The Screenwriting Screenwriter

It Happened Again

2011-10-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

My kid is watching "Up".

There's a moment towards the end where, after fighting tooth and nail for, like, twenty minutes, Carl finds himself on the floor with the bad guy holding a sword over him... and he does nothing. He sits there, waiting to die, until he is fortuitously saved by the dog accidentally turning the steering wheel.

I know it's probably not annoying to anyone else. But it's becoming annoying to me.

Have You Ever Noticed...

2011-10-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a cliche in action movies that's starting to bug me.

In nearly every action movie you have by necessity a hero who never gives up. No matter what gets thrown at him, he fights back against it and refuses to lie down. When everybody else is ducking for cover, he's charging into battle. Which is great. This is what we want from our action heroes.

But almost inevitably, there's a moment where the guy freaking gives up and waits to die. It's usually a minor moment at the end of a big fight or chase, and it is almost always followed by a last-minute rescue by a piece of luck or supporting character.

For example, take Avatar. Jake spends the whole movie being Mr. Heroic, taking no crap from nobody. He's just been engaged a mano-a-mano battle with Quarritch in his big robot suit, fighting like a mad dog, and what happens? Quarritch picks him up by the hair, and Jake does nothing. He just dangles there like a dead fish, giving his girlfriend the perfect opportunity to swoop in to his rescue. At any other point in the movie had he been in this situation, he would have found a way to get in a good kick or squirm free. But here, he just apparently says "Oh well, he's got my pony tail so I'm screwed."

Same thing in Back to the Future. Marty's confronted by Libyan terrorists, they aim their machine guns at him, and he just stands there and closes his eyes, waiting to die. Any other time in the movie, he'd have... I dunno... moved, or something.

Another Fun Way I Get Unstuck

2011-09-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

Got stuck on a scene recently and tried something else new (along the lines of my previous Sketchup Experiment).

My problem was visualizing how the scene would play out logistically. I don't really fancy myself a director, but nevertheless I thought... well heck, it would help if I had some actors here and we could block the scene and work it out. But I didn't. Actors like to get paid for that kind of thing. So I went the virtual route.

My software of choice was Iclone. It's real-time movie making software (aka "machinima"). And as with most packages of this kind, the results look like an in-engine cutscene from a video game. They're damn near unwatchable, despite what machinima proponents would have you believe. But as a tool for pre-viz or for brainstorming the logistics of a scene, they work great. With just a few minutes work (and some spectacularly awful voice acting by yours truly) I had some virtual humans blocking out my scene in a pretty decent approximation of how I pictured it in my head. Not something I'd ever show to anyone, but enough to work out the spatial kinks and even come up with a few new ideas.

Lest you think I'm sneakily promoting this one software package, there are other options available. Moviestorm is decent and relatively flexible. Muvizu is very cartoony and less versatile, but is easy to use and has the notable advantage of being free. I like Iclone because it gives you the most control over every aspect of the scene and posing, and because it imports Sketchup models so there's pretty much no location you can't simulate.

Again, I'd never make an actual film this way. Even the best machinima does not look good. But for testing out ideas, it can be a really fantastic tool.

Screenwriting in Plain Text? What Is This, The Middle Ages?

2011-09-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

A little time off after nine drafts (!) of one script and a first draft of another. Finally.

I'm a big fan of Stu Maschwitz and his Prolost blog. Lately he's been on a kick to develop a syntax similar to Markdown for writing screenplays in plain text. Which is to say, no Final Draft, no Movie Magic, no Celtx. You'd write in Notepad, or whatever text editor is handy.

The problem he's trying to solve is that the screenwriting apps for iphone and ipad mostly suck, and the ones that don't suck (particularly Celtx Script, which is great) don't play nice with Final Draft FDX format, the supposed industry standard. So he wants to write in plain text because there are lots of great text editor apps, and the resulting file would be readable on any system.

Now here's my take: In the eleven or twelve years I've been writing, not once has anybody ever asked me for an FDX file. It's always PDF. Consequently, I don't care if my software can read or write FDX files. So I have no problem at all using Celtx Script. It's stable, it gives reasonable screen real estate for typing even in landscape mode on an iphone, and it syncs very nicely with the desktop app (which is free).

