Hello, everyone – As you know I’m all about giving you information that you don’t normally get in the typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  Here we go again.

Halloween is around the corner and it’s not just celebrated in the U.S.  When I was in Spain, they were getting ready to trick and treat as well.  And when we think of Halloween we also celebrate scary movies, which for a beginning screenwriter, is probably the wisest career choice you can make.

If this is in your immediate future (that is to write a horror film) please join my webinar on Writing Great Horror Film for Films and TV, as horror is also quite big on television these days as well.  The webinar goes live on Wed October 30 at 1:00 pm but it’s archived for a year so you can watch it at any time you choose.  Click on the following link for more information: http://tinyurl.com/pn9rv9s

Now let’s move on with our discussion. This is the upteenth communication we’ve had on character and we’re still going strong, so you can see how much is to be gained by looking at character and creating the most interesting, dynamic characters we can.

I have turned my attention more and more lately to this subject of “rooting interest” and find it a crucial element in not only emotionally connecting the audience to our characters but also it’s essential in immediately hooking the reader to our stories.

For this week, let’s use “American Beauty,” as our model for a successful use of rooting interest. Alan Ball, the great writer of this masterpiece, also had a character – Lester Burnham – played brilliantly by Kevin Spacey – who was not by his immediate nature and circumstances particularly sympathetic.

He was basically a loser, a shlub, who wasn’t a good father or a good husband. He worked in a dead end job that he hated but he mostly bemoaned his fate rather than do anything about it.

So how did Alan Bell turn all this around to his advantage? First of all he started with a Voice Over narrative, spoken by Lester. This allowed us to get deeper into Lester’s head. Yes, he was a loser, but he had more going on. He was sensitive. He felt bad about his life. His greatest pleasure was masturbating in the shower every morning. He could laugh at himself. And this self deprecating side of Lester made us immediately feel for him.

Lester became a universal figure of entrapment – he was trapped by his job, trapped by his marriage, by his economic status and by his own desires. Thus we all connected with him on a deeper level – because we are all trapped. In some way. And this is the very thing that Waldo Salt talks about when he says all great movies have this universal bond going between audience and protagonist – a deep sense of connection.

American Beauty has it in spades. Especially for men. You see the man as dork – a figure of derision in commercials and sitcoms all the time. Many men feel this way. They bring home the paycheck but they are universally made fun of by their families, their wives, the world at large. They’re chumps. Somehow they got the wrong end of the deal. Lester is a prime example of this. We feel how unfair this is and thus root for him.

I’ll continue this discussion of American Beauty next week as there’s much more to be learned from this amazing piece of screenwriting.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. We are growing by leaps and bounds, which is very gratifying to me.  As you know, I do everything possible to provide information that you don’t normally hear in a typical screenwriting class, screenwriting course or even screenwriting workshop.  It seems to be working.

Please don’t hesitate to share your reactions, ideas and comments. You can do this on my blog at Facebook:  Secrets of Screenwriting Group.  If you’d like to read previous posts, please click on FILES and you will see them archived there. For anything related to screenwriting, please share your ideas or comments.

If you’re looking for a screenwriting partner, you can post that – or if you’ve heard of a great screenwriting competition, please let all of us know about that.

We will help you and if you’re smart – you will help us.  This is how careers are born.

I’d like now to continue this thread we’ve been exploring in the last few weeks – that is – rooting interest.

As I mentioned before, it was written about with great enthusiasm by Blake Snyder in:  Saving The Cat. This was done literally in a Clint Eastwood movie from 1984, “Tightrope.”  In that movie, Clint played a character named Captain Wes Block.

He worked vice and was a bit of an unsavory character himself.  This was a challenge for the screenwriter to be sure – because the entire thrust of the film was about Wes Block walking a moral tightrope, the more he saw of the seedier side of life, the more he teetered on the tightrope between good and evil.

