Paul Hackett

In recent years screenwriting blogs have begun taking the place of once seminal books on the subject. Information may travel faster online but by no means is the learning curve any shorter– there still aren’t any real short cuts. These past few days have seen a debate over screenwriting blogs and that got me thinking about my favorite sites. I have bookmarked a lot of screenwriting sites, but there are really only a few that I visit every day.

John August

John August is the screenwriter behind Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish as well as Charlie’s Angels and Go. Mr. August is always at the top of my go-to list when looking for a professional’s take on screenwriting. Quite often I’ll find the answer to a question buried somewhere in his site’s archives. These days there seems to be a lot more posts about John’s life and projects (which are still interesting) and his take on things like last year’s writer’s strike. However, when John has the time to answer questions or offer fresh advice, it’s always presented in a helpful and authoritative way. This is a guy who thinks before he writes. A lot of writers offer opinions on what makes a good script, but John’s site provides more information than you’d get from the movie trailer version. His answers are what I call “the university answer.” You have to go home, think about what has been said, work through it on your own, and finally, if you work at it, you might be able to ace the test. This is the site for serious writers.

Go Into The Story

Go Into The Story is written by Scott Myers, an established writer who currently works as an Executive Producer and teaches screenwriting on the side. His site provides a lot more than a single daily dose of screenwriting advice. It’s more like several booster shots to make it through the day. Most other sites I can check once a day and then get on with my own work. Scott’s prolific posting schedule has me checking back several times a day. The topics range from the business side of script sales to examples of great dialogue and scene construction. Scott tackles any question his readers can throw at him.

This is a particularly good blog for both hobbyists and aspiring professionals. Nobody wants to be an amateur writer, but this is where most writers with the time to read blogs every day will find themselves. As well as offering countless tips and examples, Scott provides a lot of encouragement for writers. Rather than telling you to read lots of scripts and then leaving it up to you to find them, he goes out and finds them for you. His site has a real inclusive feeling to it. The honesty, enthusiasm and passion for sharing reminds me of my work at Guitar Noise. Not surprisingly, Scott’s site has attracted a loyal community of followers.

ScriptShadow

Reading a lot of scripts is an important habit for all would-be writers to learn, but most of us don’t have time to read a different script every single day. Thanks to Carson Reeves and ScriptShadow it’s no longer necessary. His site reviews unproduced scripts five days a week. Though still unproduced, many of these scripts are already quite notable; some of them have won contests, sold for large sums of money or landed on the Black List (Hollywood’s list of the best unmade scripts). The format of the reviews is appealing and consistent with a valuable “What I learned” section at the end of each review. The comments section is also very active.

The road to screenwriting hell may be paved with good intentions and the site’s growing popularity is something of a problem. ScriptShadow is an excellent aide to aspiring and amateur writers; but it sometimes irks producers and executives and potentially harms working writers. Perhaps these issues will be addressed as Carson seems like a decent guy. He obviously loves scripts like a librarian loves books.

For my own personal use, I generally read most of the reviews but rarely download the scripts themselves. If a script sounds especially good I might give it a read. There’s only so much time for reading scripts and when I’m supposed to be writing and finding my own voice.

Just F*ing Entertain Me.

Julie Gray is the voice and personality behind Just F*ing Entertain Me. Apparently this will be the title of her upcoming screenwriting book which culls lessons from her previous screenwriting blog The Rouge Wave. Many of the posts from the old blog are reprinted on the new one and updates occur on a near-daily basis.  Julie earned her stripes as a script reader, one of the film industry’s gate keepers. Readers know more than anyone else that a lot of the scripts making the rounds repeat the same mistakes. With a positive outlook, Just F*ing Entertain Me encourages writers to continually strive for their best while avoiding the common pitfalls most writers face. Julie offers insights on writing great characters, moving a story forward, and basically just surviving the emotional ups and downs of being a writer no one has heard of.

Julie’s unique voice is a lot like a fourth grade teacher that really wants her class write better and enjoy doing it at the same time. Writing is a lot of hard work. Having a little more confidence and inspiration helps a lot. I’m looking forward to seeing Just F*ing Entertain Me on the bookshelves soon.