Because of my respect for Stu I tried writing in plain text for a while. It went okay, but I found myself missing having a list of my scenes I could scroll through to quickly hunt for things, although I suppose that could be solved by having a separate plain text file for each scene. And I desperately missed predictive text (character names and locations popping up automatically, so you don't have to type them out every time). When one of your characters has a name like, say, "Fleet Admiral Von Hoogenmeyer", or even maybe "Xtactycyl", predictive text is an absolute must-have. Not everybody is named "Ed".

I guess it's nice to know that I could write in a plain text editor if I needed to. Final Draft, Movie Magic, and Celtx all have import functions that can pull in plain text quite nicely if you're conscious of formatting it properly while you write. And I'd imagine it would be pretty easy for the creators of these various apps to include functionality to pull in Stu's "Markdown" standard. So if he succeeds and it takes off, everybody wins.

Dramatica Drives Me Nuts (In A Good Way)

2011-05-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Another Dramatica post because, frankly, I like it. It has transformed the way I write. It also drives me nuts, but for all the right reasons.

Case in point: I've been working on a story for, like, a year now. I'm convinced it's good. I can see the movie in my head. For whatever reason, though, I just can't write it.

So I lean on Dramatica to help me. I run it through the software's alchemical algorithms over and over. I ask the guys on the Convore discussion group for help, and they are patient with my ignorance. And then I run it through again and again. And it never works. I can get one throughline right, but the others never fit.

This is what's maddening about Dramatica sometimes. You get your main storyline worked out exactly the way you want, and Dramatica tells you "okay, so your main character's problem should have something to do with Perception vs. Actuality". And you thought your main character's problem was about flesh eating bacteria, so you want to kick Dramatica hard in the stupid face it doesn't have.

But here's the thing... somehow, magically, insanely... Dramatica is never wrong. I'm wrong. It just occurred to me this morning... the movie I've been seeing in my head has no middle. It's a bunch of characters discovering something, doing something vague for about an hour, and then wrapping things up. The Underpants Gnomes of stories.

It occurred to me that I don't even really have a clear sense of the what the story's central problem is. I was getting ready to throw Dramatica aside and start writing this thing, and I don't even know what the story's about. It would have been a horrendous waste of effort.

And that is the reason why my Dramatica experiments were not working. If I'm getting the very first question wrong--the Story Problem--how can I possibly expect it to help me with the answers that follow? I need to really stop and think about these answers, not just throw something in that sort of feels like it fits.

I'm sure a lot of people try out Dramatica briefly, get frustrated just as I have, and then discard it forever. I can almost guarantee you, it wasn't Dramatica's fault. It is not madlibs; it demands a lot of a writer to use it properly. And if it's not giving you the answers you want, you really need to stop and examine why that is. It will be worth it.

I'll stop with these posts. Jim Hull is much better at them than I am.

Random Toy Story Musings

2011-05-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

A couple of random thoughts of no value at all to anyone, brought on by repeated viewings (thanks to my kids):

At the end of Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear proves that he can fly. There are tons of situations in the subsequent two movies where that would prove useful, so why does he never do it again? A couple of times in the other movies, in fact, he specifically fails to fly.

In Toy Story 2, Woody finds himself in an apartment filled with merchandise from the TV show he was a part of. How come none of those toys are alive? He's merchandise from the show just like they are.

Third Draft Heaven

2011-04-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

I know some writers get frustrated by the third draft, going over and over the same story. But I love my thirds.

Third draft is when I already know every character intimately. It's when all the logic holes are filled and all the motivations are clear and all the useless scenes are long behind me. It's when I suddenly can't believe I ever thought that first draft was any good. And it's when, holy smokes, this thing starts to feel like a movie.

I just finished a third. It feels good. I might do a first draft of something new to celebrate.

Brainstorming, By Any Available Means

2011-03-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a script with sci fi elements and I started to feel like the imagination wasn't there. Some of the locations were kind of dimly defined in my head. The story was okay, but the world building wasn't happening, and that was making my presentation lackluster.