But the problem with that premise is that it would be easy not to sympathize with this character.  So the screenwriter took out his bag of tricks and came up with this – he had Wes coming home late one night and finding a kitten caught in the rain, huddling in a doorway.  The cop felt sorry for the animal and put it under his raincoat, taking it home.

Now how obvious and corny can one get?  But despite the obvious ploy for sympathy – it actually kind of worked in this film.  Maybe today we’re much too cynical and educated to buy something like this – but writers use these rooting interest techniques all the time to manipulate our emotions and make us care for their characters.

The trick is not to become so obvious that the audience sees through the manipulation and rejects what we’re doing out of hand. In other words, the rooting interest techniques must be organic and believable.

I’m actually facing the same issue in a screenplay I’m currently writing.  The protagonist is beautiful and wealthy, married to a famous writer – someone you may be jealous of but not someone that you would immediately connect with on an emotional level.

So I have been trying to bring more rooting interest to her – stealing from Body Heat – having everyone in the coastal town where she lives really liking her – finding an opportunity where she is immediately taken advantage of by someone who pretends to like her – only for her to find out that he really

wants to meet her husband.  So she is betrayed and for that we feel great sympathy for her.

These rooting interest techniques, as I’ve said before – are especially important when our protagonists are not by their nature someone who make us feel empathy for them.  But we want to immediately care for all our protagonists.

Waldo Salt – my great inspiration as a screenwriter – writer of “Midnight Cowboy” & “Coming Home,” talked about what makes great movies.  He brought it down to the most elemental level – that great movies have to do with an audience making a deep and primal bond with the protagonist of the movie – living and dying with that character – wanting them to succeed no matter what.

When you think of “Midnight Cowboy” and “Coming Home,” Waldo Salt clearly accomplished this goal and these movies are now classics in their genre.

How we create that deep and primal bond has much to do with these rooting interest techniques.  Just because you feel a connection to your protagonist – it doesn’t mean we will.  You have to create the situations where this connection is made.

We’ll talk more about rooting interest in the future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you are well aware, I do everything possible to provide insights into screenwriting that aren’t normally covered in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  So here we go again.

We spoke last week about the 3 things every producer wants to know when he first begins reading your script.  They are:  Who is the protagonist?  What is the genre?  And why do I care about your hero/heroine?Let’s now discuss the third part of that answer.  Who is your protagonist and why do I care about him or her?  For your entire script is really about one thing  – the hero’s journey.  And really it comes down to this – rooting interest.

And the more I think about how important character is and your protagonist’s character arc, the more it occurs to me that structure is really no more than this – where your character begins and where they end – that is truly the story structure.  But more of that later.

One of the toughest challenges will occur when your protagonist is not by nature particularly sympathetic. Ned Racine, for example, in Body Heat. He’s a little sleazy, not too bright, a womanizer, and seems to be just drifting through life. Not someone I’d immediately want to root for.

But the author makes it very clear that everyone in the southern town where he lives really likes Ned. He has lots of friends who enjoy his company. So if other people really like Ned – it makes it easy for us to like him, too.

We also discover he has a self-deprecating sense of humor. He laughs at himself quite easily and doesn’t take himself seriously at all. Life is rather absurd, he knows he’s got all these flaws and can make fun of himself. This is also a rooting interest.

Someone who takes himself too seriously is by definition then someone who we don’t tend to root for.  Think of the protagonist of the series:  News Room, the part played by Jeff Daniels.  He takes himself far too seriously.  And it’s a critical mistake of one of our greatest screenwriters, Aaron Sorkin.  Is he so powerful now and well respected that no one told him this?  We really aren’t that crazy about the lead of your series.  But for me at least, it makes the show far less interesting.  I watch it if there’s nothing else on but I don’t yearn to see the next episode – like I do Homeland or even Breaking Bad.  Maybe it’s because the Jeff Daniels character is so uncomfortably close to who Aaron Sorkin is in real life?  Could be that be the disconnect?  Anyway, enough of my psychoanalyzing.  It’s exactly what I said I hate about Freudian analysis as it relates to screenwriting.

