John August

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Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

First Person, Rant, So-Called Experts

Last night, I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at Trinity University in San Antonio. While I speak at various screenwriter-oriented functions fairly often, this was unusual in that the event was university-wide, and the focus wasn’t specifically on film.

Part of the deal was that I had to announce the title of my speech months in advance. I picked, “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur,” figuring that in the intervening months I would think of inspiring examples of how the World of Tomorrow was going to be a wonderland of possibility for the undergraduates in the audience.

But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to talk about the future. Instead, I wanted to focus on one of the biggest challenges of today: in our celebration of the amateur, we kind of forget what it means to be professional.

As I spoke with various classes before the big presentation, I promised I’d post the whole speech on the site for those students who had night classes. And, of course, for anyone else who might be interested.

Let me warn you: this is __long__. My speech lasted 45 minutes, and that was without a lot of riffing. So if you’d rather read the whole thing as a .pdf, you can find it [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/professional.pdf).

. . .

It’s a pleasure to be here talking with you tonight. Over the last two days, I’ve been visiting a lot of classes, talking about screenwriting and movies, and well, basically talking about myself. Which I’m really good at. But when I agreed to give a formal public lecture, one of the requirements was that the presentation actually have a title. By which I mean a topic, a thesis. A point.

It all feels very academic, and I love that. I miss that. None of you will believe me now, but some day you’ll look back on your college careers and be wistful. Nostalgic. Because there’s something comforting about having to write a fifteen page paper on the use of floral imagery in “Pride and Prejudice.”

I think what it is, is that even if you’re completely wrong, it just doesn’t matter that much. For the rest of your life, you’re going to get called on bullshitting. In college, you’re graded on it.

Anyway.

I decided I wanted my lecture tonight to be not strictly about screenwriting, but about writing in general. Because everyone in this room is a writer. You might write screenplays; you might write research papers. You definitely write emails. Every one of you is, and will be, a professional writer in some field.

So I wanted to talk about what that means.

[Read more…] about Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

How to format lyrics in scripts

Formatting, QandA

I was quite curious as to how one would write a scene with characters singing a song, musical style. Do we just include “singing” as an action within the handy parentheses? Or is there some other formatting we must use? And how much mention are we supposed to give to the music itself?

— Adam Scott
Perth, Australia

For movies and television, the convention is to put the lyrics in italics. It’s probably helpful to include a “(singing)” parenthetical the first time you do it, because some readers may not catch it otherwise. And yes, dialogue in italics can also be used for foreign languages, so you’ll need to make sure it’s clear in context.

Here’s where the former graphic designer in me resurfaces. Screenplays are written in 12-pt. Courier, which is not the most attractive typeface in the world, but certainly sturdy and readable. There’s an italic form of Courier that’s rounded and a little more like handwriting, which would be quite suitable for lyrics.

However, the “italic” form of Courier you find on most computers is really just normal Courier with a slant effect applied (called “oblique”), and it seriously blows. It’s ugly on screen. It’s ugly printed.

It’s impossible to write beautiful lyrics in such an ugly typeface.

So, having written lyrics in many of my scripts, I’ve come to use a different typeface altogether for the songs. For Big Fish, I used 11 pt. Stone Sans Italic. For Charlie and Corpse Bride, I switched to 11 pt. Verdana Italic, because I needed to send those scripts in as .pdf files, and you can safely count on just about any computer having Verdana installed.

Why 11 pt., when the main text is set at 12 pt.? That’s because Verdana looks much bigger than Courier when set at the same point size. You’re also more likely to get a full lyric line in without a break at that size. (Although I feel no guilt cheating a margin slightly to avoid a break in any event.)

Some scripts I’ve read will include a slash “/” at the end of each sung line. I don’t find that helpful, so I never use it.

In terms of talking about the music, your best bet is to describe the general style and tone, such as “bright, Sousa-like march” or “melancholy dirge.” You can give an example if it’s particularly apt, but I’d avoid a reference that makes the reader stop and think, “Hmm, how does that go?”

Note that the convention for songs in stage musicals is completely different. For those, lyrics are placed in uppercase along the left margin. You can see examples of the format in the templates for Final Draft or Screenwriter.

