You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three zero four. Yeah, I didn't get into
Sundance either. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we
really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to
another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex
Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now,
unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of
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head on over to cover my Screenplay dot Com. Enjoy today's episode with
guest host Dave Bullis, the founder of Zero Draft thirty is actually the guest
on this week's podcast, who is a screenwriter and founder of one of the
most popular screenwriting blogs, Going a Story, which is also the official blog
of the Blacklist. He also reins also runs screenwriting Masterclass, and he's also
an instructor, which we're going to get into as well, and without further
ado, with guests Scott Myers. You know, my guiding light through most
of my life has been Joseph Campbell and that simple little phrase, follow your
bliss. Find that thing that you are passionate about, that energizes you,
that you feel you have a talent for and creatively, I've just always done
that. And one of the things along the way was I discovered teaching while
I was writing. I'd go and do these presentations be invited and people say,
hey, man, you're really good at this, maybe you should teach.
So that started with teaching online through UCLA Extension. And then when we
moved to North Carolina where I was a television producer for a production company there
called Trailblazer Studios for eight years, I started teaching one class semester at UNC
Chapel Hill in the writing for Screening Stage program, which was great. And
then the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts here in Chicago came to know me.
One of my colleagues now here, Brad Riddell, who's a working screenwriter
and had four movies made. He's now an associate professor here at at the
program and the chair of our program screenwriting program, And he got in touch
with me because he knew about my blog. He was a huge fan of
the blog. So we started talking and very very exciting things going on at
De Paul. It's a fast growing school with incredible facilities. The school has
three sound stages that it rents for the students at the largest studio system studio
facility outside of Los Angeles and North America. There's the same facility where all
the Chicago fire Chicago, Hope. All those shows are filmed. Empire was
filmed, There are lots of movies are filmed there. So the students not
only get a chance to actually get hands on experience making movies like right away,
a very diy spirit here at the school. They have incredible gear and
these sound stages and a three time grip truck. They are also segue into
working for these productions for NBC and whatnot. So that combined with the fact
that the faculty here is tremendous, the support from the administration is outstanding.
The school is extremely diverse. A lot of schools talk about, well we
want to you know, we're into inclusion, we want to diverse student bodies.
Well, DePaul actually has that. I mean my current MFA cohort,
the group that's going to be graduating in twenty nineteen. That MFA group is
fifty percent non white and over fifty percent women, And it's really exciting to
work with people who have diverse backgrounds and to be able to help them find
their voice and facilitate their writing process. So, circling back to how I
got here, it was just one of those things you put yourself out there,
you do something that you are passionate about. And as Campbell says,
the universe will open doors where there used to be walls. And the Paul
invited me to come here and apply for the position, and I got it,
and I moved here two years ago, and I love it. It's
just a tremendous place to be and very exciting working with these students. You
know during the application process that did you know they ask any sort of like
questions about production or anything like that, like how you would handle something,
because I mean, I imagine you you were kind of I mean not just
about screenwriting, so I imagine you you kind of have your hands and you
wear a lot of hats. As what I'm trying to say, Oh yeah,
I wear a lot of hats. And the great thing about the Paul
School Cinematic Arts is that we've got eight eight areas of concentration. So there's
screenwriting, there's directing, there's creative producing, there's all sorts of a post
there's an animation group that's terrific. So we we don't have a silo system.
We work together. Again, the students are I had a freshman last
year. He was like three weeks in. I mean all my students one
on one and all my classes. I just think that's important to do.
And I was saying, well, I hope you take advantage of your time
here because it's it's really amazing that you have all these facilities and resources to
go out and make these short films. He said, I'm already making one
three weeks in. He's already making one. So there's a lot of communication
between the directors and the writers. We have meetings every quarter whereby students get
together in this big group and they pitched these projects to each other and it's
incredibly collaborative things. So yes, I'm involved with helping them with the scripting
thing, helping them with their edits, helping them with some of the directing
choices they're making. Is I oversee some other thesis projects and whatnot? You
know, I should note that just recently DePaul Hollywood Reporter came out with their
top twenty five film schools, and DePaul's thirteen in that list and rising clearly
the number one film school in the Midwest. We aspire to be more than
that variety. We made that list of the top film schools. So it's
a it's a really exciting place to be and we're having students go to La
now and shoot some success. So yeah, one of the reasons I enjoyed
being here is that I get a chance to wear a lot of hats and
work with students in a lot of different ways. So, you know,
Scott, you mentioned the student that that, you know, three weeks in
he was already shooting something or planning to shoot something. Do you ever have
the opposite? I mean, he is there ever a student who shows up
and just says, you know, uh, you know, maybe they start
dragging their feet, or they have to kind of like say, how are
you hey, aren't you going to make something? Do you ever have that?
Uh? Yeah? There are students who, you know, and I
don't you know, I don't denigrate them at all. If they come here
and they just want to be writers, you know, or perhaps they just
want to work in post, you know, in visual effects, they don't
want to go out and do production, you know. Having done some of
that, I think I agree pretty much with what William Goldman said when he
said paraphrasing here, he said, the first day, the most exciting day
of a screenwriter's life is a first day on a set on a movie set.