Screenwriting Tips… You Hack

Screenwriting Tips… You Hack offers a different tip every day. They are usually short and presented tongue in cheek. I try to absorb as many of these gems into my writer psyche as possible. This site is run by a current Hollywood script reader. Nothing could be more insightful or helpful than reading about what bugs turns these gate keepers off a script completely. Since this is the person who may be manually moving your script into the garbage bin it’s only natural to try and give them what they want. A couple hundred more tips and this site could be made into a book too.

There are a lot of other sites that I haven’t mentioned here. Many of them are also worth perusing. These are only the ones I dig into regularly. The rest of the time I’m supposed to be writing.

First impressions are just as important in screenwriting as they are in life. A good screenplay needs a likable hero that gets trapped in a compelling situation; someone the reader can relate to and root for as they turn the pages of your script. How you go about introducing your hero is something that should be given a lot of thought. A helpful approach is to watch how directors introduce their main characters. Rather than introducing a hero, a good director will reveal the hero to the audience. The reveal usually tells us something important about the character right off the bat and alerts us to their significance. More often than not, the hero is revealed through some kind of action.

An excellent example of a reveal is John Milius’ Conan The Barbarian (1982). Anyone who has seen the film is unlikely to forget the “Wheel of Pain” sequence. Conan is introduced through a montage sequence that follows his torturous passage to manhood. A young Conan is chained to a punishing device and made to walk in circles through all seasons. As weaker men die Conan presses on. His muscles grow. We see his feet plod on as the years pass. Finally, the full grown Conan looks up and stares into the camera. He’s already a hero in our minds because he has survived an ordeal that finished off weaker men. He’s now ready to embark on any journey.

It’s generally best to reveal characters by having them doing something when we first meet them. The first glimpse we get is going to tell us almost everything we need to know about them. I call it a reveal because it should share something about both the inner and outer life of the hero.

Imagine your protagonist is a taxi driver. The scene opens inside the taxi dispatch. We see someone fastidiously cleaning a taxi at the start of their shift. A person who begins their shift in this way is probably honest, hard working and perhaps has dreams of doing something greater. This sounds a lot like the reveal from Collateral (Stuart Beattie, 2004).

• INT. TAXI DISPATCH – L.A. – DAY
• ORANGE and YELLOW FORD CROWN VICTORIAS are wiping screen. We find ourselves in a busy garage at change of shift. A balletic convergence of arriving and departing cars. One’s door’s flung open…
• INT. ONE CAB – MAX’S HANDS
• enter. They wipe the seats with paper towels and 409…a DMV LICENSE fitted into the small Lexan holder. On it is a picture of Max.

  Lights being checked. Indicators. Hazards. Switches. Similar to a pilot doing an aircraft check list. Fast. All fine.

• REVEAL NOW: MAX’S BRIEFCASE
• He opens it, preparing for his workday. CD caddy of personal mixes goes on a visor. Spreadsheet peaks out a worn Mercedes S500 brochure, clipped open. A submarine sandwich from Subway.
• LONG LENS: OTHER CABBIES – OTHER FACES
• load-in. Southern California diversity – some unshaven, swapping stories, counting cash, one stands on the passenger seat to shout over the roof to his pal, spills his coffee, couldn’t care less…

  Not Max. His cab is fly. Among cabbies he is GQ.

  And as CAR HORNS BLARE. AD LIB BANTER. CABBIES SHOUT. Max gets behind the wheel, closes the door…

• INT. CAB – DAY
• …and WHAM! The noise evaporates. Welcome silence. Max takes a moment to savor it.

  He starts the engine. RAP MUSIC BLARES from the radio. Max turns it off.

  He dumps a CD into the changer. MOZART SONATA fills the cab.

  From the open briefcase, Max also pulls out one last thing…

  A TATTERED POSTCARD

  which depicts the whitest sand and bluest sea you can imagine. A dream place. An endorphin-releasing groove. Limitless horizon. It’s the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean.