So I tried something different. I fired up Google Sketchup and I started trying to lay out some of the locations. I'm not a production designer by any means and I don't expect that the final locations, if it gets produced, will look anything like my rough versions. But it became an excellent brainstorming tool for me.

I had a room laid out and I started to think, "okay, but this is in the future. What would make it futuristic?" And I added detail here and there, and the ideas started to flow. Little bits of future technology that were not just eye candy, but actually gave me new ways to present story points. A couple of them actually helped me eliminate an entire dialog scene and replace it with pure visuals. That's gold.

Worth trying if you're stuck!

A Crystal Skull rebuttal

2011-03-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

Scriptshadow has an interesting article up called "10 Screenwriting No-Nos You Can Learn from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

Now, I actually enjoyed Skull to some extent, moreso than Last Crusade, in fact. So I feel like refuting a few of these points. Other ones, I think he's spot on.

1) THE PROTAGONIST ISN’T ACTIVE. I think this is true part of the time. Carson implies that it's the whole time, but I don't think that's the case. Indy is not following Mutt around at all, as Carson suggests. Look at the graveyard scene. Indy is completely in command, barking orders as Mutt stumbles around. Later it is Indy who takes over when they're in the back of the truck, not Mutt, and Indy comes right out and says what they need to do. Mutt only really comes into his own once they've fallen into the water pit, but even then he's asking Indy for help ("This way?").

2) MOVIE TAKES FOREVER TO GET GOING. Eh, maybe. It's true, the skull isn't mentioned for quite a while. But the warehouse opening, while never really connected to the rest of the movie, is perhaps the most classic Indiana-Jones-ish section of the whole movie, so I never got bored. And after that it's a search for Oxley, not for the skull. The skull is a discovery along the way. Same as Last Crusade was a search for Henry, not the Grail. ("I didn't come for the cup of Christ; I came to find my father!")

3) PLOT IS UNCLEAR. I never found this. There's a whole section in the tent scene where Spalko tells Indy exactly why she wants the skull and how it will enable the Soviets to conquer the West. Seems perfectly clear to me that Indy needs to return the skull to its source before she gets there. I'm not sure what's unclear.

4) DON’T BE TOO ‘WRITERLY’. Here Carson criticizes the scene of the magnetic bullets leading the way through the warehouse as being too writerly, or a scene that probably seemed great on paper but plays "awkward" on screen. I do not agree at all. I love the magnetic gunpowder scene. I don't find it awkward in any way; I find it intriguing and unique.

5) DON'T PUT GAGS BEFORE YOUR STORY. Ah, the fridge nuking. Here I agree with Carson. The fridge scene doesn't work not because it's ridiculous, but because it is irrelevant. The opening should have ended right after the rocket sled stopped. I love the execution of the Doom Town scene, though, and that makes it watchable for me even if I wish it was connected to the story somehow.

6) FORCED PLOT POINTS. I like the scene where Indy gets fired. Jim Broadbent's "I resigned" is a nice turn. But I will admit this--there really isn't any story reason why Indy needs to get fired (nor is there a convincing reason why he gets re-hired at the end). It impacts nothing. So I see a different problem with this bit than Carson does.

7) UNCLEAR ACTION SCENES. I don't particularly care for the motorcycle chase either, but not because it's unclear. Just because it's not terribly spectacular. I expect more from an Indy action scene. Outside of that one, I have no trouble with any of the action scenes. I see clear objectives (sometimes even stated aloud). And I don't agree that Indy is constantly being chased instead of chasing. He's the full-on aggressor in the jungle chase, and even in the scenes where he's being chased he manages to turn it around on his pursuers.

8) EXPOSITION EXPOSITION EXPOSITION. Yes, there is too much exposition. I'll grant this.

9) LONG SCENES IN ROOMS IN ACTION MOVIES. This is almost the same point as 8. And yeah, that tent scene, which is actually several scenes back to back, goes on too long. But I don't agree that we're more confused after it than we were before. I think this scene clarifies everything and propels us forward, even if it's done in a somewhat dull way.

10) NEVER MAKE THINGS CONVENIENT OR EASY FOR YOUR CHARACTERS. Yeah, there's some of this going on. I'll grant this last one too.

