Write Your Screenplay Podcast

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Developing Your Brand As A Writer

By Jacob Krueger

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I recently had a student ask me a pretty interesting question: “What do you do when you realize that even though you think you’re writing all these different projects, you’re really just writing the same script over and over again?”

And this made me think about a couple of different questions facing writers as they move into their professional careers.

The first is an artistic question: What do you do when you’re following the same cycle again and again and again? What do you do when all your scripts seem to be converging around the same idea or the same themes?

The second is a question about branding: How do you brand yourself as a writer? How do you figure out what box to put yourself in?  How do you figure out whether you should write a script that’s very different from the ones you’ve written before, or whether you should build a brand around scripts that are similar?

So I want to talk about what happens when you realize you are ripping yourself off. When you realize you are writing the same movie again, and again, and again.

There are a couple of possibilities as to why this happens. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad.

Sometimes, there are themes that we just have not finished dealing with, themes that we still have to get out of ourselves. And sometimes those themes actually occupy more than one screenplay worth of writing.

All writing is really just looking inside and wrestling with the stuff that we have going on inside. And, if we're doing it right, we're wrestling with the stuff we don't totally understand yet, or we wouldn't need to wrestle with it in the first place.

Sometimes, when the same stuff comes up again, and again, and again, it's really just a sign that you haven't totally figured it out yet: that there is something still a little broken in there, still a little confusing. Just some old stuff that you're still cycling through and trying to figure out.

There are many, many examples of truly great writers who do this. And not just screenwriters.

Take the great novelist Haruki Murakami. It seems like in nearly every novel he writes, there's a well, and a moon, and a cat, and the cat runs away, and then his girlfriend disappears, and he ends up at the bottom of a well or looking at the moon. This happens again, and again, and again in his novels. There is also moon imagery in everything that he writes. It’s the same symbols, used in different ways.

And as you're reading his novels, the truth of the matter is you don't care at all! Every time you see a cat, you know the cat is going to run away, and his girlfriend is going to leave him. And the reason you don't care, is that Murakami finds a way to push a little deeper on those symbols each time. He's giving you the same symbols, he's wrestling with the same symbols. But never in exactly the same way.

There was obviously a time in Murakami’s life when an animal left him and his girlfriend left him at the same time, or when something that felt like that happened to him. And there is obviously something for him about wells as a symbol of change and coming out a different person than when you went in. These are obviously things that mean something to him. The moon means something to Murakami. And like the moon, sometimes there are just phases that we go through as writers.

Another great example is Darren Aronofsky. Nearly every movie he has ever directed, has ended with some version of a death or a suicide that is also a moment of salvation. Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler,

I recently had a student ask me a pretty interesting question: “What do you do when you realize that even though you think you’re writing all these different projects, you’re really just writing the same script over and over again?”

And this made me think about a couple of different questions facing writers as they move into their professional careers.

The first is an artistic question: What do you do when you’re following the same cycle again and again and again? What do you do when all your scripts seem to be converging around the same idea or the same themes?

The second is a question about branding: How do you brand yourself as a writer? How do you figure out what box to put yourself in? How do you figure out whether you should write a script that’s very different from the ones you’ve written before, or whether you should build a brand around scripts that are similar?

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

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Build Out Your Script: Choosing The Right Idea To Write

By Jacob Krueger

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As many of you know this has been one of the most exciting months in the history of the Jacob Krueger studio. We have recently signed a lease on a new location in New York City with an expected opening date of January 1st. We're going to have three brand new classrooms, eight one-on-one offices for our Protrack mentorship program, and plenty of space for our students to write and to gather. 

This is the culmination of a dream that started about ten years ago for me and my staff. And in the process of finding and now building out that space, I've learned a lot of lessons, many of which apply not only to New York City real estate, but also to screenwriting.

So, in this series of podcasts I'm going to be sharing some of the lessons that I've learned and how they relate to screenwriting.

Lesson #1:

The Perfect Space & The Perfect Idea Have One Thing In Common: Neither Of Them Actually Exist.

Over the past six months I have probably looked at about five hundred spaces all throughout New York City. And I'm not even going to talk here about the spaces that were obviously not a fit for my school, I want to talk about the ones that potentially were.

Because the process of finding a space is a lot like that unenviable hunt for the perfect screenplay idea. Oftentimes during the process of searching, it feels like we're never going to find that right idea or we're never going to find that right space.

