What the? Somebody stole my script?

Cool news.

I got an email a couple weeks ago from Andrew Sanchez telling me he wanted to steal my script for Earnest and Emm Kill Their Dad. I was all, "Sure"! But I know how these things work. Movies take time to make. Money is hard to raise.

Andrew was pretty confident. He was all, "I am in the process of raising funds, but this project will 100% be made."

And I was all, "Cool!". But I know how these things work. Time is short. Priorities shift.

He emailed me back a couple days later and was all, "I have some family members who may help w/ what little financing I may need... I've put together a very small crew of about 9... I've scheduled shooting in Los Angeles for Dec 3rd...".

And I was all, "That's wicked!". But I know how these things work. Procrastination can happen. Holidays take over EVERYTHING.

Two days ago, the dude sends me these:

(download)

And he's all, "The name of our short is 'Emilio y Earnest Matan!' You'll see that we took it a different route but worked off your idea. Once again i'd like to thank you for letting us use your awesome story."

And I'm all...

Dude is making movies!

Let me say. There are people who like the idea of making movies and then there are people who go out and make movies.

Andrew makes movies.

Congrats to Andrew and his whole cast and crew on getting a film in the can.

I have no idea how much of the original script ended up in the final. Doesn't matter. (I have a feeling it's also made a wicked transition to Spanish! - awesome).

I can't wait to see what Andrew has put together! He's promised an update when there's more to share.

Lessons when Learning: Pride

I'm writing these little posts based on things I learned during my 52 scripts in a year project.

Reflections on the journey.

Very important to all of this is–

Be proud of your work.

This is harder than it seems because most of what you write will go unnoticed and unread.

But you wrote it.

You created it.

You invented worlds and people.

You.

It may not be gread.

It may not even be good.

That has nothing to do with it.

You created.

Be proud. Of yourself.

And keep writing.

Lessons in Learning: You will get Depressed

I will make this short.

If you want to be a writer, if you are a writer, if you're thinking about wanting to be a writer...

You will get depressed.

Very, very, very depressed.

It is easy to think about being depressed. It's another thing to be depressed.

It's romantic to imagine the darkness of the creative soul. It's actually very difficult.

And hollow.

And sad.

And lonely.

And real.

You will get depressed.

Expect it.

Keep writing.

Lessons on Learning: Deadlines Keep the Dream Alive

Writing to a deadline is not something many new writers have the luxury/pain of experiencing. That was one of the reasons I started this project. I wanted to give myself a [very public] deadline to encourage me to write every week.

Deadlines may suck, they may add stress, they may drive you to drink (a topic for another post), they may bring out the swearing and the cursing and the black snake moaning, but one thing is certain, they work.

There were weeks during this ridiculous fiasco of mine where I had nothing written when I woke up Sunday morning.

I shouldn't say that.

I had three or four things started and I hated them all.

But I had a deadline.

And I always made my deadline.

Deadlines work.

Sometimes I had to post a script I knew was bad. [scary]

Sometimes I had to post a script I knew I had no notion of. I couldn't tell what it was. [very scary]

Other times, I had to post a script that I really thought was great. [scariest of all]

For my very last post, #52, I spent 6 days writing a story about a screenwriter (a veiled me) landing in an LA agent's office and learning the hard way that his year of learning meant nothing to anyone but him.

You'll notice if you read #52, that's not the script I posted.

I woke up Sunday morning and wrote a completely different story and posted it with about 17 minutes to spare.

I could have pushed the deadline back by 2 or 3 hours and ultimately nobody would have cared.

But that's not how deadlines work.

You either make them or you die.

Give me a month and I'll take a month.

Give me a day and I'll take a day.

Don't let yourself off the hook. Set a deadline, tell everyone you know about your deadline, and keep the deadline.

Because in the end, the only question that really matters is the question only you can answer:

Are you a writer or not?

Lessons from Learning: Momentum Makes Movies

Maybe a bit of a misnomer. I haven't really made any movies. Yet.

But.

During my year of writing a script a week, one of the important things I learned was that starting a script is easy. Finishing a script is hard.

If you want to finish a script, don't stop writing. At all costs. Don't stop. Don't take breaks. Don't let yourself believe that those 4 hours you put in yesterday mean you can take today off. Don't think that checking Twitter and Facebook will bring inspiration. Don't think taking a walk to clear your head will make writing easier.

