Just Effing Entertain Me

Best and Brightest Writer’s Salon

Take a good look at these faces. These are just a few of the best, brightest, most talented and committed writers I have worked with in Los Angeles. If I could add writers from other states and countries, we’d have to make a pyramid or use bleachers to fit everyone in! I won’t label this pic with names just in case any of these brilliant eggheads has any dubious or notorious misdeeds they need to hide from the general public

Today we met for our maiden Sunday Salon. Our first gathering, we’ll be honest, was a cocktail party. But starting now, we are meeting once each month for this writing super group
during which we meet for a short writing exercise or lesson and give each other updates on our writing statuses. Then we have snacks and we write. Before we adjourn for the month, each writer sits with me to confirm goals to be achieved before the next meeting.

I can’t tell you how wonderful the energy in that room was today. I love my job – great writers humble me. Membership in the Best & Brightest is intentionally very exclusive; these writers are all on a very high level of their writing potential. I have worked with some for years. I’d love to host a beginner or intermediate writing group down the line. Let me know if you’re interested!

Buy My Script. Now.

Then – and only then – is it time to try to find an agent or manager who believes your scripts are competitive in the marketplace. Notice I didn’t say brilliant; I said competitive in the marketplace. Because Hollywood is one big hurly-burly marketplace of buying and selling. The wares are stories. The agent or manager who represents you is the barker at a stall, trying to hawk your wares. And the only way he or she makes money, when they pack up their booth at the end of the day, is if they can sell your script.

So you arrive on your camel, from the hot, dry desert with your wares – will you sell this for me? The agent or manager is going to look at your script, kick it some, check its teeth and make a decision. Man, that market is hot and tiring – am I gonna make some coin on this? Because I have those four other stories that are pretty bright and shiny. So why this one? Why this writer?

The marketplace is there – that’s quite real. You can smell the spices and hear the barkers shouting even now, can’t you? But you cannot take a shortcut to it. And not everyone who gets there is going to see their wares for sale. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The mystery, the surprise, the sheer adrenaline of trying?

From Networking to Netgiving

Networking is a critical part of a writer’s life. In fact, networking is part of everybody’s life, when it comes down to it. We all need favors, we do them in return, we borrow an egg or recommend a gardener or drive someone to the hospital. It takes a village.

But in the business world and specifically in the world of creatives, networking can sometimes take on a different, darker connotation. I seek you out and meet you because you can DO something for me. Primarily something to do with money or jobs or status.

Can you read my script?
Can you introduce me to someone you know who seems important?
Can you get my script to your agent?
Or your friend’s agent?
Or your manager/lawyer/celebrity friend?
Can you have coffee with me so I can take up your time for free?

Networking. Working the net. Climbing upward.

For some, it’s distastefull, full stop, and opportunities are passed by. For others, it’s POWER networking, or The Gimme Game and connections are not only not formed, they are strained and desperate. GIMME.

But what if we change the definition of networking to something entirely different? What if we were to call it netgiving? Ah! A different beast! What if a networking event were an event at which you ask the object of your networking what you can do for them? Is there something you can offer to trade for their services? Are you an artisan, or do you have a skill that is unusual or valuable? How about just offering a polite, sincere, intelligent conversation? How about asking for nothing at all? You’re more likely to elicit a friendly, genuine response and you can make effort to stay in touch.

My crazily gifted Australian web designer just had his excellent sci-fi script handed to a director I know who is looking for a good writer. He’s now interviewed and brainstormed to get a job writing a treatment for the director. Why? Because he met me at a party and ingratiated himself aggressively? No. Because he offered to convert a document for me several years ago and did so quickly and cheerfully. Then he began doing work on my website. Cheerfully and quickly. We became friends. And now it’s my turn to pay him back. And so I am.

A couple of years ago I was picking up a number of heavy boxes from the printer to bring to the CS Expo. As I struggled with the boxes, a young man offered to help me to my car. He, as it turns out, was a writer. He loaded up the boxes and said he’d see me at Expo. Which he did. He never asked one thing from me. He just offered to help. Fast forward and we email frequently, stay in touch, and if there is ever anything I can do for the kid, you know I will in a heartbeat, whether that means giving him feedback on a script, making an introduction for him or recommending him as a candidate for an assistant or PA job.

Do not ask what other writers can do for you – ask what you can do for them. It’s a steep climb, and we’re all standing in the rain waiting for lightning to strike. Why not toss the rope down to the next guy so we all scale this wall together?