Biggest Genre Mistakes

2011-01-20T09:27:00.000-08:00

Scriptshadow has an excellent post up today entitled "the Biggest Mistakes I Encounter in Each Genre". Great advice all around.

I've probably made all of those mistakes. Repeatedly. And with gusto.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

2011-01-11T10:51:00.000-08:00

Got my Christmas Theme back. Pretty much as expected. Instead of "You'll shoot your eye out", I got an "It's about 2/3 of the way there". Which is really not bad for a first draft.

And now begins the lovely business of re-writing.

Fun With First Drafts

2011-01-06T06:29:00.000-08:00

You know that scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie hands in his homework assignment about what he wants for Christmas, and has a little fantasy sequence about how much everybody will love it? He is carried around on the shoulders of his classmates while the teacher writes A++++++++ on the blackboard.

I get a little bit of that every time I turn in a first draft, like I did yesterday. I can already hear the comments coming back: "Among the most exciting scripts I have ever read!" "Don't change a word!" "This is a perfect, shining jewel of a script!"

But in a few days, as happened to Ralphie, I'm sure I'm going to get it back with a C+ and a terse "You'll shoot your eye out." Or the screenplay equivalent, which is usually something like "It's not quite there".

Happens every single time. To every writer, I suspect. That's just what first drafts are like.

And yet I still have that little dream with every first draft I turn in. It's a pleasant feeling for the few days I get to enjoy it.

And One More...

2010-12-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

One more little confession before I put aside such geeky things and get back to the business at hand.

I think Avatar should have won Best Picture over Hurt Locker. Yep.

Hurt Locker in Dramatica terms, for me, was a good Main Character throughline, half of a good Impact Character throughline, and absolutely no Overall throughline.

Important subject, yes. Competently executed. But incomplete and unsatisfying, episodic and inconsistent.

I get sick of the bitching about Avatar being "great visuals, weak story". No, no, no. People who say that have no idea what they're talking about. It's a meticulously structured story that uses familiar elements, yes, but uses them to brilliant effect. There's a difference between an archetypal story and a rip off. Avatar is definitively the former.

Enough of that. I've got pages to turn out. :)

P.S. I am not James Cameron.

A few random confessions

2010-11-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

After posting some comments on somebody else's blog recently, I feel like putting a few opinions out there that will likely make a people think I'm an idiot. I am willing to back up any of these opinions upon request, but I doubt anyone will request.

1) I think the Star Wars prequel trilogy is not significantly worse than the original trilogy. I don't mean to say that the prequel trilogy is filmmaking at its best. I only mean that the original trilogy, looked at with an objective eye, has exactly the same flaws. Jedi, for example, is easily as bad as Phantom. Lest you think I'm a hater, though, I love them all. :)

2) I think Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was better than Last Crusade. And Temple of Doom was better than both of them. Raiders is the indisputable king, though.

3) I never really liked The Godfather. I won't claim that it's bad. I just don't enjoy it. Peter Griffin and I have that in common. ("It insists upon itself, Lois.")

Gone Writin'

2010-11-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

No posts lately. Been writing. Finishing off a marathon TV series and starting a feature. (Again, neither of which you're likely to have heard of. I am not Aaron Sorkin.)

Want a sneak preview of the feature I'm writing? Here it is...

CHARACTER DYNAMICS:
MC RESOLVE: Change
MC GROWTH: Stop
MC APPROACH: Do-er
MC PROBLEM-SOLVING STYLE: Logical
IC RESOLVE: Steadfast

PLOT DYNAMICS:
DRIVER: Action
LIMIT: Timelock
OUTCOME: Success
JUDGMENT: Good

MAIN CHARACTER
(the Main Character)
THROUGHLINE: Situation
CONCERN: The Future
ISSUE: Choice vs. Delay
PROBLEM: Temptation
SOLUTION: Conscience
SYMPTOM: Feeling
RESPONSE: Logic
UNIQUE ABILITY: Delay
CRITICAL FLAW: Dream
BENCHMARK: How Things are Changing
SIGNPOST 1: How Things are Changing
SIGNPOST 2: The Future
SIGNPOST 3: The Present
SIGNPOST 4: The Past

