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 two ninety four. The secret of becoming a good
screenwriter is to write, write, and keep on writing. Ken McLean 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
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Screenplay dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff. On today's
episode, I'm going to be talking with Pilar Alessandra about screenwriting. I just
read her book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter, and I mean it's it's an
amazing book. It's got all kinds of activities you can do to kind of
jump start your creativity and start really figuring out what your screenplay is about and
what the characters are, you know, what their motivations are, what they
want in the story. I really enjoyed it, and it's got a lot
of stuff that I haven't seen another sco You know, there's a million screenwriting
books and I try to read as many as I can, and this one
had a lot of great new stuff in it, so I highly recommend it.
Here's my interview with the amazing Pilar Alessandra, Like a typical work week
for you? Like what I mean? You do you have like a pile
of screenplays that you are going through? Are you talking with screenwriters on the
phone? What's kind of your world like there? My world is a little
bit busy. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody unless you're you want to commit
to workaholism. I consult on two scripts a day and I run not read
Funny Money today. I run four different private writers groups. This is these
are things I actually don't advertise. They're made up of writers that I've picked
out of clients that I think that that are really at a certain level with
their writing and are also good in a room. So I run those private
writing groups four times a week. And then I also have six week classes
that I teach, currently teaching one on Saturdays twelve thirty to three thirty,
and that's those tend to be first draft classes. And then I also do
rewrite weekends and the occasional specialty class. I'm very very excited because I'm also
teaching TV class about every two months now and it's usually a one day intensive
and then when I'm not doing that, I'm really lucky I get to travel
and teaching other countries, and recently just got back from South Africa, which
was amazing. I got to spend five days with an animation company called Triggerfish
and thirty five writers from all over Africa, So that was really cool.
So is that ever intimidating to you? I mean, do you you kind
of pinch yourself and say, you know, wow, Yeah. Every time
I'm invited somewhere, I just think that they've just sent the email to the
person, you know, imposter syndrome. Yeah, We've kind of go through
that for a little bit, like well you know this and you know,
and they're like, no, no you So so yeah, I'm very very
lucky and it's really cool. So so yeah, I work really hard,
but it's a it's a great job. So working with creative people, do
you is there something that they have in common that they're looking for that they
need in terms of they have a certain way of thinking, they have a
certain way of wanting to create and want to write, but they just need
somebody to come in and organize their thought or something like that. I think
I think everybody wants to know are they expressing their intention? They had this
idea in their head, or they had this person in their mind, or
they had this amazing scene. Is it there? I think one of the
reasons I called this on the page my business was because it really all came
down to was it there? Was it on the page? It can it
can live in your mind. You can help a director brings it out or
an actor, but if it's not on the page, then it's just not
working. So that's what everybody wants to know. Am I seeing it?
Is it there? Will audiences see it? And if it's not there,
then we talk about what's the best way to express that so that they can
get their intention out. One of the things that I've had to learn over
the years was, Okay, where is my talent? What am I good
at? What can I you know, I can see when I write,
I kind of see scenes. I see it, And it's almost a way
of like taking dictation, putting it on the page and saying, Okay,
I've got a movie. Now how do I take that movie and then structure
it right and put it right so that what I'm actually seeing is what I'm
conveying to people, you know, right? And then there's the tricky part
because if what you're seeing is sort of a list of things. I see
things. I see that, I see the other thing. That can get
monotonous and it can feel cutible. But if you phrase it in a way,
you know, I see it and it looks like this thing. You
know, if you're using assembly that works for you or a metaphor. I
mean, people don't don't appreciate. I think how how much screenwriters are writers.
They have to find the right phrase in order to convey visually what's in
their head because they're A list of things doesn't work. It has to be
a sometimes just a concise sentence. So so word choices is everything. Page
work. It seems like a lot of you can take a lot of liberties
with certain things when it comes to kind of making your vision come to life.
And I was wondering what you thought about that in terms of just do
you find that there's a lot of as long as they're getting their vision through
that they can kind of play with that. Yes, if it's readable,
it's working. If it doesn't make the readers stop to notice the format or
look at the page number, it's working. People are so hung up on
you know it's there. Am I doing the correct format. But I really
believe over the years it has loosened up because at the stage that you're submitting
your script, it's for people to grasp on to the story and characters and
then start pushing it upwards. So if that's not coming through, um,
if they're not completely involved, it's not going to go anywhere. They're not
going to pass on it because you did some kind of incorrect formatting. They're
going to pass at their board. So um, yeah, even that's my
call warning slow. Everybody will just assume you use some bad language there.
So that'd be really funny if it just kept okay, okay, let's try
to let's you know, keep it on the table here. Don't work blue.
Um. Even David Trottier, Um, he wrote the Screenwriter's Bible,
and he's known lovingly as doctor format. You know, he's he's over the
years said as much. You know, if it's worked on the page,
if it's you know, the things, the objects you want noticed or being
noticed, and the visuals are coming through, and the dialogue is clear,
and you're working down the page with a certain pace, it's working. One
of the biggest things that I remember was when I was in my younger years.
