Write Your Screenplay Podcast

On this podcast episode, Jacob Krueger breaks down The Florida Project, to show the underlying structure that makes this seemingly structureless film so successful.

This week we are going to be talking about The Florida Project, by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch.

I am so excited to be talking about this film, especially a week after the Oscars, because this is a film that probably should have been competing for Best Picture. Bria Vinaite probably should have been competing for Best Actress, and Sean Baker probably should have been competing for Best Writer and Best Director.

If you haven't seen The Florida Project yet, I am going to try to avoid spoilers until we get to the end, and I’ll give you some warning first.

What Sean Baker did in this film, like what he did in Tangerine, if you listened to my Tangerine podcast, is really quite inspirational for any writer and quite complex, in its structure and its form. Sean Baker shot Tangerine on about 600 grand. He shot it on an iPhone-- a feature film shot on an iPhone! And he shot this movie in a budget somewhere around 2 million dollars.

So these are extremely low budget films. Beautiful, successful, powerful, low budget films. Which is very exciting if you are an emerging screenwriter.

As an emerging screenwriter, you can take the success of The Florida Project as a sign that you can do this yourself.

You can do this yourself at a very high level, and you don’t need a lot of money.

Here is Willem Dafoe, who has obviously done some huge movies, who isn't doing this film for the money-- who is doing this because someone has written a beautiful role that he just needs to play. And seeing the performances that Sean Baker, second time in a row, has gotten out of these extremely inexperienced actors—Bria Vinaite along with little Brooklynn Prince, who gives one of the finest performances you could ever ask for, and she is seven years old-- shows you just how much you can do with very little if you have the right script and the right actors.

I also want to talk about the form and the structure of The Florida Project. Because The Florida Project is not put together like most movies we see at the theater.

Rather than hurling us into the action, or into the plot of the film, it just kind of drops us into a world. And lets us wander with the characters through that world, watching their lives as if we were living them.

Watching The Florida Project is like watching Beasts of the Southern Wild in pastels.

You might feel like you’re just drifting through a world, but you’re actually being propelled on an extremely powerful journey, into the experience of some extraordinarily compelling characters whose lives are changing forever, and whose journey will change the way we see ourselves and our world.

The Florida Project is an incredibly hopeful film that takes place in a world that should be filled with despair.

It takes place in a rundown motel just outside of Disney World, where a bunch of low income families are attempting to raise their children in these tiny little one bedroom motel rooms.

The movie is primarily seen through the eyes of children, and it centers around a really complicated and beautiful relationship between six year old Moonee, who is played by Brooklynn Prince, and her mother Halley played by Bria Vinaite.

Moonee is not quite old enough to recognize her mother’s problems, her destitution, her desperation, her drug addiction, her violence, her despair. Instead, she sees her mother through the eyes of any child-- through these beautifully idealistic, Disney World, pastel eyes. This child who is having the time of her life, in her own private Disney World with absolutely no supervision, and absolutely no awareness of the danger that is all around her.

And what is gorgeous about this film, what makes us feel connected to these characters, is not that these characters are perfectly good.

Because the characters in The Florida Project are not perfectly good-- not the kids, and not the parents. They’re not all doing all the right things all the time. Sean Baker is not “saving the cat” here at all.

Because what connects us to these characters is not that they’re doing the right thing, but that they’re coming at life with an open heart, from a place of love.

And what is really beautiful about all these characters, no matter what their problems, no matter how misfit they are for being parents, all of these families, all of these people, are coming from a place of love. They all love their children. Some of them are terrible with their children, but they all love their children. They all want them to have better lives.

And Halley, in particular, is as fun of a mom as you could ever want. Halley is open to anything, completely non-judgmental of any behavior that Moonee chooses to engage in. She loves and accepts her child exactly as she is, and all they do together is have fun.

Of course, Halley is also stoned out of her mind all the time, struggling to make ends meet by mooching meals off of her one employed friend, ripping off tourists on fake perfume and worse, and running a lot of other scams that are incredibly unhealthy for both her and the people around her.

But Moonee doesn’t really see any of that. We see it, from a distance, in the same way that Willem Dafoe’s character, Bobby, sees it.

Bobby is the incredibly harried manager of this crappy motel, who is like the father to all these troubled children who live there and to all the parents who live there as well.

We see these fractured family units where there is no one to watch the kid, where it is impossible to watch the kid, have a job, pay your rent. And we follow the kids as they run wild through a summer of fun, in a dilapidated world just a stone’s throw away from Disney World.

And even though The Florida Project appears to have no structure, you are absolutely never bored.

So how do you build structure that doesn’t feel like structure?

Because in 80% of The Florida Project nothing is happening. 80% of the movie we are just watching a bunch of kids play together. And yet, we don’t feel like it is amorphous or structureless. In fact, we feel totally drawn in and compelled.