MAIN VS. IMPACT STORY
(The Main vs. Impact Story)
THROUGHLINE: Manipulation
CONCERN: Changing One's Nature
ISSUE: Responsibility vs. Commitment
PROBLEM: Avoidance
SOLUTION: Pursuit
SYMPTOM: Disbelief
RESPONSE: Faith
CATALYST: Commitment
INHIBITOR: Morality
BENCHMARK: Playing a Role
SIGNPOST 1: Developing a Plan
SIGNPOST 2: Playing a Role
SIGNPOST 3: Changing One's Nature
SIGNPOST 4: Conceiving an Idea

OVERALL STORY
(The Overall Story)
THROUGHLINE: Activity
CONCERN: Obtaining
ISSUE: Morality vs. Self Interest
PROBLEM: Temptation
SOLUTION: Conscience
SYMPTOM: Disbelief
RESPONSE: Faith
CATALYST: Self Interest
INHIBITOR: Responsibility
BENCHMARK: Doing
SIGNPOST 1: Gathering Information
SIGNPOST 2: Doing
SIGNPOST 3: Obtaining
SIGNPOST 4: Understanding

IMPACT CHARACTER
(the Impact Character)
THROUGHLINE: Fixed Attitude
CONCERN: Innermost Desires
ISSUE: Dream vs. Hope
PROBLEM: Oppose
SOLUTION: Support
SYMPTOM: Disbelief
RESPONSE: Faith
UNIQUE ABILITY: Hope
CRITICAL FLAW: Choice
BENCHMARK: Impulsive Responses
SIGNPOST 1: Memories
SIGNPOST 2: Innermost Desires
SIGNPOST 3: Contemplation
SIGNPOST 4: Impulsive Responses

ADDITIONAL STORY POINTS

GOAL: Obtaining
CONSEQUENCE: Changing One's Nature
COST: Innermost Desires
DIVIDEND: The Future

REQUIREMENT: Doing
PREREQUISITE: Playing a Role
PRECONDITION: Impulsive Responses
FOREWARNINGS: How Things are Changing

Sounds good, eh? Hopefully it plays a bit funnier onscreen.

How Pixar Sets a Story in Motion

2010-11-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

There's an amazing extra on the blu-ray of Toy Story 3, released yesterday. It's called "Beginnings: Setting a Story in Motion", and it's all about Michael Arndt, the film's writer, breaking down the first acts of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles to figure out how their protagonists and worlds are set up, and what gets their stories moving into the second act.

You don't expect to see this kind of foundation screenwriting craft analysis in an extra on a kids' movie, even a Pixar one. But there it is! Not only do those guys make excellent movies, but they're not afraid to share their secrets.

Full disclosure. Sort of.

2010-10-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

I don't want to present myself as something I'm not. And while I don't want to reveal my identity, I also don't want to give the impression that it's because I'm Shane Black or Robert Towne. So here's a reality check...

Am I a working screenwriter? Yes. Have been for, I dunno, something like ten years now. Predominantly television. And when I say "predominantly", I mean "almost exclusively". There have been a couple of features, but as I said, you haven't heard of them. They screened a couple of times and then went to TV and DVD. I'm not even sure you can buy them anymore. I did get paid for them, though, so that's nice.

Am I a big name screenwriter? Nope. Not even close. I'm in the IMDB, but I'm not big enough to warrant Wikipedia. Weird how that defines my status.

Just so you know!

Dramatica Fanatic

2010-10-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

Jim Hull's Story Fanatic has a great post on "What You're Missing By Not Understanding Dramatica".

I don't know Jim, but his site continues to impress me. And the more I learn about Dramatica, the more I like it. I wish I'd learned of it years ago.

Good Script Feedback is Hard to Find

2010-10-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

I recently joined one of the big screenwriting community sites. I won't mention it by name, but it rhymes with "Biggerstreet". I felt like reading some amateur specs. Good or bad, you can always learn something from reading a script.

