Contour At The Movies

“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

I’ve been having an interesting tête-à-tête over at the Mariner Software Contour forum with a member from England.  He asks the question “Is this (Contour) too restrictive?”  

C’mon…you know you’ve been thinking the same thing. CLICK HERE to read the questions and replies.

Imagine listening to two pieces of music, both very similar but with one major difference. The first piece is the glorious final movement from Beethoven’s 9thSymphony. The second, a random re-ordering of all the same notes, played by all the same musicians, on all of the same instruments, and with each note lasting exactly as long as it did in the non-random version of the 9th. It’s obvious that while the random version of Beethoven’s 9thmight offer occasional moments of musical interest, as a whole it would be an unsatisfying experience.

The question we must ask is why should your brain prefer one version over the other? This isn’t a glib question. If two musical works are composed of the same notes and durations but in two different orderings, why does the brain hear one as “music” and the other as “noise?”

The answer is structure. Your brain hears the notes of the 9th Symphony as arranged by Beethoven, and because it has a structure that the brain’s “wiring” is genetically able to decode, the brain responds to and accepts what it just heard as the satisfying experience known as hearing music. Even someone who doesn’t like classical music (or hip-hop or new age or disco) would rather listen to a type of music they don’t have an affinity for than listen to a discordant, structure-less collection of notes.

Okay, maybe not disco.

Another way of saying this is that the brain is “hard-wired” to recognize and respond favorably to musical structure. It comes as part of the package deal we call “being human.” Now, if we can accept this idea — that the brain is hard-wired to detect and respond to musical structure — is it possible that the brain is also hard-wired to recognize story structure?

I posed this question to Dr. Barry Bank. Dr. Bank is one of them big-brain types. A former honcho at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, Dr. Bank is currently working on an early diagnostic tool to detect Alzheimer’s Disease. The wiring of the brain is his area of expertise, and the short version of his answer to my question — is the brain hard-wired to recognize good story structure? — is an unqualified “yes.” The brain is on a never-ending mission to take the data that comes its way through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch and assemble that data into understandable experiences. When it does it with sounds at different frequencies it’s called “music.” When it does it with plot points and dramatic beats, it’s called “story.”

Joseph Campbell, in his defining work THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, noticed that people from different cultures spanning the earth, cultures that had no contact with each other, told very similar stories in very similar ways. Campbell made popular the theory that there is something in the human condition that creates similar stories independent of culture or conditioning. Science has now stepped in to help clarify Joseph Campbell’s observation. The human brain looks for and responds to a similar meaningful story structure because that’s what it was born to do.

Armed with this information you can now see the power of developing a definable, repeatable system for breaking down movies. What if you were to take the top films of all time (”top” being defined as those films whose stories found the widest possible audience), distill those films down to their common shared elements and codify it all into a system? You’d have a pretty solid jumping off point for telling your stories. And don’t worry that your scripts are going to come out feeling formulaic. What makes AMERICAN BEAUTY, STAR WARS, THE SIXTH SENSE, and LIAR LIAR different from each other is not that their structures are different (which they aren’t) but how creative each writer was within the same structure.

It will be your creativity that will make your characters leap off the page. Your creativity will make your settings unique and your dialog soar. Apply it to the nuts and bolts of structure, however, and your creativity might just kill your script in the cradle by rendering the structure unrecognizable to the human brain.

There is plenty of room for creativity when writing. Just don’t monkey around with structure. Structure is mechanical. A tool. It is a waste of your time and energy to re-invent structure every time you sit down to write. And as the great William Goldman says in his classic book ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, “Screenplays are structure.”

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

In order to have a basic understanding of how these reviews work, you need to understand two concepts: the four questions and the four archetypes.

The four questions are the questions that every movie must answer effectively:

1. Who’s your main character?
2. What’s your main character trying to accomplish?
3. Who’s trying to stop your main character?
4. What happens if your main character fails?

The answers must be:

1. A sympathetic character, who is…
2. …trying to accomplish a compelling goal while being opposed by…
3. … a powerful and committed opponent, over…
4. life and death stakes.

The four archetypes are the four classic archetypes that every main character moves through in every great movie:

1. ORPHAN in Act One
2. WANDERER in the first half of Act Two
3. WARRIOR in the second half of Act Two
4. MARTYR in Act Three.

If only this would somehow get me a discount at the Apple Store…

http://www.macworld.com/article/137698/2008/12/contour.html

Syd Field first described the three areas of conflict your main character is dealing with, and I’ve gone back to this concept over and over again, particularly in crafting a good CENTRAL QUESTION for my stories.  (The Central Question is the question that once it’s answered definitively “yes” or “no” the movie is over.)

These three areas of conflict are:

• PROFESSIONAL — That which is evident to everyone around your main character.
• PERSONAL — That which is evident to only those closest to your main character.
• PRIVATE — That which only your main character really knows.

So, in STAR WARS the Central Question is “Will Luke save the Princess, destroy the Deathstar, and become a Jedi like his father.”  Destroying the Deathstar is his professional goal.  Saving the Princess is his personal goal.  Becoming a Jedi like his father is his private goal.

A more recent example is QUANTUM OF SOLACE.  The Central Question is “Will Bond defeat the plans of the Dominic Greene (professional), keep Camille safe as she seeks revenge (personal), and avenge the death of his girlfriend Vesper Lynd (private).”

The closer you can resolve all three of these areas of conflict to each other, the tighter and more satisfying the conclusion of your stories will be.