Contour At The Movies

I’m often asked by writers how much passion they should have about what they are writing.  Are they selling out by writing something they think will sell, rather than something they they feel more strongly about but is possibly less commercial?

The bottom line is that one always needs a certain amount of passion when sitting down to write.  Sometimes the passion is to launch a career.  Sometimes it’s to sustain a career.  Sometimes it’s just for the joy of writing something different and out of one’s comfort zone.

However, if one is an aspiring writer and creating a career where one doesn’t currently exist is the goal, then here’s my feeling about what to be passionate about: the business of writing.

There!  I said it!  Writing is a business. If you have any desire to make writing your sole source of income, then I suggest in the strongest terms possible that you treat your writing with the same forethought and intelligence with which you would treat any business venture.

Let’s say you had the passionate desire to open a retail store. Pick one…hardware? Pizza? Bike shop? Whatever you’re passionate about.  Would you pour your time and money into opening a store before you checked out the location? Would you open your little hardware store right next to the brand new Home Depot? Would you open your pizza shop on the same block that already had three others? How about a bike shop in the middle of a retirement community? Would you have kind words for the business sense of the people who did any of these?

If I told you that I had a business venture that I wanted you to invest a thousand dollars in, would you fork over the money just because I was passionate about it? I hope not. You would check out my business idea first. What other businesses are out there like it? Why do I think my business will succeed when others like it have failed? What’s the market like for my business? You’d ask to see some hard data from me before investing.    Isn’t that time that it takes you to write a spec screenplay worth at least the same thousand dollars you wouldn’t give me for my business idea until you checked it out first? Time is the most valuable commodity that we own. Once we squander it, it’s gone forever.

What are you going to tell your wife/husband/children/significant other about the 3/4/6/12 months you spent away from them as you wrote a screenplay that had a reduced chance of selling from the first FADE IN: because you didn’t think to check if there were other films JUST LIKE IT in development?  Or that you rushed to market without first being satisfied that it wasn’t just as good as you could make it, but as good as it needed to be to be taken seriously by agents and producers?  Would you expect your loved one to have any kind of sympathy for you after you deliberately turned a blind eye to the demands of the marketplace and then came to them upset because your new horror-musical-western screenplay got rejected again?

So, what’s the solution? How do you develop your writer’s business plan?

The fact that you’re reading this means that you’ve discovered one of the most powerful secret weapons on the planet…the Net. No joke, there are communities of aspiring writers in the THOUSANDS (www.scriptsales.com, www. screenwritinggoldmine.com) that represents a huge brain trust. Post a message. “Anyone know of any horror-musical-westerns in development?” You’ll get an answer very quickly.

How about tapping into the working professionals on the boards? Drop them a short email asking if they know of any horror-musical-westerns in development. I’d bet that (without naming names) they’d be happy to let you know.

Check out the script sales posts at least once a week over at Done Deal pro. Make it your BUSINESS (there’s that word again) to be familiar with what’s sold and to whom.

Subscribe to at least one trade paper…Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Variety Weekly, Playback (up here in Canada) even the Variety online edition…and read it cover to cover every day. This is what your professional peers and hopefully future-colleagues are reading. Shouldn’t you have the same information as they do?  Remember…you’re trying to launch a business.

What I’ve presented here is a very limited discussion of a very serious topic. It doesn’t take into account building a library of material of various genres, or writing something you feel strongly about that doesn’t sell right away but may sell in the future as the market comes back around. The business of writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Obviously, even if you take all I’ve written to heart you still might not sell your work. Happens to me all the time. It’s impossible to totally read the market…any market. But in a game where so much is stacked against you from the outset, it behoves you to take control of whatever elements you can and master them.

Yes, by all means be passionate about all aspects of writing…particularly the business aspects of it.

Blake Snyder passed away this morning from cardiac arrest at the age of 51.  Without ever having met Blake, his trajectory and mine crisscrossed and paralleled each for the last 20 years or so.  Having just signed a deal with Blake’s publisher for my upcoming book, I was looking forward to the chance of meeting and comparing notes with him.  Alas, it was not meant to be.

Blake had a loyal fan base of students and fans, and I know that he is already missed.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

So, I was halfway through watching TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN in a theater in Toronto when my wife called me.  My father-in-law, who had been ill, was not doing well and she really wanted to leave for Los Angeles to see him.  RIGHT…NOW!

Sensing the urgency in her voice, I left the theater in the middle of the film.  This was last Wednesday.  I just got back last night.  The good news is the my father-in-law is doing much better.  The better news is that I didn’t have to watch the rest of TRANSFORMERS 2.