So I generated an assignment and read the script it gave me, a sci-fi thriller, and wrote a brief review of it. Lemme tell you, this script was a concrete example of exactly why there are 50,000 - 100,000 spec scripts written every year, but only 50 or so produced. It's because 99.99% of those spec scripts SUUUUUUCK. Seriously, this was a preposterous mess of a script. Driven entirely by coincidence and happenstance, crammed with exposition, and with a central plot point that bordered on a Pythonian level of absurdity. I tried to be nice in my review, but it was difficult.

After you submit your review on this site, you are allowed to read reviews of the same script by other readers. This is where it got really interesting. The other reviews were, virtually without exception, GLOWING. I believe it was even listed as a top ten favorite for that month. And it occurred to me... the people writing these reviews are the same people who write those 50,000 - 100,000 sucky scripts every year. It's an infinite repeating loop of suckage!

This is why I would not recommend submitting anything to that site, or probably any other site like it, for review. When the reviewers who are going to be reading your script can't even recognize that a story has no meaningful incidents in it whatsoever, those reviewers are not valuable. When I need feedback, I'll continue choosing people whose skills I know and trust, thank you very much.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger... Exposition

2010-10-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

Lame title for a blog post. Not a morning person.

Watching Jaws the other day for the first time in quite a while, I spotted an excellent piece of exposition that has probably been noted by people smarter than me for 35 years. But I just noticed it now because I'm slow.

Brody's waking up in the morning and says something like "How come the sun didn't used to shine in here?" And Ellen replies something like "We bought the house in the fall. This is summer."

Two lines of dialogue that don't feel like exposition at all. It's perfectly natural for Brody to be annoyed by the sun in his eyes in the morning. But we've learned that that it's summer (probably early summer), and that these people have only lived here for a few months. Both relevant points to the story, delivered without anyone explicitly saying "I've only lived here a few months and this is my first summer season."

The Motivating Power of Novelty

2010-09-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

Every writer knows that finding the motivation to actually sit down and write is the real trick. I've discovered my own personal motivation tool: novelty.

I used Final Draft for a long while. I got bored of it. It became a chore to sit down and use it. So I switched to Movie Magic Screenwriter. Suddenly writing was novel again. Just because the screen looked different and there were new buttons and features to learn, I experienced a surge in productivity.

Then I got bored of Movie Magic, and the writing slowed down. So I switched to a newer version of Final Draft. Got bored of that and upgraded Movie Magic. Got bored of that and switched to Celtx. Got bored of that and started using the Celtx mobile app. Which is where I'm at right now; the novelty hasn't worn off. It's still cool being able to write in line at the bank.

It can be expensive buying new versions of stuff, and eventually I'll run out. But for now I've still got Scripped to try if I get desperate, and after that, who knows? Maybe a template in Google Docs. As long as it's novel, it'll keep me going!

Things I Learned from Ted Haggard

2010-09-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, I'm not going to preach. I'm not into the religion thing.

But I saw a little HBO documentary called The Trials of Ted Haggard, and although it was a documentary, I learned a lot that can take into my dramatic writing.

I confess that, not being a follower of evangelicals, I knew of Ted Haggard only from an appearance he made in a Richard Dawkins BBC special called "The Root of All Evil". Haggard was part of the "evil". And I hated him. He seemed like one of those con man TV evangelist cliches. And at one time, maybe he was.

Then I happened across the documentary about him and tuned in out of interest. And at the beginning, I still hated him. It confirmed my impression of him.

Then something happened.

He lost everything. He was caught buying meth from a gay prostitute, and for a Christian fundamentalist, that's just about the best way to make sure the rug gets pulled out from under you.

And as I watched this man's life fall apart, I realized I didn't hate him anymore. He became a real human being, not the stereotype I thought he was. I felt bad for him. I wanted him to put his life back together. I wanted him to stick it to the fundamentalists who turned their backs on him.

I don't know if he's actually as genuine as he came across in the latter part of this film, but man oh man, did he make an awesome character.

I remember reading a quote once... I think it was Cameron Crowe, but I'm not sure... that the best way to reveal a character is to tear him down and let him struggle to build himself up again. Ted Haggard proved that for me.

My characters better watch out, because I'm about to make their lives miserable.