The most boring day in a screenwriter's life is the second day in the
movie set, you know, because it's a lot of setup and just waiting
her out for things, you know. So I found that when I was
doing TV, producing out in the field and whatnot, it was okay,
I didn't really enjoy it that much. I really enjoy more working. So
there are students who I respect that, But then there are other students who
have to be encouraged, who they have a creative idea and they've got a
good visual sense of acuity and say, okay, come on, yes,
get out there, try it. There's no there's no downside here. It's
not like if you make a short film and it stinks, well, you've
learned a lot. There's things that you can only learn, but being out
in the field and making movies, you just can't learn it all by sitting
in a room writing. And so I encourage people to, you know,
all my writers that I work with, whether it's through to Paul or through
a screenwriting masterclass, or interfacing with my blog or going up to these conferences
and festivals I've been going to more frequently now, I encourage them to go
make stuff. This is a time right now where with everything going on and
the second Golden age of TV or peak TV and digital filmmaking where content is
King, Queen, Prince, duke whatever, and who is responsible for creating
that content, for coming up with that stuff at the inception stage its writers.
And so this is a fantastic opportunity for people who are creative and I
have a good way with words and know how to write and craft stories.
We'll be right back a word from our sponsor and now back to the show
to do that and then see if they have a directorial shops. That way,
you can control your material a lot more so. Yeah, I have
students who run the gamut, you know. I have students that come in
and you know, many of them have they can name for you every single
shot in a Martin Scorsese movie, you know. I mean, I've had
those kind of students. And I have students who come in who their parents,
you know, have them majoring in economics or business or whatnot, but
they're creative, and so they come in here and they can take a double
major in screenwriting, a BFA or a BA or even a minor, you
know, and to see them light up and see them really grow creatively,
and maybe it's only an advocation for them moving forward and not a vocation.
Well that's great. At least they've discovered something that they're passionate about and they
have a talent for and they can do that and uh and have them urture
and fuller life. You know, I thought you were going to say the
William Goldman quote nobody knows anything. So yeah, well that's true. I
mean, oh, we're seeing this right now, aren't we, Dave,
Like, you know, up until about a year ago, it was like,
oh, rom coms, you're dead, nobody wants to see romantic comedies.
Rich Crazy Rich Asians comes out, boom, three of them, Green
Litton one week, you know, a spec Script Singles Day, the sequel
to Crazy Rich Asians, and a K pop projects in Korea. So you
know, um, now we're seeing articles about how Crazy Rich Asians has resurrected
the rom com So people when they say these things, you know, they
don't understand the cyclical nature of the business. Um and and yeah, so
I think that's probably true. Golden says, nobody knows anything. Yeah,
it's kind of like how zombies. Um, we're always you know, considered
played out or what have you. And then the Walking Dead came around and
now suddenly they're you know, they were cool again, and then Ben then
you know, now let's cool over again. Well, I'll tell you another
thing, because you know, you know me, I tracked the specscript market.
I've been tracking it since well, I broke into nineteen eighty seven by
selling a K nine and then really started an earnest to track it in eighty
nine ninety. So my blog going to the story, you can go and
see that I got over two thousand specscript deals annotated. They're dating back to
nineteen ninety one and up through two thousand and fourteen. Not one time in
the entire period of tracking specscript market during the twenty se nine years of doing
that was drama in the top three in terms of genre sales. It was
always comedy, action or thriller always, and then for the last three years
the number one genre in the spec script market has been dramas. Again,
nobody knows anything, so we're in a new cycle here and trying to interpret
that's quite interesting. I think part of it is that people have grown up
with reality TV a whole generation and so they're used to and interested in quote
unquote real people, and so in the case of historical dramas, they actually
are like real people. I think part of it is nostalgia. We're a
wash in nostalgia right now, and so when they see a picture, you
know, like a script that was on the top of the Blacklist of years
back about Madonna or before that, about Michael Jackson told from the perspective of
his pet mockey Bubbles. You know, those type of historical dramas they hit
there, they hit on a you know where the reader or the viewer knows
of them. It's the nostalgic And I think the final thing really going on
there is just the studios are way into pre branded content. You know,
they want content that people will know about, and so historical figures, you
know, is a way of doing that because people will know about a figure
in the past, you know. So so yeah, it's it's a it's
a it's a fascinating time. We really is just an interesting time right now,
and it's great to be a creator in that type of environment. So,
so Scott like, what what have you read any like unpublished or I'm
sorry unpublished? Have you read any any unproduced screenplays recently that have just like
floored you. Yes, I just got done doing my twelfth Blacklist feature writers
Lab in LA got back about two weeks ago, and there were six projects
and all of them were really good, and a couple of them were just,
uh, we're you know. One of them was like almost ready to
go. I mean, there's some rewriting they could do on it. You
could totally see it. It's a genre peace elevator, genre piece. And
so yes, you know, there's there's great material out there now. The
spec script market is down this year, and it's compared to last year,
and last year was down compared to the previous year, and I think in
large part that's due to the studios. Um you know, again you're just
relying on pre branded content, franchise material and whatnot. But I still believe
this to be true that if you write a great script, it'll find its
way. Someone's going to respond to that. And so yeah, there's great
material out there. You know. I've got students here written scripts that they'll
need to rewrite them, but they got strong concepts, great character execution.