I read it read, you know, Shane Black screenplay for Lethal Weapon,
which is kind of like what everybody has to read when they're first starting
out, and it just blew me away, like, you know, even
noting parts of it where it was like, you know, he was in
the kind of house that I would buy if I sold this screenplay, and
like all these little things that he put in just to kind of keep people
interested, And it just seems like in the good screenplays that I've read,
it's all about just keeping people's attention, you know, building that tension,
making sure that every every scene has a reason to be there and everything is
pulling you in and just affecting you, versus some of the more amateurist things
that I used to read, which was you would just have people talking and
dialogue that kind of went nowhere, and people would be creating a world,
but they wouldn't necessarily be creating a story. No. I totally agree with
you, Um, And you know, fortunately, I think writers have there's
so much more out there now for them as far as resources go, that
they know now that you know, just hanging it on dialogue is not the
way to go. Um. They're the scripts that I've read over the years
have gotten better and better and better. Um. And the bad news is
that means your competition is getting is also getting better. UM. So now
when people sort of when it's not screen when when people so now, when
it's not working page wise, it's not so much because people are um hanging
it on amateur. Um sorry, I'm getting a little sun that. So
it's not that people are getting amateur in their writing. It's that, um
they sometimes they're just it's actually two full of bells and whistles. Now we'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
show. Now it's like, I'm not going to tell you the story.
I'm gonna go to a really cool flash forward. Now I'm going to go
back in time, and now I'm gonna go from somebody else's point of view.
Well, I switched genres. I'm so clever. And so when that
starts happening, that's sometimes what I see is screwing things up, not because
you shouldn't be inventive, because you should, but because they're throwing all the
cool spaghetti against the wall and it just feels like spaghetti against the wall kind
of the Michael Bay version of a screenplay. There. I think, what
Michael Bay does, you know, he commits to I think people don't know
what they want. Like if they if you know, if they're writing a
Michael Bay movie, fine, commit to it. But if you're writing a
Michael Bay movie, but it's half that and it's half Tarantino, you know,
and it's also a super indie at the same time, it's like,
okay, make up your mind. It's that kind of spaghetti method that could
be a problem. Yeah. Well, I remember when when I was in
film school, Tarantino was Tarantino had really just come out when I think pulp
fiction was out and Reservoir Dogs came out. I think when I was a
sophomore, and it was funny because, you know, I was taking a
screenwriting class and every single person in that class started writing Quentin Tarantino screenplays,
you know, and they had the dialogue between two guys that was kind of
like didn't really have anything to do with anything, and there was something kind
of you know, in the background that you were supposed to They just kind
of missed the point of that and just went for the funny dialogue versus it's
funny dialogue because you know something bad is going to happen. It builds that
tension, you know, the kind of hitchcock way of showing you something bad's
going to happen and then having people do stuff you know they would just forget
about that part. Yeah, you've totally just nailed why that scene works,
which is it gets our defenses down. You think, wow, these are
two guys who were just talking about just guy fun stuff. And then when
you see the blow of the scene, which is you know they're on their
way to kill a room full of people. Um, that is what that
scene is about. That's why it has to be there. And you're right
after that. People wrote a million copies and I read them all because I
was videos at the time, and they didn't have any reason for being there.
They were just clever and uh and you know, cleverness without context,
without a connecting to anything. Um. You know, it's a cute scene,
but it feels it kind of wrecks the screenplay. It feels out of
place. Now I want to I want to step back a little bit and
talk about your time at Ambling and working with Amblin and DreamWorks and that that
period and so if we can just go back in time a little bit back
intent Oh my goodness, Well, I can't let it go because I'm a
huge Spielberg and Zamecha's fan. You know. I first took on the job
because it was really cool job. I was like, oh, wow,
this would be great. You know, I can I can work from home,
and I can do with the other things I was interested in and hang
out with my friends. But my work workaholism. You know. Soon,
you know, soon got in my way where UM. I was reading tons
of scripts for them. UM. When I first started, it was the
heyday of amblin UM. Jurassic Park had just hit UM Schindler's list, and
you know, everybody was feeling really good about the content and it was a
real or sort of happy, go lucky place, if I remember right.
I was in my in my twey, you know, like you could show
up and on Friday people were, you know, having a beer and you
know it felt like yeah, and you know, you'd go in every day
in the place, UM looked a lot like the Flintstone Compound to me.
You know, I had these cute little hutches and yeah, it was it
was. It was pretty amazing. I think I remember seeing that in like
a Barbara Walter special or something, because he was they had all the Jurassic
Park stuff around in dinosaurs. Yes, and it was it was such a
cool place to be working in the twenties. You know. I was just
like, wow, this is this is awesome. And I was definitely learning
on the job. Um, you know, I made some screw ups,
but I also had you know, a couple of creative executives who really thought
I knew story and um, you know it would would you know, give
me some of their more trusted work and over there, once you were trusted
and we're working your your butt off, you know, you'd also start doing
notes on existing projects. Um. So that was interesting for me to as
a reader, what you're usually doing is going yes or no. As somebody's
doing notes, you're saying, well, of course, because it's a project,
and this is what you can do about it, this is how you
can make it better, which is very much the kind of work that I
do now. And when it became DreamWorks, you know, I got to
be senior story analysts, one of a couple of senior story analysts, which
really just meant work harder. And then when Bob Zemeckis did have a deal
with dream Works and he was on the lot for a while there, I
was sort of reading a sort of go between between both companies. It was
interesting, just tons and tons and tons of content that was coming my way,
and I was really getting I think, pretty good at homing in on
what made a script exciting and where it might not work for the executives I
was working for. And that was what led me to create a bunch of
writing tools that I used in classes and became the root of my book.
