Lethal Weapon – The Story Department

Screenwriting: from Fail to Sale (4/5)

Samuel Bartlett — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 02:42:18 +0000

There’s this notion among screenwriters that if a plot point doesn’t work, you can brush over it, I’ve done it a bunch of times, why? Because we see plot points in great films that just don’t work and we forgive them.

By Samuel Bartlett

The Law of Causation

So why not forgive my little lack of logic at that last turn.

No. You really can’t do that.

That’s what re-writing and polishing is. You go through every little crease, really finely and iron out every single one of those bumps.

Everything has to make sense. Everything has to link, every scene has to feed into the next. Speaking about beats making sense, flowing into the next etc…

Here’s something I just learnt recently that is screenwriting gold…

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the South Park creators figured that if they can take the beat sheet of your film script and put the words AND THEN between every beat, basically your script is fucked.

The words between the beats of a beat sheet of a great film should read THEREFORE or BECAUSE.

That first script I sold was a ‘found footage’ film similar in style to Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity.

During the script selling process I had approached Full Clip Productions for script sale advice. I had a friend that worked there and he gave me some great inside advice from a producer’s POV.

The words between the beats of a beat sheet of a great film
should read THEREFORE or BECAUSE.

After the sale went through, said friend approached me with an idea Sam Worthington had just pitched to him that they wanted to develop, the idea was of the found footage variety. He said they were looking for a writer for the concept, would I be interested?

The Bottom Line

I took the idea, no more than a logline, extrapolated that into a feature script and wrote my nuts off for the next month. Sent it to them, they dug it and as of last night I finished writing the third draft. (That I really should be working on instead of this…)

This same friend, let’s call him, Mike, I had sent another one of my scripts, my baby, I mentioned earlier.

Then one afternoon he calls me and says he’s put that script in the hands of a manager that really digs it, he’s flying to Sydney for 48 hours to do a bunch of shit, but he wants to meet.

That meet went really well.

I’m not writing all this to bang my drum, I really haven’t done all that much yet, it’s this notion of ‘breaking in’ that I want to get back to.

It’s not about IN or OUT, it’s about the steps along the way, each leading into the next.

You can write Lethal Weapon, you can sell a script for $3million, but unless you’re constantly at it, constantly working, constantly writing, constantly reading scripts, watching films, you can slip back OUT again.

My advice in a nutshell is to learn the craft.

It’s not about IN or OUT, it’s about the steps along the way,
each leading into the next.

When you’ve got a script that’s good, send it out to script comps.

When you place, solicit your script around town.

If you’re easily dissuaded by rejection, then quit.

Seriously. Give up. This ain’t for you.

When you do get that first foot through the door, when someone who counts does take notice of your work, make it work for you.

Dominos people, dominos.

Here’s a list of the script comps that agents and prod companies give a shit about in no particular order:

Austin Screenplay Comp. Nicholl Fellowship. Champion Screenplay Comp. Scriptapalooza. Pipeline. TrackingB (or Tracking Board). Final Draft Big Break Comp. Slam Dance. Page Awards. Expo Screen Comp.

There are others, smaller ones, but these are the ones people take notice of.

– Samuel Bartlett

Part 1 – The Beginnings
Part 2 – Cars and Cops
Part 3 – The Truth about Comps
Part 5 – Writing and Reading

Photo Credit: The Man in Blue – dicktay2000

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Samuel Bartlett is an award winning screen writer and film maker with two feature films currently in development with Los Angeles based production companies.

He shot his first award winning feature film in 2011 and has another short film ready for the festival circuit. He divides his time between Sydney, London and LA.

Samuel Bartlett

Samuel Bartlett is an award winning screen writer and film maker with two feature films currently in development with Los Angeles based production companies. He shot his first award winning feature film in 2011 and has another short film ready for the festival circuit. He divides his time between Sydney, London and LA. Samuel also regularly deconstructs unproduced scripts here.

deconstructthescript.blogspot.com.au/

The Biggest Mistakes I Encounter In Each Genre (1/2)

Karel FG Segers — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:16:17 +0000

I was reading away last weekend, burning through script after script, each one in a different genre, becoming more and more frustrated as each script ended.

And I was wondering why I was getting so worked up.

by Carson Reeves

I go through bad stretches of scripts all the time. It eventually turns. So why was this bothering me more than usual?

And I realized that in each script I’d read, some basic common mistake was being made. These weren’t unique problems that only pop up once every hundred screenplays or so. These were genre-specific mistakes that I see over and over again. So I thought, hey, if I knew the number one mistake to avoid when I started writing a screenplay, wouldn’t that give me an advantage over other writers?

