Just Effing Entertain Me

Three Ways to Rocket Fuel Your Script

Clear, clean, concise pages that deliver the theme and the central conceit of your script (the big upshot) on every single page are crucial. Why, just this weekend while teaching a great workshop at The Writers Store, we spent a lot of time working on pitching our scripts…first in a 30-second block (nervewracking!) and then in a 10-minute block. Much gnashing of teeth and red faces and laughter ensued, as you can imagine. Pitching is hard! How can you spit out what your entire script is about in 30 seconds? Ask the Angry Alien Bunnies. (I just blew 30 minutes of your afternoon – you’re welcome!)

As I told my students, I have never seen a writer with a long, babbling, confusing logline then actually have a clear, crisp script. Doesn’t happen. There is a direct relationship between an inability to pitch the script quickly and easily and creating pages that do not read quickly and easily.

In other words, if in your own mind, you can’t just spit out the basic upshot of your script, then your pages are also meandering and confused. I have never seen it another way. Writers often lean on the excuse that they are just no good at pitching. Yes, I have seen writers for whom pitching really is an almost pathologically uncomfortable experience. Those writers get a free pass. Something deeper going on there that I am not qualified to address. But for most writers, when they say they’re no good at pitching what they do not realize but are actually saying is that they do not have a clear idea of what their script is about.

When you pitch, you have to think in terms of the Big Moments and Set Pieces that are the Markers of the Cool Moments that all illustrate the path of the BLOODY UPSHOT.

Here’s an example: People talk to (and sometimes at) me all day every day. Like many people (you may feel this way too) I am sometimes so immersed in waves of talk talk talk, information information information that I have developed a sharp ability to blur out most of it and only listen for keywords. We all do that. Remember the great Far Side comic, “blah blah Ginger?”

My teenagers sometimes speak to me circuitously at great length, usually when I am in the midst of something else. I always say “just give me the upshot.” Need to borrow car. Fine. Got it. The ability to give the upshot points to a knowing of what one wants in that moment. The ability to pitch your script concisely tells me you knew (or know) what you’re writing about.

Time after time, as we go through the notoriously difficult pitching day that I do in my workshops, I see students go from frustrated, embarrassed sputterers to empowered, concise, psyched-up writers because we go through a bit of a my sister! my daughter! my sister! bootcamp until we get down to brass tacks: EXACTLY what are you writing about and why.

When writers are really, really pressed to spit out the answer to that question, we finally find the passion behind the whole story (or not!) and it is when you get the writer a little riled up like that that I hear the answers I want to hear – clear, concise, impassioned answers. It’s about how much it would suck to have to take care of an aging parent from whom you have been estranged for years (I know, THE SAVAGES, but that was the relationship between the siblings, I would argue).

Being able to articulate the upshot quickly and clearly – no excuses – means you have a premise that is working. And further, it means that your pages are going to work, too. Don’t forget, the longest distance is not between Earth and the edge of the universe, it’s between your mind and the pages. Your pages are the delivery system for the amazing stuff in your imagination – if there is a disconnect between that, and if it’s not on the page, you might as well go write your movie on an alley wall for all the good it’s going to do you.

There are three things that can add rocket fuel to your script pages and make them crisp, clear and powerful:

1. Being able to pitch the whole idea in 30 seconds

2. Knowing what the theme and the central dramatic question of your story is

3. Using every word at your disposal to layer the conceit and the theme into the script on every single page.

How about we dig deeper into this subject later this week? Stick around and we will!

What’s YOUR Story, Morning Glory?

Yesterday evening, as my daughter and I had dinner with her best friend and sister, we traded stories around the table of our adventures, misfortunes and – The Bee Swarm (it’s painful), one sister began to tell a story but was interrupted by the other with a emphatic – HEY! That’s MY story! And it was. It was her story because the dramatic center of the story happened to and had the most meaning for her.

They say that every writer really has only one story that they tell and that they tell it over and over again.

Charles Dickens wrote about cruelty, hardship and injustice to children.

Mark Twain wrote about the comic buffoonery of the American spirit.

D.H. Lawrence wrote about desperate yearning caused by class divisions.

Somerset Maugham wrote about his physical deformity and how he never felt he fit in.

Philip Roth writes about his fear, loathing and awe of his masculinity and Jewish identity.

What is YOUR story? What do you find that you write about, time after time, even if the plot changes? I promise you that it’s something pretty deep-seated and something to do with the theme of your arc as a human in this life. It’s something that you need to understand, come to grips with or accept. And if you need to grapple with it, others do too – thus the universality of art.

Understanding what YOUR story is can help you with something else. It can help you make sure that in every script, not only do you have the theme and compelling question of that script down, but you are addressing yet another aspect or facet of Your Story in general. Nobody wants to hear the same thing from you over and over. No, we want to identify your voice and your style but we want to hear everything you have to say on the topic of Your Story.

So what’s your story, morning glory? As my new British business partner* would say – give it a think today.

*more on his AWESOMENESS in coming days.