The clever screenwriter who has a challenging protagonist like this has to really pull out his bag of tricks to find those situations or character traits which will ameliorate more negative aspects of the character.

There are many, many techniques and “tricks” in effect that create rooting interest for our protagonist. Even negative aspects of their character – their flaws in effect – can be created to help us sympathize with them.

Next week we will continue this invaluable line of discussion – for when we care about the protagonist, we will want to root for them – we will be connected to their desires and will live and die during their harrowing journey to reach their goals.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you all know, I try in these posts to contribute ideas and lessons that you won’t normally hear in a typical screenwriting course, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting class.  Here is more of the same.

In every script you write – the first thing you must understand is that a reader or producer or director when they first flip past your title page wants to know a couple key things right off the bat. They have no idea what your story is about – who your protagonist is or what the genre is. So we have to carefully lead them by the hand and make 3 key things very clear:

1. Who’s the protagonist.

2.  Why should I care about this character.

3.  And what genre is this supposed to be – drama? comedy? horror? suspense thriller? etc.

Because those 3 things will allow me to relax, focus and know what I’m supposed to be experiencing.

If any of these things are not clear, then I (as the reader) will become easily confused.

You have to understand readers, producers, directors, etc read many, many scripts.  It’s not easy to start reading one when we don’t have sufficient enough information to groove us into the reading experience.

Therefore, you better have a damn good reason to present something in the beginning of your script that is confusing – because confusion is definitely not the effect we want at the beginning of a story.

The effect we do want is to immediately pull the reader into the story. To grab them.  And once we grab them, to not let them go. We want to compel them to keep turning pages to find out what’s going to happen next.

And one of the best ways to do that is to establish the protagonist quickly – and create rooting interest for them. We create situations where we immediately empathize with the main character.

We’ll talk more about rooting interest in the weeks to come.

Until then — KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone. As I always make clear, these posts are meant to provide information you wouldn’t normally find in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop and screenwriting course.  I hope I have fulfilled that promise.

We have now discussed for 15 weeks many aspects of character development, especially as it relates to your protagonist. I want to continue that discussion for awhile more – giving you an example of how these techniques are realized.

The film is “Waitress,” which is a real gem. If you have not seen this film yet, please do, as it captures many of the layers of character growth and complexity that I have been discussing.

For some reason this movie did not get the attention that a movie like Juno did, but it is as beautifully written with great performances. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly (who is tragically no longer with us any longer) – it tells the story of a waitress in a small southern town who is trapped in a marriage with an abusive man.

She discovers she’s pregnant as the movie starts, which makes her feel even more trapped to her husband and her life.

The entire story is her attempt to flee that marriage and find her true destiny in life.

It’s a small story with minimal plot which gives the writer more opportunity to develop her characters and show how they are all yearning for something better – for true passion and a reason for being.

Why I want to discuss this movie is that Adrienne Shelly writes fully drawn, complex characters who never fall into cliche. They all have contradictions – always surprising us with their behavior and actions but always staying real to human nature.

We’ll start with the protagonist – Jenna. She’s creative (makes amazing pies) smart, tough and willing to engage anyone. She’s certainly no wimp. But when it comes to her husband – Earl – she allows herself to be manipulated and coerced. So she’s not a victim but she is. She’s poor and afraid – and we’re afraid for her because we feel the lurking violence in her husband – who only slaps her once, but we know he’s capable of much more.

Jenna never suspected who Earl really was before they got married but now she knows what a controlling sociopath he truly is. When she’s around him she puts on a big act, and acquiesces to everything he says, but her voice is flat and she’s clearly just playing a part. In fact, she can’t stand him anymore  but is afraid to antagonize him in any way.

This is a strong woman who is a victim to her class and to the bad choices in her past. She’s desperately looking for a way out and ends up having an affair with her pediatrician to feel something real and genuine again.