By shifting the paradigm, networking becomes netgiving; rather than asking for someone’s energy, you are giving of your own. Do we all know what happens when we do things with that intentionality? That’s right. Comes back tenfold. All in due time.

Seen through a different lens, giving, not getting is what networking is all about.

From Idea to the Page to the Statistic

The thing with me is that I am pretty straightforward. I like to get to the heart of the matter. I really do. I have grown impatient with effluvia and excess verbiage. The more I travel the more I appreciate being an American and the way we like to cowboy our way straight into conversations.

I may have mentioned briefly and lightly that along with a couple of partners, I am looking at setting up a production company. It’s early days – this is why I haven’t made a formal announcement – but resultingly, as I speak with investors and colleagues, I get asked about the flow of scripts I see at The Script Department and the Silver Screenwriting Competition. And as I have had to really look at that flow of creativity and what comprises it, I have come to grips with some startling and hilarious stats:

If I see 1,000 scripts, there are, within that pile, maybe three to five that are worth discussing. And of that three to five, maybe two that look like viable projects. Wow, right?!

So what’s going on with the other 995 scripts culled from the general screenwriting public? Well, those would fall under categories about like this:

1) written in crayon
2) car wrecks
3) benign sleeping aid

Written in Crayon:
These are scripts that contain egregious errors. Language, grammar, spelling plus the story is totally weird and confusing. These are scripts written ostensibly in a basement in-between violent video games OR from the subway or Burger King after a particularly bad breakup or firing. This category generally includes Grand Guignol, screeds, rants and whining at length. This would comprise about 20% of 1000 submitted scripts.

Car Wrecks
These are flights of fancy, caffeine-fueled journeys into the psychedelic cobwebs of every movie you’ve ever seen because you love movies, maaaaan! No, you don’t use Final Draft, no, you haven’t read a book or taken a class but shit, you love Quentin Tarantino, and movies put you in in this like, reverie, and you had this THING happen when you were in the OUTBACK last year (okay it was a dream) that would make an AWESOME movie! This would account for a whopping 60% of submitted scripts.

Benign Sleeping Aid
This is a pretty good script. You know. It’s nice. Stuff happens. And. The characters were – you know what – good try! You know what – I think it’s a GREAT idea you’ve tried to write a script and I tell you what, it’s better than MOST other scripts and that is a mathematical FACT! I liked the montage where the happy couple has their honeymoon and……ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I fell asleep. This makes up about 15% of submitted scripts.

Then there are the rest. That top 5% or so. Which are original, transcendent, memorable, elegant and which actually could be a movie. But of that 5%, we do bump into the writers who insist that they and only they direct the movie. Or who make otherwise bad business moves about the script. Which leaves us with two or three with which to work.

You think you’ve never been in these categories but you have – most likely in the benign sleeping aid category. And look – I have too. It’s the normal, natural path of writers to traverse this landscape. And as I say in my classes, you can’t go over it, you can’t go around it – ya gots to go through it. But leave the land of the Lotus Eaters (read: denial) behind you and develop an awareness of what your script is really bringing to the table.

In my workshops, I hear some of the BEST ideas – I mean – every SINGLE class I teach I hear at least four or five ideas that get me REALLY excited to see the movie. At least. In my last class in San Francisco there were two great ideas and one in particular that I would kick down the door to see at the theater. WOW.

Now the question is, can the writers then execute the idea in a way that presents that story in an exciting, riveting, compelling, unique and original way? And I mean – I’m saying that format and execution are a GIVEN. I won’t even speak to the absence of those nuts and bolts because unless I’m distinctly on the topic, I waste your time or patronize you. You know you know what I mean.

Which category are you in? Do you have a great idea? Do you have a script worth a discussion among partners at a nascent production company looking to get investors and produce a movie? If the answer is no, you’re not at that point, that is A-okay with me. But you need an awareness of where you are, where you’re going and what it takes to come out on top.

It’s more than LOVING your story. It’s more than the cool music you listened to while writing. It’s not about you, at all, it’s about the story. And it’s hard to create enough distance to really stand back and make that assessment.

In every workshop I teach, at least one person comes away with the sad realization that what they’re writing or working on is not in fact a good story but about some breakup or firing. At least one. At least a couple of people realize that with some work, some new ideas and about 18 cups of coffee their pretty good idea is actually FANtastic. And of course, there are always a few people who, even with gentle hints and glazed over eyes, continue on their merry way and god love ‘em. You can bring a horse to water. Dance monkey, dance. And all of those other weird mixed metaphors that I like to use. It’s the cake, not the frosting. Eat your vegetables.