So yeah, there's still some really good content being made that's the key.
It's just you write a great script. So so let's talk about that.
You know, when you're working with students, you know, what are some
of the advice that you give to these college students. Well, the first
thing is to remind them constantly that movies are primarily a visual medium. There
are some who will tend to rely too much on dialogue to drive the action.
Not to say that dialogue's bad, it isn't, but for certain genres
action, comedy, depending upon the type of comedy that's thriller, science fiction,
fantasy, those type of movies really lend themselves to visual storytelling. And
that's the type of thing that Hollywood does better than anybody else in the world,
you know, visual storytelling. And so I remind them that. Look,
for the first three decades of movies existence, there was no dialogue.
It was silent films. Yeah, we have those little inner titles, but
largely it was just visuals. And in some ways, we're circling back to
that kind of paradigm, I think because now with the box office receipts,
the revenues seventy to seventy five percent of those generated by the international markets,
whereas a joke a line of dialogue. An exchange of dialogue may not translate
that well from say the United States to China or Brazil or Germany or whatnot.
Someone slipping out of an antipedal and falling on their asses universally funny.
So that's the first thing I hammer with them, like every quarter, is,
you know, it's a visual medium. You've got to think visually.
You know, whenever you start to construct a scene, that's your starting point
is a visual storytelling. I'd also say this because you know, I stay
on top of the business. It's weird that I'm you know, I'm more
connected now in Hollywood than I ever was when I live to and a half
miles east of twentieth century Fox because of my blog. You know, is
there are several things going on relative to cultural trends and technological developments. The
generation right now, the young general, young people you know up through the
millennials, but these eighteen year olds up to that they have seen, heard,
or read exponentially more stories than previous generations. If you consider stories to
be snapchat conversations and text conversations and YouTube videos that sort of thing, and
those are stories, you know, at the beginning middle end many of them,
and so they just intuitively know story on a level that I think previous
generations don't. So, for example, they don't need as much exposition now
as it used to be, which is why I think you've seen this shift
back in the eighties when I broke in what is now what used to be
the end of act one then is now the middle of act one. You
just don't need all that setup. Get into the story and get going.
And that's another thing because young people nowadays are so used to getting their content
when they want it, how they want it now now that another thing I
take to teach my students is get into the story. Drop them in.
There's a Latin phrase in media race, drop them into the middle. Just
put them in there. They want that type of thing. They want to
get into the story. They may not even need to know that much about
the characters. You think about movies like X, Mackina or Lucy. There's
a couple of movies that come into mind, you don't barely anything about the
protagonist. Within two to three minutes, boom, they're into the plot.
And so I think young audience is kind of like that. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
Like, Okay, as long as I'm not confused, let's say I'm here
with this character and we're into the action, I'm going to find out all
that exposition along the way, not sort of lay it out up front like
we we traditionally used to do. So there are definitely some things going on
in terms of technology and cultural mindset that you know, we need to be
cognizant of as screenwriters, and I try to pass that along to my students.
So when when you mentioned that, you know, the the it used
to be in the eighties, the end of act one is now the middle
of act one, do you sort of so so let me ask you this,
let me kind of rephrase that my question. Do you kind of think
like you know, usually in the Hero's Journey with Joseph Campbell, you know,
there's a there's the call to action, and then there's the refusal of
the call. Don't you think that the refusal of that call sometimes can be
a little who is maybe not needed? And here's what I mean by that.
You know, if you go to see like a road trip movie nowadays,
you already know the going on the road trip. So is there really
any need to have a refusal of the call? Because I mean, hell,
the you know that then being on the road is the whole reason that
brought you into the theater, do you know what I mean? Well,
that's you're raising an interesting point, Dave, which is that the awareness level
of people going into movies is such based on trailers and the inundation of marketing,
and I think that does have an impact. So if you know that
this is a road picture, do you really need to spend twenty five pages
setting it up? No, you don't, you know, You're just you're
just gonna You're gonna bore the younger generation. They just they just want things
to I think, in their storytelling to move much more quickly. So in
terms of the refusal to call, well, this gets into a bigger area.
And this is another thing that I hammer my students on, which is
that you've got to ground your story crafting process in the characters and so in
particularly the protagonist. And so if you question, for you know, if
you were like a student that came in and said, I don't know whether
I should have a refusal of the call to adventure with this character or not.
You know, I would say, well, don't look at it from
outside the story universe. Go inside the story universe and get to know that
character. Are they the type of individual that would refuse or are they the
type of individual who would leap at the opportunity. You really need to ground
the storytelling and what I call the protagonist's journey. In fact, I'm working
up a book proposal right now. I was approached by a publishing company to
write a potential textbook in which we invert the way we look at I think
typically, or at least the way that kind of floats around in the screenplay
universe about how to approach story structure. So much of the emphasis is on
plot and on these page counts and whatnot, which I think is a rather
wrongheaded way of approaching it. Much better to go at it by immersing yourself
and engage in the story universe and engaging yourself with all the characters, in
particularly the protagonist. The protagonists goal, the protagonists want and need. All
that stuff basically sets the spine of the story. And so how much better
to come to the plot by working with the character and determine it's their story.