Ops stops

Ops, Projects

One strange aspect of writing a blog is recognizing that one’s online narrative doesn’t always match up very well with reality. There is a lag between when events happen and when you write about them.

Take for example [Josh Friedman’s](http://hucksblog.blogspot.com) recent and scary brush with kidney cancer. As his real-life neighbor, I knew he was on the mend before anyone online knew there was anything wrong. Quite understandably, Josh didn’t blog about the situation while he was in the middle of it. But it was weird watching the two realities diverge. Josh’s readers would write in to me, asking why Josh hadn’t posted for so long. I knew, but it wasn’t my story to tell.

I’m just glad it has a happy ending.

In the dramedy of my own life, one story thread I’ve let drop is Ops, the one-hour drama Jordan Mechner and I developed for Fox.

For those who’ve tuned in late, Ops is an adventure-drama about two guys who run a private military corporation. They’re the sub-sub-contractors for a giant corporation like Halliburton, providing field operations in really dangerous parts of the world, such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Venezuela. Week-to-week, our heroes could be delivering a blood shipment, rescuing a kidnapped executive, or training a security force. Tonally, it’s probably closest to [Three Kings](http://imdb.com/title/tt0120188/). You could also think of it as a modern-day Western.

Ops was originally Jordan’s idea. He’d been researching private military corporations, with the intention of writing a feature. As he described the world to me, I felt it was really more of a TV drama. Much like the detective shows of the 80’s, you were following two guys. You didn’t just want to see them on one mission. You wanted to see them in a new predicament each week.

Jordan agreed, and we decided to write it together.

Our first hero would be THEO VANOWEN, the experienced soldier who is not only the brawn but the tactical brains — he could tell you exactly how many men you needed to guard an airstrip. His partner JOE McGINTY would be the business side of the equation: the salesman, the negotiator and problem-solver. While there would be other supporting characters, the show really falls on their backs.

We pitched the show to our agents at a hotel bar. (Since I’m represented at UTA, and Jordan’s at ICM, it was helpful to have a neutral location.) The agents loved the idea, and suggested we pitch the show to Fox. Two days later, we did. Fox (the studio) quickly bought it, and set it up for Fox (the network) as a put pilot. That was the end of September, 2004.

There was [an article](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117911329?categoryid=13&cs=1) in Variety about the show a few days later.

__FULL SPEED AHEAD__
While Jordan and I were writing the pilot, we met with the physical production department about location and budget strategies, since the show would no doubt be expensive. We also had preliminary meetings with actors the studio and/or network liked.

We turned in the pilot script in November, and were met with thunderous silence.

After a week or so, we got notes asking about the tone, and asking questions about certain plot points. We addressed those concerns as well as we could, but there was no question we’d lost mojo. Something was bugging them, but what? It was only after a few drafts that we got our answer: they liked the characters, but weren’t crazy about the A-plot. At all.

For the pilot, we began with a teaser in Afghanistan, then segued into a kidnap-and-rescue in Venezuela. The studio liked the Afghanistan part, but was eager to speed up the story. We tried an Alias-like jump-ahead structure which was interesting but a little gimmicky. No one really liked it.

We met with Gail Berman, president of Fox (the network). She said that what she had really been hoping for was more literally Three Kings. Happy to oblige, we pitched a new pilot that had our heroes trying to deliver a shipment of human blood from Turkey to Kirkuk. Everyone loved it. Jordan and I went off to write our new pilot, which was tentatively slated to shoot mid-season.

Then Gail Berman left Fox, to take over as president of Paramount.

__THE NEW GUY__
She was replaced by Peter Liguori, who had mostly recently run FX. One of the shows he had developed at FX was [“Over There,”](http://imdb.com/title/tt0446241/combined?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHE9b3ZlciB0aGVyZXxmdD0xfG14PTIwfGxtPTUwMHxjbz0xfGh0bWw9MXxubT0x;fc=1;ft=20;fm=1) an Iraq war drama that was not fairing well in the ratings. Concerned, we called our people at both Foxes, but were assured that the Iraq-ish-ness of our new pilot would be no problem.