  MAX

  slips the postcard under the rubber bands on the visor. He can see it whenever he wants to. But not now. He flips the visor up, puts the car in gear and pulls out.

This script is an excellent example of a reveal. We are already able to empathize with the hero. He’s doing his best while still dreaming of something greater for himself. That’s something we can respect.

Reveals can be humorous, endearing and insightful all at the same time. Check out the classic reveal from Cool Hand Luke (Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson, 1967):

• FADE IN:
• EXT. SOUTHERN CITY STREET EXTREME CLOSEUP PARKING METER (NIGHT)
• Its irritating head opens a glaring red eye: the red flag pops across the entire screen:
• VIOLATION
• INSERT: PARKING METER SUPPORT (NIGHT)
• CLOSEUP of a pipe cutter attached to the meter neck, metal slivers curling out. From o.s. we HEAR — LUCAS JACKSON cheerfully humming and mumbling Auld Lang Syne and then:
• LUKE
• Okay, Mister General, you son of a bitch. Sir. Think you can put things right with a piece of tin with a ribbon hangin’ on it? Gonna put you right.
• CLOSEUP PARKING METER (NIGHT)
• as the meter head falls out of FRAME.
• NEW ANGLE ON METER (NIGHT)
• as it falls to the ground amidst a forest of meter stands and Luke’s hand comes into the FRAME to pick it up and we SEE him in CLOSEUP for the first time. He is cheerful, drunk, wearing a faded GI Field jacket. A bottle opener hangs on a silver chain around his neck. He addresses the next meter.
• LUKE
• All right. Helen, honey. I lost my head over you. Now its your turn.

Today’s screenwriter generally pays a lot of attention to white space. The opening lines from Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007) reveals entire character personalities:

• EXT. BEN’S HOUSE – DAY
• BEN STONE, 23, cute in a chunky Jewish guy sort of way, boxes one of his roommates, MARTIN. His other roommates, JAY and JASON fight with broom sticks. JONAH drinks beer on the couch spectating.

Half of the characters in this movie are set up in just a few lines. We already have a sense of who our hero is and what is in store for him. Taking into account the film’s title we already have a pretty good idea where this story is going.

When putting characters on the page for the first time, it’s not just important to describe them in a way that makes them memorable. You also need to reveal something about them. Show them at work or play in such a way that the reader can see much more than what’s on the page – their inner and outer lives intertwined.

When writing dialog it’s important to give each character their own voice. What often happens is we begin writing before our characters are sufficiently developed and they all end up sounding alike. This can be worked out in rewriting, but until each character comes to life they usually all sound the same.

For me, characters start to come to life as soon as they have a name. It’s a starting point. And while it is possible to write a script referring to the main characters as GUY and GIRL, giving them names makes them appear more realistic. But this raises an immediate problem for writers: where do you come up with good names?

Over thinking names can get you into trouble. It’s tempting to go for something with a lot of meaning. But when you take a movie like The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), which has character names derived from The Bhagavad Gita you are lining yourself up to alienate a lot of readers. Good names are ones that sound like real people and can actually tell you something about them. A good example of simple yet symbolic names can be found in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987): Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) and Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Their names suit their relative social statuses, but watch the film again with the names in mind and Fox and Gekko take on a deeper layer of meaning.

Sometimes choosing names quickly can help you get started quickly. There is a cool random name generator at http://www.unled.net/ that gathers names from the U.S. Census Bureau. It never fails to spit out believable and interesting sounding names. I only have a couple problems with it. It’s somewhat limited to American sounding names and it’s based on census data from 1990. So it’s not exactly up to date.

Recently I’ve been working on a new script that has a lot of characters. Fortunately, I found a great new place to explore randomly generated names. It’s the junk mail folder. Most of the names there are pieced together from software that tries to make the names sound real and believable. And that’s exactly what I am looking for. Now there is actually a reason to reread the headers on junk mail.

I’m proud to report that after a year of work I’m finally finished my latest script. I know 12 months is too long to spend on one script, but no one is paying me. And I ran into problems along the way.

