John August

Stuart

What Is a Movie, Anyway?

Episode - 369

Go to Archive

Awards, Film Industry, Follow Up, Indie, Scriptnotes, Stuart, Television, Transcribed, Videogames

John and Craig welcome Franklin Leonard to weigh in on the current definition of “movie.” In the age of streaming, this distinction is not only important for audiences and awards, but has a meaningful effect on how writers are paid.

We also take umbrage with Awards Season as a Hollywood fixture, and follow up on a five year-old prediction about iPads in movie theaters.

Links:

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

UPDATE 9-28-18: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Live To Write Another Day, A Survival Guide for Screenwriters and Creative Storytellers

Books, Stuart

I don’t read many books about screenwriting, but my assistant Stuart Friedel does. From time to time I ask him to write up his impressions.

by_stuartDean Orion has something worthwhile to say about writing. I’d certainly read his blog. But his new eBook, Live to Write Another Day, is a lesson in the pitfalls of self-publishing. He doesn’t know where the book is best, and brushes over points that deserve whole chapters, or makes chapters out of what should be entire books.

The early chapters are almost all superfluous. The Writer Gene — the title of the first chapter, as well as a phrase Orion appears to have adopted as a sort of brand — is a chapter on knowing you’re a writer because you have to write. What does a chapter like this accomplish? Are any aspiring writers saved from decades of suffering because they read this chapter and realize they don’t have The Gene?

It would work fine as a blog post, or an online rant. As a chapter of a book though, it makes me lose faith in the author. It sets up an expectation of chicanery, like he is trying to gain my trust by getting me to nod and agree a little bit before he tries to sell the snake oil.

The other early chapters are about process — his process, specifically. At times, they seem to be for people who have never written a word before, defining basic terms and spending pages on ideas like finding a good writing environment. At other times these chapters feel like advice for struggling veterans — for people doing this for so long they’ve forgotten how to do it any ways but theirs, and their ways aren’t working anymore, so they need to be exposed to other options. But the basics in here are so basic that I’m not sure a veteran could stomach them.

The first few chapters’ topics and tone feel dad-like — a pep talk given not because one is needed, but because that’s what dads are supposed to do. Advice dispensed by someone with advice to dispense, but who is lost when it comes to how or why or when or what.

And in TV-dad-like fashion, after a bit of rambling, he finds his footing.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 — on Giving, Getting, and Executing Notes, respectively (and respectfully) — are substantial, and full of fantastic, from-all-angles advice on a vital and too often ignored subject. I find that a large percentage of the ask@johnaugust.com inbox is made up of questions on notes — and half time time, the asker doesn’t even realize that’s what the question is about.

These chapters cover the obvious, like being respectful and offering constructive hints, but they also get into the more abstract parts of the subject, like figuring out what notes to ignore, and maintaining ownership over your script while others are trying to mold it in ways you may not agree with. These chapters are worth the price of admission.

The next chunk of chapters are good, but again skirt more towards blog territory. He has worthwhile advice on pitching, working with writing partners, writing for hire, art vs commerce, and finding a writing community.

The book ends with an Afterword that made me angry — because it should be an entire book itself instead of an afterthought. Orion has spent a lot of his career working in interactive media, from video games to theme park line entertainment. And he speaks intelligently about it. About how narratives and character arcs and emotions should play into games, how writing and design interact, the present and future of transmedia story telling — topics usually discussed theoretically and academically, rarely practically or with this kind of experiential insight. His point of view is unique and well informed.

But it’s just a tease. A few pages tacked onto the end of a book about something else — something Orion is in a position to speak about, but not a unique or particularly authoritative position. So the afterword gives us enough to get excited, but not satiated. Instead, it shines a light on the book’s weaknesses — what was done wrong in those earlier chapters, and was not done right in this.

Dean Orion should be writing about writing. He should write a book on writing for interactive media, a blog on writing in general, and maybe even a few self-published eBooks on topics that deserve more substantial coverage, like giving and getting notes or working with writing partners. But this book isn’t a cohesive whole. It may be worth purchasing for its best parts, but I don’t recommend sitting down and reading it cover to cover. It’s too jarring of a ride.

Tales from Development Hell

Books, Stuart

I don’t read many books about screenwriting, but my assistant Stuart Friedel does. From time to time I ask him to write up his impressions.

Several readers had written to ask about David Hughes’s Tales from Development Hell, so I asked Stuart to look at it during a break from reading Three Page Challenge entries.

by_stuartHughes’s book is a collection of historical accounts about the development — and sometimes eventual release — of famously troubled titles. In order, they are: Smoke and Mirrors, the new Planet of the Apes, The Lord of the Rings, Total Recall 2, Indiana Jones 4, Crusade, Isobar, various Howard Hughes projects, The Sandman, The Hot Zone, post-Clooney Batman, Tomb Raider, and Fantastic Voyage.

Each chapter covers one project, going into detail about who owned what rights when, who was hired to do what rewrites, why people were fired, etc. It answers questions like, “What ever happened to that Sandman adaptation I read about a few years back?” or, “Why have they never made a Hot Zone movie?”

What happened is those projects went through the Hollywood development process, which Tales from Development Hell does a good enough job of covering.

The accounts are thorough and drawn out, sometimes including long summaries of multiple almost-identical drafts, and rarely leaving out details, be they interesting or not. If you’re reading this book because you want this coverage, this over-thoroughness is probably a good thing. You may as well get the whole story. After all, this is literally the book on it.

But if you’re reading this as an aspiring screenwriter, there is little of direct value to you here, despite the writer’s pre-emptive apology for delivering these stories favoring your point of view. The tales are from the projects’ points of view. And that’s neither a particularly hellish nor interesting one.

An example: The first chapter covers an unproduced period piece — a magician adventure called Smoke and Mirrors. The spec script, written by a then-unknown, unrepped writing team with no credits (Janet Scott & Lee Batchler), sold for one million dollars plus a second script commitment. There were a bunch of rewrites — some by big-named writers, some by other unknowns. Attachments came on and fell off. It went into turnaround, got bought, went through more rewrites. It was finally ready to shoot…and then 9/11 derailed it.

In the chapter’s wrap-up, we check back in with the original writers:

Almost two decades after their million-dollar script sale, the Batchlers […] refuse to give up on the prospect of seeing Smoke and Mirrors on the big screen. “For one thing, in half the meetings we take, someone still comments on what a great script it is, how much they loved it, and how they wish it would get made. For another thing, the fact that the movie hasn’t been made means that no one has ruined a frame of it yet. […]”

If you subscribe to the book’s definition of Development Hell, the fact that Smoke and Mirrors hasn’t been made means it should be one of the book’s more hellish examples.

But as John and Craig often point out on the podcast, screenwriters’ careers are not about a single movie.

On a macro screenwriter level, the Smoke and Mirrors development cycle has employed a lot of people. And on a micro level, even the original writers don’t seem all that broken up over not seeing it made yet. It launched their careers, got them repped, got them a paycheck, a second script commitment from a major studio. It’s still brought up in meetings.

As a wannabe-screenwriter, what I was hoping for from a book with this title is a collection of war stories. Cautionary tales about hellish development experiences, told by writers who have been where I hope to go. Unworkable note sessions, passion projects that get oh-so-close but never get made, being forced to do bad rewrites for attachments that make no sense. Stories of pitfalls, and if I’m lucky, a bit about how to avoid them.

This second edition does sort of get there. Eventually. The last chapter consists of tales from the writer’s own career, but by that time, it’s too-little-too-late.

So should you read this book?

If you’re a fan of some of the more-famous project titles listed on the cover, you’ll probably find something interesting in those respective chapters. But I don’t know that you’ll get valuable screenwriting lessons out of it. Most scripts in development don’t get made, and a repetitive laundry list of the specific reasons why doesn’t feel especially helpful.

Heck, Daniel Wilson’s io9 article about his Robopocalypse experience is probably the best version of what this book is, and he does it in what would amount to fewer than five pages.

It’s not that this book doesn’t have value. It’s just not a must-have for an aspiring writer’s bookshelf.

Learning from the Three Page Challenge

Stuart, Three Page Challenge

Every few weeks, Craig and I look at three or four entries to the Three Page Challenge for the podcast. But my assistant, Stuart Friedel, has read more than 500.

I asked him to write up a post discussing the patterns, problems and common themes among what he’s read.1

by_stuartFirst I want to say thank you to everyone who entered the Three Page Challenge. I’ve genuinely enjoyed reading your work, and the bite-sized, three-pages-at-a-time format is perfect for someone with my generation’s attention span.

With more than 500 submissions, it’s difficult to comment on the content in any general group sense. There were no oft-repeated themes, no heavily skewed genre distributions, nothing to be gleaned about the zeitgeist as perceived by aspiring screenwriters. Vampire and zombie submissions numbers were exactly where you’d expect.

But there’s plenty to talk about regarding presentation.

Aside from the Three Page Challenge, I don’t read submissions for John. But I have been a reader in the past, mostly reading newly represented writers looking to get hired for assignments, often their first.

So that’s the basis of comparison here: not established writers’ screenplays, but other young writers’.

In general, these all looked fine. But there were a few issues common enough that they are worth pointing out.

Content

Floweriness. It’s good when your writing is interesting, but it’s too much when flowery description obscures the intent of the sentence.

JIM, 23, floats along the sidewalk, effortless.

Wait — is he literally floating? Better might be:

JIM, 23, jogs along the sidewalk effortlessly, as if floating.

Remember: your goal is not to write pretty words; it’s to write words that clearly express a pretty scene. Colorfulness should clarify your intent, not confuse the reader.

Clumping. Pages need room to breathe. Break up long description into multiple paragraphs. Break up long runs of dialogue with short description. Use sluglines.

Write your screenplay in a way that encourages it to be read at the same pace as the movie that’s playing in your head. If the words on the page are shoved together, or if paragraphs run on too long, that’s how the reader will read the scene.

Formatting

Characters’ names should be written in UPPERCASE the first time we meet them, and only the first time we meet them.2 Most of you got the first-time-we-meet-them part of this correct, but a lot of the samples continued to put characters’ names in all caps, sometimes inconsistently.

Important sounds should also be in UPPERCASE. When sneakers crunch gravel, “CRUNCH” should be in caps, not “sneakers.”3 Uppercase should be used whenever something deserves special attention, from the reader and/or from a specific department4: an important sound, detail, or effect, a vital prop, a newly introduced character that will need to be cast, a noteworthy piece of wardrobe, etc.

Presenting characters and content

When we meet a named character, his or her age should be mentioned. This can be done naturally in the character description, or can simply be put in parentheses after the character’s name. It’s fine to say (late-20s) rather than (28).

Even a seemingly-detailed description can create an ambiguous picture if there is no mention of age. When your salt-and-pepper haired businessman flirts with the girl at the bar as he’s done at a million other bars with a million other girls, is the reader seeing a prematurely graying recent college grad who is no stranger to a night out? Or a single fifty-something who is still going through the motions but is wishing he had someone waiting for him at home?

Vary character names. As much as possible, don’t use the same first letter for multiple characters. Readers don’t sound out every word, especially words that repeat often, like character names. You can’t casually breeze past “Alvin” and “Arwyn;” every time either of them is mentioned you have to pause, interrupt your flow, and take special note of which one is speaking. Don’t make readers do this.

Give minor characters descriptive names. “Lanky Cop” and “Stuttering Cop” are more interesting, more visual and easier to differentiate than “Cop #1” and “Cop #2.” You want me to be imagining the scene as I’m reading; make it easy for me.

If something is held back from the audience, hold it back from the reader. Don’t spoil your big reveal by clueing us in early. And similarly, don’t falsely convince yourself you’ve given your audience information just because you’ve given it to the reader.

A note on the selection process

We’re getting submissions at a rate of about 15 – 50 per week. I have an email filter set up with the leagalese — if you’ve got it, you get through; if not, it’s an instant delete.

Yes, it’s called the Three Page Challenge, but I do not delete submissions for having a title page, or a blank fourth page. I do delete it if you try to cheat the system by shrinking your font, majorly fudging your margins or spacing, or anything of that sort. If you send in a second, better/corrected/proofread/etc. draft and ask me to use that one, I use that one. But please don’t send the same submission a second time just to send it; if you’re in the folder, you’re in the folder.

Once there’s a healthy backlog, I drag the files one at a time to my desktop, and change the file name to whatever name you indicated you want to be called.5 I appreciate the kind notes, but it doesn’t help you get picked; by the time I read the submission, it’s far removed from your email. Similarly, as stated on the submission process page, I’m not reading loglines or synopses or explanations of where we are in the story. Ideally the pages can stand on their own.

John and Craig allow for you to submit any three pages of your screenplay for consideration, not just the first three. And while I don’t favor first-three-pages submissions, by their very nature they usually make more sense than out of context middle-of-the-script submissions. The first pages are written with the intent of introducing readers to the world.

I also don’t judge you negatively if your submission is fewer than three pages, but why give us less to work off of? I’m looking for competently written submissions with a clear intention, where something happens, and there’s something to talk about.

So keep ‘em coming.

  1. One of Stuart’s early observations was The Mystery of the Js; there seemed to be a disproportionate number of entries from writers whose names begin with J. I think it’s less mysterious than it appears. Once you account for our demographics — a lot of men born in the 80s and 90s — it’s within the range of coincidence. ↩
  2. You’ll find exceptions to this rule, particularly in some TV formats that use uppercase every time. But for screenplays, the first-time-rule is almost gospel. ↩
  3. Although, to be fair, there are instances where “SNEAKERS” should be in caps, too. Like if those specific sneakers later turn out to be the detail that gets the bad guy caught. ↩
  4. It’s almost always both. If something’s important enough that you want to call the reader’s attention to it, it’s important enough that it will be someone’s job to make sure it makes it into the film. ↩
  5. Pro tip: It helps if you just name your file this in the first place. ↩