So what are those techniques that these writers are using and that this director is using to pull us in?

The first technique Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch use in The Florida Project is the power of visual storytelling.

And I am not just talking about the incredibly beautiful shots, and the incredibly beautiful costumes, and the incredibly beautiful mise-en-scène of this piece in the way it is shot. Because that is compelling and powerful, but ultimately, if that is all you have, you end up feeling like you are in an art gallery. It is fine to look around for a little while, but people tend to browse for a few moments and then they tend to lose attention.

What actually roots us in these characters also isn’t just the great performances. And, yes, the performances are fabulous. And, yes, these characters, even these kids, are fully alive on the screen. But guess what? That isn't what roots us into these characters either.

What actually roots us into the characters in The Florida Project is a screenwriting and directorial concept called vignettes.

As I’ve discussed in depth in earlier podcasts, a vignette is a moment of visual action that captures the essence of the character from the very first moment we meet them.

What Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch do such a great job of in The Florida Project is using those vignettes to provide an underlying structure for the character’s journey.

They root each of these characters in action, allowing us to immediately understand who they are and what they want. And then they attack those desires with obstacles, to force the characters to make new choices. No matter how small the choice may be, there is always a goal and there is always an obstacle that leads to it.

As an example of this, we are going to look at the opening sequence of the film, which culminates in a spitting contest.

We are watching a bunch of kids and they have a very clear goal, their super-objective is to have a good time and that is what they do for most of the movie.

 

They do it in a way that we wish we could. I wish my childhood was as much fun as these kids’ childhoods, although I would never trade my childhood for their childhood either.

But, these kids are living in a magic kingdom, in a place where there are no rules and there is no responsibility, and there are no consequences. And, in that beautiful magic kingdom, they start the film. And they are practicing spitting from that balcony of a neighboring motel onto one of the resident’s cars.

Oftentimes we think as we are writing, “if I am going to start my movie I need something really big,” but the truth is you don’t need something really big, you need something really small.

You need something really small that the characters really want to do; in this case the characters really want to spit on that windshield.

And it needs to connect to a super-objective, which is they want to have fun. Then you need an obstacle. In this case the obstacle is the neighbor, who comes out and screams at them and tells them to stop.

And what happens? The kids don’t stop; in fact, the kids don’t care at all. The kids end up cursing her out and spitting all over her car and all over her and all over her kids.

So, in this case we have a bunch of kids, and all they want to do is spit on the car of this resident of the neighboring motel. And they don’t even probably know the resident; they are just enjoying their little spitting game.

They have a want and they are rooted in the action and it is visually fun to watch. And we watch them do a verb. Not sit around in a state of fun, but rather doing the verb, the little goal, the little task that is going to pull us through their story today.

And what happens is, the obstacle of the chastising neighbor forces the kids to reveal their how: how they are different from any other children....

"...On this podcast episode, Jacob Krueger interviews Doug Jung, co-writer of Star Trek Beyond, and Emily Dell, indie writer & director of Compass Rose and Helen..."

*Please note this interview was from 2018.  

Jake: This week, I am so excited to be doing something we’ve actually never done before on the podcast: we have two different writers, Doug Jung and Emily Dell.

Emily tends to come at things from more of the independent film side, and Doug has been involved in some very famous blockbusters and big name TV shows like Star Trek Beyond and Big Love.

 

And what’s really cool is that both of these writers have transcended a lot of the genre conventions in their writing-- doing everything from really beautiful, personal, character-driven stories, to big budget action movies and sci-fi.

I want to start by asking you both-- when you first broke into the industry, what do you think it was that led to your success? And in the face of the commercial and genre demands of so many different kinds of projects, how do you hold onto who you are and continue to grow your voice as an artist?

EMILY: I want to say this, I am still finding my way in, I think this is a long term process and in fact maybe  that one of the biggest “aha!” moments for me being early mid-career but not quite mid yet.

I feel like my writing has grown and expanded through the help of friends who are also mentors who have given me feedback and Doug has been one of those.

And on the content side, always trying to write what I believe in and write what is connected to me, but also to see how that fits into an organic brand that maybe was part of my identity-- never having a difference between who I am and what I write is a clear part of the way that I look at my art.

And I think that is what makes people connect both to it and then to me, and then makes it easy for people to be like, “hey here is this Emily girl and she writes grounded emotional genre because that is also what she loves in life.” So that is one thing that I found to be really helpful lately.

But also, as I have been in LA for a while more than a couple of years and I have developed friendships and working relationships, I really tried to listen as much as I spoke, learn as much as I can, ask questions from the people whose work I admire and whose work I seek to emulate, and use that to improve. But also if they someday become comfortable even me and want to form an organic working relationship, then that is something I am obviously very open and welcome to.