I’ve been working hard to get my writing to the level where I can complete a 120 screenplay in 3 to 4 months. Unfortunately, I do get distracted easily. During the past year I have moved twice and gone traveling dozens of times. Anything to avoid finishing those last ten pages.

The truth is, it took me six months to finish the last 5% of this draft. I took off so many times that I struggled to bring my writing back up to the level it was in the early stages. I make a point not to start something new until I’ve finished my current script. The best way to benefit from the writing process is to actually complete the process. I was so adamant about not shelving this script that I got stuck on the last ten pages for six months.

To wrap things up I ended up dropping two scenes at the last minute. I had so carefully plotted out my story that I really believed every scene was necessary. By this point I had been over every page so many times that I forgot my audience would be reading it for the first time. If I’m the only one who misses the cut scenes they probably didn’t belong in the first place.

It is a great feeling for a writer to have written something. I’m glad I stuck it out and finished the entire process. It will make me a better writer on my next project.

What’s next? Tomorrow I begin the next script in the pipeline.

It’s been a tough year for working writers, but a fairly decent one for aspiring writers. Studios posted more scripts online in an effort to grab more award nominations. Aside from writing, the most important thing aspiring screenwriters should be doing is reading a lot of scripts.

The Thinking Writer tracked down and shared links to the studios that were basically giving scripts away for free. The links are More Scripts and More Scripts, Pt. 2.

Being earnest, I read all of them. In fact, I printed them all and what a mountain of paper it made.

I was not at all surprised that Cody Diablo’s Juno won the Academy Award award for Best Original Screenplay. I was quite happy with the choice, in fact. As I pored over every script I could find from the past year, Juno is the one that struck me as the most original. It is written with a unique voice. As I read, I could see the movie playing in my mind. It hooked me from the first page. And by the last page I was feeling jealous that my writing isn’t nearly as good.

It stands head and shoulders above the other original scripts I read this year. And those were good scripts too.

As for the Best Adapated Screenplay, I did enjoy reading No Country For Old Men. But it wasn’t my favorite. Of those nominated, I think The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is the one I’d rather read again.

Entrances are for playwrights. They should be used much more sparingly by screenwriters.

In a play, the author typically has to devise several ways of getting the actors on and off the stage. The action occurs in only a few locations. In a screenplay, however, the action takes place over several locations. The heightened pace of film also makes entrances and exits seem staged. They are best avoided unless there is a dramatic reason for them.

When I’m writing a scene, I like to build the four walls first. The scratch scene, my first pass at writing, often has both an entrance and exit. Then I very quickly begin to rework the scene, cutting it down until only the bare essentials are left. It’s almost like a director giving lines for actors to speak before the actual scene begins. They won’t appear in the film, but still help bring the performance up to speed. I find this also works well in writing.

In his memoirs, Elia Kazan compared the difference between directing for stage and screen:

A film director can choose to leap into the “meat” of a scene or from high moment to high moment, leaving out what, in his opinion, is not worth the attention of the audience. Entrances and exits – unless they’re freighted with dramatic substance – mean nothing. It doesn’t matter how the character got there. He’s there. Cut to the heart of the scene.

Good screenplays also cut straight to the heart of the scene.

Take a screenplay like Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977). There are very few entrances in the entire script, even though the story jumps from location to location. There is an excellent party scene at a Beverly Hills mansion. It begins with two men chatting. This cuts to a wider shot and another man joins the conversation. Another cut, and Alvy (Woody Allen) and Rob (Tony Roberts) are at the center of the scene. They arrive at the party without actually making an entrance. It’s economical. It’s also good writing.

Elaborating on my discussion of the moral center in films…

“The first casualty of war is innocence.” That’s the tagline for Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), a film that’s different from other Viet Nam war stories because it’s not about two countries fighting each other. Rather, it’s a story about a country at war with itself. Although the story centers on the thoughts and fears of one soldier, everyone in the platoon faces similar moral choices, and must decide for themselves what is right and wrong.