Okay…that’s a cheap shot and lazy writing.  As long-time readers of this space know, I’m a stickler for story logic.  I hate when things happen in scripts because the writer wants or needs them to happen, and not because the story has earned the right for that event to happen.   Even up to the halfway mark, TRANSFORMERS was so rife with unexplained events, illogical plot points, bad characters development, and by-the-numbers dialog that I had started squirming in my seat.  Before my wife called me I literally couldn’t wait for this movie to be over.  Characters were doing things and acting in ways completely inconsistent with what was happening around them, all for the sake of the joyride that this movie was supposed to be.  I felt like if the writers didn’t care what was on the screen, why should I?

It was on the plane to Los Angeles that I got to thinking about the movie in greater detail.  It dawned on me that TRANSFORMERS might be something more than just another bad movie.  The writers were the same guys who wrote the new STAR TREK, one of my favorite movies of the year.  What the…?   How could they have written both?

Were they really this bad and STAR TREK was one of their broken clocks (under the idea that even a broken clock is right twice a day)?  Maybe STAR TREK was polished (uncredited) by better uncredited polishers than TRANSFORMERS?  It’s possible.

I then looked at the talent behind the camera.  Michael Bay.  Steven Spielberg.  Don’t these guys know how to tell a story?  Of course they do.  I’m spitting distance from nobody.  Don’t they know at least as much as I do about structure, character, and story logic?

And then I started to think, what if the illogical action, the unmotivated character turns and reactions, even the awful and unfunny comic relief characters…what if they were the herald of a new sensibility in storytelling?  I’m not kidding.  What if TRANSFORMERS 2 is actually a NEW FORM OF STORYTELLING?

I remember watching MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING and marveling at how concise the setup was: Scene 1, Julia Roberts says that she has a deal with a friend to get married if they’re both single at the age of 30; Scene 2, Julia Roberts goes home and gets a phone call from said friend saying that he’s getting married and wants her to come to the wedding; Scene 3, she’s on the way to the airport to break up the wedding.  Back in the old days there’d be 10 minutes or so spent on establishing the Julia Roberts character; what she’s like at work, the state of her love life, her life as a single woman.  And after a few scenes you’d hear about the deal with the friend.  And a few scenes later she’d get the phone call.  And a few scenes later (after some agonizing) she’d be on the plane.

But here was all of that story development delivered one, two, three.  I was elated! It felt to me as if the filmmakers were saying “Hey!  We’ve had 100 years of cinema.  We all know what’s going to happen, so let’s just get there and have some fun.”

Could the braintrust behind TRANSFORMERS be doing the same thing?  ”Screw the logic!  This is the biggest action movie of the year.  DEAL WITH IT!”  Perhaps the seeming willful abandonment of logic is not laziness but a new paradigm of storytelling?  Let’s call it “rollercoastering.”  When you get on SPACE MOUNTAIN, you don’t need to know how the damn thing works.  As a matter of fact, you want the rollercoaster to do wildly unexpected things that seem to defy the logics of mechanics.  I’m upside down!  I can’t see the track!

Perhaps TRANSFORMERS doesn’t have logic because the filmmakers felt it doesn’t need logic.   People are going to this particular ride for the lights and special effects around the rollercoaster car, not the track beneath it.  And certainly, TRANSFORMERS isn’t being punished at the box office.

Perhaps logic in an action movie five years from now — having seamless story structure in a $200 million dollar SFX extravaganza —  will be the exception and not the rule.   Or there will be a new category of action blockbuster for those who crave the thrill and care less about story.   Actually, there already is a category of movie like that.  Porn.  Another cheap shot, I know.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how other big-budget blockbusters handle storytelling moving forward from this point.  Is TRANSFORMERS the start of a rollercoastering trend — a new paradigm of storytelling — or just a bloated, poorly written movie that is the right movie for the right audience at the right time?

I don’t know, but I’ll be watching to see how it pans out.  Bottom line is that my father-in-law is doing better, and one of the storytelling conventions that hasn’t been beaten out of me is the happy ending.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

When you have (virtually) unlimited resources, time, and creativity, you can do some pretty remarkable things.  Case in point…PIXAR.

I haven’t seen UP yet (though the estimable Dan Pilditch has and raves about it) but by all accounts it’s a great achievement.  And then to top that off, PIXAR released the teaser trailer for TOY STORY 3.  Goofy charm aside, there’s more creativity, character work, and attention to detail paid in this teaser than in most full-length movies.