Doug:  I ended up in a very fortuitous way getting some work in television which you know literally like these sort of freelance things for weird shows, and that enabled me to quit my day job. At that time I also had a very lucky stretch where I managed to bank a little bit of money.

But I was able to take this time and I wrote a script that ultimately was picked up, then optioned, and then eventually made. And I suddenly had, in a very lucky way, both a foot in the door in the TV world and a foot in the door in the feature world. And I have just sort of managed to stay in that position this whole time, which is great.

But as much as I can say it was hard work and I applied myself, there is an element of luck. And for my case it took a long time, but I do believe that luck is a byproduct of other things that you are doing to put yourself in there.

Jake: I feel the same way with my career, almost everything that ever happened to me that was good was luck, but I worked so damn hard to get to that lucky moment. And I think one of the places where I was luckiest was that it happened at a time where I had enough craft to actually back it up.

Doug: There is this element that I always see with people in these kinds of panel discussions, or this meet-and-greet kind of thing that I have been to-- you know the most often asked question seems to be: How do I get an agent? How do I get somebody to read this thing? Totally valid, totally get it. But, nobody has the same origin story. Nobody has that thing where it was a particular path that you took.

And you kind of have no control over that stuff. You write something, you put it out into the world. Someone is going to love it, someone isn't going to love it-- certainly you can have some direction in how it goes, where it goes, all that sort of stuff.

So a lot times I get that question in like panels or film festivals or something and I say, “I don’t know…” I mean in the nicest possible way I say, “I am not really quite sure if you must know somebody, more importantly, what are you doing now?”

Because, if you are just going to sit there and say, “I wrote this little nugget of gold, a diamond in the rough, someone just needs to recover it…” a lot of times it isn't like, “Hey, this is this great thing and we love it,” they go, “We like the potential this thing shows, what else are you working on?”

Emily: Yeah, it comes along with you doing the work, and you having three or four things ready, or you having the one thing ready that when they do ask for it, and they read it, it is really, really good.

Doug: That is exactly right. I think the other thing that you know there is this kind of cliché about writers being on a certain level of the totem pole, but another way that I always try to look at it is that we actually are in the most democratic position in Hollywood.

We’re not directors, we’re not production designers. We aren't beholden. We start with nothing other than your time, your imagination, a blank page and you are off. So, you don’t need 50 other people to accomplish the creative thing you are trying to do.

There aren’t many places out there, or not many positions other than being a screenwriter, where you can do a whole movie just by yourself.

And I have found that as I have been lucky enough to have a career, and do these things, that, more and more, time becomes the greatest commodity. And how you spend that time. Because if you are lucky enough and you are good enough, at some point you can kind of say, “Well I can get work, but now how am I going to spend this time in the best way?”

And one of the things that I always find really interesting about talking about mentors and mentoring relationships, there is this idea of “beginner’s mind”, this sort of Zen Buddhist idea that there’s nothing but possibilities, there is nothing but opportunities, and you aren't loaded down by experience, or you haven't developed all these bad habits. And you connect very easily to this part of you that is so wide open.

You have access to all these parts of you that I think you can kind of lose a little bit as you start to get a little bit further on in your career. You fall into the conventional world and you start taking on those other voices in your head constantly. And a lot of times, it becomes about beating those voices back and getting back to your authentic thing.

Jake: One of my really great mentors was a guy name Joe Blaustein, and he actually—he wasn’t a writer he was a painter—and I used to study painting with him in Los Angeles when I lived out there.

And Joe used to say, “Don’t paint on canvas, paint on paper. If you paint on canvas, you are going to start thinking you are making art and you will forget what it is to really be an artist.” He said, “You want to paint on paper. Feel like you could throw it away.”

And for me that was one of the most valuable lessons I ever learned as an artist, was this idea that rather than like trying to create the one product that is going to get me where I need to go, losing myself in like the joy and the play and the creativity of childhood. “Hey I want to make something, and I’ve got these characters that want to say something or want to do something,” and the practice of navigating back to that, even as you emerge into your professional career, is challenging, especially as you get an agent and you get projects.

I am curious, how do you navigate yourself back to that place?

Doug:  I have a hard time connecting with a project if I don’t find that thing in it that feels like it is a part of me. So, if a project is presented to me, or if I have an idea, really taking a lot of time to figure out, “What is appealing about this to me, and what is the thing that I want to say, or how do I connect with it?”

 

So, for example I recently adapted this graphic novel, a vertigo book called Scalped, which is a crime noir by this great writer named Jason Aaron and it is set on a contemporary Indian reservation. I really didn’t want to let it go, because I knew there was something really great in it and it took me a long time.

So, I sort of came to this idea that it wasn’t that I had the direct experience, but what I saw in it was this idea that all of the people in the book are searching for some form of the American dream, like they are trying to get to that aspiration.