And that's because spaces, like ideas, tend to fall into two categories…

The first are the ones that look perfect when you first see them. They're in the right location, the right size, the right price. And these are few and far between. But when you look at them you get so excited, only to realize once you get involved in the negotiation, just like once you get involved in the writing, that there are problems that you never anticipated: crazy landlords, unexpected bidding wars, hidden costs, or clauses in the lease that you never would have expected when you first sat down to look at the space.

The second category of spaces are the spaces that have obvious problems and in New York you can imagine what those problems are: they're either too expensive or they're in the wrong place. And the process of looking at space after space after space trying to find the right combination of size and prices and location reminded me of a time in my own screenwriting career, shortly after I'd finished The Matthew Shepard Story.

The first draft of Matthew Shepard was without a doubt, at that point in my career, the best thing that I had ever written. And I remember setting the goal that this next project, whatever it was, had to be better, even better, than Matthew Shepard.

And I remember going through a process of rejecting idea after idea after idea. It was one of the rare times in my life during which I actually had writers' block.

No matter how good the idea was, I could always see a problem. I could always see something getting in the way. I always felt like it wasn't quite going to match up to Matthew Shepard.

And if you're a writer you've probably had this experience before as well, feeling like no idea is good enough, or embarking on an idea that feels perfect, only to realize that there are problems underneath that you didn't anticipate and that you don't quite know how to handle.

In the process of finding a space, ultimately I had to decide on what was really important to me. The things that I knew were vital: I needed a ten year lease.

Over the past six months I have probably looked at about five hundred spaces all throughout New York City. And I’m not even going to talk here about the spaces that were obviously not a fit for my school, I want to talk about the ones that potentially were.

Because the process of finding a space is a lot like that unenviable hunt for the perfect screenplay idea. Oftentimes during the process of searching, it feels like we’re never going to find that right idea or we’re never going to find that right space.

And that’s because spaces, like ideas, tend to fall into two categories…

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

In Part 1 of this podcast, we used There Will Be Blood as a model for understanding the vital craft of externalizing the internal in a screenplay. But how do you go about using this technique in early drafts of your own screenplay, before you’ve got that perfect image in your head?

Today we’ve invited Jessica Hinds, who teaches our Weekend-Long Craft Intensive Nov 7-8th, to give you a sneak preview of some of the core concepts she’ll be covering, and speak about some practical things you can do right now to externalize the internal in your writing and reap the benefits in your career.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

Rather than looking at the structure of There Will Be Blood this podcast will be looking at There Will Be Blood in terms of a concept called externalizing the internal.

Often times when we're not externalizing the internal it's because we have not actually seen it yet in our own mind’s eyes. We haven't looked closely enough yet to see it exactly the way it needs to play out on screen. We've got a kind of sense of it, but we haven't taken the time to step inside and let it play frame by frame in the little movie screen in our mind, until we know exactly what we're seeing and exactly how we're seeing it.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

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The Martian: Bring Your Script Home

By Jacob Krueger

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The success of The Martian is extremely exciting if you're a screenwriter, especially because it breaks so much of the traditional Hollywood dogma. Often, as screenwriters, we think that our movies have to exist within some kind of orthodoxy: that there are certain things that you are just not allowed to do, and if you do them somehow you have no chance of writing a movie that's a hit. And yet, The Martian seems to throw all of those cares to the wind.

If you’ve taken the average Screenwriting 101 class you’ve probably been taught a couple of concepts that are supposed to be the rules for all movies.

You've probably been taught that structure is always built on characters' change. Yet, here is a character who doesn't change at all.

You’ve probably been taught that screenplay structure is built primarily around the relationships between characters. That you simply cannot leave your character alone on a planet, that he has to interact with somebody. That even Castaway was kind enough to give Tom Hanks a volleyball to interact with! Yet, here is a movie in which the character is primarily relating to his environment, and in which his only interactions with other characters, beyond the first few minutes of the movie, take place over email!

You've probably been taught that a movie must have an antagonist, and you've probably been taught that that antagonist is some kind of bad guy. Yet, in the world of this movie we don't have an antagonist. Or at least not one that is human. In fact, every character in the movie is trying to do the very best they can to solve an extraordinary problem with limited resources. Even the most overtly political character, the head of NASA, played by Jeff Daniels, is truly just trying to protect his space program and the lives of his crew.

So, we don't have a traditional bad guy. We don't have a movie that's built primarily around relationships. We don't have a character who changes. And yet, we do have an extraordinarily successful movie. So how did writer Drew Goddard make all that work?

