John August

John

8 Common Mistakes Made by New Screenwriters

Adaptation, QandA, So-Called Experts, Story and Plot, Words on the page, Writing Process

B.J. Novak is all about lists. He asked me to write this one about issues I frequently see in scripts written by beginning screenwriters.

**1. Starting with a concept rather than a character**
We don’t want a movie about a lost relic. We want a movie about Indiana Jones.

**2. Being too nice to the heroes**
I’m glad you love them. Now make them do something and suffer.

**3. Trying to adapt their favorite book**
It will only end in tears, because the thing that makes the book so great is probably not what would make a great movie. Adaptation is more like transmutation. It’s arcana narrative distillery. It’s not a great place to start your screenwriting journey.

**4. Stock scenes**
Hitting the alarm clock. Complicated Starbucks orders. Harried mom making breakfast. Parents at the
principal’s office. Guys watching the football game.

You may think a stock scene will help shorthand the hero or world, but it just makes the reader stop paying attention. Unless you’re presenting a clever parody/inversion of a stock scene, you’re better off doing anything else.

**5. D&D scene description**
“This small bedroom has a twin bed, a bookshelf and a desk. There are two lamps, both lit.”

**6. Characters with confusingly similar names**
Wait, was Lucy or Lisa the girl in the museum?

**7. Shoe leather**
You rarely need to walk characters into and out of a scene. Most scenes can just be the heart of the idea and done. No doors, no hellos, no goodbyes.

**8. Starting off in Final Draft**
This isn’t even because of my frustrations with Final Draft as an app. It’s more about process.

If you were writing a song, you wouldn’t sit down with Finale and start dragging in notes. You would use a guitar or piano and start figuring out a melody. You would futz around until you had something you thought was good, and then finally jot it down. You wouldn’t make tidy sheet music until you were ready to show it to someone.

Scenes are like songs. They shouldn’t be made pretty until they are good.

Full disclosure: My company makes [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), which follows my theory that words should come first. But pen and paper are completely non-proprietary, and another great way to start.

Saving water and power

How-To, Los Angeles, Random Advice

Every month, my husband logs information from our utility bills into a spreadsheet. Comparing the past 12 months to the same 12 months in 2005, we used:

• 40% less water
• 46% less natural gas
• 75% less electricity (from the grid)

Bragging about efficiency plays into the worst stereotypes of California: smug, self-righteous and self-congratulatory. Yet conspicuous underconsumption has actual benefits, both to the individual and society. You’re showing what’s possible, and helping to nudge trend lines and public policy in the right direction.

So here’s how we did it. We didn’t do it all at once, and we didn’t do it all right. But if it helps provide some inspiration, it’s probably worth sharing.

## Electricity

Seven years ago, we added solar panels, which provide the bulk of our electricity. During daylight hours, we sell power back to the utility.

While battery technologies like Tesla’s [Powerwall](http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall “Tesla”) might one day become common, for now most residential solar works like ours. Beyond permit hassles when we first installed it, selling back to the grid has worked out well.

We’re paying less than a dollar a day for electricity, and that includes charging our primary car, a Nissan Leaf.

In addition to generating power, we’re also using less wherever possible. We have almost entirely LED lighting, including outdoor lights. Lighting only accounts for [14% of total residential electricity consumption](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3), so while it’s important, it’s not the only thing to look at. For example, we got a variable-speed pool pump, which uses 80% less electricity than a single-speed version. With rebates, the new pump paid for itself in the first year.

In colder climates, thermostats are mostly for controlling heat, but they also regulate air conditioning in the summer. We switched to Nest thermostats, which include an [Airwave](https://nest.com/support/article/What-is-Airwave) feature that makes smarter use of the compressor coils.

## Water and Gas

We moved to a more-efficient hot water heater with a circulator pump, which gets hot water to the tap faster, sending less down the drain. We use solar to heat the pool.

Because we live in California, we’re always mindful of the drought. Our water use is down 25% from last year. We had already switched to native landscaping, so most of the savings this past year probably came from better sprinkler timers that use an iPhone app. (We have the [Rachio](http://rachio.com).)

Could we push our consumption of water and power lower? Maybe, but to do so, we’d need to able to identify where we’re using utilities in a much more granular, real-time way.

We still don’t have a smart meter. We don’t have anything like Google Analytics for amps and gallons. Without that kind of information, it’s hard to know what areas are really worth our attention.

So we’re left guessing, and relying on other people’s experience. That’s mostly why I’m blogging what we’ve done. If you have suggestions for great ways to do more, hit me up [on Twitter](http://twitter.com/johnaugust).

The 200th Episode Live Feed

News

scriptnotes is on Mixlr

On Wednesday, May 27th at 8pm LA time we recorded the 200th episode of Scriptnotes. It was a live show, but recorded at the office rather than a theater.

Aline and Craig were here in person, along with 1.5 glasses of wine each. We had the whole internet — or at least several hundred people — listening to the live feed. We answered questions and suffered through some robot voice issues. Thanks to everyone who came.

We’ll have the episode up on Tuesday as usual.

How and why we made the One Hit Kill app

Geek Alert, One Hit Kill

ohk-app-iconWhen [One Hit Kill](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/913409803/one-hit-kill?utm_source=mail&utm_medium=sig&utm_campaign=ohk&utm_source=JA&utm_medium=app-blogpost&utm_campaign=OHK) ships in September, it will have printed rules in the box like every other game.

But because OHK is designed to grow and change — both with our own expansion packs and user-created variants — we wanted to be able to quickly update and “officialize” rules to reflect the state of the game.

So we did what we do. We made an app.

The [One Hit Kill app](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-hit-kill/id988455334?mt=8) is free in the App Store. There’s also a [web app](http://app.onehitkillgame.com) that works on Android and other devices.

### Under the hood

This is our first iOS app written in [Swift](https://www.apple.com/swift/), Apple’s next-generation coding language. Nima Yousefi originally prototyped it in Objective-C, but when it became clear we would be using primarily stock elements and libraries, he rewrote it in Swift.

Nima reported very few issues making the change. Swift is certainly readable. It’s the first app we’ve made where I can look at the code and basically understand what’s happening, so that’s remarkable.

Within the app, the pages themselves — from rules to the FAQ — are written in [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/), and rendered as text rather than web views. (We do the same thing in Weekend Read.)

The app pulls its data from the cloud: [Rails](http://rubyonrails.org) running on [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com). From a web interface, we can update the text and images for any piece of content, then push it out live. It’s not Facebook or Twitter levels of performance, but it meets our lightweight needs.

We are on the verge of submitting version 1.1 of the OHK app, which trades out some of the table views for collections. That allows us to flatten some of the hierarchy and show more cards at once, particularly on the iPad.

### Making it work on Android

Because a lot of our backers will be on Android or other devices, we wanted to provide a version of the app for them as well.

After considering several alternatives, we chose [Framework7](http://www.idangero.us/framework7/#.VWOMd2CbKXQ) to build a web app that would work regardless of the platform. Framework7 unapologetically tries to fake an iOS look, but our Android users haven’t objected. For iOS developers in similar situations with fairly simple, text-based apps, we’d recommend giving Framework7 a look.

### There can only be One

Our primary reason for building the One Hit Kill app was to make it easy to update the rules and artwork.

Another goal was to protect the name One Hit Kill.

It’s not an idle worry. The Exploding Kittens game in the App Store is terrible: a [generic whack-a-mole](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/exploding-kittens/id961636946?mt=8) with no relation at all to the [wildly popular Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/exploding-kittens). No doubt thrown together in an afternoon, it’s attempting to draft off the Kittens brand name. (The developer’s other games include “the 2048 game” and Flappy Chappy, neither of which have any reviews.)

The One Hit Kill app should at least stave off the most obnoxious clones, and keep the name available to us down the road.

So take a look at [the app](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-hit-kill/id988455334?mt=8), and check out the [web app](http://app.onehitkillgame.com) if you’re curious.

One Hit Kill itself is available [exclusively through Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/913409803/one-hit-kill?utm_source=mail&utm_medium=sig&utm_campaign=ohk&utm_source=JA&utm_medium=app-blogpost&utm_campaign=OHK), and only until June 5th.