To me that was an immigrant story, and I am Korean-American, my parents were immigrants. So, now I can say, “Well that is what I can always go back to.” I know that whatever the story and the plot becomes, underneath it all, in my mind I knew that what I am doing is a reverse immigrant story.

Now I had a connection-- and when we got to the point of shooting the pilot, I could then talk to the Native American actors we had and say to them, “I am not trying to emulate something that I am not; this is my take on it.” And that is what enabled them to trust me.

So, that was one example of finding yourself in some material that wasn’t originally yours, but it also maybe had a very on the surface disparate connection to how you had seen it on paper or whatever.

Jake: You’ve done a lot of rewriting work, you’ve come onto a lot of projects where they didn’t originate with you.  I was thinking about your work on Star Trek Beyond where you really use that theme of unity versus independence.

And I am curious when you are coming on to a project that already exists, where someone has already done a lot of work and maybe pieces are working and pieces a

"...Writing really is self-exploration. Facing certain things that you may not be dealing with in every day and recognizing those things and giving them a voice..." - Sebastian Stan

Jake: This week I am with Sebastian Stan. Many of you have probably seen I, Tonya and Sebastian’s performance in that piece. We are going to have an interesting conversation with Sebastian, looking at I, Tonya from the perspective of an actor and also from the perspective of a writer.

And we’re going to be discussing something that is important to a lot of writers, which is understanding how an actor approaches a role, how a script develops beyond the point where you’ve sold it and then into the production side, and how a script evolves.

And also understanding what an actor like Sebastian looks for in a script: how you know when that is the role I want to play.

So, I wanted to just start off by asking you a little bit about when you first read Steven Roger’s script. What did you connect to about it that made you go, “I’ve got to play Jeff”?

 

Sebastian: It was kind of a hard one, to be honest, because it was so controversial. He was such a hated character; he was such a hated person in real life.

And in that aspect, it was really difficult-- you start wondering whether that is something you could even do or you could even play. There was a lot of judgment there.

But, looking at it just as a script, and then as an actor looking at it, it felt like a goldmine. It was always unpredictable. It was tragic at certain times and it was shocking and then it could be funny.

And there seemed to be a very strong degree of honesty to it. You’re always looking for how authentic certain voices sound. And later I did find out a lot of the dialogue in the script came from the interviews that he had directly with them-- not to take away from his genius writing-- it just had a very authentic air to it, and I think you look for that.

And then as an actor you’re challenged by that because you go, “I don’t know if I could do that… and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

And I think, in that case, also them being real life characters had a lot to do with it. The whole thing was so sensationalized that you couldn’t really believe that these people existed or that they were capable of that. And it kind of led on a whole tangent of wanting to search for stuff.

Jake: Yeah I think it is interesting because, in a way, all of our stories come from life; even the most fictional stories come from life. And there is an interesting theme in I, Tonya that there is no one truth.

Sebastian: Right.

Jake: And you know even like the breaking of the fourth wall, like, “Yeah, this didn’t happen like this.”

Sebastian: Yeah, and it is interesting the fourth wall because that wasn’t in the script originally. That was the director coming in and suggesting that we break the fourth wall in the scenes. I could have seen Steven Rogers come up with that--but you know, the director just finished his sentence so to speak. So I feel like it is important to find that counterpart in your director.

Jake: Yeah I think it is an interesting thing about process for writers in that we see a lot of bad movies come out of Hollywood. And so, a lot of people are under the impression, “Oh I will just give them the idea and then they will figure it out.”

But you can see with a movie like I, Tonya when the writer has really done his job, and really built the movie around that theme. what it allows an actor to do with the role to make those kind of creative decisions about how you are going to perform it.

Sebastian: I always think it starts with the writing. I think that is the most important and the hardest part. I’ve always thought that actors make better actors with good material, which is why the in plays that you go to at the theatre sometimes end up being such great characters-- like those Tennessee Williams’ plays-- and those writers who sort of fleshed out these characters that you don’t usually get to see so much of nowadays.

Steven Rogers-- first of all, two funny things about him as a writer--

One of them is he wrote this part for Allison Janney. Every movie he’s written he has always written a part for her, but he could never hire her, he could never get her. She didn’t even know! Because the director or the studio-- somebody would want somebody else.

 

And he actually, finally, in writing at the negotiations of this thing told them, “I am not going to do this movie, I’m not giving you the script unless you have her attached to play that part.”

And the other thing is, what fascinated me about him was that he wrote this Christmas movie and he apparently just woke up and was like, “Well okay like what is the furthest away I can do anything from a Christmas movie?”

Then he saw this 30 for 30:  and he was like, “Oh I, Tonya,” and I am like, “Okay well great, I wish I could wake up tomorrow and go like, ‘well I don’t want to do that theme anymore, I am just going to go onto this theme and produce this.’”

