Does a chain email hold the secret to your script?

A friend of mine recently sent me a chain email.  Normally, I just delete these without reading.  But because of the person who had sent it, I decided to take a look.

The email went something like this:

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Enligsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.”

Of course the first thing it made me think about was screenwriting

Just like in the scrambled letters of this chain email, when it comes to understanding the scenes of your screenplay, your audience is not hanging on your every word.  Rather, they are processing the scene as a whole. 

That means an audience’s ability to decipher the meaning of your story may depend upon the choices you make at the beginning and ends of each scene.

The power of the first and last images

You can think of the first and last image of each scene as the moments that lock in each step of your character’s journey.

Get these moments right, and you can get away with all kinds of flights of fancy in between.  Get them wrong, and no matter how compelling your writing may be, your script may start to feel like it’s got about as much structure as a bowl of oatmeal.

The difference between “unerdtsnad” and “dnerdtsnau”

If you look closely, you’ll see that the only thing I’ve done is switch the and u the d at the beginning and the end of this word… yet the first translation reads like “understand” while the second is entirely illegible.

Similarly, simply by getting more specific about the images at the beginning and the end of each scene, you can pull an entire story into focus, and begin to capture the change, either literally or metaphorically, that your character has gone through within the scene.

As you start to learn more about Seven Act Screenplay Structure, you’ll discover that these little punctuated moments within your scenes not only make your screenplay more cinematic, but also become the organic building blocks for larger movements within your story, and ultimately for entire structure of your script.

Revolutionize your writing

Next time you sit down at your computer, start taking a closer look at the first image of each scene you write.  Give it a little tweak to make it more compelling, more unusual, more cinematic or more specific to your character.  Think about what your character wants, and what your character is doing when the scene begins.  Then play around until you’ve captured that action in a way that only they would do it.

Now, think about the last image of your scene.  How is it different from the one you began with?  How does it reflect the change your character has gone through in the scene?  Is it literal, or is it metaphorical?  What makes it unique to your character and your story?

Transform your images into structure

Want to learn more about visual storytelling?  Check out these new classes at both the beginner and intermediate level, and learn how you can use the fundamentals of Seven Act Structure to pull your writing into focus:

INTRO TO SCREENWRITING

4 Week Workshop With Jessica Hinds
Saturdays, 12-3pm
Feb 18 - Mar 17 (No Class Mar 3)
285 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY

The perfect class for beginning screenwriters, this exciting workshop will teach you a whole new way of looking at the fundamentals, and help you integrate your artistic goals into your real world life. LEARN MORE

Price: $300.00

WRITE YOUR SCREENPLAY: LEVEL 2

With Jacob Krueger
Class Starts February 20th
Mondays, 7-10pm
71 W 23rd St, Suite 515, NYC

Take your writing to the next level, with Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger. LEARN MORE

Reserve your spot today! Balance due at first class. Payment plans available.

Rule #6: You Need To Make Writing a Full Time Job

If you’re a writer, at some point you’ve probably heard yourself say some version of the following sentence:

“If I could just get (one day/one week/one month/one year) off from my (day job/kids/spouse/everyday life) to focus full time on my writing, then I could actually finish my (screenplay/novel/other creative project) and finally feel like a writer.”

At some point, maybe you even went for it.  Took a leave of absence, called out sick for a week, locked yourself in the library for a weekend and resolved to focus 24/7 on your writing…

…Only to find that your writing life didn’t change in the way you expected.

You imagined yourself writing every minute of every day, but instead found yourself unable to stick to your deadlines, blowing those precious hours on Facebook or solitaire, and creating new and inventive procrastination techniques that robbed you of your precious writing time.

You imagined the words flowing effortlessly onto the page, and instead found yourself staring at a blank screen, lost somewhere in the middle of your screenplay or afraid to even start.

You imagined being at one with your creativity, and instead found yourself alone in a scary place, feeling even more blocked, more overwhelmed, more stuck, and more frustrated.

Perhaps at that moment, you started to ask yourself “do I really want this?”  or “do I even have what it takes to be a writer?”

The Journey and the Destination

Building a healthy relationship with your writing is not about teleporting yourself to an alternate universe where everything changes overnight.

Rather, it’s about embarking on a journey with your creativity, through which writing gradually becomes so naturally integrated with your daily life that when you finally reach your destination, you may even find yourself wondering exactly how you got there.

Understanding The Power of a Single Drop of Water

Dump 100,000 gallons of water onto an arid desert, and you don’t get a river.  You get a terrifying flash flood that overwhelms everything in its path and then disappears just as quickly into the sand.

Let that same stream of water trickle slowly and steadily over time, and gradually a channel will start to form, getting deeper and wider until it becomes a mighty river, which can carry that water all the way to the sea.

This is how you build a writing life.  Not with a 100,000 gallon flash flood.  But with a small, steady trickle that gradually grows stronger and more powerful.  For most of us, the time to create that trickle already exists in our lives.  It’s just about making it a priority, and getting the support you need to make the most of the time you have.

How Much Time You Really Need To Write?

One of my most prolific students writes for 90 minutes a day. 45 minutes on the train ride to work.  And 45 minutes on the train ride back.

One of my good friends, Christine Boylan, a highly successful TV writer, writes in chunks of 48 minutes on and 12 minutes off-and forces herself to stop writing after 48 minutes no matter what in order to train her subconscious mind to follow her impulses and make decisions quickly.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours to write.  If you train yourself to set achievable goals, and then force yourself to stick to them, you will notice that your writing time, and the ease with which you generate material, starts to expand naturally.

5 minutes of writing in the morning gives rise to a whole day of thought about your screenplay.  During your coffee break, you jot down a couple of notes.  Instead of updating your Facebook status, you suddenly find yourself pounding out a scene.

That night, you don’t go home and turn on the TV.  You find yourself back at your computer, putting on the finishing touches on the work you’ve done.  You go to bed dreaming about your script, and you wake up the next morning racing to get everything out on the page before you leave for work.

You’re no longer writing because you have to write.  You’re writing because you want to write, because you already feel successful as a writer.  Not because of the huge goals you dreamed of, but because of the 5 minute goal you stuck to.

Create The Steady Stream of Writing that Changes Your Life

If you wrote one page a day for a year, at the end of the year, you’d have written three screenplays.  But getting that page written, day after day, can be a real challenge.

Our lives are filled with so many “urgent” demands from so many people, that sometimes the things that are really important end up falling to the wayside, simply because there is no one but ourselves to demand it from us.

If you’re going to succeed as a writer, you need to find a way to make whatever writing time you do have as urgent and non-negotiable as showing up for work in the morning.

You need someone to hold you responsible for hitting your goals, to let you know when you’ve done well, and to demand more out of you when you’ve fallen short.

If you’ve ever gone to the gym with a personal trainer, you know that even 45 minutes working out with a personal trainer can give you ten times the workout of hours spent working out on your own.

That’s why I’m introducing a new service to help you keep your focus on what really matters to you.   It’s called Personal Training for Writers.   And it’s just like working out with a trainer in the gym.

Here’s how it works:

• Subscribe: For 3 months, 6 months, or a full year of weekly training sessions.

• Create Your Gameplan:  Discuss your writing goals with your personal trainer, and create a personalized writing schedule and regimen of exercises, to maximize the time you have to write, and integrate your creative goals with your daily life.

• Stick To Your Goals: Halfway through your writing week, your Personal Trainer will call to check in on how you’re proceeding, answer urgent questions, and give you the guidance (or tough love) you need to meet your deadlines.

• Turn in Your Pages: Each week, you’ll submit up to ten pages of writing to your Personal Trainer, hitting your deadlines just like professional writers do.

• Get Personalized Feedback:  With weekly one-on-one sessions with your personal trainer.  Get in depth feedback on the pages you’ve  written, and the guidance you need to keep moving forward, so you can stay on track and growing as a writer.

• In Person or Online: Meet with your trainer from anywhere in the world: in-person in NYC, or online via video chat.

Students Save 50% or More on Personal Training!

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100 Rules and How To Break Them

Rule #5:  Show Don’t Tell

That you should “show” instead of “telling” is perhaps the most sound advice any screenwriter can follow.

After all, movies are visual, and it’s almost always more interesting to see someone do something right now in the present than to hear them talk about doing something, explain about feeling something, or worst of all reminisce about having done something in the past.

In general, telling leads to boring exposition that slows down your story, undermines your visual storytelling, and turns your characters into talking heads.

Showing, on the other hand, forces you to make exciting choices for your character, leading you naturally to the compelling images that drive your character’s journey forward and help your audience to connect to your story.

For all these reasons “Show Don’t Tell” is a mantra drilled into the mind of almost any student at almost any writing program in almost any genre anywhere in the world.

It’s just a good thing no one told Nora Ephron, or she could never have written When Harry Met Sally.

Here’s an Academy Award nominated script that somehow manages to break nearly every fundamental principle of screenwriting: monologues that run on for pages, characters that recount entire phases of their histories, and a multitude of scenes where characters do nothing but tell.

Had Nora Ephron taken the final draft of When Harry Met Sally to the average screenwriting teacher, she probably would have gotten a kind and supportive lecture about easy ways to “fix” her script simply by using “show don’t tell.”

You can probably imagine it now:

“Why don’t we just SEE Harry’s relationship with his ex-wife, rather than hear him talk about it during a baseball game?”

Yup, there goes the famous “doing the wave” scene at Yankee Stadium.

When Harry Met Sally works BECAUSE of it’s “telling” scenes, not in spite of them.

That’s because When Harry Met Sally is a movie about storytelling.

It begins with a story told by an elderly couple directly to the camera. And it ends with similar story told by the elderly Harry and Sally.

The movie is about the stories people tell themselves and each other about their relationships. These stories provide the fundamental structure of the screenplay; to tell the story in any other way would undermine the very instincts that made it worth telling in the first place.

Furthermore, by allowing the characters to tell their stories to each other, Ephron is able to keep her focus on the characters that matter, even as she covers large periods of time when they are apart.

We’re watching the story of Harry and Sally and Jess and Marie, not the story of Harry and his ex-wife or Sally and her ex-boyfriend.   These are the hot relationships in the movie, and the only characters we care about.

So, though these characters may spend half the movie “telling” their stories to each other, by allowing them to spend all their screen-time together, Ephron is actually showing us the story that matters.

When to follow the rules? And when to break them?

Make no mistake, it takes a heck of a lot of skill to write a story like When Harry Met Sally and make all that “telling” work for you. Ephron uses all sorts of advanced screenwriting techniques to keep her story moving, her drama building, and her characters growing, even as she breaks all the rules of this traditional principle of screenwriting.

In most cases, if you find yourself “telling” in your script, it’s worth at least asking the question of whether or not you’d be better off “showing” the scene dramatically. And if you’re not sure, it’s probably worth at least scribbling out a scene or two to find out.

But the most important thing to remember when it comes to “Show Don’t Tell” or any of the other so-called rules of screenwriting, is quite simply this:

The only rules that matter are the ones that serve your script and your intentions.

No matter how many screenwriting books you read, or how well meaning your teachers may be, when you start to listen to other people’s rules, rather than listening to your own voice as a writer, your writing is going to suffer.

So learn the rules. And then forget them. Listen to your script. Listen to your characters. And listen to the mentors who guide you toward your own rules.

That way, the rules you really can reveal themselves to you.

Se7en: How To Avoid A Dud Ending

Check out this new video I recently recorded for Scriptmag.com and learn how to discover a great ending for your screenplay.

100 Rules and How To Break Them

Rule #4 THE INCITING INCIDENT

This installment of the 100 Rules series grows directly out of a question from a former student:

I have a question and thought I needed a fresh perspective from someone outside UCLA… I’m sort of getting in a fight with the teacher of my workshop about my inciting event. In my naturally rebellious style, I don’t think there is a rule that the inciting event has to nail us early in the script. I think it can actually be before anything is ever done on screen.  I’m being told that [an event that happens before the movie starts] can’t be my inciting incident... I’m just wondering your opinion.  – Dom C.

Opening The Door To Change

The inciting incident is just a fancy name writing teachers like to give to the moment that opens the door for change for a character.  And you’re absolutely right.  It’s often the case in movies that inciting incidents happen before the movie starts.

For example, in Thelma and Louise, the main characters have already decided to go on their road trip before the movie begins (though Thelma still hasn’t told her hubby).  Or, in Little Miss Sunshine, Uncle Frank has already decided to kill himself before the movie starts.

Getting Your Movie Moving

Having an inciting incident happen before your movie begins can often be a good thing, because it keeps the “normal world” of your script from becoming a “boring world” by starting the movie moving and your characters changing from page 1.

When this happens though, there’s usually a second inciting incident on page 10 – 12, that shocks us out of the “new normal” world set up by that original inciting incident, and opens the door to change.

For Thelma and Louise, it’s the moment Thelma flirts with the creepy guy at the truck stop who will later try to rape her.  In Little Miss Sunshine it’s the moment Olive hears the voicemail saying that she’s going to get to compete in the beauty pageant.

Is This A Rule You Can Break?

You are absolutely right that there are no rules in screenwriting.  God did not come down and proclaim that the inciting incident must happen by page 12 (that was Syd Field).

Many screenplays have pushed the inciting incident pretty deep down into the story and still worked brilliantly.  But if you have commercial aspirations for your script, it’s also worth noting that having a strong inciting incident early in your script will help lock an audience into your story, and help get you past the coverage readers that guard the kingdom.

Besides, if you don’t have an inciting incident where producers are expecting it, almost certainly at some point, some producer is going to create one for you.

You’re not going to like what they create.  So usually you’re better off giving them one yourself.

No Rigid Formulas

If your professor doesn’t believe an inciting incident can happen late in a movie, tell him to watch There Will Be Blood.  PT Anderson starts the movie with about 20 minutes of silent filmmaking before we ever get to the inciting incident.

However, when you read the script for There Will Be Blood, there’s the inciting incident, right where it’s supposed to be.  By page 6, Daniel’s friend has died, and Daniel is already stuck with the boy.  And just in case anyone was concerned that this was too early, there’s another inciting incident right where Syd Field says it should appear: on page 12, when Paul Sunday shows up to tell Daniel about the oil.

Anderson knows he’s not going to shoot it that way.  But he also knows if he doesn’t write it that way, executives are going to get nervous.

Similarly, Michael Clayton moves the end of the movie to the beginning, to create the sense of an exciting inciting incident before one has actually occurred.

Great writers know that that inciting incident is not a rule to which we must conform.  It’s a game we play in later drafts, in order to help us capture the attention of our audiences.

Discovering Your Inciting Incident

There are very few things more damaging to a young writer than obsessing over page count.  Great scripts come from stepping into a character, and taking them on a profound journey.  And it’s impossible to do this if you’re looking in on your script from the outside, and editing every word before your story even makes it onto the page.

The page 12 inciting incident is not where you start as a writer.  It’s where you end up.

It might take you 50 pages of writing to discover the amazing moment that ultimately becomes your inciting incident.  And if you’re so worried about hitting some magic number that you don’t allow yourself those 50 pages, you’re never going to discover the good stuff.

In which case, it’s not going to matter where your inciting incident happens, because nobody’s going to want to watch your movie.

Almost every scene has an inciting incident.

Though inciting incident is usually used as structural concept to discuss the moment that starts the engine on the entire film, the truth of the matter is that almost every scene in your movie is going to contain an inciting incident.

Another way to think of inciting incident is simply as the moment where things shift for your character:  the event that happens– within the scene, the act, or the entire movie– that interrupts whatever has become the normal world for the character, and changes your character or the world around him so that things can no longer be exactly the same as they were before.

This is why it’s often the little inciting incidents within each scene that are actually most important for you as a writer.  It’s these moments that keep your movie moving, and propel the force of your character’s journey.

If you are driving your story forward and forcing your character to change in little ways in each scene that you write, it’s inevitable that your character is going to go on a profound journey, and you’re going to discover those big turning points that producers are always so worried about.

Once you’ve allowed your character’s journey to play out to the greatest extent of your imagination and discovered those powerful scenes around which your movie turns, you can slice, dice, compress, revise or (if you’re like PT Anderson) downright cheat to make that moment feel producer friendly.

But until then, keep your focus where it belongs.  On your character.

100 RULES AND HOW TO BREAK THEM:

Rule #3: Be Careful Who You Pitch To

It’s a constant fear among young writers: finally coming up with that million dollar idea, only to have it stolen by some mustache twirling producer, some back-stabbing friend, or even worse, some untalented hack of a writer.

For this reason, scores of writers hide away their best ideas, terrified to share them with anyone for fear of losing them.

So, let me reassure you.

You don’t have to worry about anybody stealing your idea. Because somewhere out there in the wild world of screenwriting, somebody already has.

No, they didn’t sneak into your laptop while you were away and spirit off your precious Final Draft files. In fact, most likely, they’ve never even met you, or talked about your idea with you or anyone you know.

But if you’ve got an idea, there’s a good chance that there are at least 50 scripts with the same idea already circulating around Hollywood.

Who Invented Darwinism?

You probably haven’t heard of him, but during the same 20 years that Darwin was scribbling away on his revolutionary (and as-yet unpublished) Origin of Species, a guy named Alfred Russell Wallace was coming to the exact same conclusion.

Never imagining that he and the great Charles Darwin could be working on the exact same project, Wallace sent his short paper on the subject to Darwin, whom he’d never met, begging the famous scientist for some feedback before he sent it to the publisher!

Imagine Darwin’s horror at receiving Wallace’s paper—and you’ll understand why producers ask you to sign such insane legal contracts before they agree to read your work. There’s a good chance that somewhere out there, somebody else is already working on exactly the same project you are.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. But a great script is not.

When Darwin rushed his Origin of Species to the presses after reading Wallace’s paper, Wallace could easily have imagined that Darwin had stolen his idea. But Wallace had the exact opposite reaction. He and Darwin became good friends, and ultimately, Wallace would claim that his greatest scientific achievement had been prompting Darwin to finally publish his groundbreaking manuscript.

Wallace understood that it wasn’t the idea of Origin of Species that changed the course of science forever. It was the execution of that idea in a way that captured the attention of everyone who read it.

Similarly, it’s not the idea of your screenplay that’s going to make it sell. It’s the execution of that idea in a way that captures the essence of that idea, and translates it in a way that captures the audience’s attention.

All Writers Steal. And You Should Too.

Darwin and Wallace were not the first scientists to muse about evolution, nor was Shakespeare the completely original inventor of all his plays.

Romeo and Juliet was stolen from the Roman myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Hamlet is just an update of an older play called The Ur-Hamlet.

The Big Lebowski steals unabashedly from The Big Sleep. And its main characters are not so loosely based on a couple of real life guys who were friends with the Coen Brothers.

And remember that great truck chase scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s stolen from an old movie called Stagecoach.

Great writers steal liberally from everyone and everything around them: people, places, history, events, novels, plays, poems, songs, art, and yes, even other screenplays.

They take these elements, draw upon them for inspiration, change, adapt, and repurpose them for their own writing, and in this way build upon the work of all the great writers who have gone before them.

Though they may have been inspired by the same sources, Romeo and Juliet is not Pyramus and Thisbe. Hamlet is not The Ur-Hamlet. The Big Lebowski is nothing like The Big Sleep. And Raiders of the Lost Ark could never be confused for Stagecoach.

That’s because no matter how similar the ideas they start with may be, it’s almost impossible for two writers to write the exact same script.

No One Can Write Your Script But You.

Translating an idea into screenplay form is intensely personal work, requiring thousands of intuitive creative decisions at every turn. And no two writers will ever make those decisions in the same way.

Even if another writer were to steal, stumble upon, or be gifted by the screenwriting gods with the exact same “million-dollar idea” that you are currently working on, the chances of them writing a script that’s anything like the one you’ve created are extraordinarily slim.

So stop protecting your writing. If someone thinks they can write your movie better than you can, tell them to go for it! And then go out and steal some good inspiration for yourself.

Why Darwin Almost Got Scooped.

Despite his 20 years of work on the subject, his fame and his reputation in the industry, Darwin was so afraid to go out and pitch his revolutionary idea that he almost got beaten to the punch.

This is the same mistake that so many young writers make, clinging so tenaciously to their ideas that they never have a chance to share them with anyone.

If you’re going to sell your idea, you’re going to have to pitch it. And if you want to figure out your script, you’re going to have to share your writing and see how other people respond.  Take a class.  Talk to your friends.  Share your writing.  Get the feedback you need.

My father used to tell me, you can’t catch a fish if your hook isn’t in the water. And the same thing is true for pitching. If you’ve got a great idea, then write the script, and start shouting about it to the world. Because that’s the only way you’re going to sell it.

The Difference Between Stealing and Stealing.

There’s a big difference between “stealing” someone’s idea and repurposing it for your own writing, and literally stealing somebody else’s script.

It’s rare that an experienced producer will actually steal a script from a writer. Anyone who’s ever produced a movie knows it’s much cheaper and easier to pay you for your screenplay than to defend a plagiarism lawsuit.

Nevertheless, the bad kind of stealing does happen occasionally, so there are steps you should take to protect yourself.

(please note that I am not a lawyer and the following does not constitute legal advice).

1. Always register your script with the US Copyright Office before you send it to anyone.
2. There is no such thing as a poor man’s copyright. You spent months or maybe years of your life writing the script. It’s worth paying the fee.
3. Keep clear records of everyone you send your script to, so you can prove they had access. Email is great, because it provides an automatic record.
4. Don’t send your script to the shady guy you met on Craigslist. Send it to real producers with established credits who know better than to rip you off.
5. Remember that WGA registration does not protect your copyright. It only helps in case of a credit arbitration.
6. Write the darn script!  You can’t copyright your idea, but you can copyright the execution.  So go out there and execute it in the way only you can.  Start today!

100 Rules and How To Break Them

Introducing my new series “100 Rules and How To Break Them!”  Each week, I’ll be analyzing one of the so called “rules” of screenwriting, and exploring both why they exist, and how to break them in interesting ways that make your writing better and your stories more powerful.

RULE #1 – WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

One of the most misleading ideas in screenwriting is that as a writer you should “write what you know.”

On its surface, this is a brilliant idea.  After all, writing what you know means you’re a whole lot less likely to get into trouble in your writing—and even your fiction is a whole lot more likely to be rooted in truth.

As anyone who’s ever told a lie can tell you, building on pure fiction is like building on quicksand.

Things might look so much easier for awhile, but pretty soon one fabrication piles upon another until you’re spending all your time trying to keep your story from from collapsing on itself.

Writing what you know makes things so much easier.  Rather than reinventing the wheel, you get to focus on something you know profoundly well, conjure it for your audience, help them to connect with it, and take them on a journey in relation to it.

But of course, if great writers truly only wrote what they knew, some of the greatest works of fiction would never have existed.

I think it’s safe to say George Lucas never spent much real time “a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away”.  Nor were JRR Tolkien or Peter Jackson ever abducted by Gandalf.

You don’t have to be a serial killer or an FBI agent to write “The Silence of The Lambs”.  You don’t have to be a mobster to write “Goodfellas”.  And you don’t have to be a pet detective to write “Ace Ventura.”

As writers, we know on some level that our job is to invent.  We are creators of fiction…  So how are you supposed to write what you know, when you’re conjuring a world you never lived in, or a character whose life you’ve never experienced?

The trick with writing what you know is not to write what you know literally—it’s to write what you know emotionally.

George Lucas may not have known Darth Vadar—but he was deeply connected to the idea of the force.  That’s what makes the early movies so powerful—and its absence is what makes the later movies so easily forgettable.

JRR Tolkein may not have dwelled in middle earth, but he clearly understood the nature of addiction:  the irresistible urge to put on the precious ring of power—even knowing that it draws the dark lord closer.  And the way the end of that addiction—with the destruction of the ring by the ultimate addict, Gollum, also means the end of the age of magic, and the beginning of the age of man.

What a great writer does is not simply to write the literal truth of what he or she knows.  What a great writer does is to translate what she knows into a fiction that tells the truth even more powerfully than the literal truth ever could.

Check back next week for the next article in the “100 Rules and How To Break Them” series.  

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a man named Syd Field wrote a book called Screenplay.  

Syd took the world’s greatest screenplays, and broke them down into his now famous three-act structure, identifying the elements that made them work, and showing aspiring screenwriters a simple way to emulate those elements in their own scripts.

Hollywood was never the same.

Suddenly, every production executive, aspiring screenwriter, script consultant and screenwriting teacher had a magic formula for success. All they had to do was copy Syd Field’s magical three act formula and surely their movie would be as successful as the films that inspired it.

Three act structure broke screenwriting into three simple acts of creation:

ACT ONE: the beginning.

ACT TWO: the middle.

ACT THREE: the end.

And then, Syd rested. And said it was good. 

There was only one problem. It didn’t actually work.

As brilliant as three-act structure was for describing finished drafts, and as much valuable information as Screenplay contained, as a tool for developing new material, it was often disastrous. 

Writers using three-act structure tended to find themselves “lost in the second act,” wandering in a 60 page wasteland of plot, without the slightest sense of how it all related to their character’s journey.

Producers imposing three-act structure in script development often landed their most promising material in “development hell“– the dreaded place where screenplays go to die once they’ve been “perfected” to a point where absolutely no one wants to make them.

How is it possible that a structure based upon the most successful screenplays in history could prove so completely counterintuitive when it came to creating new work?

Simple. Syd Field’s approach to writing doesn’t work because nobody actually writes that way.

Writing is a messy, complex, and intuitive process. A fascinating dance between the editing and creative parts of the writer’s mind. It doesn’t work in a straight line. It works in ever expanding circles.

It’s one thing to look at a screenwriting masterpiece, identify the beginning, middle and end, and reverse engineer the structure that holds it all together.

It’s quite another to start with the blank page, a rough draft, a great idea, or a compelling character and organically discover the great story that lies within.

That’s why I developed Seven Act Structure.

Seven Act Structure takes your focus off of rigid formulas and critical ideas, and puts it back where it belongs: on creating the most compelling journey for your main character.

It breaks down the movement of your story into manageable chunks, so that you can wrap your head around the complexities of your character, and their journey, without feeling overwhelmed by all you’re trying to accomplish.

And most importantly, Seven Act Structure honors the intuitive and mysterious nature of the writers craft, allowing you to develop your story organically, one step at a time, even when you don’t know exactly where it’s leading.

Now, you can learn Seven Act Structure for only $25 bucks!

Come check out my new Seven Act Structure seminar on August 10th – in NYC and Online!

THE BIG LEBOWSKI

A Special Seminar in 7 Act Structure
August 10, 2011
71 W 23rd St, NYC
7pm – 10pm
Normal Cost: $40
Blog Readers Discount:
Only $25 Bucks!

For the ONLINE VERSION of this class please click here.

Using The Big Lebowski as a model, you’ll not only learn how to break down the Seven Act Structure of any film– but also how to apply these lessons to your own writing, so you can develop your structure organically-in a way that honors your instincts, your intentions, and your voice as a writer.

In the spirit of “The Dude,” a “Dudish Priest” will bless the proceedings, and we’ll all go bowling afterwards. Get ready for the most fun you’ve ever had at a screenwriting class.

Flip flops encouraged but not required.

Help Your Inner Artist to Cooperate With Your Grown Up Goals

Click here to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the series

If screenwriting was just about playing happily and freely, if you could simply free your creative child to play, your job would be done, and you and your inner artist could now dance off into the sunset.

But just like any child, if your inner artist is going to give you the kind of writing you can use to build your writing career, it’s going to need some guidance.

Different children need different kinds of parenting. And the same is true for different kinds of inner artists.

When I was growing up, my mom used to laugh that she could let me play out on the front lawn for hours with barely an eye on me, and never have to worry for a moment.

The same is true for my inner artist. When I write the first draft of a screenplay, I barely have to worry consciously about structure, outlining, hook, or any of the stuff they teach in screenwriting books. For the most part, I just need to allow my inner artist to play, and I’ll know he’ll get there.

This is true for many different reasons.

The first is that my inner artist is super-educated. From a lifetime of reading, writing, watching movies, breaking down scripts, learning from great writers, trying new approaches and reading just about every book on writing he’s become an “old soul” who just knows how to do it.

But he’s also just “that type of kid”– just like I was growing up. Give him too much structure, and he feels trapped. Give him freedom, and a little gentle guidance here and there, and he’s blissfully happy.

My sister, on the other hand, was an entirely different kind of kid. Crack the door an inch, and Carina would be off dashing happily into traffic with my mom chasing frantically after her.

If your inner artist is built more like Carina– you can’t just leave her unattended in the front yard to follow her impulses.

Because as brilliant and talented as she may be (Carina grew up to be a Harvard educated doctor) she also needs some structure to keep her safe.

At the same time, if you’ve got an inner artist like Carina, you’ve got to resist the urge to put her in a cage. Because she may be “safe” in there, she’s not going to be happy, and she’s going to fight you like crazy to escape.

This is where so many screenwriting gurus, screenwriting books and programs go wrong.

They put so much focus on “adult” stuff: outlines, image systems, rules and principles of “good writing” that your inner artist doesn’t get to have any fun at all. And soon, no matter how nice you treat her, she still doesn’t want to play.

To understand this, all you have to do is take a kid like Carina to a playground. Insist that she has to play on the swings, and she will kick and scream and cry and fight. But put her in a nice safe area with lots of great stuff to play with, let her run around madly for awhile from the swings to the slide to the sandbox to the jungle gym, and eventually you’ll be surprised to find her settling down into one area where she really wants to play.

It may be the swing set you intended for her. Or it may be something else that’s even cooler. But at that point, you’ll be amazed at the endless creativity she’ll show you. The hardest part will be getting her to leave!

Become the perfect parent for your unique inner artist.

As writers, when we become obsessed with forcing our inner artists to perform the way we want them to, we cut ourselves off from our best writing and the endless source of creativity within us.

But when we create just enough structure to keep our inner artists safe, our characters moving forward and our stories developing, and free our inner artist to play and explore within that fabulous playground, writers block becomes a thing of the past.

It’s impossible to be blocked when you’re having fun.

If you enjoyed this series of articles, and want help striking the balance with your own inner artist, I invite you to check out my Summer Screenwriting Classes starting July 25^th and my upcoming 10 Day Screenwriting Retreat Oct 1-10 in Bali, Indonesia.

Shift The Focus of Your Feedback

Click here to read Part 1 & Part 2 of the series.

Here’s a great exercise that can get you started changing the way you relate to your inner artist. Next time you find yourself feeling blocked, listen for the words you’re saying to your inner artist. It might be hard to hear them at first. You may just feel a general sense of anger, frustration, or despair. But if you listen carefully, you’ll find that there are words underneath. Go ahead and write them down.

Now, in a second column, replace each of these negative comments with two positive comments.

Sound easy? Here’s the trick.

Your positive comments must be true. And you have to believe them.

Like all children, your inner artist can detect false praise from 200 miles away. You’ll feel silly saying it. And they won’t believe you anyway.

For example, if you heard yourself saying “this dialogue sucks” your first instinct might be to replace it with “This dialogue is awesome!” and “I love this dialogue!”

But the truth is, if you were already in the place where you could believe that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.

So instead, you’ve got to work hard to find something that you can believe. For example, “this dialogue sucks” might transform into a statement of curiosity like “I wonder how this character talks?” And while you might not be able to say “I love this dialogue” you might be able to say “I like the idea of this line”.

When you switch abusive statements into positive ones that you can truly believe, you allow your inner artist to stop cowering in the corner, and start to get curious and creative.

You give them a foundation upon which to build, by honoring the work they’ve already done, and pointing them in the right direction.

Invite your inner artist to start trusting you again.

If you’ve ever worked with an abused child, you know that establishing this trust may take time. And it may even take counseling. But if you keep on using this exercise, you’ll be shocked one day when your inner artist suddenly shows up at the computer, and you start to feel the excitement with writing you once felt as a child.

Check out the final installment of this series, in which I’ll be discussing how to take these concepts to the next level, and get your creative child to play ways that serve your grown up creative goals.

Recognizing The Cycle of Abuse

Click here to read Part 1 of the series

Have you ever felt cut off from your inner artist?

Do you feel like there was once a childlike spirit of creativity inside you, that now no longer wants to come out and play?

Do you find yourself dragging yourself reluctantly to your keyboard… or even worse not dragging yourself there at all?

Do you feel like you’ve lost your creative inner-child?

We say things to our little inner artist that we would never say to any other human being, let alone a child. In fact, in the real world, if anyone saw you treating a child the way you treat your inner artist, they’d be rushing off to call social services.

When we abuse the creative child inside us, it starts to behave like most abused children: becoming glum, rebellious, fearful, and depressed.

What used to feel like play now feels like being force fed celery and chopped liver. And before long, your inner artist doesn’t want to play with you anymore, no matter how good your intentions for it may be.

Breaking The Cycle of Abuse

This isn’t your fault. Since you were in kindergarten, and the first well meaning adult told you to “think before you speak” or made you feel ashamed for acting on your impulses, you’ve been taught to censor your inner artist. This works great for preparing you for your place on the Henry Ford assembly-line of life. But it’s deadly for writers. And until you become aware of the way this innate self-censorship is affecting you, it’s like having a wall between you and your creative brain.

In my screenwriting classes here in New York and Online, I teach a unique feedback style designed to reframe the way you communicate with your inner artist and with your fellow writers. The result is a unique community that understands what it’s like to be an artist, and can help you nurture your creative child, while still building toward your creative goals.

A Reframing Technique You Can Use Now

If you have trouble breaking the abusive cycle with your inner artist, resist the urge to beat yourself up about it. This will only add to the cycle of self abuse. Instead, focus on becoming aware of your patterns, and seeking out the support you need to help you build a positive relationship with your creativity: a good screenwriting class, a hypnosis session for writer’s block, or a one on one script consultation to get you back on the right track with your writing.

Check out next week’s article, in which I’ll be sharing a reframing technique you can use right now to break the cycle of abuse with your inner artist.

In Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series I discussed the Hegelian dialectic between Nature and Grace represented by Jack’s father and mother, and the way that dialectic is used to give structure to the film.

The Dialectic Within Jack

Just as Thesis and Antithesis are embodied within the characters of father and mother, so too are they embodied within Jack. And it’s through Jack’s wrestling with both sides of the dialectic that we experience his journey, in relation to his mother, his father, his community, his God, and most importantly, his brother.

Jack’s journey is an evolutionary one. The first phase takes him away from the Grace of his mother, and toward the violent Nature of his father—a nature Jack pushes even further than his father would dream, by letting go of love almost entirely and succumbing to hatred, jealousy, and betrayal in their rawest forms. He rages against the mother who loves him, contemplates killing his father while he works under the car, and betrays the trust of his adoring brother when he shoots him with the bb gun.

The second phase of his journey takes him back toward his mother’s Grace, as he makes peace with his brother, and tries to once again be deserving of his brother’s trust and love.

But just as Nature failed to protect him, so too does Grace.

Despite Jack’s love, his brother is taken from him, leaving him completely alone in the world, isolated from his family, his work, and from God.

Eden is lost, and to find his way back, Jack must somehow find a new Synthesis that reconciles the dialectical opposites of Grace and Nature in his world and in himself.

The Dialectic of Images

This is what it means to truly wrestle with a question—to push both sides of a dialectic to their extremes of success and failure, and expose how they both work and don’t work in the universe.

But Malick pushes his dialectic to a cosmic level, which transcends time, space and even character relationships. In almost every image of the film, he captures the omnipresence of death within beauty, and beauty within death. Nature within Grace, and Grace within Nature.

In the big picture, his opposing styles of storytelling for an even bigger Hegelian dialectic, between the vastness of the earth, time, universe and God captured in the meditative sequences, and the small, family drama of earthly realities, pain, and beauty that seem so important in the family story, and so small when juxtaposed against the scope of the universe—building toward a profound synthesis, which doesn’t try to answer the question, but instead to surrender to it.

And in that surrender, to finally find catharsis.

The Dialectic of The Film Itself

Like movies such as Memento and 500 Days of Summer, The Tree of Life tells its story in a non-linear way in order to capture the essence of its main character’s experience.
Rather than unfolding linearly, the story unfolds dialectically, stepping into the swirl of memories in Jack’s mind, and juxtaposing moments of Grace and Nature from his past and his present.

But it’s actually the strong linear journey, and the character driven dialectic underneath all these flash forwards, flashbacks, and meditative sequences that allow the film to jump around in time so effectively.

Once you’ve created a strong linear journey for your character, you can slice it up, flash it back, take it out of order or toss it like a salad. You can play around like an experimental jazz artist, departing from the beat and then finding it again. And if you do it right, your audience will delight in putting together the pieces, and figuring out how they are connected.

But if you start tossing before you know the real structure of your film, you’ll be left with the kind of cooking no one wants to eat.

Learn More About The Tree of Life with Jacob Krueger’s Exciting New Seminar Jan 10, 2011

THE TREE OF LIFE Seminar

And Hegelian Dialectical Structure

Wednesday, January 11th, 7pm-9pm

Dialectic structure is not just for epic art house films. Learn how to use this unique type of structure to breathe life into your characters move your film forward. LEARN MORE

As discussed in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, The Tree of Life is built around a dialectic between Nature, as represented by Jack’s father, and Grace, as represented by his mother.

When using a Hegelian Dialectic to structure your screenplay, it’s important to remember that your characters are more than just the ideas they represent.

They are also people, complete with complexities, contradictions, and competing motivations that have nothing to do with your dialectical structure.

In The Big Lebowski, The Dude may represent the hippy thesis, but he’s also a character who loves White Russians and bowling, and spends most of his time pursuing one of these things.

In There Will Be Blood, Daniel may represent capitalism, but he also is a character desperate for a family connection and someone he can confide in.

Even Darth Vadar loves his son, and secretly wants to overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy with him.

Character and Dialectic

Rather than fixating on the structural role your character plays in your dialectical structure, you can think of the ideas your characters represent as a kind of North Star—something to navigate by as you construct their choices.

If you spend every moment with staring up at the sky, you’re going to spend most of your time crashing into trees. But if you keep your eyes on the instinctual path of your character, and allow yourself to remember that North Star is there to guide you when you need it, that dialectical idea will help you discover the most profound structure possible for your character’s journey.

Grace and Nature

What makes both the father and mother function so well as characters in the The Tree of Life is that in addition to representing dialectical opposites of Grace and Nature, they both love their children more than anything in the world, and want to protect them from suffering.

The problem is that they have opposing views of how to do this—and in good Hegelian fashion, neither of their views work in the universe.

The Thesis of Nature

The father believes that the Nature of the world is violent and destructive, and he’s right. And that’s why he wants to make his sons tough, so that other people don’t walk all over them, so that they can express themselves as artists, control their own destinies, and not have to compromise the way that he did.

We’ve seen this type of character before in movies like Billy Elliot, The Return and A Prophet— in fact there’s even an archetypal name for him: the terrible father.

But Brad Pitt’s character is more than just an archetype or an intellectual thesis. And that’s what makes him care about him, and keeps him from being a cliché. Unlike the terrible fathers we’ve seen in the past, who want to quell the artistic expression of their children, Brad Pitt’s character wants only to foster it. He loves his children, hugs his children. He is loyal to his wife, and makes sacrifices for his family. His tough Nature is the North Star by which he navigates. But its not his sole reason for existence.

The problem with the father’s Thesis is that it doesn’t ultimately protect him, his family or his children. Rather than earning him his son’s love, his lessons in Nature only destroy the beauty in his family and in Jack, turn his sons against him, tear apart his marriage, and pit brother against brother.

For all his toughness, he can’t protect his patents from the courts, himself from a lost job, or his children from suffering. And his rage at his failures only manifests in more violence against the people he most loves.

The Antithesis of Grace

In dialectical opposition to the beliefs of the father, the mother inherently believes that the world is beautiful. And she’s right too. That’s why she wants to play happily with her sons at every moment, love everyone and everything. That’s why she infuses their life with joy and bliss and their genuine love for one another.

But her Grace doesn’t ultimately protect anyone either. Because she can’t stand up to her husband, or defend her children from his violence. As Young Jack accuses her in a moment of rage, she lets her husband walk all over her—and all over them. Her love cannot protect her children from suffering or from death. And for that failure rather than earning her love from Jack, it only earns her his anger.

Stay tuned for the final article in the series, in which I’ll discuss the way dialectical structure creates a drum beat for Malick’s fragmented narrative, and the ways you can apply these lessons to the structure of your own screenplays.

Learn More About The Tree of Life with Jacob Krueger’s Exciting New Seminar Jan 10, 2011

THE TREE OF LIFE Seminar

And Hegelian Dialectical Structure

Wednesday, January 11th, 7pm-9pm

Dialectic structure is not just for epic art house films. Learn how to use this unique type of structure to breathe life into your characters move your film forward. LEARN MORE

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the question around which Jack’s journey in The Tree of Life is built:

“Why Should I be Good If You’re Not?”

Struggling in a world in which both God and Father can act in such contradictions of beauty and violence, Jack the son is left with a profound question: will he build his life in their image, or in another.

Structurally, this question is raised in both the present and the past story with two powerful inciting incidents, both involving the death of a child.

You Let A Boy Die

No one could forget the moment early in The Tree of Life, when Jack’s mother receives the letter, and with it, news of her son’s death.

Thinking in traditional screenplay structure, this moment provides a powerful inciting incident for the film as a whole, ripping a hole not only the family’s universe, but the universe of the film itself. We slip from a character driven drama into an epic sea of juxtaposing images, dinosaurs, births, and big bang cosmology that at once seems to dwarf and echo the problems of the family:

How can the world possess such beauty and such violence at the same time? How can a woman whose only philosophy is “love everyone and everything” be punished in this way? Where is God?

Two Levels of Structure

In creating the structure of a screenplay, it’s important to think about the moment that incites the film as a whole—that opens the door to change, introduces the central question of the film, and locks the audience into the journey of the movie. And whether you’re writing an art film like The Tree of Life or a Hollywood blockbuster, it’s vital that you get to this moment as quickly as possible, to create the feeling that your movie is moving, and to create the lens through which the audience can interpret the events of your story.

When you’re building a movie that jumps around in time, you actually have two different layers of this structure: the primary linear structure of the main character’s journey, and the secondary structure of the way that information is revealed the audience.

For the audience, the journey begins when Jack’s mother receives the letter. But for the main character, Jack, the journey begins much earlier, when a boy dies right in the middle of a “perfect” day at the local swimming hole, and Young Jack is forced to confront the fact that neither life, nor God, is what he thought it was.

Young Jack whispers his dismay to God.

“Where were you? You let a boy die. You’ll let anything happen.”

For Jack, as for his mother and father, the fruit of knowledge of good and evil leads to a fall from the Eden of his childhood.

Two Inciting Incidents For Two Linear Structures

These two moments of unexpected death provide the two inciting incidents that get the structure of The Tree of Life moving forward, propelling both threads of The Tree of Life’s narrative structure:

The Fall From Eden: The story of young Jack’s fall—from an idyllic childhood where death was present but not perceived—to his gradual disillusionment, with God, his father, his mother and himself, leading up to the moment where his brother dies and all hope of Eden is lost.

The Return to Eden: The story of grown Jack’s (Sean Penn) surrender—through which he finally comes to terms death of his brother, the opposing philosophies of his parents, the beauty and ugliness of the universe, and the inexplicable nature of God.

For the audience, these two threads are chopped up and juxtaposed one against another in a way that transcends time and captures the emotional feeling of Jack’s experience.

But on the primary structural level, these two threads comprise a single linear journey for the main character, as he first loses and then seeks to return to Eden.

Finding The Drum Beat of Your Movie

Every movie needs a drum beat—a clear structure that lets us know where we are and helps us imagine the road ahead, so that we can hope for, be disappointed by, or pleasantly surprised by the turns that the story takes.

And this is doubly true when you are building around a structure as complex as that of The Tree of Life.

Commercial movies tend to have more of a rock and roll drum beat—while The Tree of Life is more like experimental jazz—leaving the beat behind for extended sequences of improvisation—and then returning to the beat to get the story flowing again.

We first see this jazz-like improvisation in an extended way with the epic montage of big-bang images early in the film. But just when it seems like we’re just going to drift in an endless meditation, we find the beat again with a much smaller big bang: Jack’s birth, and the idyllic memories of his early childhood-a childhood filled with beautiful moments where death is present, but not perceived.

Each of these moments foreshadows the road ahead, preparing us for the inciting incident in Jack’s journey, when the boy dies at the swimming hole, the question of the film arises and his fall from Eden begins.

Hegelian Dialectic and the Drum Beat of Life

The Tree of Life is quite obviously a film about ideas—about characters grappling with profound questions (and even narrating those questions aloud in the voiceover soundtrack which punctuates the piece—as if the audience were listening through God’s ears).

But for all its poetry, The Tree of Life is also a film. And as a character in a film, Jack cannot simply ask his questions with words; he must grapple with them through action.

As the writer, this means Malick must take the profound ideas he wants to explore, and bring them into active conflict through the characters of the film, the actions they take, the choices they make, and Jack’s journey in relation to those choices.

The structure through which Malick gives shape to this journey is known as a Hegelian dialectic.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series, in which I’ll be breaking down the Hegelian dialectical structure in relation to The Tree of Life, The Empire Strikes Back, The Big Lebowski, and There Will Be Blood.

Learn More About The Tree of Life with Jacob Krueger’s Exciting New Seminar Jan 10, 2011

THE TREE OF LIFE Seminar

And Hegelian Dialectical Structure

Wednesday, January 11th, 7pm-9pm

Dialectic structure is not just for epic art house films. Learn how to use this unique type of structure to breathe life into your characters move your film forward. LEARN MORE

SPOILER ALERT: You may want to come back to this article after you have seen The Tree of Life.

Often as writers we get so hung up on linear, narrative structure that we forget that there are completely different forms of screenplay structure that can be equally moving and powerful.

What makes Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life so extraordinary is the effortless way it weaves traditional linear storytelling—the story of the family– with long meditative sequences of breathtaking images of the vast beauty and wanton destructiveness of the universe.

But don’t let Malick fool you, underneath the melodic rambling of The Tree of Life is a rock solid structure, which provides the drum beat for the entire film.

The Fundamental Question

Despite all its jumping back and forth in time, its shifting perspectives, its God’s eye view of the universe, its whispering voiceovers, its dinosaur sequences and its meditative imagery washing over us like ocean waves, at the fundamental structural level, The Tree of Life follows the story of Sean Penn’s character, Jack, as he searches both past and present for the answer an unanswerable question:

“Why should I be good, if you’re not?”

On the spiritual level, Jack is asking this question of God, as he tries to reconcile the vastness, wonder, and beauty of the universe with the senseless death of his brother: the problem of a world where death is always present, even in the most idyllic memories of his early childhood.

On the physical level, Jack is asking the same question of his loving but abusive father, played by Brad Pitt, whose often misguided love both protects Jack and is slowly destroying him. As young Jack’s adoration for his father and desire to “be good” devolves into disappointment and hatred, he is forced to reconcile not only the dual sides of his father’s nature, but also the dual sides of his own– wrestling with a profound and unanswerable question of how to be good in a world where the love of both God and father seem to shift inexplicably from beauty to violence.

Great Movies Are Built Around Big Questions

What’s wonderful about building a movie around a question to which you truly don’t know the answer, is that it forces you, as a writer, to take a journey as profound as that of your characters.

Searching for a deeper understanding of the world is what writing is all about. And that’s not limited to experimental films like The Tree of Life. Even Woody Allen’s new comedy Midnight in Paris is built around a profound question “would my life have been better if I lived in another era?”

Think about movies like Michael Clayton, A Few Good Men, The Social Network, or Solitary Man and you will see the fundamental questions at the center of these other commercially successful movies.

What Questions Are You Asking in Your Writing?

Think about your own writing. What are the questions that haunt you? What are the questions your screenplays are asking? Are they questions you care about? And are you truly wrestling with them through your character’s journey, or trying to tie them up with a neat little bow?

Stay tuned for the next article in the series: “The Tree of Life: From Question To Structure”, in which I’ll be exploring Inciting Incidents of The Tree of Life—and the ways Malick uses an idea from philosophy in order to give shape to his character’s journey.

Learn More About The Tree of Life with Jacob Krueger’s Exciting New Seminar Jan 10, 2011

THE TREE OF LIFE Seminar

And Hegelian Dialectical Structure

Wednesday, January 11th, 7pm-9pm

Dialectic structure is not just for epic art house films. Learn how to use this unique type of structure to breathe life into your characters move your film forward. LEARN MORE

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I’ve discussed how movies like The Lincoln Lawyer and Win Win take real world rules and dramatize them to create a journey for a character.

But what about when you feel like you need to completely make up a rule to make your story work?  Or when the real world rule you are working with seems like it might unbelievable to an audience?

When you need to invent a “rule” in order to make your script work or convince your audience to accept a real life rule which flies in the face of their expectations or beliefs, the question to ask yourself is not “is it true?”

The question to ask yourself is “how do I sell this to an audience?”

Movies Don’t Come With Footnotes

The good news is,  nobody’s going to be whispering in your audience’s ear when you fudge the details or make up a rule that isn’t technically correct.  Unfortunately, nobody’s going to be there to tell them “no, this really happened, in real life!” either.

As writers, we often want to believe that just because something happened, the audience will accept it as true.  But often, audiences are much more happy to accept fiction that seems believable than reality that doesn’t– especially if it makes things hard for your main character.

The good news is, you can shape what your audience believes, by setting up the rules (real or imagined) in ways that are viscerally and dramatically powerful for your main character.

Selling The Rules of Away From Her

In Away From Her, the main character drops his Alzheimer’s suffering wife off at a nursing home, only to be informed that he has to leave her for a full month so that she can “adjust”.  

Now, perhaps somewhere in America there truly is a nursing home with such a rule.

But more likely the rule exists because the writer, Sarah Polley, needs that separation (spoiler alert:) so that when the husband finally returns for his “joyful reunion” with the woman he loves, he can be shocked to discover a totally different person the woman he left– a woman who has forgotten him completely and fallen in love with another man.

That’s the movie.  And if Sarah Polley doesn’t sell the rule, whether it exists or not, that movie doesn’t happen.

In the real world, you might spend time with your wife every day, and then one day realize you’re with a totally different person.  But in a movie, with characters we are just getting to know, it takes a strong juxtaposition to create that feeling.

Polley uses the rule to create that juxtaposition.  And she sells it by allowing the nursing home to have a reasonable rationale, and allowing the husband to fight against that rule with everything he’s got- a fight that only further dramatizes his connection to his wife when she finally asks him to go and he reluctantly gives in to her request.

Create The Rules That Amplify The Truth

In this way, writing a script about law is a lot like writing a fantasy.  People know that there is no such thing as goblins and that little boys don’t get to be king by pulling a sword out of a stone.  But if you create the rules of the world properly and in a dramatic way, the audience will be happy to go along for the ride, because it gives them access to the story they want to experience.  And more importantly, closer to the essence of that emotional truth the writer is communicating.

Stay tuned for the final installment of this series:  What Are The Rules of Your Script: Part 4: Superbad and the Rules of Genre

Win Win: Make The Truth Work For You

If you read Joe Tiboni’s blog, you may be surprised to discover that the real-life lawyer who inspired Paul Giamatti’s character in Win Win never assumed guardianship of a client (for money or otherwise), never committed a client to a nursing home against his will, and never was on the brink of losing his law practice.

What you will learn is that Joe Tiboni is a good guy, who used to wrestle with screenwriter Tom McCarthy, who did once have a water heater blow up in his office, and who does have a true passion for representing the elderly and bringing attention to unfair elements in the law that cause them suffering.

Write a movie in which the “real” Joe Tiboni waxes poetic about the ins and out of the laws of elderly care, and you may feel like you’ve done a great deal to awareness about some very important issues.

But you probably won’t have an audience that’s listening.

Even “issue” movies are never about the issues.  At least not for most of your audience.  

To make an audience care about the finer points of elder-care law, you’ve got to make it personal.  And that means it has to deeply affect the life of your main character, and force that character to undergo a life-changing journey.

As discussed in Part 2 of this series, The Lincoln Lawyer accomplishes this by forcing its character to personally deal with the horrifying complications that result from an “unfair” law.

Win Win takes the opposite approach.

Rather than making Paul Giamatti’s character the victim of an unfair law, Win Win makes the law matter dramatically by (spoiler alert): allowing the main character to exploit it for his own gain– by taking guardianship of a mentally disabled elderly client for money, and then committing him against his will to a nursing home.

Every main character needs to have a problem.

Even if your character is based on someone as wonderful as Joe Tiboni, unless they have some kind of unresolved problem they need to deal with, there’s no reason for them to have to go through the experience of the movie.

(As you know if you’ve ever written a main character, movie life tends to treat them pretty harshly).

Now that doesn’t mean you have to turn your main character into a bad guy at the beginning of the movie.  Do that, and you’re going to lose the thing that made you want to write about a person like Joe in the first place.

We’re not talking about completely fictionalizing a character.  We’re talking about looking more closely at a real life guy like Joe, and asking yourself “under what circumstances would a guy like this make a mistake?”

Make The Truth Work For You

Using the real world stuff that connected him to Joe Tiboni:  the broken water heater, the high school wrestling they were never any good at, and the genuine dedication to the elderly and his family that makes Joe worth writing about, Tom McCarthy simply sets up the rules of the world to create circumstances in which it would be believable that a guy as good as Joe do something as wrong as exploit his own client.

To do this, he must change some of the facts:  transforming Joe from a successful lawyer into a struggling one, putting him into a crisis where he truly needs the cash to survive, and then creating the moral dilemma of the law in a way that a good guy like Joe could reasonably convince himself he wasn’t hurting anyone.

Once he’s done that, he really gets to have his fun, by making the character deal with the ramifications of his mistake when he finds himself first saddled with his client’s troubled grandson, and later unable to protect the boy he’s come to love without risking his own legal career and his last chance of providing for his family.

By allowing his main character to make and struggle with a mistake, Tom McCarthy takes the law out of the intellectual realm and makes it visceral for the audience– forcing us to wrestle with the law as powerfully as his main character does.

Stay tuned for Part 3 in the series:
Away From Her: Create The Rules That Amplify The Truth.

Here’s a great question I recently received from a student

Question:

I’m working on a [comedy] script right now about [premise deleted]… and I’m doing a little bit of research on the laws surrounding International Marriage Brokers and Immigration.

What’s your opinion on how to handle the laws, and how strictly to adhere to them?  I’m thinking of movies like The Proposal, What Happens in Vegas, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry as examples… I’m guessing the accuracy in the way they address the laws is less than 100%?  — Josh B.

Answer:

Unless you’re writing for lawyers, what matters most when it comes to laws in a movie is not what the actual law is, but what the audience believes the law is.

In the real world, all kinds of unbelievable laws exist, and all kinds of laws that everyone believes exist actually don’t exist at all.

But for audiences, the only laws that exist are the ones they believe.

That doesn’t mean you’re stuck with the notions your audience enters believing.  And similarly it doesn’t mean that you are held to the strict reality of those laws as they exist in the universe.

What’s more important is that you set up the rules and the laws of your character’s world clearly, and then force your character to play by those rules.

Does this mean you should just ignore the laws of the real world?

Absolutely not.  Often there’s more fun to be had by exploring the truth than simply making up a law that’s convenient for your script.  But that doesn’t change the fact that your audience isn’t coming to learn about the finer points of legal theory.  They’re coming to watch a movie.

Dramatically, the law only matters in relation to the pressure it’s putting on your main character– so as with most things in a movie, if it makes your character’s life harder, most likely your audience will accept it.  And if it makes your character’s life easier, most likely they will start to doubt it, whether it is true or not.

As a writer, your job is to sell the audience on the laws of your script

People always talk about “willing suspension of disbelief” when people watch movies.  But I don’t think that’s what happens at all.  I think that subconsciously people come to identify with your main character.  And when he or she reacts believably to the “realities” of their world, the audiences comes to believe in those realities as well.

For laws that audiences generally are aware of and believe in, “you have the right to remain silent” for example, that’s a pretty easy job.

The law is already active in your audience’s consciousness, so even if your version is missing some of the finer nuances, as long as you gently remind them, in a dramatic way, that the law exists and that your character has to deal with it, most likely your audience will happily accept it easily as the reality of the script, even if your interpretation of that law glosses over some of the details.

The Lincoln Lawyer and the Law

For example John Romano’s script, The Lincoln Lawyer, does this with Attorney-Client privilege– the idea that a lawyer cannot under any circumstances, disclose anything a client has said to him in confidence, and that even if he did, such evidence would automatically be inadmissible in court.

Now I don’t know for sure whether Attorney-Client privilege extends to cases where the client is (spoiler alert:) killing the lawyer’s friends and threatening the lawyer’s kids, and attempting to frame the lawyer for murder.

I’m no lawyer, but I’d guess that in the real world, there’s a loophole for that.

But the important thing is, within the world of The Lincoln Lawyer, there is no loophole.  And we can experience that viscerally, because of the way the “law” of Attorney-Client privilege is established dramatically early in the script, and the way the main character is forced to grapple of not being able to simply say the truth throughout the story.

There may be a couple of lawyers in the audience hemming and hawing.  But for the majority of the audience, that law becomes the law, and they get to enjoy the movie by accepting its rules.

What Are The Rules Of Your Script?

Want to know more about how to set up the rules of your script so that audiences will believe them?

Over the next week, I’ll be exploring the way rules are established in three great scripts of completely different genres:  Win Win, Away From Her and Superbad.

The Vampire Cowboys’ new play, THE INEXPLICABLE REDEMPTION OF AGENT G, is more than just a hilarious genre bending, kick-ass-ninja-stage-fighting, comic book romp.

It’s also a profound look at what it means to find and follow your voice as a writer, the inexplicable questions of identity and the challenge of telling a true story in a truthful way.

Theatre’s Answer To ADAPTATION

The process of adapting a true story into a form that really captures its essence is one of the most challenging tasks of any writer.

In AGENT G, playwright Qui Nguyen wrestles for the third time with a reinterpretation of his first play, TRIAL BY WATER, the critically reviled “true-life” melodrama of his 9 year old cousin’s journey from Vietnam to America– during which their boat was lost at sea, and the passengers, including Qui’s young cousin, resorted to cannibalism to survive

Feeling that he has failed to capture the essence of the story in his earlier attempts at the play, Qui (who is also a character in AGENT G) attempts to reinterpret the story Vampire Cowboys style– complete with the theatre company’s requisite kick ass stage combat, ninja chases, hilarious genre shifts, and a musical showdown with Qui’s hero, the legendary playwright David Henry Hwang.

In wonderful and surprising ways, this comic reinterpretation leads Qui closer to the “true truth” of the story than any of Qui’s more serious early attempts.

What Does It Mean To Tell The Truth?

At each step of the way toward this “truthful” telling of the story, Qui finds himself confronted by his characters, his fans, his mentors and even his wife– each of whom have their own ideas of what the play should be, and each of whom he desperately wants to please.

As Qui strips away the layers of smoke, mirrors and self deception to find his real story, he’s forced to confront what it really means to be a writer, and what it takes to look honestly, and fiercely, at one’s own writing.

In his attempts to write a “commercial” piece, build the story around his hook,  please his teachers, emulate his heros, impress his audience, honor his cousin and to answer the well-meaning, but misguided notes of people who didn’t really understand his writing, Qui comes to realize that he abandoned the essential truth that brought him to the story in the first place– not just in this amped up, tongue in cheek, action hero reinterpretation of the story– but also in the “true story” melodrama he was once so proud of.

Following The Truth Of Your Own Story

As Qui strips away the layers of art and artifice that obscure him from the story he truly wants to tell, he reminds us that writing is not a paint by numbers process of “filling in the beats” of your outline, but a mystical and complex journey through countless rewrites, reimaginings, and reinterpretations of what the real story might actually be.

He reminds us of the dangers of the wrong way turns of misguided feedback and the challenges we go in getting to truly know our characters, our stories, and ourselves each time we approach the blank page.

And most of all, he reminds us the mysterious and inevitable process which with each draft slowly draws us closer to the truth of our own story, our own voices, and our own inexplicable redemptions.

February 7 – March 4, 2012

At THE BECKETT THEATRE
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St (Btw 9th & 10th)

Want to revolutionize your writing in three letters or less? Do a hunt through your writing for these three letters:

I-N-G.

No, I’m not talking about the internet bank. I’m talking about the three letters at the ends of words that turn verbs into nouns (gerunds for you English teachers).

It’s not that gerunds are bad in themselves. If you tried to cut every gerund out of your script you’d probably go crazy, and your script might not be any better for your troubles.

At the same time, gerunds can often be red-flags for missed opportunities in your writing. So if you’re using a ton of gerunds in your action, you may want to take a closer look, and make sure you’re getting everything you can out of them.

The Difference Between Verbs and Gerunds

Movies are active, and they’re told through exciting images of exciting characters doing exciting things in exciting ways. And because movies are told in the cuts between scenes, they work best when we’re cutting from one big moment to another– big changes, big decisions, big choices your characters make.

Unlike the active verbs that capture the unique ways your characters pursue their objectives and react to problems in their world, gerunds suggest states of being, continuing action and static images– the opposite of the specific moments that truly capture your character and make your movie feel like it’s happening NOW.

Is all this really so important?

In a word, yes.

At first look, there might not seem to be a big difference between phrases like:

Elizabeth is standing/Elizabeth stands
Mary is running/Mary runs
John is dancing/John dances

But the big problem with gerunds is not just that they can often feel static. It’s that their very nature can make it difficult to isolate the specific moments that capture your character’s journey. You may feel like you’re writing actions, but oftentimes you’re not. You’re writing states of being.

And that means you’re not thinking in movie time.

“Elizabeth is standing” tells us Elizabeth’s placement– as if she was a static figure in a picture. As a writer, your job is not to be a set decorator. And let’s face it– it’s hard to visualize placement of stuff in a room you’re not even seeing.

“Elizabeth stands” doesn’t exactly capture the Academy Award for excitement. But at least it can suggest that a choice is being made– that she stood up for a reason. That she is no longer seated. That something is happening.

“Mary is running” suggests that Mary is in the process of running. But this isn’t what your director is going to shoot. What she is actually going to shoot is a bunch of cool moments and specific actions that when strung together capture the feeling of Mary’s run.

When you write “Mary is running” you’re not thinking like a filmmaker. You’re once again thinking like a set decorator– setting the scene, rather than capturing the moments.

If instead you forced yourself to capture the moments that say “Mary is running” and the actions she takes as she runs, you would learn all kinds of important stuff about your character.

Mary is doing more than just running.

You might visualize the awkward way her arms flop as she runs. You might imagine the slap of a flip flop against the pavement. You might see her stumble over her paisley skirt and tumble into the mud.

Or, you might imagine the rhythmic thump of Mary’s 300 dollar running shoes. Feel her rock hard biceps strain against her moisture-wicking running shirt, hear her heart rate monitor sound an alarm, and see her ignore it and quicken her pace.

These visual moments would not only be a lot more fun to watch than “Mary is running”, they would also reveal so much more about who Mary is, what she wants, and the unique way she pursues those desires.

Revolutionize your writing

Each specific moment you create in your action becomes something you can riff on later in your script, to capture your character’s journey in powerful ways.

The moment when the first Mary struggles to get the stain out of her paisley skirt, or trades it for a pair of running shorts, or jumps effortlessly over the mud puddle she once dreaded.

The moment when the second Mary hears the heart rate alarm sound and stops running, or when her bicep strains against a hospital blood pressure cuff rather than her running shirt.

In this way, you can transform missed opportunities into transformative moments that create a visual language for your movie, capture the unique spirit of your character, and drive the action of your story forward in exciting ways.

Keep a lookout for those three little letters.  And notice what it does for your writing.

Here’s a question I recently received from a student:

The Question:

Given that I have very few connections to the industry, how would you best recommend moving forward if I have a novel in mind I’d like to adapt?… Is it necessary to have a literary agent? Is it best to go through the publishers to find out about the rights? What would help me to get my foot in the door?

My Answer:

Most likely, novels by major authors will have already been snapped up
by people with much deeper pockets than you have. However, older or lesser known novels and non-fiction books by less famous authors may very well be available. And some very old novels even exist in the public domain, which means you can use them without optioning anything!

Contacting The Subsidiary Rights Department

The way to start is by contacting the Subsidiary Rights Department at the book or novel’s publisher. You can usually find the contact information for the Subsidiary Rights Department down in the fine print at the bottom the publisher’s website, or by calling the publisher directly.

Break Out Your 1990′s Technology

Believe it or not, many Subsidiary Rights Departments still require contact via fax, so unless your publisher accepts email requests, go ahead and crank back the calendar to 1994, break out your old fax machine, and get ready to rock.

The fax (or email) you send should include the following:

• Your Name
• Your Company Name (if Applicable)
• Your Address
• Your Fax Number
• Title of The Novel
• Author’s Name
• Publisher
• Publication Date
• ISBN Number
• A Request To Know Who Controls The Film Rights For The Novel
• A Blank Space For Them To Write That Person Or Company’s Contact Info

Make sure your return fax number is printed clearly on the form, so they know who to send it back to! If you’d like, feel free to use this sample fax form.

Contacting The Rights Holder

Once you have the name of the person, company, or agent that controls the film rights, you can go ahead and reach out to them (usually by phone or email) about optioning the novel or book.

What The Heck is An Option?

Essentially an option is a legal agreement that gives you the right to buy or sell the film rights for a book or novel at an agreed upon price. Most options last for a year, and give you an option to extend for a second year for a fixed additional payment. Depending on the perceived value of the book or novel you’re optioning, an option can cost a fortune, or as little as a dollar.

The option is the thing that gives you the right to actually SELL the screenplay you write based on somebody else’s book or novel.

It’s not your job to know the ins and outs of options. When the time comes, you will hire a lawyer to walk you through the option agreement. For right now, just concentrate on contacting the rights holder, finding out if the film rights are available, and asking if he or she would be willing to work out a “free” (technically $1) or inexpensive option with you so that you can adapt the book or novel into screenplay form.

Your Pitch

If you’re like most writers, you probably don’t have a ton of money to spend on an option. If the novel’s been sitting on the shelf for years, the rights holder may simply be delighted to know that someone is interested. But the chances are, you’re going to have to do a little bit of selling of yourself in order to convince the rights holder that it’s in their best interest to put their project in your hands.

So that means before you pick up the phone, you want to have a clear take on the material, and an exciting pitch for how you’d transform it into a marketable screenplay, and maybe some ideas for big stars who could play the lead role once your screenplay is finished, and how your version of the adaptation would be perfect for those actors.

Remember, You Are Bringing Real Value To The Project

Generally, if the film rights for a book or novel are still available, it means the rights holder has already done everything in their power to sell the project as a film and failed. That means your script could give them a second chance to show someone how this story really could make a great movie and turn it from another project sitting in their files into a hot commodity that can bring them lots of money.

If you’re going to risk a year of your life writing that script for them with no upfront compensation, it’s reasonable to expect them to give you a year long option and the rights to extend for a second year for a reasonable amount of money.

What If They Want You To “Audition”

If the rights holder asks you for a short treatment or a writing sample, it’s probably worth your while go ahead and send it. But don’t under any circumstances start writing a screenplay until you legally control the option on the material.

I can’t tell you how many writers I’ve known who have “auditioned” by writing a script with the hopes that a rights holder would like it, only to have the rights holder sell the book or novel out from under them– often for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the script.

Why You Need A Lawyer

Remember that you only control the rights as long as you control the option, which means that once the option expires, you can’t sell your script without the author’s approval. That means you want a real entertainment lawyer to draw up your option agreement for you (even if you’re optioning the story for a dollar).

Think about the time you’re going to invest in this project. Do you really want to stake everything on an option agreement you pulled off the internet? You need an expert to protect your investment, and make sure you can do something with it when it’s finished.

Public Domain Books And Novels

As you can tell, when rights holders are involved, optioning a book or novel can be a challenging process for a young writer. However, if the book you’re interested in adapting was published in the United States prior to 1923, most likely you don’t have to go through ANY of this! Because most likely that book is in the public domain.

For this reason, if you’re interested in adaptation, one of the best places to start is with old books that you can use as you like without any option agreement.

The rules of public domain can be complex, so make sure to double check that the book is in the public domain before you start writing. Here’s a handy website that covers many of the public domain rules.

Writing Your Adaptation

Of course, optioning the book or novel, or discovering the public domain book you want to adapt is just the beginning. The process of making your adaptation is an art in itself. If you’d like to learn more about the creative side of adaptation, I invite you to join my upcoming screenwriting workshops.

Legal Disclaimer: I am a screenwriter and not a lawyer. Though I hope that this information will be useful to you, please be aware that no part of this article should be considered legal advice. For such advice please consult an entertainment attorney.

It’s no wonder that some of the greatest writers began their careers as actors.

The art of writing and acting have always been profoundly intertwined. Great writers tend to have an instinctual understanding of the actor’s craft: the ability to create a character, to play with and against text, and to shape a journey over the course of a play or movie.

Similarly, great actors need an instinctive understanding of a writer’s craft: the ability to cultivate a compelling arc for a character, by exploring the dramatic structure and the conscious and unconscious desires that lie underneath the text.

Dramatic writing could not exist without acting. And acting could not exist without dramatic writing.

Yet strangely, these interrelated fields are often taught as if they were separate disciplines, with actors receiving little training in writing, and writers receiving even less training in acting.

Experience your characters from the other side of the page.

As any of you who have taken my classes know, for precisely this reason I’ve always integrated acting concepts into my writing classes.  By learning to see your characters through an actor’s eyes, you develop an intuitive understanding of structure, character, dialogue, action and the kinds of specific choices that make your writing jump off the page.

Now, I’m offering a brand new ACTING CLASS, designed especially for writers:

ACTING FOR WRITERS
An Acting Class With A Writing Twist 

Nov 9 – Dec 7, 2011
(No Class Nov 23)
Wednesdays, 7pm-10pm
15 W 28th St,  NYC
Cost $300
LEARN MORE

Deepen Your Craft By Learning A New One

Whether you’ve always dreamed of being on the stage or screen, or are looking for a fun new way to improve your writing, this class will forever transform you as both a writer and an actor.

Under the guidance of acclaimed director Isabel Milenski, you’ll not only learn how an actor approaches a play or screenplay, you’ll experience what it’s like to physically inhabit a character, and experience the world through their eyes.

Translate Your Experiences Back To The Page

In addition to learning the craft of acting, you’ll learn to translate those lessons back to your writing, with special writing exercises that grow directly out of the work you’re doing in class.  

Use them as a writer to shape your character’s journey, enhance your dialogue and action, and create the unforgettable moments that demand the attention of actors, directors and producers.  

Or take things one step further and start writing that dream role for yourself.

No experience is required. Only a desire to explore and create.

You will love this class or your money back.  Sign Up Today!

ACTING FOR WRITERS
An Acting Class With A Writing Twist 

Nov 9 – Dec 7, 2011
(No Class Nov 23)
Wednesdays, 7pm-10pm
15 W 28th St, NYC
Cost $300
LEARN MORE

As discussed in As discussed in Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of this series, Christopher Nolan’s screenplay Inception is deeply rooted in the principles of hypnosis.   Learning more about these principles may not only change the way you approach your own writing, but also help you understand new ways that you can break through writer’s block and build the writer’s life you’ve been seeking.

Can The Words You Tell Yourself Really Change Your Life?

You’re walking down the street.  You see a crack in the road ahead of you.  You visualize yourself stumbling over it.  Imagine the embarrassment of people watching you fall.   A little voice starts in your head.  “Don’t trip.  Don’t trip.  Don’t trip.”

What happens?

You trip.

If you want to understand why, try telling a child “don’t look through that window” or telling yourself “don’t imagine a pink elephant”.

It’s almost impossible, right?  That’s because your subconscious mind is just like a child.   It ignores “don’ts” entirely and accepts only the positive parts of your suggestions:  “look through that window, ” “imagine a pink elephant.”

What You Conjure Becomes Reality

Combine the words “trip, trip, trip” that your subconscious mind hears, the image that flashes in your mind of yourself tripping, and the genuine feelings of embarrassment that come with that image, and suddenly those words aren’t just words anymore.  They’re a post hypnotic suggestion, delivered with all the power of the most convincing hypnotist in the world: you.

At this point, to the subconscious mind, these words exist as if they’d already happened.   As if they were true already.  As if they were unavoidable.

As unavoidable as Mal’s thinking that her life wasn’t real, once the post hypnotic suggestion was planted in her mind, by a person she trusted, using the image systems that they had created together.

As unavoidable as Robert Fischer finally feeling free of the burden of his father’s disappointment, once the inception of the post hypnotic suggestion of his father’s love was completed.

As unavoidable as Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, accepting those kids as real, whether they actually are or not.

To your subconscious mind, there is absolutely no difference between what really happened, and the story you tell about it.  Deliver the message in the right way, and the subconscious mind will react as if it were true, regardless of the facts.

Sounds Pretty Scary Right?

Until you realize that even the truth of your true experiences is not necessarily true.  That in fact the post hypnotic suggestions you are giving to yourself are just stories, like any other stories, and as story tellers, we can choose the kinds of tales we want to believe, based on the same objective facts.

Five people witness a car crash.  And afterwards each presents an entirely different story of what happened.  Even though they all saw the same thing.  The facts don’t change.  The only thing that changes is the perception of those facts.

Just as a writer can make small changes in the execution of a script adjust the value of a scene within a movie, so too can you adjust the stories you tell yourself about the events in your life,  to completely change the value of what those events mean to you.

So the questions become, not what is true, but what story are you telling yourself about the truth?

Robert Fischer’s Inception

In Inception, the father has been cruel to the son.  These are the objective facts.  But they are not the end of the story.  The process of the movie doesn’t change the objective facts, it merely changes the story the son is telling himself about his father, from “my father is disappointed in me” to “my father believes in me, and is trying to inspire me to pave my own way”.

Same facts.  Different story.  It’s not REALITY that changes his life.  It’s the story he’s telling himself about it.

Mal’s Inception

In Inception, after accepting a post-hypnotic suggestion from her husband, Mal tells herself the story that her real life isn’t real, and plunges to her death, losing the beautiful relationship she and Cobb have created together.  It doesn’t matter whether the story she is telling herself is right or wrong.  What matters is that she believes it.

Cobb’s Inception

In a way, the person incepting himself most powerfully throughout Inception may be Cobb himself.  At each step of the journey– three steps down, and three steps back up– someone tells Cobb to “take a leap of faith”.  And by the end of the movie, he finally does, by telling Mal that she isn’t real, killing off the part of her he’s holding onto, and taking a leap of faith back to his old life.

Cobb tells himself that his relationship with his children is real, and gets to enjoy it as if it were, whether the top is still spinning or not.

Once again, it’s not reality that changes Cobb’s life.  But the stories he is telling himself about it.

And of course the same is true with the stories you tell yourself about your writing.

What if you chose to tell yourself you were really a writer?  What if you chose to believe the dream was real?

What step would you take to chase it today?

Take A Leap of Faith

If you’ve enjoyed this series of articles about Inception, I invite you to take a leap of faith in yourself.  Check out one of my upcoming Screenwriting Workshops and take the first step toward being the writer you know yourself to be.

Just as the real hypnotic script discussed in Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series uses a three step structure to hypnotically bring about a change, the structure of the film Inception also takes three steps down, and then three “kicks” back up, to plant the post hypnotic suggestion of breaking up his father’s company in Robert Fischer’s mind.

The film begins in conscious reality, or at least what seems like conscious reality.  Robert Fischer is in a plane, and Cobb builds trust with him by returning his “lost” passport, before inducing trance by drugging Robert and entering his dream.

First Step Down: A Secret Safe

Robert finds himself in what he thinks is Los Angeles, where he is taken hostage by Cobb’s crew.  Eames impersonates family friend Peter Browning, and convinces Robert that he has been tortured for the combination to Robert’s father’s secret safe– a combination only Robert knows.  In the safe is his father’s last gift for Robert, a secret will that splits up the company.  Robert’s doubt of his father is so intense that even in a dream he can’t believe Browning’s story.  Even on his death bed, Robert’s father only had one word to share with him: “Disappointed”.  Ultimately, the numbers need to be extracted at random from Robert’s subconscious before Robert can be put back to sleep for the next step down…

Second Step Down: Browning’s Secret

At the Los Angeles hotel, Robert meets Cobb, who tells him that he is dreaming, and that he is there to protect him.  Once again using Eames’ skills of impersonation, they trick Robert into suspecting Browning, who admits that he staged the kidnapping in an effort to prevent Robert from accepting his father’s challenge to break up the company.  This experience begins to cast down upon the story Robert has been telling himself about Browning, and about his father, and to shift his trust from one to the other. Desperate to understand, Robert enters what he believes to be Browning’s dream.  As Robert is put back to sleep in the hotel room, he finds himself…

Third Step Down: The Father’s Secret

Robert attempts to infiltrate the snow fortress which he believes holds the secrets of Browning’s mind.  After Mal’s untimely appearance and a brief misadventure in Limbo, he is rescued by Cobb and Ariadne and returned to the inner chamber of the fortress.  Inside,  he discovers himself alone with his father, at the sick bed where his father once expressed his devastating feelings about Robert in one painful word: “Disappointed”.

“…because I wasn’t you…” Robert tells his father sadly, sharing the story he’s been telling himself about his father’s words.

“No, his father corrects him… disappointed that you tried.”

And at that moment, everything changes for Robert… and he is ready to open the safe.

The Post Hypnotic Suggestion

From the moment Robert’s story changes, so too does every element of the way his subconscious mind perceives his world.  And that’s why, when he opens the safe, what he finds is not just the will, but a symbol of his father’s love: the old pin-wheel from the photo Robert has always carried with him– his last memory of a loving relationship with his father.

And with that pin-wheel comes the healing Robert so desperately needs.

Whether the story is true or not.

Three Steps Back Up In Inception

As you saw in last week’s hypnotic script, in classical hypnosis, at this point a hypnotist would return the client to each level of the dream, allowing to see how the new story they have accepted will forever change those images, and building toward an even more powerful moment of healing, which anchors the larger change the person is seeking.

To some degree, Christopher Nolan does this as well, for example, by allowing the snow fortress (and with it, the secret that was once kept from Robert) to collapse.  But for the most part, Nolan reduces the three steps back up process to a series of three “kicks”: Fischer and the team falling with the collapsing snow fortress, Arthur blowing up the weightless elevator in the hotel, and Yusuf crashing the van into the water.

But even though Robert the character doesn’t go through each of the three steps back up– as an audience, we experience the whole journey, witnessing each step down from a new perspective as we race back up toward consciousness…

From a character perspective, this makes a lot of sense.  Because ultimately, Robert may not be the only one dreaming…

Cobb’s Inception

Just as Inception is built through a “dream within a dream” structure, it may also contain an inception within an inception.

Just as Robert is being incepted to break up his father’s company, so too is Cobb being incepted to “take a leap of faith”.  He’s the one we truly care about– in whose transformation we are most deeply invested– and through whose dream architecture we actually experience the story of Inception.

Stay tuned for next week’s article, in which I’ll be breaking down Cobb’s journey as it relates to hypnosis and Inception:  “Is Robert Fischer The Only One Dreaming?”

As discussed in parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, Christopher Nolan’s screenplay Inception is deeply rooted in the principles of hypnosis.   Learning more about these principles may not only change the way you approach your own writing, but also help you understand new ways that you can break through writer’s block and build the writer’s life you’ve been seeking.

The Post Hypnotic Suggestion

Just like the idea, in Inception, that Robert Fischer’s father really loved him, a post hypnotic suggestion is an idea, delivered in deep trance, that the subconscious mind accepts as if it were true.

Post hypnotic suggestions are incredibly powerful, in that when done right, they become anchored in your consciousness, and begin to bring about real life changes in your every day reality.

As suggested in Inception, these post hypnotic suggestions only work if certain conditions are met:

• They are in alignment with the person’s beliefs.  (In other words you can’t “incept” a kind person to be violent, even though you can “incept” a person who desperately wants to write to take action).

• The person chooses to accept the suggestion.  This is why post hypnotic suggestions are more likely to work if they’re given by someone you trust– such as a respected teacher, a great hypnotist, or a person you can depend on (in the case of Inception, Eames masquerades as Peter Browning, the one person Robert truly believes in, to surreptitiously deliver the post-hypnotic suggestion)

• The suggestions, and the “dream” images used to get the person to them, are phrased in the right way for that particular person, using their own language, and their own symbolic systems.

The magic book used in last week’s hypnotic script is just one of many ways of delivering a post-hypnotic suggestion.  Just as the classical three step model is only one of many ways of using hypnosis to bring about profound change.

How Are You Incepting Yourself?

The truth is, you’re delivering post-hypnotic suggestions to yourself every single day, in the words you say to yourself, and the soundtrack running in your head.  And these suggestions can be even MORE powerful than the ones a hypnotist provides, because they are already perfectly aligned with your belief systems, come from a person you trust (yourself), and are perfectly phrased in the way that only you can say them.

So if post hypnotic suggestions really are this powerful– are so transformative, as suggested by Inception, that a person like Mal will continue to accept them as the truth, even if they are not true.  Are so powerful that a person like Robert Fischer can heal his whole relationship with his abusive father based on a simple thought.  Then its worth asking yourself, what are the post hypnotic suggestions that you’re giving yourself about your writing?  And what effect are they having on your writing life?

Stay tuned for next week’s article, in which I’ll be breaking down the structure of Inception in relation to the three step hypnotic technique.

As described in Parts 1 and 2 of the series, the organizing principles of Inception‘s “dream within a dream within a dream” structure seem to be drawn directly from a classical three-step approach to hypnosis.  This technique is used to help people create profound changes in their lives, by “incepting” suggestions for positive change into their subconscious minds.  Just as the architecture of Robert’s dream sequence in Inception is built around around the people, image systems, and beliefs Robert holds most dear, so too is a three step hypnotic technique built around the most resonant images for the person being hypnotized.

After an interview process during which the hypnotist gathers images that have emotional power to the writer, the hypnotist would then induce a trance in the person, creating a dream like journey– a series of three images down into hypnosis, and three images back up–  in which each image leads them deeper into trance, and closer to the transformation they are searching for, just like a dream within a dream.

The following is an example of how this technique could be utilized to help a writer break through writer’s block, by constructing a three step sequence of images with emotional resonance to the writer.

Three Steps Down

For example, if the writer loved the water, the first image might be of them floating in the ocean, feeling incredibly free.  The temperature of the water is exactly the temperature that that is right, and as they float along it feels like the water is caressing their skin.  In the distance, there is a dolphin splashing effortlessly through the water.  The dolphin dives deeper into the water and they find themselves longing to dive down with that dolphin…

This image would lead them to the next sequence, just like a dream within a dream.  Again, working with images that have emotional resonance to the writer.  So if they loved children, we might bring them to a scene at a playground, watching a young child playing happily, creating dream worlds full of magic and creativity, so carefree and playful, completely in touch with their most creative part, just as the writer once was.  The child invites the writer to join them…

This image would lead to the next dream within the dream.  The third level down into the writer’s subconscious, and the third step closer to the transformation they are seeking.  Perhaps they find themselves in a magical forest, where they are approached by someone they completely trust.  This could be a religious figure, like the Buddha or Jesus, a mother or father, or a teacher that they believe in.  The teacher leads them to a special place, a cave, a clearing, a secret room or chamber just for them.

And inside this secret place is an old leather bound book, in which the secret they need to bring about their transformation is written…  all they have to do is read the words, and they will already be transformed….

Those words are the post-hypnotic suggestion.  The key to change, which the subconscious mind will act upon and accept.  Just as in Inception, the hypnotist doesn’t even need to create the suggestion.  They simply need to create the book, and the subconscious mind will populate it with the suggestion it most needs right now…

Three Steps Back Up

Once the post hypnotic suggestion is delivered, the hypnotist brings the writer three steps back up, using different versions of the same images to anchor the suggestion, and project a positive future for the subconscious mind in which the person can experience the positive results of the change they have made, as if they had already occurred.

So taking the example previously discussed, as the writer exits the special place where the book was hidden, they can already feel how the secret contained in the book has transformed them.  As they find themselves in the magical forest, it’s like looking through new eyes… everything is so alive and magical.  It’s like there’s a story in every branch, every leaf, every sound.  Stories the writer is curious to explore, and excited to tell…

Their curiosity then carries them back once again to the playground, where they find themselves playing with the child, recapturing that childlike bliss that writing has always held for them, and always will, if they merely take the step today to open themselves to it.  As they see the child’s smiling face, they recognize that face… as a younger version of their own.  At that moment something shifts inside of them, some inner knowing, as they realize what that means…

…Ask that child, that younger self, if they would like to see the great future that lies ahead.  And they discover themselves back back in that ocean.  Only this time the adult and the child swim together with that dolphin, effortless, happy, free.  The dolphin dives, and the writer and child dive with him, together, swimming all the way to the bottom, where they discover a magical reflecting pool, in which they can see their own future.

And reflected in it, writer and child see the future that lies before them, the days of satisfaction as they work on their screenplay, the eager scribbling of endless ideas, a friend or trusted mentor guiding them, the completion of their first script, and then their next, and next, and next…  a crowded movie theatre in which a movie plays.  Their movie.  The one that’s been waiting inside them, just begging to be written down.    They can hear the applause of the audience.  The laughter.  Or maybe even the tears.  They can feel the pride welling up within them…

“How did I get here?” asks the child.

“We did it together” the writer tells the child… and it all began with the step we took today.

The Power of Hypnosis

If you’ve read this script, you already have some sense of how the hypnotic process works.  If the suggestions were right for you, you may have even seen yourself in that ocean, in that playground, in that magical forest, and in that secret room.  You may have discovered your own post hypnotic suggestion waiting in your own book, or simply felt the feeling of knowing even if you no longer remember the words.

And if these suggestions were right for you, with them you have already taken the first step of becoming the writer you want to be.

The images I used in this script are drawn from Jungian archetypes, but of course these images take on even more hypnotic power when they are shaped directly from your own symbolic systems, your own beliefs, and your own dreams.

Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter, in which I’ll be discussing post-hypnotic suggestion in relation to Inception.

As I discussed in last week’s article, the organizing principles of Inception’s dream within a dream within a dream structure almost perfectly mirror the classical hypnosis training one receives at a weekend certification class in hypnosis.

To understand how a movie can be built from this kind of organizing principle, you first need to know a little about hypnosis.

The Standard Three Step Hypnotic Technique

Weekend certifications in hypnosis generally teach a three step technique which corresponds almost perfectly with the “three dream” technique the characters in Inception are using to convince their subject, Robert Fischer, to break up his father’s company.

Just as the architecture of Robert’s dream sequence in Inception is  built around around the people, image systems, and beliefs Robert holds most dear, so too is a three step hypnotic technique built around the most resonant images for the person being hypnotized.

Dream Research and Hypnotic Research

A hypnotic session using this approach begins with an interview, during which the hypnotist gathers images that have emotional power to the person being hypnotized.

For example, if you were using this method to help a blocked writer pick up the pen after a long period of procrastination, you might begin with images that are not even related to writing, but which capture some of the emotions the person wishes they had when they were writing.

The hypnotist would then induce a trance in the person, creating a dream like journey– a series of three images down into hypnosis, and three images back up–  in which each image leads them deeper into trance, and closer to the transformation they are searching for, just like a dream within a dream.

With each step down, the value of the image is established, and with each step back up, the meaning of each image is deepened and adapted, associating that image with the change the person is seeking, and anchoring that change on a deep subconscious level– as if it had already happened.

The Power of Images

Movies are built around images, because movies are hypnotic.  They carry us out of our own world, and transport us into the dream world of the writer.  Each sequence of images leads us deeper into trance, until we begin to respond to the movie as if it were real, feeling real emotions for characters we know don’t actually exist.

We cry for losses that never happened, feel embarrassed for social gaffs that never actually occurred.  Our hearts race as if we were standing in the character’s shoes– as if their fear was our fear, or their love our love.  We root for them, we care about them.

And we begin to care about their images systems as if they were our own.

When Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, sees his children but cannot see their faces, we begin to long for their reunion just as he does.  And when those children turn around and reveal their faces to him, it’s hard to fight the rush of emotion.

Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Images?

As a writer, you can use the three step hypnotic process to craft a profound journey for your character.  Think about the images that most powerfully capture your character’s experience on the way down toward the heart of their journey, and how you can return to those images in new ways on the way back up in order to anchor and deepen the change your character is experiencing.

And while your at it, think about the hypnotic images that play in your own head as a writer.  What images do you chose to focus on?  What images are holding you back?  And how can you revisit, deepen, and adapt those images in order to anchor the future that you are seeking?

Whatever images you choose, if you get them right your subconscious mind will respond to them as if they were real– just like you do at the movies.  Perhaps it’s time to create some new variations.

Stay tuned next week for my most exciting Inception article yet– a powerful hypnotic script that uses the principles behind Inception to help you overcome your own creative blocks.

By now, you and everyone you know have probably seen Inception.  You’ve read reviews that wax poetic about its dream like nature, its visual innovation, and its extraordinarily ambitious thematic aspirations.

Perhaps you’ve even heard me lecture about Inception, and the ways I feel it could have pushed its themes even further.

The Hypnotic Basis of Inception

One of the truly interesting things about Inception is that its structure seems to be based upon the principles of hypnosis.  In fact, the organizing principles of the dream within a dream within a dream structure of the film almost perfectly mirror the classical hypnosis training one receives at a weekend certification class in hypnosis.

Your Screenplay’s Organizing Principles

Why is this important to you as a writer?  Because as writers we all need organizing principles around which to structure our character’s journey.  Usually we think of such structures in terms of acts and themes, but as Inception demonstrates, the truth is that almost any source of inspiration can become the organizing principal of your story:  from a question, to a character trait, to a work of art or piece of music, or in this case to a classical hypnosis certification class.

As writers we are not only students of screenwriting, we are also students of the world.  And the good news is: you can utilize the hypnotic principles behind Inception not only to inspire the way you create the structure of your own movie, but also to open up new avenues toward building your life as a writer.

An Exciting New Series of Articles

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing the hypnotic principles behind Inception, and ways of applying them to your own writing.  I’ll also be describing ways that you can draw upon your own experiences to create organizing principles for your own movies– and harness those ideas to create unity for your script and profound journeys for your main characters.

To that end, we’ll not only be talking about the things that work in Inception, but also the things that could have been pushed further, to make the film even more dramatically successful and emotionally powerful.

Finally, we’ll be discussing ways that you can apply hypnotic principles in your life as a writer, in order to break through writer’s block, heal old wounds to your confidence, overcome procrastination, and create a better relationship between your writing and your editing brain.

Check back next week, for the first article in the series:  INCEPTION:  Understanding Hypnosis For Writers

Recently a student asked me the following question:

Can I write a synopsis/storyline, complete with time era, scenery and plot for a movie, and have someone else develop the characters and dialogue?

This is essentially what producers do in Hollywood.  But it’s very, very hard for young writers to sell movies this way.  And it’s even harder to actually develop a script that captures the spirit of your idea in the way you imagined it unless you’re writing it yourself.

The Long Road To Development Hell

As much as we all dream of the magical writer who can sweep in from the sky and make our ideas come to life, if you know much about the development process in Hollywood, you know this hardly ever works.

Hollywood is full of great ideas.  And producers spend millions of dollars paying professional writers to turn these ideas into scripts.

But no matter how glowing the writer’s past track-record, scripts that are generated this way are rarely successful.

Projects end up being written and re-written by dozens of writers, and seem to get worse with every re-draft.  These scripts end up languishing in what producers like to call  “development hell,” that eternal purgatory of screenplays that will never be made.

Create The Script You Really Want

It’s a safe bet that if writing someone else’s script is this challenging for a million-dollar-a-script writer in Hollywood, it’s certainly going to be even harder for the young writers you can afford to hire as a young producer.

Most writers do their best work when they are writing from the heart, exploring themes that are resonant for them, and discovering their character’s journey as they write it.  Not when they are “painting by numbers” and filling in the gaps of someone else’s story.

So most likely, if you want to see your project come to fruition, you’re going to have to write it yourself.

Take a class.  Grab a pen.  Sit down, and start searching for your character.

Tell the story you wanted to tell, as only you can tell it.

You’ll be happy that you did.

As discussed in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of this series, the structure of Toy Story 3 is built around the theme of loyalty, and desperate desires of both its protagonists and antagonists to be loved and played with by children.  Love is the currency of Toy Story 3, the one thing that every character wants, and the one thing that has true value. In order to earn that love, the characters must each come to terms with loyalty in their own unique way, and come together to overcome the corrupting force of the greatest antagonist to loyalty: doubt.

Let Your Characters Earn Their Happy Endings

Just as the choices we make in response to the challenges of our lives define us as people, so too do the choices the toys make define them as characters.

In overcoming Lotso and the doubt he represents, the toys come to terms with their own lack of faith, and recapture their loyalty to Andy and to each other.

In doing so, they earn the true fulfillment of their own greatest wish, when Andy bestows them on a little girl, and plays with them one last time before moving on to the next phase of his life.

And that, of course, is why we cry.

Because as silly and zany as Toy Story 3 might be, it draws its structure upon the real emotions, the real desires, and the real losses that we all share as we grow older, say goodbye to old phases of our lives and move on to the new ones.

The desire to be played with.  The desire to be loved.  The desire to relive those cherished memories one last time.

Every Journey Begins With A Want

Just as the journey of your character begins with a simple want, so too does your journey as a screenwriter.  Take a moment to think about what you want today.  And what steps are you ready to take to achieve it.

Then come check out my upcoming screenwriting classes, now available here in New York City, and streamed live ONLINE via the internet.

Your journey begins today.

As discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, the structure of Toy Story 3 is built around a simple desire shared by its characters, and unified around a simple theme, loyalty.   As Andy grows older and heads off to college, the desperate desire of the toys to be loved and played with leads them to question their loyalty to Andy, and his loyalty to them.  This leads the toys to seek out a new home, and new love, at a daycare center, only to discover that the very thing they most want is likely to be their destruction.

But one of the things that makes the structure of Toy Story 3 so successful is the way it explores different variations of the same theme, though the journey of its main character, Woody the Cowboy, the one toy Andy still loves enough to take with him to college.

Push Your Characters To The Limit

Unlike the other toys, who turn their back on Andy when they think he doesn’t love them anymore, Woody is a character governed by his loyalty.  But it’s easy to be loyal when you’re the most loved toy in the toybox.  So Woody too must be tested.

The structure of Toy Story 3 is designed to test Woody to the greatest extent possible, by forcing him to choose between the one thing he truly wants, to stay with his beloved Andy, and saving his friends from certain death at the hands of the daycare toddlers.

Remaining loyal to his friends, Woody risks losing the one thing he truly wants,  and proves himself worthy of Andy’s loyalty, and of ours.

In the process, he leads his friends to rediscover their own loyalty and their own faith, in Woody, in Andy, and in each other.

Wants Are The Foundation of Structure

As a writer, when you clearly establish your characters’ most deeply held desires early in the script, you arm yourself with the structural ammunition you need to build the kind of emotionally powerful story that moves your audience to laughter and tears.  Structure can then grow organically, as you inspire your characters to seek their desires, and create obstacles that test and challenge who they are, and what they believe in.

Check in for tomorrow’s installment: “Toy Story 3, Part 3: Create The Right Antagonist”

As I discussed in Part 1 of this series, Toy Story 3 does a wonderful job of building its structure around the greatest wish of its main characters: to be loved and played with by children.  When the toys feel that their owner Andy no longer cares about them, this desperate desire forces them to question their loyalty to him and seek out love and attention from new children at a daycare center.  By establishing the character’s most deeply held desire clearly from the start, the writers of Toy Story 3 give themselves the foundation they need for a great structure.

The Beauty of Unexpected Consequences

Great writers know that however beautiful or benign the character’s greatest wish may seem, they must explore both the best and the worst possible implications of fulfilling that wish.  And the toys of Toy Story get a heck of a lot more than they bargained for.

Trapped in a playroom ruled by a psychotic strawberry scented bear, and filled with insane toddlers, the non-age-appropriate toys are literally tortured by the fulfillment of their own greatest desire, played with nearly to death, until the best thing they can hope for is to somehow escape to a life of confinement in Andy’s attic– the very fate that they were fleeing when they came to the daycare center in the first place.

When you can make your main characters run from the very thing they most want, you know you are succeeding as a writer.

Toy Story 3 pushes this irony even further by exploring yet another riff on the theme of loyalty: the journey of the one toy Andy still loves enough to take with him to college: Woody the Cowboy…

Check back tomorrow for the next installment of the Toy Story 3 Series:  “The Foundation of Structure.”

Read the whole Feedback series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

It’s a simple fact.  Writers don’t like most of what they write.

And they don’t like most of what they read either.

Writers can be like rabid bloodhounds, ready to sniff out every flaw in a screenplay at a moment’s notice.

This isn’t your fault.  Countless years of English teachers, writing groups, screenwriting books and well-intentioned writing professors have trained you to approach a project in this way.

The problem is, when it comes to the creative process of writing, all that sniffing around doesn’t necessarily help.

In fact, if you’re on the receiving end of that kind of feedback, you probably know what it feels like to be the bird in the bloodhound’s jaws.

Not exactly inspiring.

How To Talk About The Bad Stuff

Whether the project is a fully developed work of art, or little baby script in need of some tender love and care, chances are that without any effort at all, you can uncover about 1001 different things that you would like to change.

But if you want to actually make a difference, your notes are going to need a context.

As counter-intuitive as it may sound, the first step in talking about the bad stuff is to begin by thinking about the good stuff. [...]

Read the whole Feedback series:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

All writers give and receive notes all the time.  We give notes to our friends, our colleagues, our writing buddies, and most importantly to ourselves.  We receive notes from producers, directors, teachers, agents, friends, family, and fellow writing students.

But how many of these notes actually help?

If you want to learn to give notes that actually help, both to yourself and to your fellow writers, there are two things that you absolutely must remember:

1)  Don’t try to fix anything, just concentrate on sharing your experience.
2)  Begin with what works.

When you begin your feedback with criticism, you can be pretty sure that the writer won’t hear a thing you say after your first sentence.  Inside their heads, their own private monologue will take over, subjecting them to a level of criticism you wouldn’t bestow on your worst enemy.

If you start with the bad, they’ll never hear the good.

On the other hand, when you begin with what works, you help a writer to see the potential in their writing, and open the doors that make moving forward possible.  At that point, the writer will follow you anywhere– and be able to process even your most brutally honest criticism in a way that is helpful and productive. [...]

As I discussed in part 1 and part 2 of this series, writing is a highly intuitive process.  When notes take us away from our organic connection to our scripts, they tend to do more harm than good, no matter how helpful they may seem.

Whether you are a professional writer, or just picking up the pen for the first time, you’re going to have to deal with notes all the time.  From producers, from actors, from directors, from other writers, from family, from friends, and even from yourself.

And guess what.  You’re going to need them.

A New Approach To Feedback

If you’ve taken a class with me, you know that to succeed as a writer, you must learn not only how to give feedback, but also how to receive it.

Writers need to develop a filter between themselves and “good advice”, allowing the helpful stuff in, and filtering out the brilliant ideas that aren’t going to help you, before they can sway you one way or another.

The First Step

Whether you’re giving notes to another writer, or revising a draft of your own writing, the first step of this process is letting go of your desperate desire to immediately “fix” the screenplay, and instead to focus on communicating your experience, without judgment or advice.

Knowing how to give and receive feedback is not only vital to discovering your voice as a writer.  It’s also an invaluable tool in communicating with yourself as you evaluate your own writing.

In tomorrow’s article, I’ll be discussing the elements of truly helpful feedback, and the questions you can ask yourself to help you discover them.

As I discussed in yesterday’s post, it’s easy for most writers to identify a obviously terrible note.  The real danger occurs with the ones that often seem to be the most intelligent.

The Danger of Other People’s Ideas

If you’ve ever been part of a certain kind of writing group, you know what I’m talking about: the feeling of being blown back and forth from one brilliant idea to another, until you have no idea what you’re actually writing anymore.

For all the conscious thought writers put into their screenplays, writing is an organic, intuitive process.  And when we lose that instinctual connection to what we are writing, our scripts tend to fall apart, no matter how brilliant the ideas we are serving.

And yet we NEED help.

We need feedback.  We need classes.  And we need teachers.

So what the heck are we supposed to do?

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, in which I’ll be introducing a new approach to feedback that can change your whole experience as a writer.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

When I finished my first screenplay, I did what any self-respecting screenwriter does.  I sent it to my mom.  She read the script, and called me gushing with pride.

For about half an hour, my mom waxed poetic about every nuance of the script: the story, the imagery, the profound metaphorical qualities.

She only had one question.  Even though it all “worked”, she was a little bit confused about why the characters were saying certain dialogue to each other…

“EXT. STREET – DAY” for example.

That was when I realized I was in trouble.

She thought the slug lines were dialogue that the characters were speaking them to each other.

And she loved me so much, she actually enjoyed it!

Good Notes And Bad Notes

As good as it feels to receive praise (and sometimes even helpful advice) about our scripts, we have to be extremely careful about who we take feedback from.

Very few people actually know how to write a script that works.  And though I like to tease my mom, the truth is that much worse notes have been given by countless screenwriting teachers, development executives, and well-meaning professional writers.

Whether it comes from a big time producer or a loving family member, it’s fairly easy for writers to recognize an obviously bad note.

It’s the helpful ones that are truly dangerous.

As Writers, We Desperately Need Feedback On Our Work.

But when writers try to solve each other’s scripts, they usually end up doing more harm than good.

Over the next week, I’ll be adding a series of posts about how to give feedback, not only for other writers, but also for yourself.   Make sure to come back and check them out.

Thanks to Chaweon Koo for forwarding this great memo from David Mamet to the writers of his Emmy-nominated series The Unit.

It’s amazing how even professional writers still need to be reminded of the fundamental principles of writing.

I particularly appreciate the way Mamet differentiates between the producer’s (often misguided) desire to make things clear with “information” and the writer’s need to create drama.

As Mamet puts it: (Please excuse his capital letters.  He’s an excitable guy!)

“ANY DICKHEAD WITH A BLUESUIT CAN BE (AND IS) TAUGHT TO SAY “MAKE IT CLEARER”, AND “I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM”.

WHEN YOU’VE MADE IT SO CLEAR THAT EVEN THIS BLUESUITED PENGUIN IS HAPPY, BOTH YOU AND HE OR SHE WILL BE OUT OF A JOB.”

That’s because, as Mamet so brilliantly points out, nobody watches a movie for exposition.  They watch a movie for an experience.  And creating that experience is all about character.

Put all your focus on taking care of your audience, and despite all your hard work, they’ll be snoozing in their seats.

Focus on your character, and your audience will follow you anywhere.

That means creating a character who wants something desperately, tries to get it against overwhelming odds, and in so doing undergoes a journey that will forever change his or her life.

This is what Mamet calls drama.  Again, in his words:

“QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.”

Mamet follows up with a “crock of shit” list of  important rules for seeking out and destroying non-dramatic scenes. As all of you know, I’m suspicious of any rules when it comes to writing.  But these are definitely worth considering. Here are some of the highlights:

“ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.”

“ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.”

“IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.”

“IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION,INDEED, OF SPEECH. YOU WILL BE FORGED TO WORK IN A NEW MEDIUM – TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING)”

“LOOK AT THE SCENE AND ASK YOURSELF “IS IT DRAMATIC? IS IT ESSENTIAL? DOES IT ADVANCE THE PLOT?  ANSWER TRUTHFULLY.  IF THE ANSWER IS “NO” WRITE IT AGAIN OR THROW IT OUT.”

Of course, like any rules, these too have exceptions.  Watch the opening of Inglourious Basterds for example, and tell me if that scene would have been better if it had been written like a silent movie.

Or take the completely non-essential “McLovin’ and the cops” sequences out of Superbad and see if you still want to watch the movie.

I think what distinguishes these exceptions is that even though they violate many of the rules of Mamet’s memo, they are true to the three principles that create drama:  a character pursuing something he or she desperately wants, against tremendous odds, and in a way that will forever change his or her life.

And of course it doesn’t hurt if you’re funny.

So I open it up to you.

What do you think about Mamet’s rules?

Do you have an example of a successful movie,  in which two characters talk about a third in riveting ways or break other rules from the list with breathtaking results?

Do you have a thought about a film that could have been saved by a generous dose of David Mamet?

Go ahead and chime in.  Respond in the comments section of this post, and I will put a list together.

You can read the full David Mamet memo here.

Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! just might be the most dangerous book out there for writers.

And you should read it.

But first, you need to recognize how to harness what’s valuable in Save The Cat!, while understanding the principles that make it so potentially destructive.

Blake Snyder isn’t dangerous because he is wrong. He’s not. He’s not dangerous because his ideas about how to build a script around a great premise aren’t brilliant. They are.

Blake Snyder is dangerous because he doesn’t teach you how to be a writer. He teaches you how to be a salesperson.

What’s Right About Save the Cat!?

You’re going to need a lot of money to turn your script into a movie. That’s true whether you are writing a tiny independent film that you are going to shoot in your backyard. Or the next incarnation of Avatar.

Unless you are ridiculously wealthy, or have a generous uncle waiting with a check in his hand, making your movie is probably going to take more money than you have. And that means you’re going to need to convince people that they should put their own hard earned money behind your production.

We call these people producers. They tend to make writers pretty darn angry. That’s because they couldn’t care less about your artistic vision, the integrity of your writing, or how your script is going to change the world.

When a producer invests in your movie, he or she is investing in one thing: the chance that your movie is going to put butts in seats.

Without butts in seats, your movie is going to lose money. And no matter how brilliant your artistic vision, it’s not going to change the world, make anybody laugh, cry or buy an overpriced barrel of popcorn. Because no one is ever going to see it.

And that’s where Blake Snyder is right. No one is going to go see your movie unless the producer knows how to sell it. That means you need a great premise, that grabs the audience’s attention and makes them want to see your movie. And once they’re in the theater, you’ve got to out-do the promise you’ve made to your audience, so that they can go and talk to their friends about how cool your movie was and drive even more butts to the theatre.

The Save The Cat! approach is to basically turn your script into a giant sales pitch. A living, breathing advertising device that looks so irresistible that audiences can’t help but see it, and producers can’t help but buy it, whether it’s any good or not.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

Except that it’s not going to work for you.

That’s because, unless you happen to be born into a Hollywood family (Snyder’s father was producer Kenneth Snyder) or already have a multi-million dollar hit in your back pocket, nobody who is anybody is going to take a chance on your crappy script. No matter how good the premise is.

Selling Out Is For Professionals

It’s true. Hollywood is filled with writers who sell bad screenplays with great premises, and make a lot of money doing it.

And you can too.

That is, if you already happen to be a big time writer.

The problem is, if you’re like most writers, it probably means that you don’t have a multi-million dollar hit in your back pocket. And in that case nobody who is anybody is going to take a chance on your bad script.

This may seem like an unfair double standard. But it’s not. And if you don’t believe me, just answer this question:

Whose next script is more likely to make you money on your investment: Quentin Tarantino’s or Joe Smith’s?

You don’t even know what the script is about, but you already know the answer. Tarantino has a whole track record to point to. Joe just has his script.

If Joe is going to convince anyone to take a chance on him, that script had better be good. Real good. It had better make them believe in it so strongly that they’d put their own reputation, and their own hard earned money, on the line to make it.

The truth is, “great ideas” in Hollywood are a dime a dozen. And so are writers with impressive track records.

But genuinely good scripts are incredibly rare.

A good script is gold in Hollywood. And you can write one.

Blake Snyder Can Show You How To Sell It. But He Can’t Show You How To Write It.

There’s a reason Blake Snyder’s magnum opus was Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Whether the movie you’re writing is a deeply moving drama, a popcorn munching action flick, or a teen sex comedy, there’s no short cut around the writing process. At least not if you want to write a good movie.

The Four Phases of Writing

In my classes, I break down the writing process into four phases. I’ll be detailing them further in future newsletters, but for now, here’s a brief overview:

1. The ME Draft
2. The AUDIENCE Draft
3. The PRODUCER Draft
4. The READER Draft

What Blake Snyder is describing in Save The Cat! is actually simply the PRODUCER phase of this process: the stage of adaptation and revision that focuses on amplifying the most marketable elements in your screenplay to turn it into candy for producers.

It’s a great place to end up. But it’s a lousy place to start.

Don’t Spend Your Writing Life Feeling Like A Used Car Salesman

No offense to any used-car dealers out there, but you’re not going to break into an industry as competitive as the film industry by peddling a broken down jalopy with a fancy paint job.

You may fool your Aunt Ida. But a real producer can tell when an engine isn’t running.

Open Yourself To The Process

If you let yourself be seduced into thinking about the pitch before you even have anything worth selling, you’re not going to get where you want to go.

Just like the kid who talks the most smack on the basketball court is probably not going to the NBA. At least not until he learns to shoot.

Learning to shoot in the world of screenwriting begins with discovering your character, and taking him or her on a profound journey.

It means getting in touch with your subconscious creative mind, which could care less about marketability, and sales-pitches, and creating a story that exceeds your own plans and expectations.

Then, when you decide to “Save The Cat”, you’ll be doing it for the right reasons: to amplify and focus what already makes your screenplay great, and to shape it into a form that the producer can salivate over.

Don’t worry, you’re going to have plenty of time to sell out later. But you have to become a writer first.

Learn To Understand The Four Phases of Writing

Curious about learning a more effective way to “Save the Cat” in your own writing? Come check out my upcoming screenwriting workshops.

Rather than imposing a cheesy sales pitch from the outside, you’ll learn to identify the underlying hook that already exists in your work, and focus your writing to bring it to the surface, intensify your character’s journey, and shape a story that grabs your audience and won’t let them go.

A question from a student:

Question for you: I wrote a short script that this guy wants to film and possibly enter into some festivals. I just want the writing credit, no money- do you think a contract is necessary in a case like this? Or is a gentleman’s agreement usually good? Luke S.

Jake’s Answer:

Glad to hear about the upcoming move and even more exciting– the good news about this guy making your script.

Although I’m not a lawyer myself and can’t give legal advice, my suggestion, for both of your protection, never ever ever ever ever do a deal without a contract.

Get a standard, boiler plate contract (you can probably find one online or ask a lawyer or agent friend to find one for you). Have a lawyer friend make any modifications necessary, and make sure your lawyer friend looks it over before you sign anything.

Do not negotiate a deal yourself. Do not make up your own contract. Most likely neither of you know enough about the law or standard practices in the industry to make a deal that will actually protect you.

Written contracts clarify what both of your expectations are– and without them, many of the best partnerships can end up being destroyed– not only when things go badly, but also when they go well.

For example: Your movie ends up becoming the all time biggest festival hit ever. Hollywood decides they want to turn it into a feature… they’re offering a ton of money.

If you have a contract: You know in advance how much of that money you get, and your buddy knows how much he gets. You’re both happy and delighted and get to go have a drink and celebrate your success together.

If you don’t– you and your buddy now have to fight over how much of that money you deserve. He argues you would have had nothing without his producing. You argue he would have nothing without your script. Before long, you hate each other, and possibly even end up killing the deal because you can’t work out your side of the bargain and neither of you can move ahead without the other’s consent.

I can tell you from experience that fight will happen no matter how good a guy your friend may be– because people do crazy things when that much money is on the table.

Another example: The studio wants to make the movie, but they want to hire a bigger name writer. If you have a contract, your buddy tells them “sorry guys, I’ve got a contract with this guy– I can’t do it”.  If he doesn’t– he now has to make a choice between taking a stand for you, and possibly blowing not only the deal but his relationship with the studio, or saying yes to their demands and destroying his friendship with you. Not a fun situation to be in.

Use a lawyer. It won’t cost you nearly as much as the pain you suffer later if you don’t. Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts may even help you for free. And it may very well save your relationship.

POWER YOUR PLOT
With These Vital Structural Elements

Today seems like a good day to talk about completions.

Not just the kind of completions you make in your life.  The kinds of completions you make in your scenes.

Completions are the single most important element in distinguishing a successful scene from an unsuccessful one.

No matter how creative you are as a writer, no matter how compelling your characters, no matter how well observed your dialogue may be, if your scenes don’t have completions, they’re not going to drive your story forward.

Completions are the key to making the leap from scene to structure– making your scenes actually DO what you need them to do in order to serve your story.

Get them right, and you can screw up a lot of other stuff and still tell a great story.

Get them wrong, and all you’ve got is a bunch of smoke and mirrors, no matter how brilliant you may be.

So what is a completion?  And how can you use completions in your own work?

Every Scene Begins With A Character

Before you can fully understand what a completion is and how to use it in your movie, it’s important to begin by understanding what a character is.

Now, this may seem like an elementary question.  We see characters every day.  Your girlfriend, your brother, your boss, your best friend, they’re all characters.  But as writers, we must understand character on an even deeper level, so that we can begin to discover a structure for a movie that tests your character and forces her to expand or change in a profound way.

Doing this does not require an intricate road map of every psychological nuance of your character.  And it certainly doesn’t require a “paint by numbers” outline of the plot of your movie.

All it actually requires is a simple want: what the great acting teacher Stanislavski would describe as an “objective” for the character to pursue in the scene.

Objectives can be as big as saving the world, and as small as a drink of water.  But to serve you structurally, a couple of things should be clear about the objective.

1) The Character Had Better Want It BADLY.
2)  It Better Be Hard To Get

When objectives are easily achieved, they don’t mean much structurally.  But when they’re hard to get, and deeply desired, they become the guideposts to understanding a character’s journey.

Remember the scene in Trainspotting in which Ewan McGregor climbs into the “worst toilet in Britain” to retrieve his opium suppositories?  Of course you do.  If he’d simply been able to get high in a normal way, you might have been grossed out, but you’d have forgotten the scene long ago.  And more importantly, you’d never really understand the profundity of his addiction.

Every Scene Ends With A Completion

Scenes happen when a character, in his or her own unique way, battles against an obstacle to get what he or she wants.  But no matter how big your obstacles and how strong with your objectives, without completions the structure of your movie can’t take shape.

Completions occur when one phase of your character’s journey ends, and another begins.  When a want is either achieved or abandoned, leading to a new objective and a new obstacle.

Because film is a visual medium, these completions should be visual as well:  a series of images, either literal or metaphorical, which if you laid them side by side would capture the entire journey of your character in relation to her most deeply held desires.

This string of objectives and completions will ultimately become the fundamental underpinning not only of your character’s journey, but of the organic structure that will lead you there.

Four Kinds Of Completions

I used to classify completions into three categories, however at the recent suggestion of one of my students, I’ve begun to include a fourth more nuanced variation as well.  (Thank you, Jonathan!)

To illustrate each of these ideas, we’re going to riff on the Trainspotting “worst toilet in Britain” scene.  In simple terms, Ewan McGregor’s character Renton has sworn off heroin, and desperately wants his last fix. Unable to get any real heroin, he has procured some opium suppositories, but after an unfortunate series of scatological events, has lost them down the most disgusting toilet in Britain (and possibly the world).

1)  The Character Gets What He Wants

In the film, Renton proceeds to reach, and then ultimately climb into the disgusting toilet in a surrealistic sequence as he searches for his fix.  That’s how bad he wants it, and what he’s willing to do to get it.

COMPLETION:  Renton returns home with the recovered opium suppositories.  He holds them up and they twinkle in the light.

Having gotten what he wanted, his last fix, Renton can now set his sights on the next step of his journey, attempting to live a life without heroin.

2)  The Character Doesn’t Get What He Wants

Let’s imagine a different version of the scene.

Renton reaches into the toilet but cannot reach his fix.  He forces his hand deeper and deeper into the toilet and perhaps even undergoes the fantastical underwater journey, but just as he has the suppositories in his grips, his movement causes the automatic sensor to flush the toilet.  In his desperate attempt to get the drugs, he rends the toilet from it’s foundation, spraying water (and worse) everywhere, and even reaches into the sewage plumbing but the drugs are gone forever.

COMPLETION: Renton sits amidst the broken wreckage of the toilet, trembling from withdrawal.

His quest to retrieve the suppositories having proved unsuccessful, he has no choice but to come up with a new objective, which will lead him to the next obstacle and the next completion.

3)  The Character Gets Interrupted

Interruptions occur when a character abandons his original objective for an even more compelling one.

For example:  Renton is searching for the drugs in the toilet when the woman he most loves enters the bathroom and almost vomits with disgust before dashing out of the bathroom.  As much as Renton wants the drugs, at this moment he has a stronger objective– to somehow explain his actions to her and avoid losing her forever.

COMPLETION:  As Renton races after her out of the bar.  The twinkling suppositories dissolve and disappear in the murky toilet water

His previous objective has been replaced by a new one, which leads him to the next phase of his journey, rescuing his relationship with the girl.

And finally the new fourth variation:

4)  The Character Gets Part of What He Wants

Renton has finally caught up with the woman he loves.  By now he is already starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms, but he still pleads for her to understand.   She presses a wad of money into his hand, and tells him to get himself a fix.  Then she turns her back on him, leaving forever.

COMPLETION:  Renton puts the money in his pocket, turns around, and walks back toward the bar, where he can procure his next fix.

Having achieved the drugs, but lost the girl forever, Renton will once again be forced to develop a new objective.

Completions Give Meaning To Scenes

As you can see from the examples above, the visual completion you choose for your scene can vastly change its structural effect on the character’s journey.  Even more importantly, when you build strong completions for your scenes, those completions organically lead you to new wants, new obstacles, and new plot points that can comprise the structure of your character’s transformation.

Completions give your scenes the movement you need to drive your story forward, and the visual clarity to track each step of your character’s change, and to force your character to make active choices that drive his experience.

And the great thing about completions is that you can adjust them to create the most dramatic journey possible for your character, just as we did with the new versions of “worst toilet in Britain” scene above.

If Your Movie Isn’t Moving, You Probably Need Better Completions

Over the next several weeks, as you go to see movies or read screenplays, pay attention to the completions of each scene.  Notice how filmmakers use these visual completions to lock in the story of the main character, clarify their wants, and track the shape of their change.

Then, as you return to your own work, think about the completions of your scenes.  Are they as strong as you would like them to be?  Clear enough?  Visual enough?  What can you do to make them even more powerful?

The stronger your completion, the clearer the shape of your character’s journey, and the easier it will become to organically discover the structure you need to power your plot.

What Are The Obstacles To Your Objectives?  And What Will Your Completion Be?

The world is not built for artists, and as writers we all face profound obstacles.  The demands of family, friends and jobs.  The inertia that gets in the way of charting a new course.  The old habits that lead to procrastination when we want to be creating.  And the self doubt that leads us to turn our backs on the creative life we so desperately need.

As your 2010 begins, consider the shape you’d like your New Year to take.  What is the creative journey you will create for yourself?  How can you power the plot of your creative life? And what are the steps you will take so that your next year can build to the kind of completion you have always dreamed for yourself?

Take The First Step Today

Check out my upcoming classes.

It’s no wonder that some of the greatest writers began their careers as actors.

The art of writing and acting have always been profoundly intertwined. That’s because structurally, movies grow out of character. And character is the thing that actors understand best.

So what is character from an actor’s perspective? And how can that help you as a writer?

CHARACTER BEGINS WITH A WANT

As writers, we are often seduced by “characteristics” when we try to create character. Characteristics can be adjectives like “pretty”, “ugly” “eccentric”, “angry”, “jealous”, “selfish”, “generous”, “wacky”, or they can be elements of carefully crafted backstories “was abused by his father”, “studied chemistry”, “works as a plumber”, “grew up on a farm”.

You put a lot of work into thinking up all these elements, so you’d hope they’d lead to great characters. But unfortunately, more often than not, instead of helping you to create the kinds of characters you’d want to follow for 100 pages, they lead to stereotypes and cliches that neither capture an audience’s attention nor drive your stories forward.

If you don’t believe me, just turn on your TV. Watch any soap opera, and you’ll be amazed at the intricate backstories that have been created for these paper thin characters. Watch an episode of any lousy sit-com, and you’ll see characters with tons of highly unusual characteristics, that nevertheless feel like you’ve seen them before.

As any trained actor will tell you, the reason for this is simple.

Characters are not adjectives.

They’re not backstories. They’re not characteristics, no matter how interesting those characteristics may be.

Characters are verbs. And these verbs begin with a want.

WHAT DOES YOUR CHARACTER WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING?

When a great actor looks at a screenplay, that’s the question they’re asking. What does this character want more than anything? And what are the unique ways this character pursues that desperate desire, that are different from the way any other character would do so?

These wants affect every aspect of character. The way they speak. The actions they take. The choices they make. The way they dress. And of course, they also affect the choices actors make in performance.

Take a moment to observe the people around you, and you will notice that this is true in life as well. People do bizarre, unexpected, sometimes even incomprehensible things in pursuit of the things they want.

It is the unique way that they do these things that distinguish these people from anyone else in the world, that make you love them or hate them or fear them or desire them.

Take away that want, and all you have is quirk for it’s own sake– a paper thin shell with nothing underneath, like an M&M without the chocolately center.

Let your character pursue the want, and all the other aspects of his or her personality will reveal themselves to you. And when you crack that shell open, you’ll have all kinds of deliciousness to enjoy.

OBJECTIVE AND SUPEROBJECTIVE

Within a scene, the wants that drive a character are called Objectives. They can be as simple as a cold glass of water, or as profound as to reconnect with a lost love. The only thing that matters is that the character wants it desperately, and is willing to go to extraordinarily lengths to get it.

Within a larger movie, these small objectives point toward a larger Superobjective, a big want which governs in some way every choice the character makes, and everything that happens to the character, within the structure of the movie.

As an actor breaks down a script, he or she will find the Objective and Superobjective underlying every line, every action, and even every image, in order to craft a memorable character that pursues those wants in unique but believable ways.

Using an actor’s approach to think about your own characters in this way will not only help you to discover the qualities that differentiate your character, but also point you toward the structural moments to which your plot must build.

Once you learn what your character wants most desperately, you know what you can take away from them, how to test them, and how to make them change. And that, in fact, is the essence of screenplay structure.

ACTORS GET MOVIES MADE

The craft of the writer and the craft of the actor are inextricably intertwined, not just by process, but by business as well. Whether you’re producing your movie yourself, or trying to sell it to a big Hollywood studio, to get your movie made you need to be able to attract great actors. And that means knowing how to think like an actor, so that you can create the kinds of roles they want to play.

Objective and Superobjective are just the beginning. The more you know about the actors craft, the better writer you will become at creating characters, and the more likely you will be to attract the kind of star who can bring your movie to fruition.

Yet strangely, these two interrelated fields are often taught as if they were separate disciplines, with actors receiving little training in writing, and writers receiving even less training in acting.

That’s why all of my screenwriting workshops are fundamentally woven around acting concepts, as well as ideas tied to Jungian psychology, directing, and even editing and cinematography.

Learn more about them here:  SCREENWRITING WORKSHOPS

Don’t throw away the baby with the bath-water. As with any screenwriting book, there are some good things to be discovered in Robert McKee’s “Story”. But there’s also a lot that can be misleading, confusing or even just plain wrong. And for young writers who take his words as gospel, McKee can pose a real danger to finding your voice, truly understanding your character, and discovering the organic structure of your screenplay.

I believe that a big part of that is because McKee teaches screenwriting from a critic’s perspective, rather than that of a writer. He teaches rules (he’d call them “principles”) extrapolated from finished screenplays, rather than the process that the writer uses to get there. In McKee’s bluster, it’s easy to forget that screenwriting is a complex art, not a simple A-Z process to which he holds the lock and key.

Here’s a Vanity Fair article that points out some of his flaws, particularly related to his discussion of the horror genre:

Read the Vanity Fair article.

Thanks to Joshua Dysart for sending this article my way!

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but thought this David Brooks NY Times Article about the film was an interesting discussion of character. I’ll weigh in with my thoughts after I’ve seen the film.

This article comes in response to a question I was recently asked by a screenwriting student.

I think it describes a challenge almost all screenwriters face: finding balance.

Balance between the planning phases and the writing phases of creating your screenplay.

Balance between the demands of your life and the demands of your writing passion.

Read on and find some suggestions!

There are just a few spots left in my upcoming Write! Write! Write! classes, so if you haven’t signed up yet, make sure to do so right away to reserve your spot!

WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!
Monday Night Workshop, begins September 14th
Tuesday Afternoon Workshop, begins September 22nd.

QUESTION:

“My question is in regards to a story I have been working on for a few years now… I have been writing and writing and I’ve done outlines and character beats and research and all of the back story I can think of and I am still at an impasse. I’ve put the story down for the past four months and have now just started a new internship and really struggling to find the time to write it. There is time, granted, but not enough I feel to adequately devote to what this story needs to separate itself from being mediocre… Is this fair to my story?”

ANSWER:

Not having time is a game we often play with ourselves when we’re feeling nervous about writing.

If you think about it, even if you just wrote one page a day, by the end of the year you’d have 365 pages. That’s three screenplays! (or more likely three drafts of one screenplay).

In your case, it sounds like the thing that’s really locked you up is trying to figure out the whole movie before you’ve actually written it.

The beauty of writing is that it is an act of discovery, so my advice to you is to let that pressure go. Stop planning, and start writing.

Come up with a goal that you know you can achieve, one page, half a page, 15 minutes a day, whatever it is. And then go and achieve it. To give yourself even more support in your endeavor, you may want to sign up for a good screenwriting class that helps you out with deadlines, writing techniques, and quality feedback on your writing.

At this point, your goal should be quantity, not quality. You can’t control whether pages come out great or mediocre. But you can control how many pages come out. And the more pages you generate, the more chance you have of stumbling onto something truly wonderful.

The good news is, once you have it on the page, you can make any scene better. But you can’t do anything while it’s only in your head.

There’s only one way to learn– by doing– writing the scene, figuring out what’s working, and what’s not working, and then learning the skills you need to make the stuff that doesn’t work fabulous.

So let all that preparation you’ve done slide to the back of your brain, engage your writing mind, and see where your characters take you. Write the scenes that seem the most fun, or the ones that scare you the most.

Focus on quantity, not quality, and the quality will come.

If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to check out one of my upcoming classes.

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SCREENWRITING?

Have a question about screenwriting? Email me here and your question could be featured in a future newsletter.

It may be hard to tell from some of the stuff you see coming out of Hollywood, but believe it or not, no one sets out to be a mediocre writer.

No writer dreams of writing that crappy screenplay with the unintelligible plot. No writer fantasizes about creating paper thin characters, canned dialogue, or predictable plot points.

As writers, we share a common desire: we want to write great scripts, fascinating characters, brilliant dialogue, and breathtaking stories that catch people and won’t let them go. We want to say something that matters to us, have our voices heard, and create the kind of movies we grew up loving.

All writers want to be great writers.

Unfortunately, for many writers this need to create something great is actually the biggest obstacle to their writing.

That’s because, as much as we’d all like to, no can can control the quality of their writing.

Occasionally, magic does happen. You wake up one day inspired. You know the story you want to tell, and somehow it just pours out of you, almost like someone else was creating the story and all you have to do is type out the words.

But more often, that magic is elusive. You wake up inspired with a brilliant premise, but feel like you don’t know how to execute it. Or you discover a character that intrigues you, but haven’t the slightest clue what his or her story will be, or how you’re going to find it.

When the words you’re actually writing don’t seem to match the dream of greatness you’re holding in your mind, it’s hard to see yourself as a writer.

You start to feel stuck, lost, or just plain blocked. You may even start to wonder if you really have what it takes to be a writer…

Nonsense.

The desire for greatness is the most dangerous desire for writers.

When you hold it too closely, you not only take all the joy out of writing, but also make it increasingly unlikely that you will ever achieve the greatness you’re seeking.

It’s not that writers shouldn’t strive for great writing. It’s that writing is a process, and to actually create something great, you must first give yourself the freedom to play.

Picasso said that he spent for years trying to paint like Raphael, and the rest of his life trying to paint like a child.

The same is true for writers. Creating something great often means letting go of your goals for your writing (and the judgment that goes with it), and simply allowing yourself to play like a child.

That’s the goal of my new “Write! Write! Write!” Screenwriting Workshops.

Each workshop begins with a special in-class writing exercise, designed to set your judgment aside, unlock your creativity, and make writing fun again.

These playful scenes then become the basis for inspiring lectures, designed to not only teach you the craft of screenwriting, but also help the build the skills you need to take your most creative scenes, and transform them into the kind of screenplay you’ve always dreamed of writing.

Take your first step today.

I was recently giving a lecture on using hypnosis to combat writer’s block, and was asked a profound question by one of the students.

She explained that her block had nothing to do with fear of writing, procrastination, the desire to get every scene “right” or any of the other common causes of writer’s block that students were describing.

Her problem that she simply didn’t know what happened next in her story. She was just plain stuck. And she felt like until she figured it out, she couldn’t write another word.

How many writers have felt EXACTLY like that?

More than you think.

It’s easy to convince ourselves that if we don’t know what is going to happen, that there’s no way to move forward in our writing.

But the truth is exactly the opposite. And if you want proof, all you have to do is think about your life.

How often do any of us have any idea what is actually going to happen?

When you wake up in the morning, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you that day. Sure, you may have a general idea of what you THINK is going to happen, what USUALLY happens, or what you’d LIKE to happen.

But the truth is, you have no idea what’s going to happen in your life.

There’s an old adage– if you want to make God laugh, make plans.

The same wisdom that is true for life is also true for character.

You don’t need to know what’s going to happen to get out of bed in the morning. You simply get up, because you have to. You live your life. You meet that new person. You fall in love. You get the big promotion or the new job.

You deal with pain from unexpected places. Death, sickness, loss. Unexpected phone calls. Friends and family in trouble.

Wonderful things and terrible things happen all the time, and we rarely see them coming.

And yet we keep on living.

So does your character.

So when you think you’ve run out of story, understand that you are fooling yourself. Life doesn’t work like that. And neither does story.

Get your character out of bed. Just like you get out of bed every morning.

Think about what he or she wants. What your character’s hopes, dreams and expectations are for the day.

And then ask yourself, what’s the BEST or WORST thing that can happen.

Write that scene, allow your character to deal with it, and you won’t have to find your structure. Your structure will find you.

From Jacob Krueger’s Screenwriting Newsletter

The following is an expanded version of an exercise I created for my screenwriting students.

It is designed to replace the negative feelings often associated with writing with positive feelings of excitement and success.

As a result, you’ll not only find yourself writing more consistently. You’ll also discover that you feel better about your writing, and the role of writing in your life.

STEP 1
Set an achievable goal for your writing this week. Something you absolutely KNOW you can EASILY accomplish. 2 pages a day. 10 minutes a day. A page a week. Whatever you know you can make work within your busy lifestyle.

NOTE: For this exercise to work, your goal must be quantifiable. In other words, there must be an objective way of determining whether or not you achieved it.

For example “write every day” is not necessarily a quantifiable goal, because it’s not clear how much writing makes this successful. Write for 7 minutes every day or writing one page a day is, because when you complete your 7 minutes or one page, you know you have achieved your goal.

Similarly “write a good scene” is not a quantifiable goal because you would have to subjectively judge whether the scene was good or not, and opinions might vary. “Write three versions of the scene I am currently struggling with” is a quantifiable goal, because regardless of subjective opinion, you can know for certain when you have achieved it.

STEP 2
Now, take whatever goal you set for yourself and CUT IT IN HALF, to make it even more easily achievable. Write it down and post it in your writing space. This is your goal for this week.

STEP 3
Break out your calendar. Schedule the time that you will use to accomplish the goal. Get specific. What time will you start? What time will you end? Will you write every day or on specific days. Where will you go to do this writing? How will you set up your day and your schedule to make sure you are not interrupted. Write it down, and make it non-negotiable. Treat the appointment just like you would treat an important appointment with your boss or a client at work.

STEP 4
Now follow your schedule throughout the week. Remember, when you achieve that goal, you are DONE. You can choose to continue if you wish. But you can also choose to close down your laptop, and feel that sense of accomplishment of a full writing day (even if your goal was only a few minutes or a quarter page of writing).

Accomplishing and CELEBRATING achievable goals is one of the most powerful things you can do to integrate writing into your life. So do something nice for yourself after each successful writing day, just like you’d hope a boss or a co-worker would do after a big meeting. Compliment yourself. Treat yourself to something. Remember, the reward should be equally great whether you simply meet your goal or end up exceeding it.

If there is a day when you do not meet your goal, accept it and MOVE ON. Don’t increase your goal for the next day. Don’t punish yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Just remind yourself that you will do better on your next writing day, and concentrate on meeting the goal you originally set out for yourself on the day you scheduled to do so.

STEP 5
At the end of the week, evaluate- did you achieve your goals? Use the criteria below to set your goals for the next week, and repeat steps 3-5.

IF YOU FELL SHORT OF YOUR GOAL

RELAX! This is not the end of the world. It just means you set your initial goal too high.

Whatever you do, DON’T punish yourself. It will not make you a better writer to beat yourself up. All it will do is take the joy out of writing, and make your resistance even stronger.

Instead, take note of what you DID accomplish and congratulate yourself for that. If you expected to write 7 pages, and only wrote 3, celebrate the three pages you have written. If you expected to write for an hour one day, and only wrote for ten minutes, take a moment to appreciate the ten minutes of writing you accomplished.

Then, adjust your goals for next week to reflect what you now KNOW you are capable of doing. Whatever you successfully wrote this week becomes the goal for next week.

For example, if you’d set a goal of seven pages, and only wrote three, your goal for next week would be three pages.

If you planned to write for an hour, and only wrote for ten minutes, your goal for next week would be ten minutes.

Remember, the point of this exercise is not to have BIG goals, it’s to have ACHIEVABLE goals, so that writing can start to feel like a joyful, successful, and integrated part of your life.

IF YOU ACHIEVED YOUR GOAL

Great job! You are already establishing a rhythm for yourself, and it will soon pay big dividends in your writing.

Set the SAME goal for next week, repeat steps 3-5, and keep that rhythm going.

IF YOU EXCEEDED YOUR GOAL

Congratulations! Often, by setting small goals that we know we can accomplish, we set the stage for even bigger success.

To get the most out of your writing, you can now increase your goals for next week, to reflect what you actually are capable of accomplishing.

Set the amount of writing you accomplished THIS week as the goal for NEXT week, and repeat steps 3-5.

In this way, your goals can grow as your ability grows, and writing can become organically integrated into your life.

Remember, if there ever comes a time you fall short, you must adjust the goal for the following week back to the level that you actually accomplished.

Repeat this process for a full month, and notice what changes for you. Send me an email, or post a comment to this blog, and tell me all about it.

Jake

The other day, a student asked me a thought provoking question. It’s a problem faced by so many writers that I decided to include it and my answer in this month’s newsletter.

What do you do when you’re so fed up with your writing, you’re ready to scrap your whole project?

Whoa! Pull those pages out of the trash can– at least until you try these simple tricks to re-energize your writing and get your project rocking again.

QUESTION:

I’m at a fork in the road. I over thought my script and my writing has frozen.

I’ve just been doing writing exercises. I feel like they are closer to “real” writing than what I’ve been doing with these scripts. I just write whatever bubbles up. It feels freer and overall much more enjoyable than the feature writing. It’s like starting a sketch and just drawing whatever comes to mind.

I know when I focus on the script I’m still writing from a conscious level. And I don’t get anything out of it. Its frustrating, depressing, etc.

These are the two sides: When I write the exercises I have fun and don’t care much about where they go. When I write the feature I don’t have fun and I worry about what’s the best/most beautiful stuff put in there.

But writing the exercises I feel like I don’t know if it’s any good. When I write the feature, at least I “think” its good writing.

So my question is, “What are your thoughts on these two sides?”

AND

I have a new idea that I’ve thought about writing for a couple of years now. I’m not sure if I should scrap the old story and start this new one or not?

ANSWER:

The question you’re struggling with is one of the most profound ones to answer as you make your transition from amateur to professional writing.

ALL writers have tons of scripts sitting in their files that are not completed. Sometimes you hit a wall. Sometimes you lose steam. Sometimes it just takes a month or even a year of working on something else to find your way back in.

There is nothing wrong with setting a script aside, UNLESS it starts to become a habit. What happens to some writers is that every time they hit a roadblock, they start something new. While this is great for keeping up the flow– and just fine for writers who are doing it as a hobby, for people with professional aspirations, it can actually become a form of writers block.

Professional writers need to finish scripts. So here’s a little trick that I use to fool my brain into finishing scripts.

Work on two scripts at a time.

This way, you can honor your writing brain’s need for a break every once in awhile– while still knowing that you are progressing toward your goals.

What you’ll soon notice is that when things get hard on one script, the other script becomes incredibly appealing. It doesn’t even feel like work anymore. So you set your current script down, and start up on the other one again.

Before long, things get hard on the second script, and suddenly the problems with the first one don’t seem so overwhelming in comparison. So you switch back, and once again keep that momentum going, accepting and respecting your process on each screenplay, and integrating it with the demands of the industry.

As a nice side benefit, you’ll find that the scripts start to inform one another– as you build on things you learned writing one script to improve things in the other.

In addition, you may also want to set aside a day to just play (as you’ve been doing with the exercises), without worrying about either script. Playing around like this keeps your writing brain limber, and often leads to huge breakthroughs in your projects. Think of it as a valuable part of your routine (like stretching before you exercise).

Keep the main focus on those two scripts (and no more than two!) and before you know it, you’ll have two finished drafts.

A final word– remember that it’s not important for either of these drafts to be GOOD. What’s important is for them to be DONE. Once you have a full draft on paper, you can always go back later and revise– and even use the two script trick again in the editing process. Until your script is on paper, there is nothing you can do to improve it. But once it’s out there, the possibilities are endless.

Got a Question About Screenwriting?

Email me here, and your question could be featured in a future issue of my newsletter.

For about as long as there have been screenwriting books, young writers have been taught that movies have a three act structure. Each act is viewed as 30 to 60 page chunk of the plot and when they’re all assembled together, they provide a beginning, middle, and an end for your story.

Countless script doctors, critics, teachers, and producers have used this structure to break down great movies, and analyze how they are put together.

But while this may be a great way of looking at a finished script from a critical perspective, it’s not particularly useful to screenwriters. When you’re beginning a new project, it’s not exactly groundbreaking news that your story is going to need a beginning, middle and an end. The real challenge is figuring out how to structure your story in a way that captures the essence of your character’s journey.

Trying to use three act structure to create the story of your movie is like trying to sprint through a marathon. You may start off strong, but by the time you hit the middle of the story, you’ll most likely be running out of steam. The plot starts to feel external, manufactured, predictable or diffuse. The ideas just aren’t coming anymore. Or you find yourself spinning off in all kinds of directions that take you away from your main character and the story you were telling.

This is a common malady. It’s called “getting lost in the second act.” And it’s killed more good screenplays than any Hollywood bigshot.

That’s why I came up with Seven Act Structure.

Seven Act Structure is not for producers. It’s not for critics, or professors, or development executives.

Seven Act Structure is for writers.

To understand Seven Act Structure, you need to start by understanding the idea of an act.

An act is not just about plot.

That’s because great movies are about much more than plot. They’re about interesting characters going on profound journeys that change them forever.

Think about any movie you’ve loved and you’ll know this is true. The details of the plot get fuzzy with time, but those powerful moments stay with you forever.

So rather than thinking of an act as something you “fill” with plot, I’d like to encourage you to think of it as a way of tracking the journey your character is undertaking, and the way that journey is forever changing your character.

Each act is just a step in your character’s change.

People don’t change easily, and your character shouldn’t either. Take a moment to think about what it would take to make you completely change your own life, how many fears you’d have to overcome, and how many challenges you’d have to face, and you’ll have a taste of the kind of resistance your character is fighting. Structure evolves as a way of pushing your character toward a profound change– whether he or she wants it or not.

So as you develop your structure, you can think of each act as one small step in the radical change your character is undergoing.

When you begin to think of an act in this way, one thing will jump out at you pretty quickly.

Trying to use three act structure to create a film means you are trying to take a character through the most profound journey in his or her life in only THREE STEPS.

That’s 30-60 pages per step.

And that’s a lot of pages!

No wonder writers tend to get lost in the second act!

Seven Act Structure is a new way of looking at structure from a character’s perspective, allowing you to break down the character’s change into manageable chunks, and to give yourself a structure you can actually use.

Because of the unique “engine” built into the structure, it’s impossible to run out of steam. It keeps your focus where it should be, on your main character.

And best of all, it lines up perfectly with a studio’s “three act” expectations, so the Hollywood big shots will never know the difference.

If you’d like to learn more about Seven Act Structure, I invite you to check out one of my upcoming classes.

Young writers often get obsessed with writing for the audience. Even in the earliest drafts, their focus is on sneaking in tons of exposition about their characters, layering themes or symbolic motifs, or carefully outlining the mechanics for a surprise ending they think will be the key to selling their script.

It’s no wonder that this happens. After all, these are the things that film scholars rave about and film studies classes teach– complex psychological portraits and deep thematic importance, screenplay structures, beat sheets and outlines.

So why do movies written this way so often come out flat? Why does it seem like nothing is happening, when the writer has put so much effort into building the psychological life of the character? Why do all the themes and motifs just feel like smoke and mirrors? Why is no one reacting to the surprise ending you’ve worked so hard to craft?

It’s not because these things aren’t important. They are. It’s because you’re focusing on them TOO EARLY.

At the beginning of the process there’s only one thing that’s important: the profound journey your character is undertaking and the irrevocable changes in your character’s life that go along with it.

Thematic ideas are not something you impose on your script. They’re something you discover as you get to know your character. Story structure is not something you plot out before you’ve written a single word, it’s something that reveals itself to you as your character’s journey unfolds.

Until you figure out your character’s journey, exposition will only slow your movie down, no matter how profound, exciting, or psychologically fascinating your character’s past may be.

“But what about my outline?” you may be thinking. “I already know my character’s journey!”

No way. Not likely.

If you think you already know your character’s journey before you even sit down to write your character, it’s probably not a very profound journey. How could it be? You don’t even know who your character is yet! In fact, if you can predict your character’s journey before you even start writing, the chances are the audience can too.

What could be more boring? Not only for the audience, but for you as a writer.

Your outline may make you feel safe, but great writing is not about painting by numbers. It’s about stepping into your character, and taking a profound journey with her.

Kill your outline.

Get to know your character.

Decide out what she wants more than anything, and enjoy coming up with the most exciting, challenging, and inventive ways you can to make it hard for her to get it. Ask yourself, what’s the best or the worst thing that could happen at this moment? And see how your character reacts when it does.

Forget about exposition or setting up things for the audience. You’ll have plenty of time for that later. For now, just let your character be herself, say what she would say in the situation, and do what she would do.

Forget about how it all fits together or what it all means. Instead just follow your character as she strives to get what she wants against impossible odds. Notice her specific behaviors. How she talks and acts differently than anyone else in the world. How she responds to things in unexpected ways. Notice how your dialogue suddenly feels more real and your characters actions more motivated and specific.

Notice how your character’s journey reveals itself to you.

Notice how a big surprise you never saw coming seems to bubble up from nowhere, and actually surprises you.

Of course, this is only the first step. There will come a time when you do need to focus on your audience. When you need to set things up and pay things off, layer in theme, and hone your structure.

But not right now. Right now is the time to keep your focus on what’s really important.

Trust your character.

Kill your outline.

Ready to learn a new approach to screenwriting? Sign up now!

I recently had a student ask me a profound question. After chugging along excitedly for a month on a first draft of a new screenplay, he had found himself paralyzed by a terrifying question:

“What if it isn’t GOOD?”

I think we can all imagine his horror– the kind of horror only a writer can feel, after pouring everything you’ve got into something that may not turn out to be what you dreamed it would be.

The horror of not knowing. And possibly, not wanting to know…

This is what I like to call the “Emily Dickinson Syndrome”– the urge to hide your writing away where you can never find out what’s good or bad about it.

It’s the same urge that keeps writers from finishing some of their best projects, for fear of not living up to their own expectations.

It’s that same little voice in your head that comes up with the excuse just when you’re ready to sit down to write, sign up for a writing class, or get your script out to an agent or producer.

It’s the fear of being judged as NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Let me say this loud and clear:

In order to write well. You have to be willing to write badly. And you’ve got to be willing to show your work, not always knowing how people are going to respond.

Writing is a lot like mining. It’s hard work. You can’t always see where you’re going. You’ve got to sort through a lot of stuff. And most of it’s not gold.

But if you don’t bring it up to the surface where others can see it, you’ll never know what you have.

Becoming a great writer is not about having some kind of secret blessing that other people are missing. It’s about generating as many pages as you can, and getting really good at noticing the flashes of brilliance within them.

As you become more skilled at excavation, you’ll learn how to follow these unpolished nuggets and shimmering dust until you find the big vein of gold you’re really looking for. That’s the moment when your script suddenly seems to be writing itself.

You’ve just got to be willing to do a lot of digging to get there.

And every once in awhile, you’ve got to take a step back from the process, come up for air, and check out what you’ve got.

The question is, where will you surface?

To really know if your writing is working, you’ve got to show it to people who know what they’re talking about.

To the untrained eye, gold doesn’t look a lot like gold. In fact, it looks a lot more like rock. But when it’s polished, shined, hammered, and shaped, its value is unmistakable.

Don’t get your initial feedback from just anybody. Get it from someone who’s at least as good an excavator as your are. Take a class. Find a professional. Or you may end up throwing out your best scenes, simply because they’re not yet polished enough for a layman’s eyes.

Ready to take the next step?

Classes Start June 8th. Sign up today. http://www.jacobkrueger.com

The following are six of the most destructive words writers can say to themselves:

“Maybe I Don’t Really Want This…”

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably uttered these words more times than you’d like to admit.

A day spent procrastinating. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

A missed deadline. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

That tortured feeling of sitting in front of your keyboard, wondering if you actually have anything to say. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

Let’s put this myth to rest right now.

OF COURSE YOU WANT THIS!

No one spends that much time and energy beating themselves up about something they don’t truly care about.

Think about the things you use for procrastination: dishes, vacuuming, laundry, errands, email, television, the internet and a thousand other things you don’t really care about but spend so much time doing.

If a day went by and you never logged onto the internet, you probably wouldn’t spend the next week furiously bashing yourself over your lack of real dedication to Facebook.

If a day went by and you never switched on the cable box, you wouldn’t spend hours morosely pondering your ability to make the sacrifices necessary to be a reality show viewer.

Of course you want this!

If writing was really just a hobby for you, you wouldn’t be agonizing over your missed writing days, abandoned deadlines, and whatever it is you feel your writing is lacking. You’d simply find another hobby.

Usually when a writer is thinking about giving up, it stems from plain old fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of trying and failing. Fear that your greatest dreams and fiercest desires won’t come true. Sadly it’s often the things we want most desperately that we’re most afraid to admit to ourselves.

So, next time you find yourself asking that dreaded question, beating yourself up over your lack of dedication, lack of skill, lack of discipline or lack of inspiration, accept what it really means.

It means you’re a writer.

It’s not an easy life, but it’s a good one, and it’s yours.

Admit it now. And set it to rest.

You want this. You want this badly. And you are going to pursue it.

There are days you are going to fall short. Days you will miss your deadlines. And days you will feel lost and uninspired. Questioning “Maybe I don’t really want this…” is not going to protect you from those days.

It’s only going to make you feel worse, by undermining the dedication that could get you back on track.

And who are you fooling anyway?

So next time you hear that familiar question bubbling up in your head, just go ahead and laugh it off. Nobody said this was going to be easy. And not even the best writers are perfect every day. Take a moment to remind yourself about just how badly you want this, and then find something you can do right now to bring yourself closer to achieving it.

Take a step toward your real goal, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly those doubts begin to lose their power.

The best way to start is with something small. Grab your notepad right now and spend a few minutes jotting down notes or ideas. Make a date with a writer friend to sit down and write together. Or better yet, sign up for a Screenwriting Workshop.

Accept that you want this. And then accept this:

Most writers don’t have trouble writing. They have trouble starting.

How will you start today?