Her performance is so genuine and compelling your heart breaks for her – because she’s not a victim and yet plays the role when she feel she has no choice.

Contradictions and complexity.

Her abusive husband Earl is another example of true complexity and depth. He’s a bully and treats Jenna like someone he owns. But he’s also weak and pathetic at times, with a constant need to be comforted and reassured.

He’s so needy it’s actually kind of sad and when he discovers she’s hidden money all around the house and not told him, he breaks down and cries and tells her how much he needs her. You actually can’t help feeling a little sorry for Earl when you’re not scared of what he might do. Again – he has layers, he’s a bundle of contradictions, he’s unpredictable and even a tiny bit charming at times.

And then finally there’s Old Joe – played by Andy Griffith. He’s the owner of the diner where Jenna works. He’s a gruff control freak, too, who’s always complaining about the service and everything else but underneath has a soft heart and gets to truly care about Jenna and her plight. He’s crusty, ornery, likes to talk a little dirty at times and Jenna has to constantly put him in his place – which he loves.

There are more great characters but these three will suffice. There’s nothing original about this story, just as there was nothing original about the story of Juno. But the characters are so well drawn and compelling we are caught up in their lives and begin rooting for them to win, agonizing each time it looks like they will fail.

Adrienne Shelly may not have heard about character diamonds but she created some great diamonds for all her characters. None are one or two dimensional, they all surprise us and yet remain consistent at the same time. This is truly a great achievement.

Please get the DVD of this film and study it – there is no greater example of what we’ve been talking about for weeks now.

Until next week then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  We were discussing “Body Heat” before the Labor Day week-end and I want to continue that discussion.  As you are well aware, this is another one in a long line of posts that are offered which go beyond the typical kinds of lectures you will be offered in most screenwriting workshops, screenwriting courses and or screenwriting classes.  I hope you enjoy them.

We were talking about Ned Racine, the protagonist, and I asked the question of what created his complex but ultimately fatal character, making him the perfect foil for Maddy, the femme fatale.

Before we get into this, I want to emphasize how important it is that you read and study the great screenplays of our time, Tootsie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Midnight Cowboy and so many others.  Body Heat certainly deserves to be in this select group.

I asked the question, did the screenwriter feel a need to give you backstory on why Ned was the way he was?  In other words, do you as a screenwriter need to tell us the psychological factors that created this human being?

Along this track, did the screenwriter need to tell you how Hannibal Lector became a serial killer or why Jerry McGuire was so emotionally cut off from true intimacy?

This is an important point because so many writers and even studio heads and their development people somehow feel we need to know a character’s background to understand who they are.  This is really a throw back to Freudian psychology.  But what I’d like to stress is that this isn’t necessary and if a character is created well the audience will never feel cheated they didn’t know where this character went to school, how he  was bullied in school, or how he or she was stood up on prom night.

Let’s look at Maddy in Body Heat.  We do learn about her past because it’s crucial to the plot.  Because of her own misdeeds, she stole the identity of a popular girl in high school and this woman is now demanding money or she’ll expose Maddy.  So when Maddy decides to kill Ned, she decides to kill this woman also and make it look like it was Maddy who died in the explosion along with her lover. We do find out about Maddy’s past because it helps to show how truly evil and manipulative she is and it makes the plot more interesting and devious.

But are we ever told what made Maddy a manipulative monster in the first place?  Not at all.  She simply is who she is.

To give one psychological incident or series of incidents to rationalize why someone is the way they are will oftentimes do nothing more than trivialize your character. If you create a great character and they’re recognizable but unique and alive and dynamic – you have done your job. No need for childhood traumas, parents dying in car accidents, etc.

Until next time — KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone. Another week-end and another opportunity to discuss great characters and what makes them so. As you all know by now, I like to provide information that you don’t normally receive in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting course.

As I have repeatedly said, anyone who is new or relatively new to this group, please go to FILES to see all previous posts.  You’ll learn more by doing that than in any screenwriting workshop, screenwriting course or screenwriting class… (I know this is a huge boast but it’s sadly the truth, as I’ve taught at some of the best of them).