Some Thoughts on Dramatica

2010-08-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

I certainly don't want this to turn into a blog just about screenwriting software, but I've been delving pretty deeply into Dramatica and I think it's worthy of some mention. Plus it's not just software; it's a whole theory of story. One that is so fearsomely complicated that it requires specialized software to even attempt to make use of it.

First, the positive.

I think it's the most complete theory of story I've ever encountered. It accounts for story structures that no other theory does, like stories where the main character is not the protagonist or where the main character is steadfast and has no "arc", so to speak. In other theories, these are sometimes cited as exceptions to the rule. In Dramatica, they fit into the rule.

Many times as I've worked through my story with Dramatica, it has presented me with requirements that didn't fit where I thought the story should go. In each case, I would pause and think "okay, why is it telling me I should go this way". And I'd work to come up with a direction that fit what the software was suggesting. And in every case, the new scene fit better and brought the story together in a way that my original plan did not. It's uncanny how good Dramatica is at this. I feel like the story I've worked out may be the most coherent thing I've ever produced.

Now, the negative.

The learning curve on Dramatica is absolutely brutal.. It's a complicated theory, and that's enough to make it difficult to start with. But the theory book and the help sections in the software are also written in a somewhat non-user-friendly way. Something will be explained one way in one section, then in a completely different way in another section. A report generated by the software will tell you that your story should do this, this, and this, without any explanation of why. You can probably find that explanation if you look, and it all makes sense when you put it together, but it can be a lot of work to get there.

Some of the examples in the book and the help files also suffer from that annoying retro-fit feeling you get from pretty much every theory book. You know what I'm talking about, where they're so sure their theory works that they'll take a story that clearly doesn't conform to it and try to squeeze it in there whether it fits or not.

I also got to the point where it started to stand in my way. The broad strokes it helped me work out for my story were rock solid. But once I started trying to put scenes together based on its specific suggestions, it started to slow me down. When it tells you that a particular sequence should examine A Fixed Attitude in terms of Memories, relating to Fate, Prediction, Interdiction, and Destiny, that's getting a little too demandingly specific for my tastes. I was working hard to make my scenes fit, but eventually decided to scrap all that and just hope the broad strokes were enough to keep my story working.

Summing Up

This has been a long post, and I promised myself no long posts. So I'll shut up. In summary, I can see Dramatica staying in my arsenal of tools. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's amazingly comprehensive and I do feel like it has improved my current project enormously. That's enough to keep me using it.

A Little Celtx Love

2010-08-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

I've started writing a new spec feature, which is crazy given that I'm scheduled to start a paid feature job in September. If I somehow manage to finish both, then I am officially the greatest writer in the world. If the spec sells, then I am also the luckiest.

I'm writing both in Celtx. That may encourage you to label be an amateur, but hear me out. I've bounced between Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft for many a year now. It's been said, if you want to work as a screenwriter you're going to have to play in Final Draft Land. But here's why I'm now dedicated to Celtx, forsaking all others: Celtx just released an iphone app, and it's good. But what really matters is that it FREAKING SYNCS WITH THE DESKTOP APP. What this means is, as long as I have my iphone with me, I have my draft with me. If a ten minute pause arrives in the day, when I'm sitting in my car or waiting for my kids to fall asleep or whatever, I can whip out the ol' iphone and bang out a scene. The next time I open up my laptop, there are my new scenes, all in place in the draft. I can write a few more or do a little polish, and the changes will be there in my iphone the next time I fire it up.

I swear, I have now written almost the entire first act of a feature in ten minute chunks without once sitting down at my desk to write. It's like having a draft magically and effortlessly appear. I just use the desktop version to polish up and revise whatever I banged out on the iphone.

And what's more, there's now a free tool to export the finished script to Final Draft, so it can play with the pros.

If Final Draft and Movie Magic make the transition to mobile devices (and I know Final Draft at least is planning this), they should learn from Celtx. That sync feature is the Holy Grail of screenwriting apps.

Stuff I learned from Inglourious Basterds

2010-08-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

This movie came out, like, what, a year ago? I like to keep my blog timely.

Stuff I learned:

1) Surprise is an awesome, awesome tool. I can't tell you how many out-of-nowhere blow-your-mind surprises there were in Basterds, maybe six or seven. Loved every one of them. And had it not been for them, I might not have put up with...