The men in Chris Taylor’s (Charlie Sheen) platoon divide into two groups: the heavy drinkers loyal to Barnes (Tom Berenger) and the pot smokers who follow Elias (Willem Dafoe). The main difference between them is that Elias already believes the war can’t be won, but keeps fighting in it with honor. The audience roots for him because he’s a moral compass and mentor to the liberal minded members of the platoon. Barnes and his men, however, have a different take on the war. They lash out at the Vietnamese and each other; committing atrocities that turn them into the real bad guys.

With a story as multi-layered as this, it’s not surprising to find a moral center – someone who voices the author’s perspective. The moral center steers the theme, so that is not about surviving war, but surviving war with humanity still intact. The moral center of Platoon is King (Keith David), introduced early in the script:

• KING looks like a king. A lion of a black man but with a sleepy, gentle face, not to be roused, is painfully trying to scrawl a letter home with the pencil held awkwardly, mouthing the words.

He has many of the film’s key lines and entertains the platoon with his home-spun wisdom and sense of humor.

King wonders how an educated man like Chris wound up in Viet Nam. The boy’s idealistic view of the war makes him laugh. He calls Chris a crusader for thinking dropping out of school and signing up would make a difference. (Stone reportedly dropped out of Yale twice and based Platoon on his own experiences serving in Viet Nam.)

After the hero survives an injury, King – whose very name is symbolic – accepts him as part of the group. He takes Chris under his wing, shrugging off the possibility that he might have let the platoon down. King tells him there is “no such thing here as a coward,” a line that he repeats later in the film.

As an ally, King introduces Chris to the “head,” an underground world where Elias’ crew smoke pot and escape the war. He gets Chris high for the first time, which not only relieves the pain of his injury, but initiates him into the underworld. The symbolism of this occasion isn’t lost on King:

• KING
• (smiling)
• This ain’t Taylor. Taylor been shot. This man Chris been resurrected…

King is not the only moral guide in Platoon. The Christ like figure Elias is another strong force of good and the focal point of Chris’ admiration.

In my mind, the moral center is generally a less active participant in the story and more of an observer. Elias plays a big part; staying very involved in the plot. He helps the men prepare for missions and teaches them what he can about survival. When faced with difficult tasks he crusades for good. King is more of a witness and commentator on the action. His actions never influence the direction of the story.

When the platoon suspects that Barnes actually killed Elias they talk about getting revenge. Barnes turns up drunk and challenges them, giving them a chance to get even.

• King, the biggest one there, is about to say something, but the moment passes.

He knows that an eye for an eye is not justice; and remains an observer. As an observer King is also the only that notices Chris isn’t writing home anymore. In case the audience hasn’t noticed Chris’ transformation, King is there to point it out.

We don’t know what happens to Chris and the other members of the platoon at the end. King makes it out alive before the final battle and he gives Chris some final advice:

• KING
• Make it outta here, it’s all gravy, every day of the rest of your life man – gravy.

If anything, this is the delivery of the film’s real message. War is a terrible experience for everyone involved. Surviving it is one thing, but surviving it and still remaining human is another.

For King, to have another chance at life, and to live life to the fullest, every day is gravy. It’s an extra gift that is worth staying alive for.

In most American films, the moral high ground is the domain of the hero. To conquer the villain he has to undergo some sort of change within himself. A general template for this transformation might be overcoming selfishness and putting the needs of others ahead of his own. Through his apprenticeship and growth, the hero learns something essential that will allow him to defeat the villain.

I’ve found that many screenplays contain a special character type that is somewhere between a stock character and an archetypal character. This figure is someone who will help the hero on his journey, and I call him or her: the moral center. It’s possible that the moral center also doubles as one of the archetypal roles such as the mentor or shapeshifter. This may be less common though, otherwise all stories would have moral centers and I don’t think that’s the case.

Aside from helping the hero in some small way, the true job of the moral center is to introduce the film’s theme, and clue us in to what the movie is all about. The voice of the moral center illustrates the writer’s perspective.

While the hero may be the moral compass of the film – the one who will strive to right the wrongs and reestablish the status quo – he is never the moral center. The hero is too busy with his quest, battling the villain, driving the story forward and facing obstacles. As the audience roots for him, he will make a series of choices – some of them will turn out to be right, others wrong. If he were also the story’s moral center, the film would assume a tone of preaching, and be of little interest to most audiences.

