Screenwriting practice for hungry newbies, sensitive typists, and recovering perfectionists.
When writing a pitch doc or preparing for a verbal pitch, remember to revisit the reasons you love your project. A freewriting session devoted to “a few of my favourite things about this show” just yielded me some great material to incorporate into my pitches.
It’s easy for pitch documents to start to feel like an academic exercise. Repeatedly revisiting your passion for the project, the things you’re excited to do with it, will help it come alive.
If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
Alan Watts
(via emotional-algebra)
My dog died last night. This is how I’m feeling about writing this morning.
(via yokoinyourcocoa)
What a screenwriting couple add to Mad Men
Source: The Globe and Mail
#screenwriting #television #writing
“Long-time friends and collaborators of Weiner’s, the couple were dividing their time between Los Angeles and Vancouver, where Maria taught at the Vancouver Film School, when Mad Men was green-lit and Weiner called them to work on his new show.
Five seasons later, the show has become a cultural phenomenon with social media abuzz about the new season and Don Draper’s hurried marriage to a much younger woman, receptionist Megan Calvet.
What’s going to happen next? Is Don’s marriage to Megan going to survive?
Maria Jacquemetton: We can’t tell you that. We know the end of season five, but we don’t know the end of the series.
André Jacquemetton: Matt has an idea of what he wants to happen to Don Draper, but getting there, I am not so sure he knows. And he’s curious to hear what we have to say, and that’s why he has 10 people in the [writing] room. Ten different voices.
What is Weiner looking for from those writers?
AJ: He’s looking for a certain surprise. Hopefully the writer can bring something he can’t bring, a certain truth.
MJ: A piece of their life experience
How could there be a surprise if the plot is all agreed upon in the story room beforehand?
MJ: You get an outline, but you don’t get every beat of the scene. The first boy Betty ever kissed was a Jewish boy. He particularly liked that. That was something we brought …well, from my life.
AJ: He likes it when we write the family scenes. It’s something we spark to.
MJ: The Betty/Don dynamic. The married couple dynamic. I guess we do good fights.
Why is this show such a success?
AJ: It’s counter-programming. People have been conditioned to watch television in a certain way and we go out of our way to tell stories in a unique manner. It’s unique, not just because its the sixties, but the way it’s structured, the way we talk about the period.
This season, for example, you don’t actually show the Rolling Stones, just backstage with the groupies waiting for them.
MJ: Or, when was Betty Draper going to cheat on Don? Instead of creating some torrid affair, the Mad Men story is on the day they think the world is ending because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She goes into a bar and lets some man pick her up so she can allow herself psychologically to take her philandering husband back and be on a level playing field. That’s the Mad Men version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There’s also nostalgia. We all sort of yearn for better times. I think there also is a measure of decorum that has been lost in society and on some level we are craving that to return.
Which is why everyone is so obsessed with fashion on the show. Somehow if I went to work in a girdle, I would do everything more graciously.
AJ: Try it! I hear all those actors complaining about the girdles.
You’re still landed immigrants in Canada. Do you think you’ll ever come back?
MJ: We had a very nice life here, but the work is in L.A.
AJ: We still have a show we are trying to work on here.
MJ: It’s called Versailles – our partners are Canal + in France and Incendo, a Montreal-based company. We have got a pilot written.
AJ: It’s about Louis XIV.
An international co-production about Versailles, Megan in Mad Men … André, is this a bit of a francophone conspiracy?
AJ: We hired Jessica Paré. She’s from Montreal, she’s Canadian. We loved that about her. We said why don’t we use her nationality. When you talk about the sixties and you think about what was going on, French literature, French film were such an influence during that time. It just feels very organic to the show to go there.
Megan isn’t a French name though.
MJ: We did not know [the character would be French]. We built the character after the role became more important. Season 4, Matt had this idea that he wanted Don Draper to get into a relationship with Dr. Faye Miller, who was going to be good for him emotionally. But at the last minute – when it became clear that being with her was going to be a lifetime of the work that he needed to do to heal himself – this beautiful young thing was going to catch his eye. We wrote to that. We cast Jessica and really her character did not come into form until the last episode of Season 4.
AJ: And Calvet is a good French name, a good Canadian name.