It was a great learning experience. Where were most of the screenplays coming from?
Were they just people that were submitting screenplays or were they now it was
all the big agencies of the time, c AA, I, CEM,
William Morris, uh Apau, just just the you know, the big ones,
which I can't always say, in my opinion from from reading so many
scripts of the years, is necessarily always a good thing because since you know,
since that work and now that I've been on my own for so many
years and I've read so many writers who aren't represented or who represented by smaller
agencies, I have to say I think sometimes the studios are missing out because
there are some wonderful work out there that that isn't wrapped by a big,
shiny agency and uh and and you know it, that's where a lot of
unique voices are. Um So, you know I've read some I would say,
over the years, even better stuff than I read back. Then,
do you think it's important for writers to try to get an agent so that
they can get into that world? Yeah? Unfortunately it still is because you
still need somebody who can champion your work and has the connections that can that
can reach out for you. Um So, yes, you still want to
try very very hard to get an agent or these days a manager, because
a manager manages your entire career and may understand that you have more than just
one sellable project, that maybe you have something that would be good as a
writing sample to get you work or to staff you up, or maybe you
have an incredible play that needs to get out there, or a web series.
So that what a manager does is tries to get you out on all
kinds of levels an agent and turns around it tries to sell a script.
Okay, Now, when you were reading these screenplays, would you was there
any is there any sort of moment when you would kind of know that it
wasn't a good screenplay. I mean, is there a typical pattern that you
would see in terms of, you know, a screenplay arrives, you start
reading it, and then you start seeing maybe like red flags. Well,
you know, there's something that happens in the second act, and it happened
then, and it happens now. Where I'll read something it has a really
strong first act, it has a great concept, but I kind of call
it spinning its wheels in the second act, it doesn't really know what to
do with that concept, and it starts playing one trick over and over again,
and you start going, Okay, I've been here before. Can we
get can we get out of here? You know, can we get out
of this mud? And know that it's just spinning its wheels and it just
sort of fails to ever sort of cleverly get out of there. Then usually
that's that's that is a problem that I see. Sometimes the problem is actually
the third act where everything has been sort of interesting and fun and games,
and you know, it's trucking along in the second act, but then there's
no clever There isn't a clever resolution there's just sort of a cheating resolution,
you know, Oh, they get the treasure, they get the girl,
they live happily ever after, but there wasn't an interesting way of getting that
treasure or the girl or living happily or after, and the writers just hoping
that the audience will be okay with that. And I don't think audiences like
to be cheated out of a third act, so so that could be a
problem as well. It seems like a lot of times screenwriters will keep setting
up things and setting up things and making things like, oh, well,
I'm going to throw something in that's going to make you it'll pull you into
the story and make you more interested, but it's not paid off at the
end. There's nothing that it really leads to. We'll be right back after
a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. You're absolutely
right, I think too. That's sort of the secret to coming up with
a clever ending is mining whatever you created in the first half. And so
writers get stuck because they think that they have to come up with something completely
out of thin air, and it's like, no, just look look behind
you, what did you invent along the way The smallest thing could be an
incredible payoff. And I think when we see thrillers that work for us,
or even romantic comedies that work for us, they're often pulling from something that
we didn't expect, but it was there. It was there, it was
right in front of our nose, and then they used that to their advantage
in the resolution. And you know, that's what I teach in class,
and I find that, you know, I'm constantly surprised when somebody does do
it well in a great script, I'm like, ah, that was a
great payoff. And in when I was working to studios that would get passed
upwards, and now that I'm not, it's I do see those scripts move
on to success. Now. One of the things that full disclosure is that
you know, I'm I've been working on a screenplay for the last two months,
and I got your book in order to talk to you about it,
you know, and I actually, when once I started reading it, it
kind of blew me away because it's exactly the kind of thing that I need
because I'm a very disorganized, all over the place kind of person. And
I absolutely love the concept of just being able to have somebody guide you through
and say okay, let's focus on what's the log line, what's the idea,
what's this and what you know? Talking about the third act. One
of the things that completely made the screenplay about a hundred times better was the
concept of working backwards from the third act. And it was just like,
it was so great. Yeah, in TV writing, and you know,
over the years my work has changed from Jeff Green just dealing with Green writers,
I would say half and half of it is it's TV And that particular
exercise works really well for TV writers too, because if you're plotting out TV,
your act breaks are everything, and when you're figuring out your TV show,
you need to think about act break backwards. So let's say you have
five acts. If you ask what is it? You know, what's my
act break going to be? And then do that kind of work of well
how did I get there? That will help you figure out how to tell
your story. So I'm very glad that worked for you, because I do
think that it is something that can help people in outlining, especially if they're
not outlined ers. How long do you think people should be outlining before they
actually jump in. I mean, one of the things that I have found
for myself is I'll go through and I'll try to get everything together, but
I'll still have a lot of scenes that I haven't worked out. And then
once I start writing, it almost becomes like this improvisation, you know,
And I want to make sure that I have the tracks laid out and I
can kind of stay there, but I kind of go into these wild ideas.