Jake: And he is a guy who is famous for rom coms.

Sebastian: Yeah I mean, I guess he wanted to change it up and go somewhere else with it. It was a very interesting script in the sense that you had these documentary types to die for, it was very similar to that in the sense that you know they talked to the camera.

Jake: So, I want to talk to you a little bit about research. I read some of your interviews about this, and you’ve talked a lot about how you felt, “I am not Jeff Gillooly.” And it was a little hard at the beginning to ask yourself, ‘How am I supposed to see myself in this role?’

And I think it’s interesting for writers because---I know for myself personally-- no matter how much I’m in love with a character, there is a point in the writing where you are like, “This is just the worst character ever.”

You kind of fall out of love with them, and you have to find a way to fall back in love with them or to like recognize the piece of you that does live in them, or like the dream that you have that you share with them.

And I’m curious about, how do you allow yourself to fall in love with a Jeff Gillooly in order to play him?

Sebastian: Well first off let me start with when you approach material, usually you know if it isn't a real person you kind of have free reign---not free reign but you are sort of, you are building a life from what you see on the script.

And you by talking to the writer you are kind of going, “Okay this is going to maybe-- it could go here, it could go there.” But here, I didn’t really have that opportunity. It was much more, “This is the guy, so you are going to have to mold more to something.”

And in a way, maybe it is difficult because you are stuck in a box. And then in another way it is easier because at least you know where to target, so you are eliminating a lot of time researching stuff that won’t be necessary but you won’t know then unless you do it.

And the thing about him was that he is very difficult to read as a person. And then virtually everything that I found on him online was just really sort of negative despicable kind of thoughts people had.

There was nothing on him. “What was he like as a child? What was their relationship like when they started, was it always that chaotic? He denied everything, okay why? What does that mean? What is he like now at 50?”

So it was kind of a big question mark, except for these videos where I would see him sort of make these terrible faces, uncomfortable, like walking through as he is getting arrested.

But again, even when you have a real person, there is a tremendous responsibility for you with that. No matter what kind of person it is, you always have to go back to the script. Because, as an actor, that is your job, that is your map. And what is in the script is what you’ve got to follow.

In terms of finding something about him, in a weird way I had to come around and try to blend-- and this was in the script also-- this idea that they were this Sid and Nancy kind of crazy couple. And then Margot and I together basically built on that and tried to piece it in terms of, “okay well was it always like this? Was there a good part of it at some point? Was there a time when they were okay or not? And how did it get to this? Was it because she got more famous? Did he get more scared?” Understanding it like a really unconventional, toxic, terrifying-love story, in a way kind of opened me up to sort of something with him that was a little bit more understandable.

Jake: One of the things that I loved about your performance was that for me you really humanized a person that is hard to humanize.

Sebastian: Thank you.

Jake: And I think this is interesting as a writer as well because you know often times like in your first draft, your character feels like a little bit of a cartoon, or it feels like a little bit like “I got this one aspect of them but I am missing the full life that lives underneath there.”

So I always think of an actor as doing a rewrite of my script. But in a good way, in the same way that I would do a rewrite of my script. “Okay what is this really about? What is the one God I’m really worshiping here?” And for me in I, Tonya like it is the God of “there is like no one truth.”

Sebastian: Right. As a part of the backbone of what the thing is.

Jake: So like at least from my perspective, everything in that script serves it. From the fact that I have a very specific idea of who Tonya Harding, is but it’s not true. But Tonya has a specific idea of who Tonya Harding is and that isn't true either.

And Jeff has an idea of who Jeff is and that isn't true. But it also, it is true to him.

Or even like Allison Janney’s character. She has a very strong story about how she is a good mom--

Sebastian: In her mind yeah.

Jake: And we can see that that isn't true. And then you know the whole movie kind of builds to Tonya basically saying “all the truth is bullshit.”

Sebastian: Yes, yeah, you mean like kind of like a button to that thing, so to speak?

...

Building on the ideas from Part 1 of this series on how to revise your screenplay, Jacob Krueger shows you how to take your screenplay revision process to the next level.

If you listened to the previous episode of this podcast, you have probably developed a pretty valuable approach for how to revise your screenplay. And you know that approach focuses on these 5 simple tips for revision:

#1 - Never Rewrite Without a Goal

#2 - Follow Your North Star

#3 - Concentrate on What’s Working

#4 - Stay Away From Quick Fixes

#5 - Beware Written Notes

So this week, we’re going to work on taking your revision process to the next level, with five more helpful tips about revising your script.

REVISION TIP #6 – Use Your Theme

If you’ve ever been part of an unmoderated writing group, you already know what it’s like to lose control of your revision.