NOTHING MAKES WRITING EASIER.

ONLY WRITING GETS THE WRITING DONE.

Thinking about writing does not fill the page.

Watching TV does not draw the pen.

Alcohol does not... Well that's a lesson for another day.

Don't stop. Don't answer the phone. Don't check your email. Don't search iTunes for the perfect writing mix.

Start writing and don't stop writing.

Momentum makes movies.

Take a week off and your chances of finishing are halved and halved again. You forget what you were writing. You lose a sense of the tone and the voice. Worst of all, you lose passion for the story. Instead of inspiration, you're filled with doubt about your choices.

Only stop writing when you have to. Like your children are crying because they haven't been fed for days.

Write to the end. Stop when it's over.

-b

#52 - Steal My Script

That's a year. Right there. Somehow I'm missing two pictures (bonus points if you can figure out which two are missing) but you get the jist.

I struggled with this last script. At the time of this writing, it's still not done. Two hours to go. I knew what I wanted it to be, but I can't seem to get it there.

I guess that's what I learned. I'll be posting in the coming weeks the lessons I learned from this project, but if I could sum it up it's this: Thinking about writing is easy. Actually writing is hard.

Some stats for the year:

I wrote over 500 pages
I wrote over 60 stories
I posted 52 scripts
I finished 4 treatments
I optioned two shorts
I got hired for five writing jobs
I made enough money writing to eat out at a really, really fancy fast food joint. Twice.
I promised not to enter any contests during the year
I lost all three contests I entered
I didn't miss one deadline.
I read 22 books (actually they were read to me, audiobooks bitches)

(I added the books I *read* because it was an important part of my learning and discovery. I'd say it was 60/40 fiction to non-fiction.)

Pretty cool.

So in between writhing that last sentence ("Pretty cool") and this one, I scrapped my entire other idea and wrote what you have after the jump. Call that the one-hour short screenplay competition because you have a deadline and you have to have something published otherwise you fail on the very last day.

A man, held at gun point, is forced to make a life and death decision that will change the rest of his life.

I don't even want to comment on it, because it's not what I wanted, but it's more than I hoped. It means something to me. And I guess that's the important thing in all of this.

Write what means something to you, like nothing else in the world matters.

I've loved doing this project.

I've loved meeting people I would have never met otherwise.

I've loved telling stories.

I've loved the journey.

I've loved the difficulty.

I've loved the success of not giving up.

I loved the discovery of something new.

I loved meeting the characters, even the 2 dimensional cliche's (they made the best lovers, btw)..

I didn't give up. I won't give up. It might kill me in the end. It might kill a lot of things along the way. But I want this. And I won't stop until I have it.

See you on the other side.

-b

Read the rest of this post »

#51 - Fair Play

The penultimate screenplay.

Wow.

I can hear the distant echo of tears.

Today is a really exciting day, and not just because we're one week from completion of this insane little project, but also because today's script marks a first.

FAIR PLAY (a title I'm not thrilled about) is based entirely on a dream I had. Aside from the dialog, which I couldn't remember, every detail is exactly as I remember it from my dream. I barely had to add any color to the events.

Does it work? I think so. Again, this is entirely a first draft, so it could likely stand to lose a page or two, but overall I think it's a funny little story about two people working through a spat in a very unusual way.

A bickering Husband and Wife try to make amends with their neighbour after one of them accidentally drives a car through the neighbour's garage.

Kind of a "Fun with Dick and Jane" meets "It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia". But way better than the bastard child of those two.

Oh, also, some proud stats of the week. I wrote 37 pages on a feature project I'm working on, 16 pages for this overly long short and I did a rewrite on a 14 page short to bring it down to 8.

I call that success.

I also call that, I lost my real job and have more time.

Either way. Success.

One more week and the dream is real.

Love and Crocono,

-b

(as always, the full screenplay is on the next page, click below, unless you're on the next page already)

Read the rest of this post »

#50 - A Man of Science

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me.

With that out of the way, let's get it on.

I was watching a little Twilight Zone and reading about one of my favourite writers, Rod Serling, this week and might have been a little influenced. I'm not sure.

I started this one free form. No ideas. No nothing. I changed the setting a dozen times until I settled upon a Laboratory. That got me thinking. Then I came up with a title and the rest just worked itself out as I went.

Did it work?

I'm no Rod Serling.