You know, it's their fate. I call it the narrative imperative.
That story that happens to the protagonist. If it happened two weeks ago in
their life or a month from now, it would be a different story.
It's happening right now. There's a reason why you type fade in at this
moment with that story. And there's a reason why that character intersects with other
characters, the specific set of chas as they go along. There's a reason
why those events happen and Acts one, two, and three because it's facilitating
the protagonist transformation that journey. Again, this is inverting the idea as opposed
to looking at the plot. First, look at the plot as a way
of facilitating, servicing, and supporting the protagonist transformation. Joseph Campbell said,
the whole point of the hero's journey is transformation. And so that's another big
area that I focus on with my students. We do a ton of work
on character development. In fact, I created a class here called story development,
and we spend it's an entire quarter working with characters and out of that
working up an outline. So then you move into writing a first draft.
So back to your question, I mean this thing about whether there's a refusal
to call any of that stuff. You have to be mindful of cultural trends
and audiences in terms of their interests and predilection. But everything needs to be
grounded and working with the characters as far as I'm concerned, I mean,
character equals plot, and so let's put some flesh on the bones there and
actually make that come to fruition. Is it when you see these students come
in or even when you're working online with different people, do you see a
tendency to do that formula sort of plot points? Well, there are some
books and you know them, I won't name them that are that you know
that that have very specific paradigms, um and um. You know, I
just have I have concerns about that. I have concerns about that multiple levels.
If you reduce screenplays to you know, these specific sort of page counts,
this needs to happen here and this needs to happen there. You're it's
problematic on several fronts. One, it demeans the craft. It makes it
look like we're dealing with which jets as opposed to the creative effort and the
creative skill and talent. That's required to write a rich story with multidimensional characters,
surprising twists and turns and all the rest. You know, that requires
creativity. If you're out there espousing something, then you have a software system
that you can plug things into and come out with a paradigm or whatever,
then that demeans the craft. And that extends to the experience of professional screenwriters
working in Hollywood right now. If you're studio executive who maybe got an MBA
from Stanford or Harvard, and you meet with them and you and they're giving
you script notes and they say, well, I'm sorry, but you're Act
one ends too late. You know, it needs to break into Act two
on twenty five. Well, if that's all they know about story, is
that sort of formulaic approach to screenwriting, then why do we end up with
so many formulaic script movies. It's because of that type of thinking. So
I think that any attempt to codify some sort of so called rules or these
kind of formulas is really working at counter purposes to what it should be,
which is a true creative effort. And that again, lean into the characters
see where they take you. You know, it's exciting to see scripts like
A Quiet Place. Did you read the script A Quiet Place? Or you've
seen the movie, right, probably, David, Yeah, I seen the
movie. I didn't read the screenplay. Well, you know, it breaks
like so many of the so called rules. I think it's like sixty eight
pages long. They include photographs and images, they mess around with fun.
I've actually interviewed those guys and they're actually coming to Chicago and the end of
September for our Courier twelve conference and going to be panelists here, Scott and
Bryan and so you read these scripts and see that there are these creative choices
being made and the stories work. You know, they don't fit the they
don't fit the sort of formulate paradigm. So yeah, I'm Fortunately for me,
most of the students I deal with, except for the graduate students who
may have had more experience in you know, immersing themselves in screenwriting, the
world of screenwriting and whatnot, most of my students are undergraduate and they haven't
been tainted by that, you know, which is great because then I can
just deal with them like you've seen them, you know, thousands of movies
and TV series and whatnot. Great, you've got in an eight understanding of
this, and so let's build on that. But let's start with characters.
Okay, let's start with your characters and see where they take you. Yea,
So it's it's kind of like you're letting the characters kind of lead the
plot rather than having, you know, this sort of template that comes in.
I always see those templates like like training wheels. You know, it's
fine to use it if you're doing like your first you know, screenplay or
whatever. But if you start keep doing that, you kind of end up
with those formulaic movies that you know, you will always talk about. Well,
and some of those formulas were created back in the nineties, you know,
are they relevant twenty years later? You know? Apart from three X
structure and perhaps the idea of sequences, you know, is there anything really
that is kind of sacrosanct in terms of the craft visa visa this, you
know, screenplay structure. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. I don't think so, you know,
I think that again, you yes, have follow the characters. It's
their story, they exist, they know it better than you do. They're
inviting you to tell the story. They want you to tell the story,
so it's much better to have you know, we go through these brainstormy exercises,
like I take my students through. We do six sets of brainstormy exercises.
We spend an entire couple of weeks just doing brainstorming. You know,
forget any of the construction construction of the story. The first we just get
to know the characters. And so they'll do the traditional indirect engagement exercises like
questionnaires and biographies, and I'll have them, you know, write a scene
just to kind of with the characters and just to get them loosened up.