As creative types, we should aspire to aim as high as PIXAR routinely hits.  That being said, we have to understand that it’s not just that PIXAR isn’t playing on a level playing field; they own the stadium.

IT Reviews just posted a review of CONTOUR.  You can check it out here.  

What I like about the review (besides the fact that they like the software!) is that it very clearly says what Contour is and how it helps writers.  It’s a great, concise overview of the program.

Thanks again to Rob Beattie and the IT Reviews team for taking the time to put CONTOUR through its paces.

I haven’t see the movie yet, but I’m confident that it will win Best Picture.  Why?  Because the story of the making of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the best story of all of nominated films.

The  filmmakers cast the film with no name actors literally plucked from the slums of Mumbai, they had to figure out how to shoot the movie in one of the worst places on earth, they fought to build an audience for the movie, and they have gotten the young actors into school and established funds for them out of their own pockets once the youths complete their studies.

It’s the four archetypes in classic sequence: Orphan.  Wanderer.  Warrior.  Martyr.

And the Academy knows a good story when it sees one.

Blog reader “Twilight” asked the following question:

“I must ask something here about who is the main character in Titanic. All the time I though it was Rose, because she is the character who drives the story, or?

I also think I have read from others like Michael Haug that Rose is the Main Character.

So please tell me how you think.”

This has been a topic of some discussion for me for several years. I used to believe that Jack was the main character based on certain principles, but I’ve heard people argue (effectively) that Rose is the main character. It’s fascinating to me that it’s even a question in my mind.  I’ll outline the principles I use to help determine main character  so you can see why this is the question for me that it is:

Principle #1 – The final battle of every good story is always “The Good Guy vs the Bad Guy over the Stakes.” In TITANIC it’s Jack and Cal over Rose, meaning Jack’s the main character. THE WINNER — JACK. 

Principle #2 – The main character is the one who changes the most from the start of the film to the end. Jack appears to change the most; he goes from a loveless drifter to committed boyfriend to dead, which is a pretty big change. However, Rose also changes from someone trapped in her life and stifled to liberated. THE WINNER — A TIE. 

Principle #3 – The main character is exactly like the main opponent, but with a moral center. The antagonist is who the protagonist IS IN DANGER OF BECOMING if he or she loses that moral center. And often, the antagonist is doing EXACTLY what the protagonist WISHES in their darkest of hearts he or she could do but doesn’t because of that moral center.  In DIE HARD, John Maclean’s dark wish would be to kill his wife’s boss, take her by force, and blow up her office building…which is exactly what Hans Gruber is doing.  In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Indiana Jones is so much  like the bad archeologist Belloq that even Belloq calls him on it.  Is Batman really THAT different than the Joker?  

In TITANIC, if Cal is our antagonist, who is like him but with a moral center?  Rose is like him in status, but Jack is like him in desire.  He wants Rose and is as committed to being with her as Cal is, however Jack is moral and Cal isn’t.  Could Jack ever become like Cal if he loses his moral center?  The scene where both he and Cal stand together after convincing Rose to get on the lifeboat sticks in my mind because Jack is just as guilty of being protective of her as Cal is, neither taking into account HER feelings.  Could Rose become like Cal if she loses her moral center?  No, because she’s ready to kill herself before that can happen.  THE WINNER — JACK.

Principle #4 – The main character drives the action.  Jack and Rose take turns driving the action.  It’s his decision to save her life when she’s ready to commit suicide.  It’s her decision to be sketched in the nude.   It’s her decision to get off TITANIC in New York with him.  It’s his decision to martyr himself.  Still, she makes some of the most major plot decisions.  THE WINNER — ROSE, BY A HAIR.

Principle #5 - The main character usually gets the biggest martyr moment at the end.  While Rose gives up a life of leisure, she doesn’t give up her life as Jack does.  THE WINNER — JACK.

So, who’s the main character?  To be honest, I’m still not sure that it’s clear in my mind. Empirically it seems that the evidence points to Jack more strongly than it does to Rose, yet…

Is it possible that Rose is the main character and Jack is the ‘traveling angel’ who changes her life?  Is it possible that Jack is the main character and Rose is the innocent who needs rescuing? Is it possible that they’re both the main character?  

Even with all I’ve written and all I know I’m not sure of the answer, and that intrigues me.  Some very smart people say that Rose is the main character.  They might be right.  My head says Jack, but my heart says Rose.

The real question is ‘what can we, as writers, learn from this?’