We are building up a great amount of knowledge here about screenwriting. As it has been said, the instructor teaches those things which he himself needs to learn.

I get a great deal of satisfaction doing this, as it reminds me of all the things I also need to absorb in my own writing. Hopefully, my work as well as yours will become deeper as a result of these communications.

Let me continue then by discussion one of the great screenplays of all times – “Body Heat,” by Lawrence Kasdan.  There is no better way to learn screenwriting than to study the great screenplays – The Verdict, E.T., 48 Hours, Chinatown, The Goodbye Girl, etc.

Pick a genre that you are interested in yourself – whether it’s noir thriller, romantic comedy, etc and study what goes into a great screenplay.

Study the way a screenwriter makes things visual, they show – they don’t tell – they have witty dialogue, their scenes somehow seem to pop, their characters come off the page.

How do they do this? Well, that is what we analyzing here. There are lessons we can learn – it’s not necessarily magic, there are proven techniques which we can all learn to become better writers.

So let’s look at “Body Heat,” because it has a great paradigm for bringing two wonderful characters to life – but does it in two very distinct ways.  There’s William Hurt’s character – Ned Racine. He is a great example of someone we wouldn’t ordinarily root for.

He’s none too bright, he’s lazy, he’s a womanizer and he’s looking for the easy way to get rich. But despite all these things – we like him.  Why?  For one thing, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, he has a certain charm, and everyone else in the story seems to like him a great deal.

Ned Racine is the perfect victim for Kathleen Turner – Maddy Walker. She is looking for a fall guy to kill her husband. He fits the bill perfectly. He’s sexually motivated, he can’t see through her true agenda, he’s looking to make money the easy way.

Perfect. We get invested in Ned and live through him. We fall for Maddy and decide to kill the evil husband. Then we’re taken for a ride by Maddy, who’s set this up from the beginning. We lose everything and have to pay for our stupidity and avarice by ending up in jail while Maddy gets away scot free.

I wanted to discuss these characters in terms of what we are told about their past.  Do we know why Ned is the way he is? Are we every told about his childhood, his parents, the time some bully took his lunch money and he decided ever since to forget hard work and go for the easy score? Thankfully, not a peep.

Ned is just Ned. We know people like this. He’s recognizable without being a cliche. Dr. Freud, sorry about that, and please don’t turn over in your grave.  By giving us some pat psychological reason for why he’s the way he is would only trivialize the story and the characters.

Does anybody still buy this Freudian stuff? It’s all about sex,sex, sex?  Why is Ned the way he is? Only he can tell us that and he probably doesn’t have a clue. A past life maybe? A consideration he made somewhere along the line? Maybe a whole series of incidents? The fact that there’s a bit of mystery in characters is part of what makes them so interesting.

But hold on. That doesn’t mean we can’t explore someone’s past if it enriches the story. I mentioned “Wicked,” and how we saw how the heroine was shaped by her childhood. That is the very heart of the story and makes up the structural spine of that musical.

The same goes for Body Heat, but in a different light. It gives us an understanding of how Maddy Walker pulled off her great deception. We find out that she had something nasty in her past when she met her husband, stole an identity from a girl in high school and now is getting blackmailed by this woman.

We will discuss more about Maddy’s past and why it’s important to the story next week.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you know I love to provide tips and comments that you wouldn’t normally get in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This is very much apropos to what I’m going to talk about now…  The complexity and contradictions in all great characters.

As a great South African novelist, Alan Paton once wrote:

“This discovery of the complexity of human nature was accompanied by another — the discovery of the complexity and irrationality of human motive, the discovery that one could love and hate simultaneously, be honest and cheap, be arrogant and humble, be any pair of opposites that one had supposed to be mutually exclusive. This, I believe, is not common knowledge and would be incomprehensible to many. It has always been known, of course, by the dramatists and novelists. It is, in fact, a knowledge far more disturbing to other people than writers, for to writers it is the grist of their mills.”