All of a sudden, I'll invent a character over here and I'll have
this happen over there, and it's like, oh wait a second, I
gotta get back. You know, I'm going off a little bit. But
it's also good, I think, to have that first draft out there so
you can just start generating all those ideas. You know. I think what
you said is perfect. I am not a believer in twenty five page outlines.
I think all you've done then is spend time on a twenty five page
outline where you could have been writing your screenplay. So in classes and in
the book, it's very much what you just said. I provide a blueprint
so that you can see big picture with your screenplay or with your TV pilot.
And then as you're right, I think you're right. Sometimes the characters
go a place you didn't expect. Now, if they're starting to go in
a place that could completely modify that outline and you like it, go back
into the blueprint, adjust it a little bit so that you can see what
that butterfly effect is going to be, and then Okay, you've got a
new blueprint to work with and go from there. But your outlines should be
something that is changeable, because I agree your writing is going to change that
story as you go. You sometimes you can never really know until you're actually
writing it. Do you find the people when they're writing their first draft to
say, oh, wait, wait, wait, I had an idea,
and they want to go back and start changing things. But going backwards thing
it can be a problem. It's not so much that they usually go back
and say, oh, I had an idea. It's usually that they want
to make whatever they did just perfect before they move on. And what ends
up happening are those perfect first acts that we talked about and those god,
I'm so tired third act. So if you if you have an idea and
you're like, oh, I want to change the first act because the idea
now is is the better one to help you move forward by all means to
do it? Just don't spend a lot of time rewriting all the stuff around
it. Just change that idea so that you can see now how it's going
to sort of retrigger the second act. That's the mistake that I made for
a very I ended up rewriting a screenplay for almost a year and a half
that I would go in and I would watch a movie and I would be
like, Oh, I really liked the tension in this scene. I kind
of like what's going on here? And I would be like, maybe I
can use that, and I would go back and start changing the screenplay around
a little bit, and it just became this gigantic mess. And so now
that I'm when I write now, it's more pay a lot more tension to
the outlining process and making sure that I don't get into it and say,
oh, I want to change things. You know halfway through, right,
you got to get to the end. My classes, it's all about in
the first draft. Class, it's all about you got to move forward and
just finish this. We can go back and make it pretty later, can
go back and nuance it later. But it doesn't matter. If you're the
most beautiful writer in the world, if you never have anything done. Now
in your classes, do you find that there are certain different approaches to screenwriting
in terms of personalities? Yeah, I would say if I've got thirty students,
there's thirty different ways in and there should be. There should be.
You know, everybody's got to have their own style and their own stamp.
So that's why again it's important to loosely outline and get hung up on saying
to people certain plot points have to be at certain pages, I believe,
because they don't have to be. Your story should be unique in its telling,
not only in its subject matter. So we can talk about patterns that
have been in successful movies and TV shows. But then once you know that,
once you feel confident in your outline, you should just go and see
what happens. So yeah, there's a million ways to tell the story,
fortunately, and that's what keeps keeps us watching movies and TV because we just
never know what the next approach is going to be. Do you find that
some people are more into the structure side of it and then other people are
just more more like me that it's just like more creative and not really like
I mean, I remember I had a conversation with Corey Mandel killed intuitive versus
conceptual. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was talking about. Yeah,
I love that. I love that approach that he has. And you know,
you can you can say the dummy version of it, which I'll say,
which would be like inside out or outside in, you know, And
there are the conceptual people. Um, those are the outside in people,
the people who see big picture and see the outline and then have a hard
time sometimes um, finding the see and they have to work at the dialogue
and they have to really work at their craft. And then they're the people
who are as he calls with the intuitive people I call at the inside out
people who Corey's way smarter than I. The people who love their dialogue,
know their scenes, but have a hard time seeing the big picture and certain
times can get lost in the minutia and in my classes. I like to
think that we do both at one time. I'll start everybody big picture,
but as we are fleshing out the big picture, the craft issues are coming
in and we're dealing with them as we go, so that you're sort of
having to flip between both minds and you're not abandoning one over the other,
but you really do have to get strong at both, and I think that's
why the experienced writers over time have done that. It's I always think of
it like, you know, somebody who's a right hand ended person having to
sit there and try to write with their left hand for you know, a
couple of days to start strengthening that up. It doesn't have to be as
difficult as that it could be. Can your right hand do two things at
one time? Can you multitask? You know, and anybody who has texted
somebody while they're writing an email and posting Facebook, you're doing three things at
one time. Well, you can probably look big picture at your script and
right from within without having to completely go to your left hand, you know
what I mean. It doesn't have to be as foreign as that. Now,
can we talk a little bit. I know you talk a lot about
log lines, and I'm sure that you're probably a little tired of it.