The moral center is almost always a minor character; someone often allied with the hero, but corrupted neither by him nor the villain. He brings to the story a voice of wisdom; shedding light on what the story is really about. With a few key lines, this enlightened individual will represent understanding and insight in a nearly godlike way.

If you really want to know who the moral center is: he’s the one dude in the film that you’d really want to hang out with.

I’ll elaborate more on the moral center in my next post with a few examples from popular films.

Whether we admit it or not, a lot of us wannabe screenwriters with blogs are in awe of John August. He is to screenwriting what Robert Plant is to singing, or Humphrey Bogart to acting: one of those artists that possesses a complete understanding and awareness of his own abilities.

John has posted to his site the text of a recent speech he gave at Drake University, The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age. Sometimes all it takes is an expert to say something obvious for it to resonate clearly. John offers up the following definition:

Writing is how we demonstrate that we understand something.

For the screenwriter that means your story. If you’re going to write a movie you should have something important to say. You can’t tell a good story if you don’t understand it yourself. A good script should adhere to a certain structure and follow a logical plan. There are as many books as there are blogs on screenwriting, but real insight and understanding only comes through hard work. This is the day to day routine of writing.

This applies equally to other kinds of writing. A songwriter needs to understand the mechanics of emotion. Songs may tell stories too, but if anything, the true purpose of music is to stir an emotional response. What remains true to all kinds writing is not only what you say, but how you say it. As John said at the end of his speech, we should all write like our lives depend on it.

It must seem like I have way too many excuses for not writing. I have already blogged about my preference for procrastination and my habitual traveling. In my own defense, I truly believe that to be a good writer you need to lead a full life. The lonely writer shut off from the world is unnecessarily isolating himself, and is hardly likely to emerge after 2 years with a masterpiece. Balancing a healthy, active life with your work is the best way to go. While you’re busy being a writer, it’s important to get out there and do other things or your creativity will suffer.

To add now to my litany of writing sins, I want to discuss the power of sleep. Besides providing your body with the rest that it needs, sleep is the time when your conscious mind gets turned off, and the unconscious takes over. Fortunately for the writer, the unconscious mind is often better at solving story problems than you’re awake and incessantly thinking about them.

Whenever possible, I do my writing in the morning. One’s energy is always on the increase until about mid-day, so it makes sense to write as much as possible before noon. I spend my afternoons on story planning, organization and other work. If I’m in a hot climate I’ll try and take a nap in the afternoon. I also walk a lot in the afternoons and evenings, which is another great way to think about my story.

But when it comes to stubborn story problems that I can’t think my way out off, I’ll turn to a good night’s sleep. Lots of writers like to feed their subconscious in this way, and I was not altogether surprised when I found this passage in Graham Greene’s autobiography Ways of Escape:

Dreams, perhaps because I was psychoanalysed as a boy, have always had great importance when I write…Sometimes identification with a character goes so far that one may dream his dream and not one’s own.

I have never personally had that experience. But many seemingly insurmountable story problems have vanished thanks to several hours sleep. Graham also had this to say on the subject:

I imagine all authors have found the same aid from the unconscious. The unconscious collaborates in all our work: it is a nègre we keep in the cellar to aid us. When an obstacle seems insurmountable, I read the day’s work before sleep and leave the nègre to labour in my place. When I wake the obstacle has nearly always been removed: the solution is there and obvious – perhaps it came in a dream which I have forgotten.

I had already been doing this before I knew of Graham’s methods. And I can absolutely vouch for it. If you are really doing your work, sleep does help.

Of course, thinking too much before trying to sleep has it hazards. If you’re not careful it can lead to bouts of insomnia. That will certainly adversely affect your ability to write and maybe even sap your interest in the story altogether. But I have found that by considering a single problem as I drift off to sleep, I will invariably wake up with the solution at hand. It’s not magic, and it’s probably not science either. But it does have a lot to do with making writing a balanced part of your life. Never let writing consume all of your time.