You were just in Toronto doing a master class at the Canadian Film Centre. What do you tell students?
AJ: We play good cop, bad cop.
MJ: You’re bad. I am more nurturing.
AJ: I try to be good. I warn them it’s a difficult business, and I warn them about the soul-killing aspect of the business, but I cap it off by saying it’s a business that I love.
This interview has been condensed and edited.”
Identify your own obsessions, then figure out how to make them interesting to other people.
Emotional Logic in the Hero’s Journey
Source: @ozzywood
#screenwriting #film #screenplay
“This post is for those in the latter category. Those who claim that overly structured stories don’t work.
Let me begin by saying I yet have to read an Australian script that is ‘overly structured’. In fact, there is no such thing as ‘overly structured’. Scripts are ‘unoriginal’, ‘boring’ or ‘predictable’. But ‘overly structured’? No. Among the most mathematically structured scripts I know are The Untouchables andThe Incredibles. Did you find those boring or predictable? Probably not.
Those who don’t see the merit in strong structure skills mostly haven’t done the hard work.
Oh, and before I see the same hands go up again, let me state the obvious: you don’t write in the creative zone while thinking of structure. You only get to look at your story structure when you’re in the left brain. Over time, structure skills become second nature in the same way you drive your car without thinking about how you shift gears or which foot to use to break.
Why movie structure works
Movie structure is nothing more or less than emotional logic. It is the order of things as we understand them subliminally, on a deeper level. It is the psychology of characters as we experience it in our everyday lives.
Recently a student wanted to write a story about a character going through the various stages of grief. No coincidence that these stages match beautifully with the Hero’s Journey.
Movie structure is nothing more or less than emotional logic.
Why?
Because this model is all about the necessary steps a character needs to go through before we believe that this character can change.
We’re talking here about change of any kind. Have a look at the Kübler-Ross model with the 5 stages of grief, compared with some of the Hero’s Journey stages.
Kübler-Ross modelThe Hero’s JourneyLossCall to AdventureDenialRefusal of the CallAngerTestsBargainingApproach to the Inmost CaveDepressionOrdealAcceptanceResurrectionAnother student once asked me if there is a correlation between the Hero’s 12 journey stages and the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The answer is: yes, but not because of the number twelve. In fact Joseph Campbell used a few more stages than Vogler’s twelve.
Wherever we see character change or any behavioral change such as addiction recovery, the character will have gone through a minimal number of steps, or we won’t buy it. Character change follows certain patterns and this emotional logic is reflected in the 3-Act Structure and Hero’s Journey. It is firmly grounded in human psychology and therefore ignoring it makes your story unbelievable to a mainstream audience…..”
Interesting take on what shows are good to spec- what’s been over specced and what’s edgy and risky but may stand out from the herd.
Wrote this a few weeks after NBC passed on my pilot in Feb.
Thanks NBC.
CLICK HERE
The world needs you. It doesn’t need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they’re tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and being kind.
Do you. It isn’t easy but it’s essential. It’s not easy because there’s a lot in the way. In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, take it off the table. Think, ‘Perhaps I’m not interesting but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.’
"Charlie Kaufman on writing. From his BAFTA-BFI Lecture. (via beggarsalll)
(via beerosie)
“What the studios want now is “risk-free” films but with any sort of art you have to take risks. Not taking risks in art is like not having sex and then expecting there to be children.” Francis Ford Coppola
(via fuckyeahdirectors)
J.D. Salinger (via floridabred)
(via meggielynne)
Just because you’ve heard a “fact” repeated hundreds of times, doesn’t mean it’s true. Do your own original research. Your story world will feel much stronger for it.
I’m always baffled by students and colleagues who tell me they don’t read journalists. As if it’s too distracting to come out of the cage of their own limited experience, too time-consuming to be curious about the society they claim to address or reflect or expect to pay for what they created in their stuffy little suburban minds. To me the whole art of the screenplay is rooted in knowing which truth or truism to take on next. For those, I rely on the storytellers who live and write and reflect reality. Especially the kind I don’t know.