Without a strong unifying voice to make order out of the chaos, it’s amazing how much turmoil even a small group of well-intentioned writers can bring to your screenplay, pushing and pulling your revision in so many different directions with their “brilliant ideas” that before long you don’t even know what you’re writing anymore!

And as anyone who has ever worked professionally as a screenwriter can tell you, the more you grow in your career, the more challenging it becomes to maintain a point of creative focus for your revisions.

Succeeding as a professional writer means learning to navigate the twists and turns in the development process, often balancing the demands of half a dozen different producers, all with their own (often conflicting) agendas for the project, without losing your own creative voice.

Which means that, if you want to succeed in this industry and actually see your movies make it to the screen, you need to start building those skills in yourself now.

That means not only developing the skills you need to navigate the often contradictory feedback you get from other people (friends, classmates, coverage readers, producers, teachers, agents, managers), but also learning how to steer the course through the shifting winds of your own feelings about your writing and the perilous waves of “brilliant ideas” that tend to crash across the bows of our own creative ships.

The real terror of the blank page is that anything is possible; and the real terror of a rewrite is that everything becomes possible all over again. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort and just keep asking “what if?” you can develop Thelma and Louise until it turns into The Wrestler (think about it).

But along the way, you’re going to drive yourself absolutely out of your mind. And if you’ve ever worked on a revision, you’ve probably found yourself going down that rabbit hole.

So how do you make sense of all the thousands of ideas vying for your attention? How do you bring order to the chaos, wrangle all these crazy notes to the ground, hold your own in a development meeting, and feel confidence in each decision you make in your revision?

That process always begins with theme.

 

There are very few people in the world who are truly good at developing scripts, but those who are all have one thing in common. Before they start trying to come up with a single idea or solve a single problem, they always ask the same question about the script: what’s it about?

And that doesn’t mean “what could it be about?” or “what was the conscious plan the writer had for the script when they first sat down to write” or even “what could I make it about?” That means seeking out what already has been built, whether consciously or unconsciously, in the pages that already exist, no matter how problematic they may be.

What are the ideas that keep on coming up again and again, page after page? What are the questions that seem to tie together the most visceral and exciting scenes in your movie, or the turning points in your character’s journey? What makes this screenplay matter to you as a writer? What is really being built here? And how can you boil that all down to a single guiding theme so simple that you can remember it at every phase of your rewrite without even thinking about it.

No matter how good your draft may be, there’s no doubt that huge changes are going to happen in your revision.  But until you know the one simple thing you’re building, you’ll never know which changes will serve your story, and which will simply distract from it.

Any note (and any idea) is only valuable in the context of what you’re building. If you were an architect working on a new cathedral, an idea for a breathtaking stained glass window might be a great place to put your energy. But, if you’re building a bomb shelter, that same stained glass window becomes a total hazard of potentially falling glass!

In the last installment of this podcast, we talked about following a North Star for your revision-- a goal to focus on as a writer. Well your theme is like a North Star for your whole script, and every scene and every character you create. No matter how lost you get, it will always guide you in the right direction. And the great thing is, you don’t even have to make it up!

Once you learn how to look, you’ll be amazed to discover that your theme already exists in almost every page of your script, often buried under the surface, sometimes disguised or masked by undeveloped craft or hidden behind piles other unrelated themes and ideas. But present nonetheless.  Because the theme is that subconscious, broken and beautiful thing in you that’s driving you to do this crazy act of writing in the first place.

That doesn’t mean that every idea that fits your theme is going to work. But it does mean that, by identifying your theme, you can cut through all the clutter and distractions. It means you can know what to say “yes” to, and what to say “no” to at each phase of your revision. It means you can focus your energy on the ideas that best serve the one unifying theme of your story, rather than getting distracted by the many red herrings that don’t.

Most importantly, as you grow in your professional career, if you can learn to agree on a theme with your production team before you start revising, it will allow you not only to wrangle your own ideas, but also to focus the energy of all those crazy producers, directors, managers, agents, and movie stars on the ideas that best serve your main intentions for the project.

REVISION TIP #7 – When in Doubt Cut It Out

Many writers make the mistake of thinking that rewriting is primarily about finding that “something missing” in your scene, adding that perfect line of dialogue or discovering that perfect image to take your script to the next level. And it’s true that these are major parts of rewriting. But oftentimes the best (and easiest) rewrites begin not by adding anything at all, but simply by stripping away the stuff that’s obscuring the real heart of the scene.

It’s natural that early drafts tend to be overwritten—after all, it’s in these early drafts that you’re supposed to be exploring the limits of what your scenes and your story can be. But once you’ve discovered the core of what the scene is really about, you’ve got to cut away all those extra layers, so other people can perceive that essence in its most pure and beautiful form.