Do you mind explaining the importance of having a long log line and how that
guides you as a writer. No screenwriting teacher is ever tired of talking about
God of our log lines. We'll be right back after a word from our
sponsor, and now back to the show. I think the reason that everybody
so hung up on them is they serve a purpose for the writer and they
serve a purpose for the listener. For the writer, knowing what your hook
is and being able to articulate that in one line means that you always have
a thesis statement you can go back to whenever you're lost in your writing process,
so you can go, oh, my god, where I am?
I look at your log line and say, oh, that's what I wanted,
That's what my intention was. So that's why it's important for the writer.
For the listener, it's important because it's a mini pitch. We get
and we get an idea right away of the kind of movie or TV show
you're going for and what's special about it? What's special in the what's a
special idea? Not what's special fanatically, although that should bubble through, but
what's that cool idea that we haven't thought about before we want to explore more.
And that's what happens in a log line. But that's why it's important.
What is the key do you think to creating? Like, if you're
a little bit lost, are there some ways that you can create your log
line or figure it out? Because a lot of people will be will write
screenplays and they're in the middle of the story, and what you know,
one of the common things that you'll do is go up and be like,
what is your story about? You know? And for whatever I mean,
people would do that to me and I'd just be like, well, do
you have half an hour? You know, play And I never It wasn't
until I started focusing on that idea of creating an idea log line that I
you know, I can be like, oh, well, I really need
to know how to say this quickly. And it's about is actually a good
way in to find your love life. What's your story about? It's about
a person who experiences this thing so they have to do so and so,
or it's about a person who wants to do so something in a particular way.
Or it's about this group of people who, in their attempt to do
such and such end up in conflict. So yeah, just starting with it's
about is a great way in. But yes, you're the answer to that
question is usually a sentence, it's not half a half an hour. Yeah,
Now, can you walk through a little bit of how to deal with
act structure and destructure in general? For how to lay out their story.
Yeah, you know, I have a second edition as a coffee break screenwriter.
No, I don't know. This is a big app and I just
want to tell you what's all right, We'll buy the book. No,
no, no, no. There's something new that's going to be in there,
that that I'm using in classes now that's not in the first one,
and I can tell it to you right now. You don't have to buy
the second edition at all. But I want to tell you it's it's just
the idea that for screenplay structure, all those books, everything we've been talking
about, all the analysis really comes down to, in my opinion, for
things, trauma, training, trials and triumphs. And the idea is that
in Act one, if you will, or the beginning of your pilot,
trauma is that thing that sort of traumatizes a character into a new experience,
and it can be positive, it could be negative, or it could be
positive. Falling in love as a trauma. Then the training is kind of
an on the job kind of training where you're sort of learning about your new
experience or your new environment by doing. And that could be seen as you
know, the first half of the second act or the first part of the
middle for your pilot. Then we've got trials, which is a real pushback
and testing. Really you think you know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
well here's this big conflict that's going to happen, deal with that. And
then we've got triumph and which doesn't have to be happy ever after. Is
just that solving of the problem that we talked about, some kind of closure
and in a pilot that tends to be sort of a a mini solving of
the problem with a greater question asked. So trauma, training, trials,
and triumphs you ask my takeoff structure. That's pretty much what it is.
Ther words that I can say really quickly, and that sounds kind of cool.
I like it. Thank you, you can put it on a shirt.
There you go. So it kind of reminds me of the Hero's journey
a little bit. It's yeah, and I think it's sort of that idea
of what's everybody's saying, you know, we're all trying to say it in
different ways. Well, I think it really down those four things. There
you go. Okay, moving on. One of the things that I struggle
with a lot is not so much the second act, but the what you
have in your book, is the second second act that you be that middle
part to Yeah huh, now that it seems like a lot of kind of
screenplays that's where they die in. Well, that's where that trials part comes
in. And it is that pushback. And that pushback can be from an
antagonist where somebody goes, you know what, I see you learning on the
job and I don't like it. I don't want you to accomplish your goal.
I'm going to do something really big. So in act to B you
might be thinking, okay, wait a minute, somebody is really going to
try and stop them in a major way. Or sometimes it's a character's flaw
that's the pushback. You know, the character was doing really well and even
sort of you know, dealing with their flaw overcoming it, but something about
their nature just screwed it up. Their flaw was triggered, and that's the
pushback. Sometimes it's an event that happens. We talked about that midpoint event
that happens right before that section that focuses the main character and forces them now
to really accomplish one mission instead of several little moments of fun and games,
and that can make act to feel more important as well. And if you
look at that as pushbacks, it's the idea that that person's now has this
mission and that's going to be really hard. It thought they were learning on
the job, they thought they got it okay, now they have to do
this. So those would be some ways I would be thinking about to heighten
actually be and make it interesting and different so that the reader doesn't go,
oh, here we are more of them. One of the things that I
think a lot of writers get lost in and one of the things that you
guys do I think a really good job of on the podcast is talk is
analyzing what people are writing, how they've put it together, and how if
somebody's going over the top in terms of explaining what the details are in the
room, every painting on the wall and everything like that, what do you
in terms of rewriting so that people are actually making progress, What is your
advice for them? A big believer of essence statements. So instead of you
said, you said, you know all that stuff in the wall, and
you know the set decorating, So instead of set decorating your environment, is
there a compara you have Is there a way of describing it in one sentence
that is the personality of the room, the essence of the room. So
I think an example that I use is, you know, UM builds the
office screams CEO. So if a if a room is if an office is
screaming CEO, you know that we've got a big desk and a huge chair,
and an imposing environment, and you know of diplomas all over the wall
something like that. The set decorator can do their job. You don't have
to say they're all those things. The personality is just their screaming CEO.