The structure of The Martian is an unusual structure, but one we do see from time to time. And, strangely, we see this unusual, very challenging structure most often in big blockbusters.

I like to call these movies Test Movies. And the way a Test Movie functions is exactly the opposite of the way a traditional film functions.

Most films start off with a character with a problem, and that character must usually go through a painful and tumultuous journey in order to be forced to confront that problem and ultimately change.

This is the easiest way to build a movie, because the truth of the matter is, every human being in the world has a problem, and every human being in the world wants to change, and every human being, when we go to see a movie, has a part of us that looks up at that screen and says “that's me up there.”

So, there is a natural identification that happens when we see somebody who is like us, making the kinds of changes in their lives that we wish we could make in ours.

But a Test Movie like The Martian is built on exactly the opposite principle.

A Test Movie begins with a character with a very strong sense of themselves. It could be a character like Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, in The Martian, whose dominant trait is his unflagging belief in himself and in science, characterized by his competence, his positivity, his lightheartedness, and his can-do attitude even in the hardest situations.

The success of The Martian is extremely exciting if you’re a screenwriter, especially because it breaks so much of the traditional Hollywood dogma. Often, as screenwriters, we think that our movies have to exist within some kind of orthodoxy: that there are certain things that you are just not allowed to do, and if you do them somehow you have no chance of writing a movie that’s a hit. And yet, The Martian seems to throw all of those cares to the wind.

If you’ve taken the average Screenwriting 101 class you’ve probably been taught a couple of concepts that are supposed to be the rules for all movies.

You’ve probably been taught that structure is always built on characters’ change. Yet, here is a character who doesn’t change at all.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

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Black Mass, The Departed  & The Art of Revision

By Jacob Krueger

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Today we're going to be looking at the new Johnny Depp movie, Black Mass.

Now this is a really extraordinary true story, based on the life of Whitey Bulger, and featuring one of Johnny Depp's all time best performances. And we're going to be discussing some of its most compelling scenes and the elements that made them work in this podcast.

And yet, at the same time, despite the power of Johnny Depp's and the supporting cast's stellar performances, there is something about Black Mass that just leaves you (or at least left me) a little hollow-- a little bit unsatisfied.

So I also want to talk about what got in the way with Black Mass, and how you can learn from both its strengths and failures in your own screenwriting, particularly when it comes to revision.

If you haven't seen Black Mass yet, please be aware that there are spoilers ahead.

At the center of Black Mass is Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, a psychotic gangster, played by Johnny Depp who is playing both sides, secretly betraying his mafia enemies as an FBI informant; at the same time he plays the FBI, by using his connections to run rampant in the world of organized crime.

If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. You’ve seen this story before, in a much more complicated form, in Martin Scorcese’s The Departed. In fact, Whitey Bulger was in many ways the inspiration for the Jack Nicholson character in The Departed.

And despite Black Mass’s true-life story pedigree, well written script, and excellent direction and performances this poses a real challenge for the screenwriter. A question that many of us face at some point in the writing of our stories:

What if it’s not good enough? What if it’s all been done before?

So if that question’s got you paralyzed, don’t worry! There is a long history of this happening.

And having a story related to one we’ve already seen doesn’t mean you’re doomed to failure.

William Shakespeare stole all of his stories. Romeo and Juliet is actually just a different version of Pyramus and Thisbe. And Midsummer Night’s Dream is yet another totally different callback to the exact same source material! Hamlet is just an adaptation of The Ur Hamlet. His history plays are ripped directly from history.

But in order to transcend the experience of someone having already seen this movie before, you have to have an extraordinarily strong take on the material-- a take that is different from the take of the previous writers. And you have to master the art of revision, so you can build around your unique version of the story in a way that distinguishes your work from all the stuff that came before.

For example, when Brokeback Mountain first came out, this was the first time we'd ever seen a “gay cowboy” movie. And the truth of the matter is just hearing the words “gay cowboys” was enough to make you go see, or not go see, Brokeback Mountain. In order to fulfill the promise of its premise, all that Brokeback Mountain needed to deliver was the story of two cowboys whose love for each other couldn’t fit the expectations of their circumstances.

A couple of years later, another movie called The Kids Are Alright came out. And in many ways The Kids Are Alright is just another “gay cowboys” movie. Except in this case the “cowboys” are two suburban moms, trying to navigate their love for each other among the challenges and expectations of their own suburban “home on the range.”

Before Brokeback Mountain had come out, this might have been enough.