This always begins with theme. Ask yourself “what is this scene really about?” And then see what happens if you cut away anything that doesn’t doesn’t work to serve that primary intention.

You might find yourself pleasantly surprised to discover that the more you cut, the stronger your scene becomes.

That’s because the best scenes function like a collection of greatest hits, catapulting the audience and the character from one compelling moment to the next. When you cut down your screenplay to its most essential elements, it allows readers to get right to the meat of your scene, without having to sort through all that garnish. From a commercial perspective, it also allows your scene to be read and understood more quickly, which will pay off big time when it’s being skimmed by a time-crunched coverage reader.

Making these kinds of cuts is quick, easy, and extraordinarily effective.  But it’s also emotionally challenging for two reasons.

The first is that we tend to like what we’ve written, and cutting away good writing, even if it doesn’t serve our story, can be incredibly painful.

 

The second is that we don’t tend to trust ourselves.

We imagine that if we just got right to the heart of the scene, keeping only our very best lines and our very best actions or images, the audience would never understand. Or even worse, we fear that if we cut that 5 page scene down to one brilliant half a page, we’d suddenly have to come up with so much more story to fill those extra pages!

But the truth is, if you really want to take your script to the next level, you’re going to need those extra pages! Cutting out the wasted space in your script (getting to the best stuff faster and faster and faster) opens up room for you to take your story and your character’s journey beyond what even you imagined when you first sat down to write.

And this is exactly what you really need to do if you want to break in as a writer.

While professionals with impressive resumes and extensive relationships may be able to get away with phoning in scripts that play by the rules and simply meet the expectations of the audience, to get a producer to take a chance on you as a writer, you’ve got to deliver even more than they expect. You’ve got to blow them away.

So next time, before you start adding to your scene, see what happens if you try to tell the whole story of the scene with the fewest lines possible. Cut it down to the very minimum. And then cut it even further. Cut everything boring, everything lackluster, everything redundant and everything that doesn’t serve your theme, until you’re left with only your most vibrant, vital and visceral writing.

See how quickly you can make it happen. Then read it to yourself.  And notice not only how much better the scene becomes,...

This is a time of year when many of us are thinking about rewrites, both on our scripts and on our lives. So what better time for a podcast about rewriting?

Everyone knows that writing is rewriting. But for many writers, the rewriting process can feel so overwhelming that it’s hard to hold onto that creative spark that made the script worth writing in the first place.

So over the next two podcasts, we’re going to be talking about 10 things you can do to help make your rewrite great! (They work pretty well for your life goals as well!)

Screenplay Revision Tip #1 – Never Rewrite Without a Goal

A character without a goal is like a car without an engine.  You can polish it up all you’d like, but it’s not going to go anywhere.

And just like our characters, if we’re going to be successful in our revisions, we’ve got to make sure we’re effective in our goal setting, not only for our characters, but also for ourselves. That means setting a clear, objective goal for each draft of our screenplay, which allows no debate over whether or not it’s been achieved.

For example, depending on what phase we’re in of a revision, we might set a goal like one of these:

Make sure the main character is driving the action of every scene.

Find lines of dialogue that feel a little familiar and either cut them or make them more specific to the character.

Chart out the 7 Act Structure of the character’s change.

Make sure the action on the page captures each image exactly the way you see it in your head.

What’s great about goals like these is that you can know if you’ve achieved them. Instead of wasting your energy panicking about whether your script is good or not, you can watch it evolve in front of your eyes, knowing that each draft is that much better than the one that came before.

Rather than feeling like you’re trying to juggle a million deadly chainsaws-- instead of feeling like you’ve got a million different problems that you simply have to fix in your script all at the same time-- you can devote all your focus to the one thing that is most important for the draft you’re working on right now.

Rather than basing your feeling of success as a writer on things that are beyond your control, like having a good writing day, selling a script or winning an Academy Award, you’re basing it on a simple area of focus that will not only grow your script, but also vastly improve your craft as a writer, which will serve you on every script you write in the future.

So if you’re working on a revision of a screenplay, revision of an act, or even just a revision of a scene, take a moment to clear your mind of all the things you’ve been told you have to do, all your fears about getting to the end, finishing, not finishing, selling your script, or having talent as a writer.

Instead, think about what this screenplay is really about for you, and set a clear, objective goal for the one thing that’s most important for you to achieve to take the script to the next level.

In early drafts, or early phases of your career, it may be hard to identify what the most important thing to focus on might be, or to separate the many conflicting things you’ve been told to do from the ones that really matter to you. Trust your instincts, and seek out the advice of mentors with enough real professional experience to point you in the right direction.

What matters is that you choose one goal to focus on, and frame it in a way that you can know if you’ve achieved it, regardless of the shifting winds of your own (or anybody else’s) subjective opinions. That way you can know you are succeeding in each phase of your revision, whether this is your final draft, or just one of many along the way.