This month, the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University celebrates the hundredth anniversary of journalism education at N.Y.U. As part of their celebration, the journalism faculty, together with an Honorary Committee of alumni, have selected “the 100 outstanding…
For those of you who followed my Deadline Challenge posts, there’s a happy ending to the story:
![threelinesorless:
What a screenwriting couple add to Mad Men
Source: The Globe and Mail
#screenwriting #television #writing
“Long-time friends and collaborators of Weiner’s, the couple were dividing their time between Los Angeles and Vancouver, where Maria taught at the Vancouver Film School, when Mad Men was green-lit and Weiner called them to work on his new show.
Five seasons later, the show has become a cultural phenomenon with social media abuzz about the new season and Don Draper’s hurried marriage to a much younger woman, receptionist Megan Calvet.
What’s going to happen next? Is Don’s marriage to Megan going to survive?
Maria Jacquemetton: We can’t tell you that. We know the end of season five, but we don’t know the end of the series.
André Jacquemetton: Matt has an idea of what he wants to happen to Don Draper, but getting there, I am not so sure he knows. And he’s curious to hear what we have to say, and that’s why he has 10 people in the [writing] room. Ten different voices.
What is Weiner looking for from those writers?
AJ: He’s looking for a certain surprise. Hopefully the writer can bring something he can’t bring, a certain truth.
MJ: A piece of their life experience
How could there be a surprise if the plot is all agreed upon in the story room beforehand?
MJ: You get an outline, but you don’t get every beat of the scene. The first boy Betty ever kissed was a Jewish boy. He particularly liked that. That was something we brought …well, from my life.
AJ: He likes it when we write the family scenes. It’s something we spark to.
MJ: The Betty/Don dynamic. The married couple dynamic. I guess we do good fights.
Why is this show such a success?
AJ: It’s counter-programming. People have been conditioned to watch television in a certain way and we go out of our way to tell stories in a unique manner. It’s unique, not just because its the sixties, but the way it’s structured, the way we talk about the period.
This season, for example, you don’t actually show the Rolling Stones, just backstage with the groupies waiting for them.
MJ: Or, when was Betty Draper going to cheat on Don? Instead of creating some torrid affair, the Mad Men story is on the day they think the world is ending because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She goes into a bar and lets some man pick her up so she can allow herself psychologically to take her philandering husband back and be on a level playing field. That’s the Mad Men version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There’s also nostalgia. We all sort of yearn for better times. I think there also is a measure of decorum that has been lost in society and on some level we are craving that to return.
Which is why everyone is so obsessed with fashion on the show. Somehow if I went to work in a girdle, I would do everything more graciously.
AJ: Try it! I hear all those actors complaining about the girdles.
You’re still landed immigrants in Canada. Do you think you’ll ever come back?
MJ: We had a very nice life here, but the work is in L.A.
AJ: We still have a show we are trying to work on here.
MJ: It’s called Versailles – our partners are Canal + in France and Incendo, a Montreal-based company. We have got a pilot written.
AJ: It’s about Louis XIV.
An international co-production about Versailles, Megan in Mad Men … André, is this a bit of a francophone conspiracy?
AJ: We hired Jessica Paré. She’s from Montreal, she’s Canadian. We loved that about her. We said why don’t we use her nationality. When you talk about the sixties and you think about what was going on, French literature, French film were such an influence during that time. It just feels very organic to the show to go there.
Megan isn’t a French name though.
MJ: We did not know [the character would be French]. We built the character after the role became more important. Season 4, Matt had this idea that he wanted Don Draper to get into a relationship with Dr. Faye Miller, who was going to be good for him emotionally. But at the last minute – when it became clear that being with her was going to be a lifetime of the work that he needed to do to heal himself – this beautiful young thing was going to catch his eye. We wrote to that. We cast Jessica and really her character did not come into form until the last episode of Season 4.
AJ: And Calvet is a good French name, a good Canadian name.
You were just in Toronto doing a master class at the Canadian Film Centre. What do you tell students?
AJ: We play good cop, bad cop.
MJ: You’re bad. I am more nurturing.
AJ: I try to be good. I warn them it’s a difficult business, and I warn them about the soul-killing aspect of the business, but I cap it off by saying it’s a business that I love.
This interview has been condensed and edited.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3vsckPVoB1r29apio1_500.jpg)