2) Tarantino's dialog scenes are really getting too long. Could have cut at least half of each of them without hurting the film at all.

My new favorite screenwriting site

2010-08-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

I came across StoryFanatic completely by accident. It's a site that delves deep into screenwriting theory, in particular the Dramatica theory. I was superficially aware of Dramatica, but after being amazed at the insightfulness of some of the many articles on StoryFanatic, I'm now reading the Dramatica book and finding it fascinating.

I'm happy to add this site to my rarely-growing list of links that none of my non-existent readers ever look at!

If a blog post falls in the forest...

2010-07-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

It's actually fun to blog when you're pretty sure nobody at all is reading. It's liberating. You should try it!

The Inimitable Armond White, Troll Extraordinaire

2010-07-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Isn't it interesting how, in every one of Armond White's controversial reviews, he provides a link to one of his other controversial reviews.

So you can be reading, in slack-jawed astonishment, his now famous negative review of Toy Story 3 and come across a seemingly irrelevant reference to how Transformers 2 did the same story better. And you just can't believe he said that, so you have to click on the link to read his Transformers 2 review. And his web stats go up by one more click. And then you're reading his positive review of Transformers 2, and there's a line comparing to the "near miraculous" Torque. And you just can't believe he said that, so you have to click on it, and up his stats go again.

He's a crafty old troll, isn't he?

The Humor of Self Contradiction

2010-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that I really admire jokes where a character says something but, in the way he says it, contradicts what he's saying. I'm not talking about subtext. I'm talking about just flatly and obviously contradicting himself.

An example, from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (written by Linda Woolverton): the Mad Hatter, upon Alice's arrival.

MAD HATTER: It's absolutely Alice! I'd know you anywhere! (to the others) I'd know him anywhere!

Brilliant!

Tragedy and Empathy

2010-07-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start very randomly with some thoughts on empathetic protagonists.

It's ridiculously common for a screenplay to start with a flashback or incident in which the protagonist suffers some tragedy, with the intention of making him empathetic. In my work we hearken back to Bambi and call it the "Shot By a Hunter" scene. Flash back to the kid's mom getting shot by a hunter and... BOOM! Instant empathy.

The problem is, in a great many scripts it's utterly irrelevant. Look at Cliffhanger. The opening scene is Stallone trying to save a woman from plummeting to her doom. He fails, she plummets. He cries. Tragic. But it doesn't affect anything that happens in the rest of the movie. Maybe it makes her fiance, Michael Rooker, a little ticked off at Sly, but that's about it. When he is called back into service, he does so virtually without hesitation.

If you're going to do it right, that opening tragedy has to inform every single thing that happens later. Look at Finding Nemo. (Indeed, when you want to see an example of screenwriting done right, you can almost always turn to Pixar.) It opens with Marlin's wife and impending children all being killed by a barracuda. And that incident absolutely defines Marlin's personality and every action he takes from that point on. He becomes over-protective of his only surviving child, and fiercely determined to save him. The family-eating is not just there for empathy; it's the heart of the story.

So go ahead and have a hunter shoot your protagonist's mother. Just make sure it counts for something.

Just Who the Heck Do I Think I Am?

2010-07-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

I'm a screenwriter. I write screenplays. You're gonna have to take my word for that.

I have something like 90 produced episodes of network television under my belt (I've lost count), about 80 of them as Executive Story Editor and probably 30 or so as the credited writer as well.

I'm also credited as writer on 3 produced feature films, although in all humility I'd have to wager that you probably haven't seen them. They did get produced, though, which is something! Isn't it? Anyone? (Crickets.)

Anyway, I don't want to reveal my identity because occasionally I'm going to want to comment on stupid studio or broadcaster notes, and I don't want them firing me for it. So hopefully the stuff I'm spewing here will provide evidence of my professional status without me having to specifically give myself away.

Why am I blogging? Because I like to rant and rave about movies, screenplays, screenwriting, and minutiae of story structure, but frequently I have nobody to rant and rave to.

So between bouts of screenwriting, I'll throw some crap on here and see what happens.