But then we move into these direct engagement exercises, which are great. It's
like, all right, imagine you're a psychiatrist and you're gonna have this patient
as one of your characters, and they've been court appointed. They have to
see you, and they have to answer questions. They cannot get out of
this unless they answer your questions. And so now you move from dealing with
the character as an eye it relationship like they're over there, you're dealing with
them directly as an EU. And so I'll have them do these exercises where
they interview the characters. Then they'll even get a little bit more into that
kind of California New Age thing, which is a lot of fun when I'm
dealing with some students who are a little bit more left brain oriented. Okay,
so I'm going to have you go into our room, close the door,
turn off the phone, get a piece of paper and a pad of
paper and a pen, or get in your computer, and I want you
to do some deep breathing. It's like meditation. I want you to breathe
in and out for about a minute or so, and I want you to
be thinking of that character and get into their headspace. And for the next
ten or fifteen minutes, it's at a timer. I want you to blind
type what are they thinking, what are they feeling? And yes, your
mind will go, well, I have to do this, and I've got
to go wash the dog and whatever. That's just chatter. Let it go.
Come back to that character and keep reaching out to them and try and
get into their headspace. You can do that as like stream of consciousness.
You can also do that as like monologues, like what are they going to
say? And so you just blind type. You do that for two to
fifteen minutes now what you end up with, maybe eighty percent of it is
nonsensical, but twenty percent of it whatever percentage fifty can be gold. You've
like accessed that character. Moreover, if it is like a monologue or even
just articulating what they're thinking or feeling, you're starting to get a sense of
their voice. And so it is that weird thing I call writing wrangling magic.
You know, where you're you're you're believing this magical thing where the characters
exists in this weird way, and so if you really believe that, then
you'll start to see and hear them. It's like the inverse of that,
seeing is believing, Well believing is seeing and hearing. You reach out to
them. They wouldn't have appeared to you, and they wouldn't want you to
write their story if they hadn't shown up. That they did show up somehow
in your conscious subconscious or conscious life, and so reach out to them.
And so we do all this brainstorming. It's great, it's really great,
And I have to say I've done and I teach it to Paul and Screenwriting
master class. I had that prep class I started eight years ago, and
I've done that, Like thirty times. That's the thing that I mean,
apart from everything else that they enjoy, the writers enjoy about that process when
we get through that brainstorming and they create this master brainstorming list and they got
all this content that they've surfaced, ten twenty pages of stuff before they even
moved toward plotting. I get compliments about that all the time, like,
oh my god, that was such a mind blowing experience. I can't belie
leeve how great that was. How much more in touch I am with the
story? You know, And I've added benefit. When you're in touch with
the characters and they're alive and they're speaking to you and you're seeing them and
you're hearing them and you can't get them out of your mind, how much
more motivated are you to write the story because you're connected with them. So
yeah, you know, I preach the character a lot. I'm sorry,
I get off of my soapbox on that, but I just it's a counteractive
to formulaic writing. It's just working with characters. And moreover, it's just
I think the right headed way to do it. You can say, I
think it's kind of like it gives you, like that north Star that north
Star. That's kind of like, this is where you're going through story rather
than kind of making the writing of a selfish stream of consciousness, you know
what I mean. So it kind of it allows them to have a lot
more or even just you know, anyone doing this in general, it as
you have a lot more of not where to go, but also you kind
of know, okay, well, these are some different scenarios or situations or
what have you that that I've already kind of thought of about. But before
I get to the outlining phase. Oh yeah, and the brainstorming, I
tell him, don't pre ate it. I mean, you may be sitting
there typing right this stream of consciousness and all of a sudden, chocolate milkshake
pops to mind. You may think, oh, well that's just dumb,
No, put it down. Imagine what orson Wells if you'd been brainstorming and
said, snowblobe, what's that? Threw it away? You know, No,
became an essential part of Citizen Kane. So you'll have scenes up here,
You'll have lines of dialogue up here, You'll have moments up here,
You'll have characters pop up. You may be working on the protagonist character and
all of a sudden, the Nemesis pops up. Okay, go off and
work with the nemesis. They evidently want to talk to you right now.
Now that said, you can if you're working with the protagonist, I think
you talk about a north star. The protagonist is your north star. In
most stories, the protagonist's journey is what dictates like virtually everything. It's why
those are the characters exist. If you think about, for example, Robert
town had that great question. He said, one of the best ways to
understand a character is to ask, what are they most afraid of? Okay,
well, let's run with that. So what if you work with a
protagonist and you come up with an answer to that, what are they most
afraid of? Right? Clarice Starling in the Silence of the Lambs most afraid
of confessing that horrible experience she had in the Montana farm where she saw that
witness the spring slaughter of the lambs. She grabbed a lamb and ran off
with it. She was trying to save that lamb, but it was so
heavy. It was so heavy. She says, Well, if you really
drill down into the psychology of that story, she is that lamb represents her
father. She's trying to save her father. Her father was slain when she
was like ten years old, and so what she's most afraid of is the
boogeyman who killed her dad. The random chance he opens a door, these
guys are stealing a TV boom boom, they shoot him and he dies.
So so if she's afraid of facing those the associations that she has with her
father's death and those bad guys, you know, with that experience in the
Montana farm, well so what better way to create drama than to have her
face a boogeyman at the end who is Buffalo Bill. So now all of
a sudden, you've got a specific psychological connection between your protagonist and your nemesis.