But I like it.

As a short.

As a statement or metaphor.

I could probably add a little more "engine" to it and push it to a 22 minute episode for a sci-fi anthology. That would be cool.

But this is where it's at right now.

A old scientist struggles to find the right formula to make a rat disappear.

Can you believe we've only got two more to go? Fourteen days to glory. Any suggestions for a theme for next week?

I've got a plan for my final posting, but next week is open.

Love and crumb cake.

-b

Read the rest of this post »

Interview with Xander Bennett - Author of Screenwriting Tips, You Hack

Buy this book.

When I was a young bird in this dangerous game of quills, I would oft frequent the internet in search of nuggets of writing gold. Amongst the vast and crowded landscape of the screenwriting book and blogosphere I found a few sites that simplified the process and made the idea of writing the next great movie seem possible.

At the top of the top, I found Screenwriting Tips, You Hack; A snarky, witty, to-the-point tip-of-the-day written by Xander Bennett. If you're not familiar with Xander and his daily dose of screenwriting gold, you've been missing some of the simplest screenwriting instruction that the internet has to offer.

There are some fantastic long form blogs that go into the weeds of writing or pull back the curtain on the process or chronicle the journey of a struggling writer - and I love all of these and still read them - but what I've really grown to appreciate about Screenwriting Tips is that it is short and to the point. In one sentence Xander can highlight a common mistake, provide and example and offer a solution. That's not easy to do. That's why his blog is a must read.

When I heard Xander was writing a book (or had written a book) I was excited. I was drunk one night and I thought I'd ask and see if Xander would do an interview with me about his blog, his book and his brain.

He said yes.

Sometimes I recommend drunk emailing. Other times not so much.

Read on for the interview with Xander Bennett, Author of Screenwriting Tips, You Hack and then jump on over to Amazon to buy his book, Screenwriting Tips, You Hack: 150 Practical Pointers for Becoming a Better Screenwriter.

BRAD: Over two years ago, you posted your first tip, "Hey, Writer-boy! Guess what? If your script is 130 pages, I hate you before I’ve even read page 1!" (#1). What is the biggest thing you've learned about screenwriting, screenwriters and Xander Bennett since that day?

XANDER: I'm going to treat that as three questions, because I enjoy making things harder for myself. That's why I became a screenwriter, obviously.

Biggest thing I've learned about screenwriting since that day: It's much, much harder than it looks.

When I started the blog, I'd only ever written two spec features and maybe one spec pilot. I was reading these terrible scripts by repped writers, wondering "how the hell does this guy have an agent? I could write better than this with one lobe tied behind my back."

But that's a lie and a trap. I've written a LOT in the last two years, and I've found that the more you write, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the harder the writing gets. I'm way less confident now than when I was a newly-minted script reader, cockily judging other people's screenplays.

Biggest thing I've learned about screenwriters since that day: We're all writing the same things.

It's strange, but there are actually more wild ideas to be found at the very bottom of the screenplay barrel. The slush pile is full of crazy, out-there premises: dramas about Theodore Roosevelt's favorite horse, comedies about every lamp on the planet coming to life, horrors about man-eating Humvees, etc. Of course, they're terrible, but at least they're original.

But once you move up a notch -- i.e. get those first bad screenplays out of your system and start developing an instinct for what a good concept looks like -- you realize there are a TON of other writers at your level of competition. Buyers are looking for that perfect combination of edgy-and-marketable; that concept that's daring and cool but which everybody "gets" as soon as they hear it.

Well, there's a finite number of ideas that fit into that category. Pretty good screenwriters -- the ones who are a notch up from the slush pile -- are all thinking along the same lines, reading the same books and desperately scanning the same RSS feeds. No wonder there were, like, five fairy tale shows during pilot season this year. The zeitgeist ain't as broad as we like to think it is.

Biggest thing I've learned about Xander Bennett since that day: That if I stop eating meat for a year I can fit into much smaller clothes.

But seriously, the biggest thing I've learned about myself is that my writing process for first drafts is distressingly inflexible. I can't write for an hour a day after coming home from the day job. I just can't do it, and no amount of wishing or willpower is going to make it so. In order to get a script finished, I need several weeks of uninterrupted solitude. As in, locked in a room with nothing but myself, a good internet connection and an ample supply of coffee. And possibly booze, for when things are going poorly. This is the only way I can mentally and emotionally tackle scripting.