So I'm looking for those personality descriptions for environment for your rewrite, an essence
of character instead of just physicalizing them. Those kind of things help paint the
picture and make your writing better. One of the things I love about doing
the podcast is I get to do a lot of research. So, you
know, I've been watching some of your presentations that are on YouTube, and
I really loved you what you said about you don't want to you want to
make sure characters aren't just saying what they're thinking, you know, and that's
a problem that people get into. It actually made me, it reminded me
of that. I don't know if you ever saw that S and L sketch
with Joe Montana where he just walks in and he's a guy that can only
say what he thinks. You know, Leslie, I could talk to you
for days. Gee, I'd like the jumper bones same here. You know,
I haven't even noticed the time. See I wish he'd jumped my bones.
Whoa, I didn't realize how late it was. You know, you're
welcome to spend the night here in the living room if she says yes,
I'm home free. Gee, you know I really shouldn't. I don't want
to seem too trampy. Well suit yourself, Okay I will. Oh great
that my roommates Stu. Damn it, What a time for him to show
up. Terrific. I'd love to meet him. Oh no, he's going
to ruin everything. I think he really likes Stu. He's absolutely the most
sincere, genuine, straightforward person you'll ever want to meet, a real honest
guy. What a jerk he is? He sounds really nice. God he
sounds boring. Oh here he is, hey, stew come on in.
Oh I hope I'm not disturbing you. I hope I'm not disturbing them.
Not at all. God, he's gonna scare her away. Stut. This
is Leslie Leslie. Stu, Hi, I'm very glad to meet you.
I'm very glad to meet her. Well, it's nice to meet you.
God, this guy's a stiff. Leslie was going to sleep in the living
room. We'll be right back after word from our sponsor, and now back
to the show. Unless that's a problem for you, in which case she
could sleep in my room and I could sleep on the floor. Come on,
you idiot, help me out. You know, maybe it would be
better if I stayed in Dan's room, because we don't want to inconvenience you.
Hey, it's fine with me. If you stay in the living room,
you won't bother me at all. It's fine with me if she stays
in the living room, that doesn't bother me at all. Well, thanks
a lot, Stu, Yeah, thanks a lot. Jerk, You know
you are so sweet? Boy? Is this guy wayme? Well, listen,
Stu, I think Leslie and I are going to stay up a while
and talk. So I guess we'll see you tomorrow. Great, see you
tomorrow. Great, I'll see them tomorrow. Do you listen. We'll talk
quietly so as not to disturb you. Okay, oh, you won't disturb
me. I'll be in my room masturbating. They're wan't to disturbing. I'll
be masturbating. It just follows it. I'll send you a link to it.
But it's like exactly a thing that people. You know, if you're
reading a screenplay, it's like, you know, I'm angry at you for
this. Well, I think because you did this, because you know what
I mean? So can you can you talk a little bit about dialogue and
the way people, you know, use dialogue that's not just like on the
nose and the different kinds of dialogue. I guess you're awesome. You know
exactly what you're talking about. The the fact that a lot of people don't
understand that on the nose means saying what you absolutely feel. It's so weird
for for a grown up to say exactly what they feel. Like. We've
learned how to lie. That's that's what being a grown up is about.
We've learned to say, wow, it's great to see you instead of oh
God, I can't believe it's you again. Um, because we're in civilized
society and uh, and you know that's why with comedy. Often the comedy
comes out of somebody who's simply unfiltered, who's just telling the truth. So
if you look at one example I've given in classes, I show a scene
from Silver Linings Playbook, and you know what makes those characters so incredibly quirky
and funny is the fact that they're in a romantic comedy and they're saying things
like you know, they're they're they're just speaking the truth to each other,
and it's just so weird and unfiltered and wrong that it's hilarious. I hope
you okay, we wrong? The sister coming over? Be okay with that?
Cool? Well, like a sister. Tiffany, Tiffany and Tommy.
Yeah, I'm just Tiffany, what happened to Tommy? He died? Tommy
die, cops die? How did he die? Please? Don't bring it
up. No, how did he die? You said, how did you
die? Hey? Tiffany? Is this Pat? Pat? Is this mon?
Tiffany? You look nice? Thank you flirting with you. I didn't
think you were. I just see that you made an effort, and I'm
going to be better with my wife. I'm working on that. I want
to acknowledge your beauty. I never used to do that. I'm gonna do
that now because we're gonna be better than never. Nikki. It's practicing.