And here’s a cupcake with a flower on it since mama may have said things today you didn’t want to hear. That should make it aalll better.

Announcements

Hello everyone!

I will be teaching in Nashville, Tennessee on August 14th – 15th and in Boston on August 21st – 22th!

The workshops are unbelievably fun to teach and participate in; all reviews have been of the rave nature. I do know that for many of us, weekends are the only time be with our families or get some quiet writing time in, so knowing that schedules are tight with so many choices, I will be dividing up the workshop just a little bit, into more discrete chunks by adding some GREAT new options for taking one day of the workshop only OR both for a discounted price.

If you’re interested in attending either workshop free of charge in exchange for helping coordinate and promote the event in your area, please email me and we’ll chat!

And everyone may have noticed the new tab on the site, just above… See…j-u-s-t look up…yes, and over to the left a little…A brand new forum where you can chat with other screenwriters from all over the world for help, advice, support and victorious tellings of your adventures in the screenwriting trade. Who knows? Empires may rise and fall, epics may be written and surely friendships will be born.  As I always say, it’s all good.

There is of course one caveat and that is that you must all be excellent to one another because everybody knows mama has a no-jerk rule in the Julie-verse. Not that I need to say that.

Go forth and network!!

From the Mailbag: Origins of Hollywood Structure

How long do you think the 12-sequence/hero’s journey type screenplay structure has been around — and how much of it would you say is embedded within the ancient Greek universals of storytelling, versus simply being our own cultural expectations after seeing so many movies? How did the Hollywood story structure evolve, basically?

-Daniel in Delaware

That is such an interesting question, Daniel! We know that the three act structure is Greek in genesis and has borne out to be the standard ever since. One could also say (as Joseph Campbell and later, Christopher Vogler did) that the heroe’s journey is even older still, dating back to the earliest epic poems and stories of the beginning of recorded history. The oldest recorded of these is the epic poem Gilgamesh.

We also know that opera, in its original incarnation, was a wildly interactive form of entertainment in which audiences often threw fruit and other items when pleased or displeased. Talk about feedback! Traveling shows with puppets and magicians had to change up the entertainment at a rapid pace in order to keep audiences from walking off to another part of the village or the faire – entertainment was, for the entertainers, no laughing matter!

The breakdown of the three acts in films into smaller units or sequences dates back to the very first silent films, which were on small reels and had to be changed every 10 minutes or so. Theaters wanted audiences to stick around to watch the whole film, so each reel would end with a tiny little cliffhanger. Over time, audiences became accustomed to that rhythm of entertainment consumption, which dovetailed perfectly with the advent of television, when advertisers needed the small breaks to sell their wares.

Over time, as our collective ADD has mushroomed, and with so many things competing for our attention, writers have to keep the entertainment coming more than ever. Breaking your script down into sequences is a way of ensuring that you are creating set-ups, complications, reversals and resolutions that keep and hold attention.

Script Frenzy

Hello, everybody!

My life is so weird. I just looked out the window here on the Lot and somebody walked by with a limp crash test dummy. Then, moments later, Angela Kinsey of “The Office” walked by primly.  I’m waiting for the Eveready Bunny to make an appearance.

The beautiful, warm, gorgeous weekend approaches and I want to encourage all of you to SPEND IT INSIDE getting your Script Frenzy on! This is a really neat, crazy chance to really write your fingers to the bone.

What does mama always say? The secret to writing is WRITING! Wait, I didn’t say that, the Writers Boot Camp says that. Of which I am an alum. Ha! Six degrees of separation, there you go.

As a reminder, Effers who live in Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area or the Los Angeles area, you can sign up and take my Just Effing workshop on the following:

Chicago: Saturday & Sunday April 17th/18th at Columbia College

Los Angeles: Saturday & Sunday April 24/25th at The Writers Store (sign up here)

San Francisco: Saturday and Sunday, May 1st/2nd site TBA.\

Email Naomi if you are interested in signing up for any of these locations. ‘Course, I’ll be in Nashville and Vancouver this summer, so mark your calendar if you live in either of those areas.

I do need some help publicizing the event in all three locations so if you’d like a free admission to the course, please contact me ASAP. Did I say FREE ADMISSION. Yes, I did. 4 rlz.