So lo and behold, that was the genesis for this article. I marked the 15 most popular genres and the most common mistakes I run into while reading those genres. Other readers may have different experiences, but this is mine. So either silently curse me for pointing out, once again, what NOT to do in a script, or use this advice to topple your competition. Here we go!

PERIOD PIECES

Number one mistake I see in period pieces is writers getting lost in their work. We’re cutting to a king in France and a peasant in Russia and a little known uprising in Austria and dozens of years pass and the old characters die and new characters are born and blah blahblahblah blah blah blah. Jumping around to 15 different characters in 18 different countries for 2 and a half hours isn’t going to entertain a reader. It’s going to frustrate them. Instead, find the focus in your period piece. Make the main character’s journey clear.

Number one mistake I see in period pieces

is writers getting lost in their work.

The King’s Speech is about a King who must overcome his speech impediment before giving the most important speech in the country’s history. It’s clean and it’s simple. If you do want to go “sprawling,” remember this: The more sprawling you get, the clearer your main character’s goal has to be. So the story of Braveheart encompassed dozens of years, but the goal (obtain freedom for his country) was always as clear as day.

DRAMAS

Many writers believe drama is a license to lay everything on thick as molasses. Cancer, death, car crashes, disease, abuse, addiction, depression. If you have more than a couple of these going on in your drama, consider taking them out now.

Dramas are at their best when they

pick and choose which moments to explore

Dramas are at their best when they pick and choose which moments to explore, not just hurl it all down in one giant depression sundae. It’s a delicate balance and by no means easy to navigate, but I always subscribe to the theory that less is more in drama.

ZOMBIE / SERIAL KILLER / ROM COMS

What the hell are all three of these doing in one category? That’s easy. All three inspire the same problem. Writers never do anything fresh with these genres. Zombie: Group of people gets chased by zombies, usually in a city.

Rom-Coms: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Serial Killer: Serial killer leaves cryptic puzzle behind for detectives to try and figure out. I see these plots over and over and over again.

You have to come up with a fresh angle! Look at Zombieland. They added comedy, silly rules, a voice over, and a road-trip story to the genre. It was fresh. Look at 500 Days of Summer.

It mixed the whole damn relationship up. As for serial killers, I don’t have an example for you because since Seven NOBODY has done anything new with the serial killer genre (NOTE TO ALL SCREENWRITERS: IF YOU WANT TO CASH IN, FIND A FRESH ANGLE FOR THE SERIAL KILLER GENRE). Remember, all three of these markets are super-competitive. So beat em by coming up with something new.

since Seven NOBODY has done

anything new with the serial killer genre

SCI-FI/FANTASY

Most new writers get into sci-fi and fantasy for the wrong reasons. They’re more interested in the macro than the micro. In other words, they care more about the world than their hero’s journey.

I remember reading a really ambitious incredibly detailed sci-fi script that didn’t have a lick of story to speak of, and the writer’s one big question to me afterwards was, “Do you think the disappearing mech suits on page 25 are realistic?”

Of all the questions they could’ve asked, they didn’t want to know, “Was my main character’s motivation strong enough?” Or “Do you think the connection between these two characters worked?” but if a singular tiny sci-fi geeky machine that had nothing to do with the rest of story was realistic.

This is representative of how writers think of these scripts. They’re focusing on the wrong things. Focus on the character’s journey first (The Matrix is more about Neo believing in himself than it is about cool wire-fu) and everything else will follow.

Focus on the character’s journey first

and everything else will follow.

COMING-OF-AGE

Coming-of-Age is a commonly encountered amateur genre because most writers are in their 20s when they begin writing. Naturally, they start writing about their own confusing directionless lives. Unfortunately, this confusion almost always translates to NO STORY!

The writer feels content to just let their character wander about, experiencing life and all its eccentricities, believing that the “realness” of the journey will be enough to capture the audience’s imagination. It isn’t. It just makes everything directionless and boring.

If you want to write coming-of-age, give your script a hook and a story just like any other genre. A perfect example is Everything Must Go – very much a coming of age story, but structured so as to keep the story on track and so we always know what’s going on.

If you want to write coming-of-age, give your script

a hook and a story just like any other genre.

COMEDY and HORROR

I’ve said this a million and one times on the site. The biggest mistake comedies and horror films make, is to focus on the laughs and the scares as opposed to character development.

Comedy and Horror plots don’t tend to be that complicated, which is fine. As long as you have a good hook, you’re okay. But the characters in these scripts are a different story. The audience *has to connect* with them in order for the script to work. Yet writers refuse to dig any deeper into those character’s lives than the width of a tic-tac.

So figure out what makes your hero tick. What are they afraid of? What’s their biggest flaw? Then use your story to explore that flaw. Happy Gilmore had major anger issues. The story was just as much about him learning to overcome that anger as it was about winning at golf.

So figure out what makes your hero tick.

-Carson Reeves

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

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