 

Screenplay Revision Tip #2 – Follow Your North Star

Without a clear, recognizable goal that we know we can achieve, it’s easy to find ourselves rewriting from a place of fear: driven by a deep anxiety that our screenplay is just not good enough without the benefit of a tangible vision of what good enough would actually be!

On the other extreme, it’s easy to overwhelm ourselves with too many tangible goals; compiling never-ending (and often conflicting) checklists of things to be fixed and improved in our screenplays as we try to heed the advice of every cook in the kitchen. Cooks including coverage readers, producers, friends, family, writers groups, screenwriting books, structural formulas – and even our own constantly shifting thoughts about our writing – without any sense of how these supposed “improvements” actually fit with our real goals for this particular screenplay, or how they’re all supposed to fit together into a unified whole.

That’s why it’s so important to focus on one goal at a time. Let that goal become the North Star for your revision. The one ring to rule them all. The only action item on your checklist and the only thing your brain needs to focus on in this phase of the process.

This allows you to calm the many anxieties that come with rewriting a script, the feeling that you’re wrestling with something so much bigger than you can keep in your head, where everything is so interconnected that you pull one string and the whole tapestry can fall apart.

It reminds you that you’re not trying to build the whole tapestry all at the same time. You’re just trying to follow this one North Star and see where it takes you, until you understand it so fully that you can intuitively recognize how it fits with all the other stars around it.

So, if you’re working on your dialogue and you suddenly realize that you’ve got problems with your action, your structure, or your formatting, that’s okay! You’re not trying to fix everything right now. You’re just following this one North Star.

The wonderful and ironic thing about focusing on only one North Star at a time is that oftentimes changes in one little area of your screenplay end up leading to vast improvements in other areas of your story. Because every element of a screenplay is so deeply interconnected, a revision focused on the specificity of your main character’s dialogue may inspire all kinds of new insights into who your character is, the nature of their journey, the hook of your movie, or even the way you write the action lines.

And if the screenwriting Gods gift you with such inspiration, by all means accept that gift!  Write the scene, rewrite the action, restructure the story, capture that turning point.

But remember, these new flashes of inspiration are only the bi-products of your clear, objective goal. The icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. So, if you’re feeling inspired, chase that inspiration. But if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed or distracted by all the possibilities, look back at your North Star, and remember what your goal is for this draft of the revision.

You’ll have plenty of time to look at all the other possibilities later and, oftentimes, be pleasantly surprised at how a tiny change to the dialogue in Act 1 has suddenly pulled that turning point you were so worried about at the end of Act 4 into perfect focus.

But if you turn out to be not so lucky, at least you can set a new goal, a new North Star to guide you, for the next revision, knowing that the foundation of the previous goal has already been fully explored and established. You now know where that star leads, and can draw upon that knowledge as you follow the next one.

Screenplay Revision Tip #3 - Concentrate on What’s Working

 

One of the most common mistakes screenwriters make when revising a screenplay is to concentrate on what’s not working rather than what is. This not only sucks all the fun out of your rewrite-- it also chips away at the confidence you need in order to get your best writing on the page.

It takes very little skill to look at an early draft of a screenplay and tear it apart. Anyone who’s ever seen a movie knows how easy it is to rant and rave about every ridiculous plot twist or corny line of dialogue in the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

And when it comes to our own work, we’re even more hyper-aware of our many flaws and shortcomings, both real and imagined. We’ve been trained since birth to think critically, censor our strongest ideas, and beat ourselves up over our writing. Thinking about your script in this way is not only unhelpful, it’s downright lazy!

If you really want to push yourself in your revision, stop focusing on what’s not working in your screenplay, and start looking for what is already working, even in your most disastrous pages.

Ask yourself what your story is really about (this may have changed since you first sat down to write) and make a list of everything in your script that seems to serve that thematic intention, no matter how problematic or flawed.

Write down every moment that you like in your script, every line of dialogue that feels connected or real, every image that grabs your attention, every moment that makes you laugh or cry or care.

Set aside your judgment, and think about the opportunities that still exist, even in the most troubling elements of your script. What can be built upon, expanded, explored, pushed further, looked at more closely or amplified in its specificity or intent?

Seek out the powerful moments early in your script that might lead you to the structural twists and turns you need later in the story. And think about the big turning points later in your story that may point the way to what needs to be revised or clarified earlier in the script.

Identify the compelling lines of dialogue that might help you understand how your character really talks in a rewrite of your dialogue?  And ask yourself how that understanding might help you add more specificity to your less compelling lines.

Chart out memorable images and actions that capture who your character really is and what they really want. And think about how those elements might come back in different w

Jacob Krueger shows you how one song, "Remember Me", was used to build the structure for Coco's Screenplay.