TITANIC was a cultural phenomenon.  It was the right movie, at the right time and was a stunning ode to the art of movie making.  What hardly anyone thinks is that it was a well-written script.  In fact, many of the reviews were scathing about the writing.   Of course, success is the best revenge so nobody should feel too badly for Mr. Cameron.   But is it also possible that the lack of clear focus on the main character is a failing and not a virtue?  Is it conceivable that the movie could have been even better with more clarity on the main character?

To me, the biggest takeaway from this question is that if we were writing TITANIC, we should clearly choose either Jack or Rose as the main character and run with that choice.  Not being clear is not an option when you’re trying to launch your career.  

As you can see from all I’ve written, I’m wide open to thinking and rethinking about this question, so…what do YOU think?

I debated a while before posting this, however I must warn people about a very dangerous screenwriting seminar.  This is no joke, and all figures I’m about to give you are real.

Out of all the graduates of the screenwriting seminar in question:

• 800 have died in auto accidents
• 90 have died of cancer
• 2 were murdered

For legal reasons I can’t tell you the name of this dangerous, deadly seminar.  But don’t be afraid, because there is a seminar out there whose graduates have won dozens of Oscars, Emmys, and other awards.  This one seems like a safer bet, doesn’t it?   There’s only one problem…

…it’s the same seminar.

The promoters of this seminar list how many attendees they’ve had over how many years and how successful they’ve been, however given enough years and enough attendees, one can generate all sorts of statistics.   Hence the ability to generate fatality rates for graduates as well as Oscar winners.  It’s called “data dredging.”  

So, which numbers should you pay closer attention to, the success rate or the mortality rate?   My suggestion?  Neither.  A seminar can no more take credit for the success of its attendees that be blamed for their untimely deaths.

Screenwriting seminars, books, software, and gurus often make all sorts of claims when trying to get you to take them seriously.   Write a movie in an hour and a half!  Sell your story without a script!  All you need to know about the movie and TV business!  Make money!  Sell your spec!  Learn the secret!  NO…learn MY secret!!

It’s not that you can’t learn something from these books and seminars,  but I want to encourage people to use their heads (and I’d like to encourage the authors and seminar givers to dial back the rhetoric.)  

Isn’t Contour just more of the same?  I hope not.   The closest I’ve gotten to hyping the software is “Get your story idea from brain to page in the shortest time possible” and “Minimum theory…maximum results.”  Both comments happen to be demonstrably true.  

At the recent LA Screenwriting Expo I did a presentation of Contour where the audience generated an idea for a movie and then after 30 minutes of explaining what Contour is and the underlying theory (“Minimum theory) we took the remaining 60 minutes and beat out the whole story.  And not 15 brief broadstrokes, but 44 specific plot points that someone could actually use to write the script from FADE IN to FADE OUT.   That’s not too shabby for an hour’s work. 

So, beware of wild claims of secrets and magic formulas for success.  During the gold rush, the only people who consistently made any money were the people selling the shovels.

As the old adage goes: if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

Not the movie, I’m talking about gender neutrality.  Contour, having been developed by a sexist pig (me) always referred to the protagonist in the masculine.  Actually, I’m kidding about the sexist pig thing.  I hope.

In actuality there is a debate in academic circles about gender neutrality and I had relied on the school of thought, as well as the guidelines in Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, that permitted the use of the masculine to refer to any non-specific person regardless of sex.  

After much consideration (and one refund to an irate user with a female protagonist) we’ve decided to embrace gender neutrality.  As updates start rolling out to Contour 1.0 we’ll be chipping away at all examples of inappropriate gender specific language in the user’s guide, manual, examples, help tips, this blog, etc. As you can imagine, this is a bit of an undertaking, so please be patient with us.  We’re trying to do the right thing.  Honest!   Rewriting it all will take some time.  

In the meantime, if I’ve offended anyone I would like to apologize to him or her, ask for his or her forgiveness, and assure him or her that he or she is welcome to contact me to discuss this or that.

“PLEASE DON’T PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK.”This was the subject line of a thread on a popular screenwriting message board. The writer was a frequent contributor to the message board with very strong opinions on a variety of subjects.

The author of the message went on to say that he had never paid to have his material read and critiqued, none of the professional writers the author of this thread knew had ever paid to get their work read, and neither should anyone else. The author ended with a bit of cheerleader pie-in-the-sky along the lines that if someone is persistent and has a good script, they will make it to the top.