It's not just generic that that nemesis is a projection or physicalization of the
of the protagonist shadow using this language. And so okay, that's cool.
Well then you think, all right, well, so what about allies along
the way? Well you'll meet like a mentor figure or two, you know,
while in case of Starling, that's just the great you know, it's
just that that movie is like the perfect thing for me to teach because it's
like fits everything that hits everything that I kind of believe about storytelling, mentor
characters. Hannibal Elector perfect guy for her, not only because he's tied to
the Buffalo bill case, but also because he's a strength and so he's he
can absolutely guide her into herself, which is what she needs to do.
If you look at the story The Silence of the Lamps from a meta standpoint,
you know, what is the narrative imperative? Why does Clarisse get called
into this story? It's yeah, it's to solve the case and to save
Catherine Martin, But on a personal level and her psychological journey, it's to
intersect with Hannibal Elector. And they do that quid pro quo, you tell
me, I'll tell you things. You tell me things, but personal things.
Right, So you know, she Crawford says, don't let him inside
your head. Boom, she lets him inside her head. And so the
mentor helps her all the way down and tell that thing that she doesn't want
to confess, which is the story of the Montanner Farm. So if you
work with the protagonists and you start thinking in terms of their journey, you
can even by asking the question, my language system, what's their opening state
of disunity. What are they disconnected from in their in their psyche, there's
stuff they're repressing, their their core of being, their their need. When
we talk about need, not need to obtain something, but need to emerge,
what needs to emerge from inside? Right, Glinda the good which says
to Dorothy, Dorothy, You've had the power to go home all along,
It's already there. Ovid says, the seeds of change lie within and so
the character of the protagonist has that stuff inside and it needs to emerge.
So they're in a state of disunion. They're just connected from that. But
if you can identify what it is that needs to come out, that suggests
the endpoint unity will be right back after a word for our sponsor, and
now back to the show positive transformation. Obviously there are stories where the protagonist
doesn't have a positive transformation. So just by working with the protagonist character and
looking at their their psychological state to depth, you can surface all sorts of
things. And of course brainstorming will help surface this subconscious stuff that you know,
can really enrich a story. Again getting off on a soapbox that date,
But I'm passionate about this stuff, you know, I want people to
write stories that are vibrant and alive and you know, not formulaic that there
were the plot emerges from working with the characters. You know that that's my
true passion. Yeah, it's just like this interview, like I'm Clarice and
you're you're kind of like Hannibal Lector. I've come to ask you for over
over help, and uh yeah, well I I funny. I did the
London Screenwriting Festival last year Screenwriters Festival, and they invited me back. I'm
going again in a week and I'll be doing a masterclass and four presentations.
But I talk about one of the presentations I did last year and they asked
me to reprise it this year is writing a worthy nemesis. And my thesis
there is that the best way to come up with a worthy nemesis is to
start with the protagonist again, what is inside them? If you ask the
question what do they fear the most? And then put the protagonists in the
situation where they have to confront that fear, that's just great drama. So
but yeah, I think the point is that I do a little Hannibal Lecter
impersonation, but I do that and uh, some people really like that last
year, so I guess I'll try and try and do that again this year.
It's something that somebody once pointed out to me. Now I can't hear
it. It was I ate his liver with a bottle of key kyant,
Yeah, and somebody said it's actually key keyante or something like. Apparently he
mispronounced it in the movie and I didn't even notice it. And I'm like,
now, now, whenever I hear him, kind of like, uh,
you know, he says it, but I think he's being ironic.
I mean, I think he purposefully miss mispronounced it because you will listen to
it. It's hang there he goes with some fava beans and a nice canty
like he's from New York or something. You know. Uh, that's yeah.
I think he does kind of mispronounce it or whatever. But but you
know, I'm gonna have to watch we watched the movie and uh and pay
attention to that part again. But uh, but you know, I wanted
to you know, s gott. I know we're kind of pushed on time,
but I wanted to talk about zero draft thirty. Um, it's it's
you know, it's uh, you know, I wanted to interview you again
before it's started, and it's actually starting in what two days? Um?
First? Yeah, yeah, so two days? So, uh, you
know, could you just you know, take us through, you know,
the the impetus for you to start zero draft thirty and what it is for
those who don't know. Sure, Well, back in October twenty fifteen,
I've been working on a script project and developing it and it started writing it
when something happened in the news that basically blew up the story. And so,
you know, I've had situations where projects had gotten kind of pulled out
from underneath me, but this was particularly veccine because I put a lot of
time into it, and so I was very frustrated. Well, I had
this comedy that I'd been sitting in my back burner for some time. So
I just said on my blog, all right, I haven't even worked the
story out, I know the characters, I know kind of where I want
to go, But starting November first through November thirtieth, I'm just going to
write this script. And it's like Nantal Writemo. I mean, it's not
like an original idea. They used to do a thing called script Frenzy,
but they stopped doing it, I think in twenty thirteen, so I just
invited people to do it with me while I got picked up by indie wire.