Much happier with our new pilot, we turned it in. We got a lot of small notes about tone and comedy, which we tried to address. Everyone professed to love the pilot (several Fox folk called it their favorite), but we never got any word from Liguori about whether or not we would be shooting the pilot.

While we were waiting, I had a baby, and Jordan wrote Prince of Persia. So we were both busy enough.

Nearly a year after we’d set up the project, Jordan and I finally went in for a meeting with Liguori and approximately 10,000 Fox executives. (Okay, maybe just 11.) Peter Liguori, for the record, is friendly, polite and thoughtful. He explained that his reluctance to proceed with Ops was the subject matter, and the Iraq setting in particular. And yet he really admired the show, and wanted to find a way it could work.

Generally, I’m the eager-to-please guy, which explains why I wrote a whole new pilot for Gail Berman. But I wasn’t going to write a third pilot without some commitment from Liguori. He agreed we could start casting and looking for directors based on the current pilot script. Meanwhile, we’d be writing a brand-new pilot that would feature a new A-plot set somewhere other than Afghanistan and Iraq. (We chose Brazil and Uzbekistan.)

And this is where I last left the story, blog-wise. We were casting. When I mentioned that [Alexis Denisof](http://imdb.com/name/nm0219206/) and [James Marsters](http://imdb.com/name/nm0551346/) had come in, I got lots of gushing Buffy fan mail. In reality, we were pretty far down the road with two actors Fox loved: [LL Cool J](http://imdb.com/name/nm0005112/) and [Luke Mably](http://imdb.com/name/nm0531101/). Those two weren’t the only choices; we were lucky to have a lot of interest from talented people.

Then something strange happened.

LL Cool J was “offer-only,” which means he wouldn’t come in to audition beforehand. That’s pretty common for a star at his level. Every day or two, I would get a call from LL’s agent asking if we were still interested in him, because Fox business affairs hadn’t called to start making a holding deal for him.

So, every day or two, I would call the powers-that-be at Fox and say, “Hey, let’s make that LL deal.” But it wouldn’t happen. And I could never get a clear answer on why it wasn’t happening.

Finally, I ended up just calling Liguori to ask why they weren’t making LL’s deal. Was Liguori having second thoughts about making the show?

Yes.

In fact, he had decided he didn’t want the show after all.

And suddenly, just like that, Ops was dead.

Our phone conversation was at noon. We had another casting session scheduled in an hour. So my first call was to the casting director, telling him to cancel the session and send the 30 or so actors home. Then I called Jordan, who was bummed. He had just finished seven pages of the third pilot.

He sent them. I read them and gave notes, just for the hell of it. We sent a big basket of muffins to the casting agency to thank them for their hard work, and called it a day.

__THE AFTERMATH__
When a pilot is announced, it shows up in Variety. Everyone knows about it.

When a pilot dies, it dies quietly in the corner. So for the next week, I kept getting calls from agents about their writer/director/actor client who would be perfect for Ops. It was awkward to tell them that the show was kaput.

In reality, the show wasn’t fully dead, because Fox (the studio) still had the right to take the project to other networks. One of the reasons I didn’t blog about Ops’ demise earlier is that we were still under consideration at NBC and Showtime. They both ultimately passed, which is good, because I had mentally moved on about an hour after the phone call with Liguori.

One aspect of the Ops situation that might perplex some readers is that the show was announced as a “put pilot,” which means that when Fox made the original deal with Jordan and me, one of the conditions was that they basically promised to shoot the pilot. In reality, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a put pilot.

In the case of Ops, there was a substantial penalty that Fox agreed to pay in the event they didn’t end up shooting the pilot. In a few months, I’ll get a check with a few zeroes for my trouble. Given how much time and money it would have taken to shoot the pilot, it’s almost certainly for the best the train stopped where it did. There’s no sense producing a pilot if the network didn’t want the show.

To the degree there’s a silver lining, I can now offer a bunch of new stuff in the [Downloads](http://johnaugust.com/downloads) section. In the Ops category, you’ll find stuff from all three versions of the pilot, along with the sides we used for casting.

On the whole, I’m proud of the show that never was. It was my first experience writing with a partner, and Jordan was a great collaborator. While I probably wouldn’t choose to write with someone again, it was good to learn that I could if I had to.

I’m really not angry with Fox or Liguori. I understand his decision, although I wish he’d reached it a few months earlier. The various incarnations of Ops took about six months of my writing, and a sizable chunk of my brain space. The mental real estate can be reclaimed, but there’s a real opportunity cost to the time I lost. I could have written two features in that time.

Or blogged more.

Anyway, that’s the story of Ops. It feels good to have my real-life narrative a little closer to my online version.

Race and the screenwriter

Rant

[Craig Mazin](http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2006/01/passing_on_the.html) and [Alex Epstein](http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2005/12/diversity-pass.html) both recently tackled a topic that was on my to-blog list. Yes, I keep a list of things I intend to blog. And yes, I tend to just write whatever strikes me at the moment anyway. But since Alex and Craig got to it first, I might as well say what I was going to say.

At issue is whether it’s a good idea for the screenwriter to specify ethnicities for various characters. Alex believes in doing the “diversity pass” to keep his script from being lily-white. Craig feels this is absurd and racist.

Craig is wrong.

But not for the reasons you’d expect. While Craig and I tend to be on different wavelengths politically, he tends to come down on the side of common sense. And I think there’s a very practical matter that’s being overlooked.

Unless it’s important for understanding a story point, I rarely specify a race for a character. But that’s not to say I won’t give some strong hints. I will often make the lieutenant GONZALEZ rather than GOODMAN. The internist is more likely to end up DR. CHO than DR. CHASE. The schoolteacher will be PATEL rather than PETERS.

Is it liberal guilt? No. It’s readability.

Screenplays are read quickly. Unlike a novel, you don’t linger for a few paragraphs getting to know minor characters, setting up their memorable quirks. Rather, you meet them on page 20, then see them again on page 64. As a screenwriter, you want the reader to instantly recall that they’ve encountered a certain character before.

A reader is much more likely to remember an international banker named Abebayehu Tegene than Abe Thompson.

You can debate why this is. Maybe it’s just that the name is more interesting. But in most cases, I think it’s because we’re hard-wired to match race to surnames. We see Abebayehu Tegene and we think, “This character is black. Not only that, he’s probably African.” We form a mental picture of “African banker,” then move on.

With Abe Thompson, the reader has nothing to latch onto. Abe Thompson is just a name.

Note that giving a character an African surname doesn’t remove the burden of actually making this character interesting. If he says more than a few lines, there better be something notable about him independent of race. Both Tegene and Thompson might be condescending snobs who openly mock our hero.

But come page 64, you’ll still remember Tegene over Thompson.

In the real world, what are the implications of implying ethnicities for these characters? As I’ve [noted earlier](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/two-sides-to-the-story), when casting, the assumption tends to be “white unless otherwise specified.” But if you write “Judge Fujimoro” rather than “Judge Foster,” there’s a pretty good chance you’ll end up with a Japanese judge.

You might find that stereotypical, or an example of blatant tokenism, such as the “black lieutenant syndrome” which hit cop shows in the ’90’s. After all, shouldn’t the part go to the best actor, regardless of race?

Yes, in theory. In reality, for a small supporting role, it’s a binary decision. Either the actor is Good Enough or Not Good Enough. If you’re casting a judge in Los Angeles, there’s no question you’ll find plenty of Good Enoughs. It might take an extra 20 minutes to find Japanese Good Enough. To me, it’s time well spent.

Obviously, there’s a lot more that can be written about race and screenwriting. As I noted in an [earlier post](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/the-get-a-mentor-program), the role of Ronna in Go was written as African-American. We ended up casting [Sarah Polley](http://imdb.com/name/nm0001631/), perhaps the whitest Canadian you could find. So was I right to write “Black” in the script? Was I wrong to take it out?

Just as it’s naive to think that making a minor-but-likable character Iraqi will better the world, it’s foolish to assume that leaving a character “race-less” lets the screenwriter off the hook. Readers, including directors, studio executives, and casting directors, will assume that European names belong with white people, and that surgeons are white men in the early 50’s, unless you tell them otherwise.

So I say, make the geophysicist Abdul Kalam. Don’t do it for diversity. Do it for your script.