This is what makes great protagonists in fact. The contradictions in their character. It is what makes screenwriting really exciting, that we have a character in mind and we begin to write that character and they do things that completely surprise us, they say something we would not have guessed they would say or do things that we would not have predicted.

Here is one example from a film I saw for the hundredth time:  “Body Heat.”  I will discuss this film in our next post – but it has a great protagonist – Ned Racine (William Hurt).  He is full of contradictions.  One great visual clue is that he loves to jog, but then right after his jog, he takes out a cigarette and smokes.

It’s a great moment in the film and a key to his character.  A total contradiction.  He’s doing something healthy and then ruins it by doing something completely self destructive.  But it’s very human, too.  We are all full of these contradictions.

These are the moments that you as a writer want to treasure, for it is these very things that make the character come alive.  That new speech pattern, their way of expressing themselves, these actions that were not anticipated.  Your character just took on a life of his or her own.  They are truly speaking to you now and not just being manipulated by you the writer.

For the most part, these moments cannot be anticipated when you are outlining your movie.  And I strongly recommend that you do outline your stories.  Otherwise, you might well end up like me, when I was first starting out as a screenwriter, getting an idea, becoming increasingly excited about it, and just started writing.

I would end up on page 70 having no idea what I was doing or what my story was about and got completely blocked.  I’m sure many of you have similar experiences.  So I stopped doing that and spent many weeks and sometimes months working on the outline, now facing another quandary –

My outlines got so detailed that when I wrote the script I was practically transcribing the outline and the act of writing became mechanical – all of my best ideas were in the outline and I wasn’t discovering anything when I wrote the screenplay.

So I think for many writers a good method is to find something in between these two extremes – to definitely have an outline, know what the major turning points in the story are (the first plot point, the midpoint, the second plot point, the climax and the major story beats of each act).

But not get too specific, allow yourself the luxury of discovering what the scenes are about as you write them.  Then the actual screenwriting process remains fresh and alive and you are discovering moments in the script as you go.

I realize at this point that we have not discussed story structure at all and after we conclude these talks on character, I will launch into a number of conversations about structure.  So look forward to those posts.

For those of you who are relatively new to the group, go to FILES to see all past posts. And until next time —

KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you all know,  I love to delve into issues that aren’t normally covered in your typical screenwriting workshop, screenwriting class or screenwriting course.  Voila.  Here is another example of that.

It’s very exciting as we are now getting close to having 3,400 screenwriters on this group. We are growing by leaps and bounds and I am very gratified by the feedback I’ve been getting.

Now let’s continue with our discussion of creating great protagonists. I would like to discuss an area that I’ve thought about for quite some time.  When we talked about the psychological aspects of your heroes/heroines, it used to be quite common that studio heads and development types insisted on knowing why your protagonist acted in the way they did.

In other words, they wanted it stated in some form or the other that they were afraid of intimacy because they were beaten as a child, or they were a loner because they lost their pet turtle and decided to never trust again.

This always made of think of outmoded Freudian analysis that really gives pat answers to issues that are much deeper than any of us suspects.  Is this really believable today?  Do people still even give credence to Freud and all his childhood theories, etc.

I myself have to be honest with you and confess that I don’t know why people act the way they do.  Only the person himself after much soul searching can tell anyone why they are the way they are.  For all I know or they know they are acting out some past life.

Isn’t it simplistic to claim that their father abandoned the family when they were young and because of this… Yada, yada… We aren’t this simplistic and I think when we try and foist this off on audiences it’s sophomoric and facile and may please some antiquated studio executive but doesn’t ring true in the real world.

For a much more interesting approach, let’s look at Jerry McGuire. This is one of my favorite screenplays and cannot be read enough to learn how a great screenwriter does it.  As we all can see, Jerry is charming, funny, self deprecating, and capable of tremendous growth.  He knows he’s not living up to his potential and in a moment of revelatory inspiration, writes a mission statement that gets him fired and launches him into a great journey of self fulfillment.