The responses to his post were almost unanimous in their assumption that nobody can learn anything useful from anyone when it comes to writing, all quality writing comes from within, we should all just write whatever feels good to us and not worry about the commercial aspects of the business, we should each discover our own way to the craft and not rely on someone else to point us in any direction, and all script consultants are just failed writers.

I debated for a couple of days before deciding to respond to this thread. There was so much wrong with the underlying logic, so much misinformation, and frankly, so little understanding about the business of writing that I didn’t know where to begin.

It seemed to me that what had not been appreciated in this thread was the incredibly small window of opportunity a spec screenplay has to impress a studio, agent or producer. The expression “you only get one chance to make a good first impression” has never been more true than when it’s applied to trying to sell a script.

If you go out to the town with a script and it doesn’t sell, you can’t gather together your notes (if you even get any), rewrite the script, and then go out with it again to the same producers. Most of them will not spend the time to re-read a script they’ve already passed on unless there is some compelling reason to do so (an actor or director attached that means something…some financing that is legitimately in place if it’s an independent movie). A rewrite of the script does not qualify as a compelling reason.

“You only get one chance to make a good first impression.” So what do you do? You get some feedback first, and THEN go out with the script. Now the question is, to whom do you go for this feedback?

You probably know by now that you are the worst person to evaluate your script because you are either too green or too close to the material or both. If you are like most aspiring writers, you give it to some trusted friends to read.

What are their credentials? If they are just as green and unproven as you, their only benefit is distance from the material and that’s not enough to be helpful. How much do they really know about screenwriting? How many scripts have they read? Just because they also write screenplays doesn’t mean that they know what they’re doing. Worse, it doesn’t mean that they know what you’re doing. My eight year old makes interesting abstract pictures. I wouldn’t go to her for an explanation of Picasso’s “blue period.”Just because everyone’s writing doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to write.

I get infuriated by the hypocrisy some writers (aspiring and professional) allow themselves to unknowingly help promulgate. As writers we can’t both complain that not enough people value our contributions to movies while also believing that there is no method to the profession outside of what we can discover on our own. We can’t complain that our currency is devalued while we also believe that everyone can mint equal coins in their basement.

Writing is an art and a craft and, yes, a business. It is a profession for some, a hobby and hoped-for career for others. Some aspects of it are gifted to us. Some can be learned and acquired.

You have to ask yourself where you are in that continuum between “aspiring” and “working?” If you’re not far enough along for your liking, how do you get to where you want to be?

Firstly, you write. And after you write, you make certain that what you’ve written is representative of the scripts found on that area on the continuum you wish to populate. You do that by finding people who know what those scripts look like, both artistically and commercially. These people may or may not be the ones you have easy access to. That’s why many writers hire qualified, experienced script readers instead of friends.

Can your friends advise you about similar films in development? Can your friends advise you about trends in the marketplace? Can they tell you which producers are looking for your kind of material and which have sworn that they’ll never again make another western/horror/musical? Can they tell you how your script compares to others like it? Do they know why the others like it worked and can they identify those elements in yours?

Can they tell you what they liked about your script? Oh…they didn’t like your script? That’s even better. Can they tell you exactly what they didn’t like and why? Best of all, can they tell you how to fix the problems based not on their opinion (your opinion is just as valid as theirs) but on an empirical knowledge about screenwriting? This is what a skilled reader brings to your project.

The people who have said that professionals don’t pay to have their scripts read are wrong. I personally pay at least 15% of everything I earn to have my material read before I go out with it; I have two agents, one in Canada and one in Los Angeles and they split 15%. Part of their job is to read my material and make sure that it’s as good as it can be before we shop it to producers.

Why should I seek out their opinions? I’m a WGA, Emmy, WGC, and BAFTA nominated writer, producer, and director. I’ve been in the WGA for 20 years. I’ve earned my living exclusively as a screenwriter for two decades. Don’t I know how to write by now? The bottom line is that even my scripts only get one chance per producer to make a good impression. And what would I do if I didn’t have agents whose opinions, taste and business acumen I trusted? I’d hire the best script reader I could find and afford to make sure that I didn’t blow that one chance my script has of making a good first impression.

Yes, there are some readers out there whose only qualifications are “failed writer.” Yes, there are some readers out there who are only marginally more qualified than you to critique your script. There are also some very sharp people who can help you. Search for them the way you would search for the best medical specialist to cure a sick child. As with anything in life, you must make your own calculation between value and price.

“Please don’t pay people to read your work.” This is a blanket statement.As with all blanket statements there are times when it is absolutely right. There are also times when following it will guarantee that you labor in obscurity yet longer.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter