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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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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.

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. All of the greatest writers have had an instinctual understanding of the actors 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.

And every great actor has an instinctive understanding of a writer’s craft as well: 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.

As any of you who have taken my classes know, for precisely this reason I’ve always integrated acting concepts into my writing classes.

Now, I’m offering a brand new class, which will allow you to experience screenwriting from the other side of the page:

ACTING FOR WRITERS
An Acting Class With A Writing Twist

Next Offered: Fall 2010

READ MORE

CONTACT US to Join Waiting List

Under the guidance of acclaimed director and teacher Isabel Milenski, you will discover how to knock down the walls between you and your characters through the magic of performance.

You’ll not only learn how an actor approaches a play or screenplay, you’ll have the experience of physically inhabiting a character, taking with you a new perspective that will forever change the way you see both writing and acting.

So, whether you’ve always dreamed of being on the stage or screen, or simply want to deepen your own writing by understanding the actor’s craft, you’ve got to take this class!

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

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.

From Jacob Krueger’s Screenwriting Newsletter July 2009

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

From Jacob Krueger’s Screenwriting Newsletter
June 1, 2009

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 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.

From: Jacob Krueger’s Screenwriting Newsletter
May 2009

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? Classes start June 8th!

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?