board for my current script, which I am calling the Redbeard story, pending an actual title.

While I await comments from you lazy slackers who have the Cousins script (you know who you are), I’m starting on my next. I feel a little guilty that this is also a rom-commy story, but hey, that’s how I roll.

I’m finding the use of the board to be very good for me. In the past I’ve always tried to plot out the movie in my head, figuring that if I can’t remember it without writing it down, it must not be a good enough idea.

I later decided that this was ridiculous.

The board is nice and visual, y’know? I can set it up there on the desk at work and stare at it for half an hour while ideas surge around. Then I can find the place where the idea actually fits. I can gaze at the story outline in visual form and figure out where the structural weak points are. I can move things around, cut and replace, and it all happens right there before my eyes.

It’s a beautiful thing.

So I have this new idea roughly plotted out. The Cousins script was the first time I did an actual outline before moving on to the draft. And because I was doing the 14-day thing, even that was a rushed outline, which will no doubt be apparent to those of you who actually read it.

In this case, I have no such deadline. So I spent this week coming up with a structurally sound outline and deciding what basic character types I wanted. Next week I will move on to some serious character development. This is supposed to be funny, and good comedy depends (in my book) on spectacular and outrageous characters.

Character is, in my own opinion, the thing I am absolutely the worst at, so I’m not sure how long I’ll spend on character development before I have it right. By that time, the plot of the movie may also be all different, because I will be making changes to it as the characters demand.

So I’m in for an exciting time, I think. Drafts are obviously the big rush, and I’ve determined that I can crank one out pretty fast what with my long empty nights at work. But I want each successive first draft to improve. John August claims that he only does one draft. That’s pretty damn good. That’s a good goal, and one only gets there through improving one’s planning skills.

Meanwhile, I need Greg to sell his stupid script and come back here so he can tell me when my ideas suck. I prefer to sidestep the suck when possible.

Must Find Hook

Last night at work I treated myself to a night of watching movies on the couch (I love my job). Why did I do this? Well, I’m glad you asked that, O jealous fellow writers.

Because I finished a script.

Okay, fine! I didn’t finish the script. I finished the first draft. But it sounds so much cooler to say you finished a script.

The 14-day Screenwriting Contest worked out well for me. I banged that thing out at an average of almost 6 pages an hour, baby. That’s pretty good for me—I don’t know about the rest of you.

I think that’s the glorious thing about having an idea that you can really see as a movie: you keep seeing it the whole time you’re writing; you just have to keep letting the fingers translate so everyone else can also see.

The 14-day script was good for me in another way, besides just getting a draft knocked over. It reminded me how much I love writing a script.

I was pumped when I got the Lifeline job, because it meant I would be able to write for several hours every night while getting paid. True, I wasn’t getting paid much, but it was enough to stay alive and not have to stress out trying to find other hours during the day in which to pursue the craft. So I entered the job excited, ready to go.

Then I didn’t write for a month.

This is the problem with ideas that you can’t “see.” You can’t see them. I had this “Hero” idea. The most famous heroes of the great stories and myths are actually all the same person. What a great idea, right?

That’s not a hook. It’s too broad to be a hook. So I went off in search of the hook. Night after night at work I would labor to find the plot for the movie this idea wanted to be. I did one. It sucked. I did another one. It sucked. But it had elements of not sucking. I took another pass at it. It still sucked.

I kept falling asleep at the desk. Outlining a hookless movie has to be the worst thing in the world for someone awake at 4 a.m.

So, worn out from all this story-breaking and not having written in longer than I wanted to admit to anyone, I went off to Sicily. And danged if my second-to-last day there, I didn’t get myself a hook. And I don’t mean a hook in the “what a great concept to explore” sense, but in the “This is so good I need to check to make sure it hasn’t already been done” sense. (Note: this is my big, biased ego talking).

Come home, back to work. First night: outlining.

Check.

I kicked that outline’s ass.

Second night: writing. Third night: writing. Fourth night: lack of sleep, but still some writing. Fifth night: hella writing (40 pages, baby) Sixth night: insane work problems and distractions galore. No writing. Seventh night: Fade to Black. Draft complete.

I think I calculated around 27 hours of writing to produce 129 pages. Not once in all those hours or pages did I get bored. Not once did I wish I was doing something else (okay, maybe sleeping). It was a thrill from start to finish.

Because I had a hook.

New screenwriting lesson: Don’t write a hookless movie. Not just because you won’t sell it. Because it’s not nearly as much fun.

Next week: a new hook, a new outline, a new script. Rewrites on the most recent draft await the perusal of my fellow scribes. Get on that, y’all. Don’t leave me hanging.