The Opening Image

The first image your reader experiences can set the thematic and symbolic tone for the rest of your script.

If you don’t have access to the Flash player click the play button below.

Just Effing Workshops

Good morning, everyone! So I’m finally back from my travels, very much inspired and renewed by the fantastic students I encountered along the way. What fun we had, in every group, every time. It was the first time I have taught the Ménage à Flaw and the WWYD question and the Theme Finder, and the reaction of the students was phenomenal. In fact, London has started up the first ever Just Effing writing group! I feel like a proud mother! You guys KNOW I will come visit, right?

Speaking of proud mother, here are just a very few of the comments I received:

Julie knocked my socks off in terms of content, skills and tools and such a great attitude. A wealth of information and so inspiring! – R.D.

Excellent workshop – probably the best I’ve ever taken on the subject of screenwriting. – C.L.

The class simplified the art of structure (my biggest weakness) greatly for me, so if anyone else struggles with the same issue, I’d recommend! – C.C.

This was a great weekend that stripped away the pretentious analysis of screenwriting, focusing on SIMPLE, PRACTICAL ADVICE. Very refreshing…The pitching exercises and advice about breaking into Hollywood were frank and realistic too. – G.P.

Two days is too short! I wanted more! – C.D.

A well-encompassing, meaningful, intensive refresher that allowed me to refocus and really concentrate on my script. – D.B.

I really enjoyed the weekend with Julie. She is friendly and passionate about what she is doing. She made me dream again about the scripts I had shelved. – V.M.

Julie, you are a gifted teacher who conveys information with clarity and enthusiasm. I also like how you encourage without setting people up with completely unrealistic expectations.  – M.R.

Julie rocks! I feel SO inspired to create and I feel lucky to have benefited from her enthusiasm and wisdom! – R.S.

Julie is an energetic and positive advocate for the writer and offered solutions for problems that are practical and easy to use. – J.H.

I liked getting a packet to bring back and work with afterwards as well as one-on-one feedback. I came with actually feeling that I accomplished some progress on my script this weekend. – A.A.

This workshop was top notch! Julie helps strengthen the skills of the new screenwriter. This was definitely a heavenly experience!! – B.A.

Don’t forget there are classes coming up on April 17th and 18th in Chicago, April 24th and 25th in LA (at the Writers Store) and May 1st and 2nd in San Francisco. Classes are filling up rather quickly and the price is OH so right – $200 for both days. So if you’re interested, better sign up ASAP to get a spot.

Deadlines Looming!

The Paramount, agent, jelly fish deadline looms! It’s tomorrow, March 11th at midnight, GMT. That’s LONDON time to you, bub. Or in LA, that would be this Friday the 11th at 4pm. I’ve received a number of entertaining scenes so you’ll have to up your game – these Brits have rapier sharp wit!

Turn your submission in HERE please. NOW please. HURRY UP please.

Speaking of which, saw the changing of the guard yesterday with my friend Daniel, and went on the London Eye and survived to tell the tale. London is a beautiful international city with a New York vibe but a very different look. Daniel and I did feel the changing of the guard could use more cowbell or, minimally, a Bollywood dance number to really pep it up. It mostly consists of soldiers marching along in the cold with a brass band, standing stock still, yelling at each other for awhile then switching places. So. You know. I just think Michael Bay could do something with that.

Daniel and I then went to the Sherlock Holmes pub, drank pints of Guinness, ordered just about every dessert they had just to try them all and came up with 10 fun, dramatic ways I could meet my end in London before it struck us we were being morbid. This is the short list, mind you.

“Julie Gray tragically failed to MIND THE GAP. Body found in Thames.”

“Julie Gray mistakenly rushed the gates of Buckingham. Bullet riddled body found in Thames.”

“Julie Gray PLUNGES 5,000 meters to a tragic death from the London Eye while leaning too far to the left. Body found in Thames.”

“Julie Gray horrified by wannabe Jack the Ripper copycat killer in White Chapel. Body found in Thames.”

So. Just some ideas for you there. Write your own ridiculous obit.

Readying to teach another class at Bristol University tomorrow, which is a train ride that shall whisk me past Stonehenge. God I hope I see a crop circle. Please, please, please god.

Hey, and what of the Silver Screenwriting Competition?! Are you guys getting your drafts in on time to make the early bird deadline of March 15th?! Save money – send early!!