It was translated into like Spanish and other languages, and I think we
had over a thousand as far as I could tell, guess them at people
doing that, and we had dozens and dozens and dozens of people who the
script. Somebody came up with this idea. I called it zero drafts,
and then they came up with the idea of zero draft thirty like zero dark
thirty on the zero draft thirty, and so that became the moniker for it.
The basic idea of zero draft is it's like a pre first draft.
So if you have problems with perfectionism and you have problems with procrastination, a
procrastination largely is about, well, I'm afraid that what I'm going to produce
is not going to be any good, So that's perfectionism. Well this is
a great way. It's like a blast at that because it's all about productivity
rather than the quality. It's about quantity pages, not quality pages. Obviously,
right those best you can. But the point is to get from fade
into fade out with the belief that by having done that, you will have
learned a lot more about your story than when you began it. Even if
you've outlined your story, and you will cross that psychological barrier which you've gotten
to the first draft, and so now you can have something to work with
as opposed to just staring at a blank page. So what happened was we
did that, and then my theory is, and I always tell people that
if you're outside the business and you want to break in, you need to
be obviously watching movies and reading scripts, but also writing pages. And so
write two specs a year. Even if you did one page a day,
you spend a month prepping a story you wrote for four months a page a
day, that's one hundred and twenty pages, and then you spend a month
rewriting it. Well, you could do two spec scripts a year just by
writing one page a day. So what I did was in the blog we
decided to do two zero draft thirty challenges a year, one in September and
one in March. March is actually thirty one day, so you get a
bonus day, and so they're basically spaced six months apart. And there's a
Facebook group Zero Draft thirty Facebook group, which is a public group, but
it's private in the sense that you have to join it. We now have
thirty one hundred members. That's an ongoing thing. You know, it's a
terrific group. It's very much like going to the story. It's everybody in
there, you know, understands that it's a real hard to road to hoe
that the competition is fierce. Success is hard to come by. But we're
also optimistic. We're also we lift each other up, you know. I
kind of ways just point to myself say, look, I was completely outside
the business. I knew one person and I wrote my third spec script and
sold. So you know, I can't deny that reality. It does happen,
even though the odds are long. So the zero Draft thirty challenge starts
in September first ends on September thirtieth. I do a blog post every day
with some inspirational stuff. We I look, you know, there's a hashtag
ZD thirty script. I look there, I look at the Facebook group,
I look at my blog. I see what people are posting. Every day.
I'll select somebody and give them an award. It varies. Sometimes it's
the Anita Loose a word who was one of the first great screenwriters in Hollywood,
a woman, and sometimes it's a Dalton Trumbo word. And so they
just get a little picture with their name, you know, on it,
and just a little something to motivate people. But it's great. And we
also this year have a harmonic convergence for reasons which I can't get into.
It's just too long. But the spirit animal for the zero Draft thirty group
is a hamster called scamper. We don't go writing sprints. We do writing
scampers. Again, it's like, have some fun with this, right,
So we do this thing. We've now done it, I think like thirty
times every first Friday night or Saturday, you know, twenty one one am
to Sunday, twenty four hour period, we do what we call our writing
scamper a thon. So they're twenty four hosts around the world each hour of
the day, so that you know, you just pick a day, pick
time slot, you're going to know that somebody's going to be there to usher
you into your hour and congratulate you on spending that hour writing. The point
of it is to get people to write on weekends, and the point of
that is to get people to write every day. You know, if you
get writing every day, there becomes a habit and you're more productive. So
it just so happens that this September challenge, starting September first at twelve or
one am, I'm gonna launch the next twenty four hours scamper thought. So
if people are interested, they can go to the zero draft thirty Facebook group.
Just look that up against tremendous group of people there. We get some
wonderful moderators who oversee things and there's no we don't allow anybody to promote any
consulting services or any contests or any of that stuff. It's like a completely
ad free, pressure free zone. It's just people who uh, you know,
want to support each other and help each other and and um, you
know, writers groups form off that, you know, private writers groups or
people will say I have some pages, I'll read pages in exchange for you
reading pages. You can do that offline. So but anyhow, that's zero
draft thirty. It's the zero draft approach. There are there are from writers
who do this. There's a that's Scott Fraser five or six years ago,
got on Twitter one day and said I'm going to write a draft in twenty
four hours, and he commented along the way on Twitter, and he did.
He wrote that draft in twenty four hours. It was a real rough
draft, like sixty pages. But that became a movie. He wrote the
script and sold it and then became a movie. So there's real value in
the zero draft approach, and particularly if you're a perfectionist and you tend to
procrastinate. Do you know what that movie was called that? I can look
it up. He's been on Twitter for quite some time, but it was
I'll have to look it up. I can email it to you. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
show. Okay, yeah, yeah, I just that's actually pretty interesting,
Scott Um. But w yeah, you know, I'm actually going to compete
in uh we'll compete. I'm actually going to participate. Yeah, and zero
Draft thirty because you really don't compete against any movie with yourself. But but
but uh you know, uh yeah, I want to participate this year.
I try to do it last year and I just kind of fell off the
wagon there, I guess I don't. I just kind of it kind of
fell off the rails and Uh, so I'm going to participate this year.
I got that handy dandy calendar out right. I was like, so,
yeah, that thing's awesome. So whoever made that, you know, great,
it's great work. Stephen Dudley did that. He's one of those zero
Draft thirty members. And so if you go to my blog, I have
blog posts all this week prepping people for the challenge, and you can see
there's a doubt you can download this this wonderful calendar where you know, where
you can just fill in every day. There's a little motivational things in there
and whatnot. So yeah, and I'm gonna link to all that in the
show notes, Scott, just you know, all of the things that we've
talked about, so, you know, just to sort of, you know,
put a period the end of this whole conversation, Sky, is there
anything you wanted to to sort of add in conclusion, Well, just that
again reinforcing the point that the odds are long, you know, astronomically long
to be able to make a living as a writer, and yet people do
you know there it was nice to see that the number of people in the
feature film side of things in Hollywood in twenty seventeen, there was an uptick
in the number of people, pretty substantial one, so that you know,
it is possible to work as a writer in the business. But beyond that,
just if you pursue your passion. You know, if you're creative and
you don't give voice to that and you don't pursue that, that's such a
loss for you and perhaps the universe. Um. But if you do pursue
it, you know, then you're putting yourself in alignment with some authentic part
of your self. And you know, again, folly or bliss, it's
it's more than just three words. It's it's like a fundamental thing. Can
you imagine this world eight billion people who are each of them able to pursue
the thing about which they were the most passionate, the thing that enlivened them.
You know what a place this would be. So I just encourage people
to don't think about the odds, don't think about anything other than just what
it is that excites you. If you're a creative person and pursue it,
whether it's an avocation, whatever it is, you know, woodworking, painting,
poetry, kite flying, do that, because it's just going to have
an incredible benefit for you, and you'll know at the end of your life,
you know, you won't say I regret not doing that. You will
have done it, and so follow your blisses. I always think, always
say that's it's profoundly important insight into life. Yeah, it's good. Uh,
you don't want to live life with regret or you know, we kind
of look back and say, why didn't I do that? Or what went
wrong? You know, why didn't I Why wasn't I able to do that?
Then you know, and uh, you know, I agreed completely,
Scott, And I think that's a great way to sort of put a period
at the end of all this where people find you out online. Scott,
Well, there's my blog. Go into the story. You know. That's
based on a little anecdote I had with my youngest son. He was about
three at the time, and I was joking with him while I was overseeing
his bath. I said, well, you know, my dad, your
dad's gonna write a story tomorrow, the New Script, and do you have
any advice for me? And he looked up at me and without hesitation,
said, go into the story and find the animals, which I just thought
was, you know, great and So that's my blog, Go into the
Story. It's now ten years old. Launched in May sixteen, two thousand
and eight. It's the official screenwriting blog of the Blacklist. There are twenty
four thousand posts there. It's covers basically everything you could possibly imagine. You
can follow me on Twitter go into the story at going to the Story,
I think of fifty one thousand followers at this point, but the very active
feed there all screenwriting and writing and creative you know oriented. Also there's the
zero Draft thirty Facebook group which I started back in November of twenty fifteen,
and terrific community of people there. And then the DePaul's University School of Cinematic
Arts. If you know anybody, Oh I should I have to say this
day, I got to tell you this. We just recently starting classes here
in September sixth will be the first BFA and MFA set of students for comedy
writing and film writing in conjunction with the Second City. We've partnered with the
Second City, which is the premier improv group. You know, it's been
around for fifty years and so DePaul University has partnered with the Second City and
we're now offering the worlds only to my knowledge, BFA and MFA programs and
comedy writing and filmmaking. So the students get to actually go to the second
city site there and work with those incredible faculty that they have who are just
phenomenal teachers when it comes to comedy and an improv. They actually work with
them at the Lincoln Park facility over there. I live five blocks from there,
and then they also work here at our DePaul University taking classes. So
they're getting they're getting an education, but they're getting an education in which they're
going to end up with a portfolio of content and an incredible experience developing their
comedy chops from just like top tier faculty in both worlds, the improv and
sketch world and then the screenwriting and writing world. So so De Paul University
School of Cinematic Arts is where I am. And I think that's probably pretty
much about it in terms of how you get in touch with me. Oh
can I mention mentioned one other thing. If you're in the UK and you're
listening to this, I'm going to be at the London Screenwriters Festival from September
seventh through the tenth. I believe it is or seventh of the ninth,
sixth of the ninth. Then I'm going to be in Cologne the first week
of October to Cologne, Germany for a two day master class, and then
I'm doing a keynote address for their Film Festival, and then I'll be at
the Austin Film Festival at the end of October. And then if you're in
France, I'm going to be in Paris in March of twenty nineteen for a
three day workshop there too, So doing a lot more of this type of
thing, So I will definitely link that in the show note because Scott,
I think I think the UK is like the third biggest listener base of this
podcast, so all right, so well, I think that's a it's a
good sign. So um but good you know it scotten the link to everything
you said in the show notes a great having a conversation with you again,
Dave. I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job
on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about
in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv
forward slash three zero four, and if you haven't already, please head over
to Screenwriting podcast dot com, Subscribe and leave a good review for the show.
It really really helps us out a lot. Thank you again for listening
to guys as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to
you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.