I'll tell me die, what about your job? I just got fired?
Actually? Oh really? How? I mean? I'm sorry? How'd that
happened? Does it really matter? Or it's it's I should say. It's
a completely new take on a traditional rom com, right, So yeah,
I think that you have to be careful that if you're writing dialogue and it's
not intended to be funny and somebody is just saying what's on their mind,
it's going to seem really cheesy. It's gonna seem like, you know,
oh, I feel this mixture of attraction and revulsion right now. It's like,
really, are you a human being? Don't you know how people really
talk? Which is the lie? You know? Instead of saying I'm feeling
this mixture of a Jackson of revulsion, they might just say hello, and
the action underneath would show the subtext. You know, they might do something
to express how they really feel, but the line itself is as simple as
hello, I have That makes sense? Yeah, I mean I think that
one of the thing you know, as a screenwriter You're always looking for things
to make your audience curious, to make them want to know more, and
to really pull them through the story, and you know, Spielberg is great
at doing that. You always want to know what's going to come next,
and when you when you have characters who aren't giving up everything and that you're
you know, maybe at some point you're going to figure out what is actually
going through their brain. But I mean, it's it's a really important thing
I think to make people wonder, I wonder what that person actually is thinking,
you know, versus what they say. You know, it's a great
scene to go back to an old classic Spielberg scene that I just think shows
that, um, I don't know, there's there's more subtext and subtlety in
certain Spielberg movies than people give those movies credit. For the mashed potato scene
in In You Know, I love the massed potato scene because there you are
at a family dinner and this guy becomes obsessed with building a mountain out of
his mashed potatoes right in front of his family, and they're looking at him
like he's the craziest guy in the world. When he looks up one of
the kids is crying. The mom's mouth is a gape, and all he's
been doing is showing what's in his head by playing with his massed potatoes.
And uh, it's it's a great scene. It's just it's it just sort
of expresses it all without having to completely talk about it. Now, it
does trigger him to finally say, Okay, this is what's going on with
daddy. But but the story is really told before he actually says that.
Yeah, is that the same scene where he's like, you kids might have
noticed the dad that yeah, yeah, it's no cool. Well, I
guess you've noticed. It's something. It's a little strange with dad. It's
okay though, still Dad, I can't describe it what I'm feeling, what
I'm thinking. This means something, it's important. But if he started the
scene the daddy your kids might have noticed and blah blah blah blah, it
would feel artificial on the nose. We needed the expression of what was in
his brain through activity first, and that triggers him to finally have to admit,
Okay, this is what's going on. Yeah. I mean, I
think something that I did back in my early screenwriting life is I would try
to make things sound natural and how people. You know, You're like,
Okay, I want it to be real, so I'm gonna I'm gonna write
like people actually talk. But at the same time, it's like, you
can't do everything in your scripts has to be deliberate, you know, it
has to be moving you towards something. So I would just sit there and
write, you know, two people talking to each other, and then this
would happen. Then that would happen. In my mind, I was like,
oh, I'm just setting up this world, but it wasn't There was
no point to it, right, and how people really talk. I'm not
saying that people in movies shouldn't talk, Abay, people really don't really talk.
There needs to be an authenticity to the voice. But if we included
every m and stutter and you know, and all those things that we do,
it would be really difficult to watch, which is why we added a
lot from the tops and bottoms of scenes, because often it takes us so
long to get to the point, where with scene work on screen, we're
able to get to the point much quicker, and we can lop off all
that hemming and hawing that gets us there. Now, one of another thing
in your book. That's really helped me a lot is the concept of goal
action and conflict as you go through your scene. Can you talk a little
bit about that and the importance of breaking things down into those idea of goal
action and the conflict that it calls. It's one of the ways I get
people to outline and just figure out their central beats so they can figure out
what their story is. I ask, okay, well, you take all
those scenes that you think are this part of the story and ask yourself,
what's the goal, what does a character want to do, what's the activity,
what do they actually do not what do they think or feel or plan?
And then what's the complications and what gets in their way? And if
you can do that big picture, you can start to find your major beats.
But you can also do that in your scenes in terms of what does
your character want from the scene and and how do they intend to get it.
So, yeah, it can be done in the macro, it can
be done in the micro, but it always sort of keeps you on story.
So yeah, it's something I would just recommend as far as outlining and
for rewriting. When you mentioned the idea that it's a macro and a micro
way of doing things. What I ended up I was going through and I
was putting together the different you know, in the book it breaks it up
into first act, second act, second act B, and third act.
And so what I ended up doing though, was I found that even in
a moment by moment level, I was looking at it, you know.