Jerry can be a great friend to anyone but at the beginning of the story seems incapable of true intimacy.  We are never given any reason for this.  Jerry is just Jerry.  We have known many people like this and we feel like we know this guy.

But the writer doesn’t feel the need to tell us Jerry lost his beloved dog when he was 10 years old and now doesn’t have the heart to get close to another creature again – human or canine.  Why is Jerry like this?  He just is.

Do we need to give some pat psychological answer to Jerry’s emotional disability?  Obviously not.  And the audience didn’t feel cheated by not getting some pat answer.  Is Jerry a less complex character as a result.  Not at all.

People are much more complex and mysterious than Freud would have us believe.  Early childhood upsets don’t necessarily cause the woof and warp of what we will eventually become.  Some people are emotionally abused and turn out just fine, others are emotionally abused and are permanently scarred.

All we really find out about Jerry’s past is that the only thing his father regretted after a career of being a bureaucrat for his whole life is that he didn’t get a more comfortable chair.  Jerry wants to reach a lot higher than this.  That is a telling detail but does not try and give us a pat answer as why Jerry McGuire is Jerry McGuire.

I would love to hear back from you on this.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you all know, I’m all about providing information that you don’t normally hear in a screenwriting course, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting class.  This is definitely true of what I want to talk about today.

For those of you who can’t make it to my screenwriting lecture today at the Alameda Writers Group I’d like to share with you one aspect of my talk – and that is Working Smart as well as Working Hard.

What do I mean by that?  Of course you have to write diligently, you need to write everyday if possible because only by doing that do you get better as a writer.

But you also have to be smart about the choices you’re making in terms of what you write.  If you’re a beginning writer, for example, what genres are the best to write?  Is it wise to write a 100 million dollar spectacle?  Not really.  Any studio or financing group that’s willing to invest that kind of money will not feel confident betting those kind of funds on a beginning screenwriter.

So clearly, it would be smarter to write a film with a low to mid level budget.

How about genres?  What genres do you have the best chance of writing to get notice and hopefully a decent paycheck?  When I first started out I knew I’d have my best shot if I wrote a horror movie.  Why?  Horror movies don’t require big budgets and are always in demand.

Just look at Paranormal Activity.  It was made for a pittance and now has spawned three sequels and is possibly the most successful movie series ever in terms of return on investment.  Horror movies don’t require stars.  They can be made on a shoe string budget and yet have the potential of making huge returns.  So naturally, many producers are always looking for the next Halloween or Friday the 13^th.

The same can be said for low budget comedies.  Once again they don’t require big budgets and even big stars and yet have the potential of making a great return for the investors.

Working smart you also want to write a film that will attract big name talent – A List Actors.  That is the topic of my lecture today in Glendale.  Why is that so important?

Because a film gets made when an A List Actor signs onto the project.  When a Will Smith or Tom Cruise agrees to attach himself to a screenplay that project is now on top of the list for getting produced.  The reasons for this are obvious.

Everyone around the world knows who Brad Pitt is for example and will more likely go to a movie because he’s starring in it.  Take World War Z.  That was basically a big budget zombie movie with one added attraction – it had Brad Pitt.  I know as a movie goer I was more inclined to go this film simply because of the star.

And then you need to realize that more stars are men than are women.  There are female stars like Angelina Jolie who can open an movie but female stars are not as numerous as male stars.  And what are the ages of male stars if you’re going to write a starring vehicle for Tom Cruise or Will Smith or Brad Pitt?  They’re not in their twenties.  Most are in their early 40’s or even early 50’s.

And then it might be smart to write a film for an older star like Clint Eastwood who gets teamed up with a younger star like Ryan Gosling.  Or Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds in R.I.P.D.

This is working smart, not just working hard.  It’s something to take into account when you conceptualize your next screenplay.  We’ll talk more about working smart in the future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this: