John August

Search Results for: characters

Split screens

Formatting, QandA, Recycled

How would you go about writing two scenes in a script that run at the
same time in split screen, but don’t necessarily have anything to do with
each other? Basically like a scene from the movie Timecode.

–John

That’s a real challenge to do in standard screenplay format. While someone watching a movie can follow the action happening in multiple sections of the screen at once, the reader simply can’t. Reading is a left-to-right, top-to-bottom process. So you’re going to have to figure out another way to communicate the same idea.

Your approach depends on how crucial the split-screen timing becomes. For instance, in an earlier draft of the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS, there was a chase sequence between Alex (Lucy Liu) and the Thin Man (Crispin Glover), in which they were both trying to get to the roof of the building in order to reach the satellite dish that Eric Knox was using. The chase started with the two characters on opposite sides of an iron fence, which formed the dividing line down the middle of the screen. We then followed each character on separate, sometimes overlapping paths, as they fought their way to the roof. Finally, Alex kicked the Thin Man “through” the center dividing line.

In this example, the exact timing of who-is-where-when was important, so I chose to write the action as two parallel columns on a horizontal page. It was a pain in the ass to format, because Final Draft couldn’t handle it, so each time I printed out the script I had to make sure to leave blank “filler” pages in which to insert the properly-formatted side-by-side pages. Still, it was a fun challenge.

Ultimately, the split-screen stuff was dropped and the sequence became about Alex and the Thin Man kicking the crap out of each other.

For TIMECODE, Mike Figgis apparently didn’t work off a traditional screenplay at all. The entire movie was rehearsed and reshot more than a dozen times. To figure out who-is-where-when, Figgis used musical score sheets.

For your script, since the two sides don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, I would recommend writing the scenes out straight. If it’s important to indicate to the reader that certain scenes are playing side-by-side, just put a note in parentheses in the first line of a scene’s description. It’s not a perfect solution, but in most cases that’s as straightfoward as you’re going to get.

(This article originally ran September 29, 2003.)

Linear writing for non-linear films

QandA, Story and Plot

When writing a narrative that jumps back and forth throughout
time and events (ie. PULP FICTION, THE KILLING) is it standard operating procedure
to write the story in a more traditional straight ahead format then re-arrange
the script;
or is the script written in a non-linear format as we see it in the movie?

–Matt Higgins

While there have been cases where a film’s timeline was juggled after-the-fact
(HEAVEN AND EARTH was one), the vast majority of scripts are written with the
non-linear elements in place. It’s
a cliché, but screenplays are
really
blueprints for making a movie, so the two forms should match up scene-by-scene.

If you’re planning to write a story that will ultimately unfold in a non-linear
way, such as GO or MEMENTO, it’s a good idea to make a second outline of the
story as it happens in "real time," to make sure the logic tracks.
In fact, this kind of outline is helpful with any kind of story, because even
if a script moves forward scene by scene, inevitably characters will refer
to things that happened "earlier," and it’s important to make sure
all these events could have happened in the sequence you propose.

Personally, I find that non-linear structure is often just a flashy trick
to disguise bad storytelling, or worse, a boring plot. It demands that the
audience pay closer attention in order to figure out what’s going on, but rarely
rewards the effort.

An analogy: When laser printers first arrived, they gave people access to
calligraphy fonts like Zapf Chancery Italic, a typeface designed for wedding
invitations. Suddenly, people printed entire newsletters in 9-point Zapf Chancery
Italic, without any consideration of whether it was the right tool for the
job. (It’s not. It’s almost unreadable.) Now I cringe whenever I see the font.
It’s been ruined for me.

What these novice designers – and many novice screenwriters – failed to recognize
is that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. I wrote
GO with three overlapping chunks because that’s the only way it made sense;
to intercut between the plotlines would have slowed everything down too much
and made it confusing. In short, I used a strange timeline because that’s what
the story required.

Always ask yourself why you’re choosing a particular way of telling the story.
Used well, and with the right material, non-linear structure can be a very
powerful technique. Used poorly, it just makes a crappy movie harder to follow.

(Originally posted in 2003.)

Where to begin a script

QandA, Recycled, Writing Process

When you start writing, or right before you start writing, what do you know?
What do you know about the story and characters before you start putting words
on paper?

–Dustin Tash

Although I don’t do it on every project, I’m a big fan of writing off-the-page,
which means creating character bios, alternate scenes and sequence chronologies
to help me figure out the story and the characters. For example, I’ll write
out the whole story from the villain’s point of view, both to track that the
logic works, and also to gain insight on why they’re doing what they’re doing.

You don’t have to stop doing this once you begin writing the screenplay, either.
If I’m getting frustrated with the script, sometimes it’s much more helpful
to write up related pieces than to bang out another scene I don’t think is
working.

Just make sure this prep-work doesn’t keep you from actually starting your
script. You don’t have to know everything about your story and characters before
you begin. Discovery is the best part of the writing process.

(Originally posted September 10, 2003.)

Her least favorite mistake

Film Industry, Genres, QandA, Rights and Copyright, Television

questionmarkLast year I wrote a spec episode of Grey’s Anatomy entitled “My Favorite Mistake” wherein platonic best friends, Izzie and George, hook up. I registered my script with the WGA and sent it in to be considered for the ABC writing fellowship. I never heard back from the fellowship (their loss, no biggie) but I was surprised to see that last Thursday’s episode shared a title (exactly the same) and a subplot as my spec.

I do not believe that Shonda and team copied my idea… but i do think it is possible that they could have inadvertently copied my title. They had the means, etc. So my question is a two parter: 1) should I do anything about this? and 2) where is the line drawn? Would my script have to be identical to the one broadcast to possibly be plagiarized?

— Jackie Honikman

I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy, so I looked up an [episode guide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greys_Anatomy_episodes) online. One of the first things I noticed was that every episode is named after a song — that’s their thing, just like the title of every episode of Friends begins “The One With…”.

Being a good spec script writer, you followed their style and picked a song title. You chose a Sheryl Crow song. So did they. What are the odds?

Huge. So absurdly huge that you’re going to feel foolish in about three paragraphs.

I know you didn’t write in expecting to be ridiculed, so I want to give you a few sentences to prepare yourself. It’s not that I dislike you, Jackie, or disbelieve you. I’m sure when you first saw the episode title, you were surprised, hurt, disappointed and angry. These are natural emotions. But then the dark engines of your brain kicked in. You convinced yourself that through some byzantine process, your idea had been appropriated. But it hadn’t. It wasn’t.

You wrote your email at the end of March.People ask how long it takes me to answer a reader-submitted question. Generally, I read them all within the week they’re sent in, and flag the ones I think will be interesting and applicable to the readership. But it’s not a first-in-first-out process. Sometimes, a question will land in my inbox that I’ll answer within the hour. There’s a big element of serendipity. But that’s not an invitation to submit the same question multiple times. That will almost guarantee that I won’t answer, since I’ll think, “Didn’t someone else just ask that?” So I’m hoping you’ve moved on, written other scripts, and laughed about how prescient you were. But in case you haven’t, I’m going to rip off the band-aid.

Let me restate your question:

I recently wrote a spec episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I worked very hard on making it exactly like the show, right down to the title. I was subsequently shocked — shocked! — to see that the writers of the show had the audacity to write an episode exactly like their own show. Who can I sue?

Put this way, your fallacy is clear — you’re confusing cause and effect. You think their “Favorite Mistake” is similar to yours because they somehow read and stole your idea, when in fact it’s similar because it’s frickin’ Grey’s Anatomy. You followed their conventions. You included their characters. You emulated their show as closely as you could.

You copied them, not vice-versa. Got it?

In terms of the title, given the show’s adult-contemporary demographics, it was pretty likely they were going to have a Sheryl Crow track sooner or later.In fact, the second episode was titled “The First Cut is the Deepest.” Sheryl Crow’s cover had topped the charts the year before. As far as I can tell from the promos (and parodies) I’ve seen, the show is about young doctors hooking up and breaking up. “My Favorite Mistake” sounds like a good fit. They didn’t need your script to come up with that idea.A while back, a screenwriting colleague was dealing with a guy who was claiming on messageboards that a certain blockbuster was stolen from his script. The “proof?” One of the characters had the same name. Basically, the guy was arguing that the screenwriter had changed the plot, the setting, the character’s motivations — pretty much everything but this one character’s name. It’s hard to claim that a conspiracy is both thorough and lazy.

In addition to the cause and effect problem, I think there’s also a fallacy of limited sampling. You’re looking at your script and the episode you saw. But if an independent reader had your script and 10 other spec scripts of the show to compare to the produced episode, would they really think yours was all that similar? I doubt it.I’m sure this “fallacy of limited sampling” has a more official name, but I couldn’t find it. (It’s not the fallacy of generalization, which infers about a large population based on a too-small sample.) If anyone can link to the proper term, I’ll be much obliged.

Or as another test, a reader could compare your script to 10 produced episodes of the show. Would he be able to tell which one your script “influenced?” Again, doubtful.

Unfortunately, this misguided conflation of “similarity” and “plagiarism” is not confined to spec episodes of TV shows. One woman claimed that both [The Matrix](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/) and [The Terminator](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/) franchises were stolen from her work. She managed to attract a fair amount of media attention before her case was [finally thrown out](http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp).

By targeting both The Terminator and The Matrix, this case helps point out what really underlies a lot of similarities between literary works: genre conventions. It’s one thing to put a killer robot in your script, but don’t claim you invented robots.The same goes for any variation of robot: friendly robot, suicidal robot, kleptomaniac robot, fatherly robot, existentially-angst-ridden robot. We can all think of other examples. Having a divorced cop who likes doughnuts is not original — and neither is having him hate doughnuts, or having him be psychic, or dead. Having two doctors hook up on a show about doctors hooking up doesn’t strike me as particularly original.

Again, Jackie, I’m not trying to belittle your feelings. It’s frustrating to spend weeks working on something, only to find a similar project already out there.

In my early days, I outlined a series that would chart the last years of Earth — a meteor was coming, and everyone knew it. So I was understandably disappointed when not [one](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120591/), but [two](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120647/) movies with essentially the same plot hit theaters. It forced me to look back and remember where the idea really came from: a bunch of popular-science articles at the time which mapped out what had likely killed off the dinosaurs, and what would happen if another such asteroid hit Earth.

I soon realized that my having the same idea as giant blockbusters was actually a good thing. It meant I had commercial taste. A writer isn’t one script. A writer is someone who can write. Forty scripts later, my meteor idea isn’t even a footnote in my career. Don’t let your Grey’s Anatomy spec be anything more than something you wrote.