So I would have like five or six different moments in the first act alone
where I was asking myself, Okay, here's this character, what is their
goal, what do they want? What is the action that they're taking to
get that goal? And then what conflict is that causing. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
And it caused the scenes to be so much more dynamic, and you you
understood the characters much more. I'm so glad that worked for you. I
don't know if I want to go around going it's the gas system throwing up
a little bit. I got I'm already making shirts. Can you talk just
for just a second about once somebody has a final screenplay, once you've worked
with them, once you've gotten it all, like ready, what is kind
of the next phase after that? So? I think are you talking about
sort of like how would you push it toward a sale? Yeah, I
mean, I guess the idea is that a lot of people that listen to
this, and you know, there's a couple of things I wanted to go
into that I won't just in terms of like people who are not in Los
Angeles who want to ride and people who are trying to sell screenplays. Are
you finding the people that you're working with are trying to build a career as
screenwriters, like full time screenwriters or is it something that's kind of like a
part time thing. And is it a viable option for people? I mean,
what can they do once they have a screenplay that you sign off on,
that you say, okay, this is really good. Well let's talk
about the people who don't live in LA. First, there's all kinds of
different feelings about competitions, but my feeling is why not when you submit to
competitions competitions know first of all that you might not be an LA person,
which actually is to your advantage because they're looking for diverse writers and that means
diversity of experience in place as well, so that gives you an advantage.
Another thing is it's a writing competition not a selling competition. So competitions are
looking at your craft and not necessarily you know whether or not they want to
take this on, and thinking about, oh, but there's a competing project.
So both of those things can work in your favor. And once you
do win a competition like that, it's become a bit of a vetting situation
for agents and managers who may not have their own personal reader pool and use
competitions to as a reader pool in a way to help them find undiscovered material
so and undiscovered writers. So I do think that it is worth submitting to
competitions, you know, high level competitions, not necessarily you know, your
friend's cousins competition, Who's bay me fifty bucks? And you know, you
want to make sure that there's some kind of particles at the end of that
rainbow, for sure, So I would do that. Are there any competitions
that come to mind? Well, the Nickel Fellowship is definitely the most prestigious
that's through the Academy Austin. Austin Film Festival screenwriting competition is also prestigious.
Kind of the ones that are typical tongue for people those have been around the
longest, and that usually means that they have the most success behind them.
Blue Cat Screencraft is doing a good job as a new screenwriting competition because they
are genre oriented, and that means that it doesn't have to just be a
drama that wins, because they have their own comedy or horror category just for
those films. So I think that's a good one. There's also a lot
more open for TV now for competitions and short films too. A lot of
short film competitions are out there that will give you money to make your film,
which is awesome because making your stuff is also a great way to get
people's attention. If you're from outside of LA and you have a good camera
and a really tight, smart script, and I'd be thinking about, you
know, really short form content and you feel like you could make it without
mortgaging your house and put it on YouTube and it's something that could get eyes
on it. That's another way to go. People are looking for talent online,
another way to go if you're you know, the pitch bests a lot
of cynicism around them that and I can understand because there's this sense that they
can be a little bit of a circus. But once you are one on
one with somebody, that's your opportunity. It can be a pretty intimate,
intimate moment, and it's an opportunity for face time with industry that you might
not have otherwise. I think it's replaced the query letter as far as being
sort of a cold look at your work. So all those things can be
good for people who don't live here. For people who do live here,
they're doing the same thing, but also they're looking for who do they know?
Who knows somebody, and they're trying to mind their contacts. And in
that case, what they're usually doing is saying, hey, person who knows
my friend not can you read my screenplay? Could I take you out for
coffee and can I pick your brain a little bit? And if you make
that relationship by the end of coffee, they might say, yeah, sure,
send me script. But you don't want to start with a favor.
You want to start with mining relationships. And that's what people in LA do
and why the caricature of that is known as you know, as as us
being very smoothy, but really, you know, it's it's it's how an
LA person moves up is they have to make their relationships, and a lot
of people in the industry live out here and they got to make friends,
you know, and I think making friends is actually not a bad thing.
So yeah, So that's that's my advice for moving things forward, just a
little bit of it. The people who come on my show, they always
have interesting stories about how they got in and inevitably it's always some kind of
random moment. But the only thing that ties them together is that their work
was ready when they got that opportunity. They had a great, kick ass
script, which is why I tend to stay on the content side, trying
to get people to write a kick ass script. If people need to have
a body of work, I mean, should they have like some people say,
three screenplays or four screenplays that they can show. I don't know if
there's a magic number, but I do know that the first thing somebody says
after they've read something is what else have you got? So you want to
make sure that you're at least knee deep in something else before you, you
know, paper your script all over town. Because if the answer is I
don't know, well, you know, at least be like, yeah,
I certainly do got something else. And as soon as I'm done polishing it
up. I'll get knock yourself in a room and finish the effort. Well,
you know, I know you got to go. So what how can
just so people can get in touch with you? I assume most people have
already heard of on the page, but um what what does what you're info?
I know, I don't know if most people have heard of on the
Page. That'd be cool if they have, but if you haven't, just
so you know, Yeah, there is a podcast called on the Page.
It's not on iTunes, but also I think a catch off for my classes.
The podcast my book. I also have some recorded classes for people who
live out of town. It's just go to on the page dot tv.
That's my website. It's got it all they are and and I'd love to
work with you some day. I want to thank Jason 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 Tune ninety four. Thank you so much for
listening, guys, As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll
talk to you soon. Thanks for listening. To the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at
Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.