This is only for first drafts, mind you -- I can rewrite, outline or work on concepts any time. But with first drafts I need to be locked away in a shack like the Unabomber. It's weird, but there it is. I guess the lesson here is: find your writing groove and stick to it. And if you can possibly swing it, I advocate shaping your life to fit your writing, not your writing to fit your life. It's easier, and your muses will be happier for it.

Of course, that's easy for me to say as a shiftless freelancer. If I had kids or a traditional full-time job, I might be singing a different tune.

BRAD: You've been pumping out these little morsels of gold for over two years. It really is an amazing collection. Where the hell do you get all your ideas from?

XANDER: Anywhere and everywhere. It could be a script I just read, or a film or TV episode I just watched. But it could just as easily be something that's bothering me about my own writing. If I'm really, really stuck, sometimes I'll visit screenwriting forums and look for people asking questions, or posts where someone is clearly struggling with something screenwriting-related.

And sometimes, in the dead of night, when it's 1AM and I can't think of anything and I really want to sleep but haven't written my tip for the day... I'll go on Amazon Studios and download something with a truly terrible logline. One of those babies can give me fodder for weeks of tips.

I'm not proud of my behavior. But seriously, have you SEEN some of the stuff on there?

BRAD: What are the most common mistakes you see? Are there any mistakes you see among writers of all skill levels?

XANDER: No love in the protagonist. This is the biggest one. Writers of all skill levels do it -- hell, I've done it myself. This is when you just don't know who your protagonist is and what she's doing in the story. Seems like this would be utterly integral to every screenplay, but you'd be surprised.

Often writers don't come up with the protagonist first -- they come up with a fascinating world, or a killer high concept, or an inherently funny situation, or a cool title. Then they work backwards to come up with a protagonist. For example: say I'm writing a comedy about the cutthroat world of pedigree cat shows. What would be funniest? Well, how about I make the protagonist a dude who hates cats? Bam. Done. Let's get writing!

Yeah, that doesn't work so well. You do that, you'll end up with a protagonist you don't understand, trust, or even really like. This manifests in a wide variety of different script problems, but the most common are the action/thriller protagonist who just reacts to stuff, and -- my favorite -- the comedy protagonist who acts as the "straight man" to their much funnier, more interesting best friend.

You have to love your protagonist. What they want and feel and need... well, that's the entire story. Without that, you don't have a plot; you just have a bunch of different things happening one after the other.

BRAD: Writing can be very subjective. You've said it yourself, "Your script could be written in crayon with your name spelled wrong on the cover, but if it's genuinely funny, none of that matters" (#120). At the same time, your tips are very opinionated. Have any of your posts elicited strong reactions or arguments? Any bloody noses?

XANDER: Here's the thing: people in Hollywood respect strong opinions. Hell, people everywhere respect strong opinions. (Well, so long as they're logical and relatively coherent. Nobody has a lot of respect for that guy down by the liquor store holding up handmade signs covered in Revelations quotes.)

Sometimes I've deliberately posted contentious tips just to see if they provoke an interesting argument. Then those posts invariably end up getting 50+ likes on Tumblr, and I think to myself, "Oh, okay. Maybe that wasn't so contentious after all?".

There was this one time I posted a tip containing a joke about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A helpful Christian fellow corrected my theology in the comment section. He seemed slightly offended on behalf of Christ. Does that count?

BRAD: In my own career, I find it far easier to describe what's wrong with something than to actually do what's right. Do you struggle with this in your own writing? Are there any tips you've written that were based on something you find time and again in your own writing?

XANDER: Oh god yes. Pointing out what's wrong with somebody else's script is one of the easiest (and, let's face it, most enjoyable) things in the world. Figuring out why your own Act Two doesn't work? That can be horribly, ulcer-inducingly hard.

And as you point out, even when you work out what needs fixing, it's often a case of easier said than done. I find I'm always fighting myself, pushing against the idea of a big rewrite. I delude myself into believing that it only needs a new coat of paint, when I know in my heart that what it really needs is a complete tear-down.

Countless numbers of my tips are based on my own screenwriting struggles. How could they not be? If I wasn't struggling with this stuff on a daily basis, I'd have nothing worthwhile to say about it.

BRAD: Congratulations on the book! How did the idea for this book come about? Is it simply a compilation of the tips on your blog or can readers expect something different?

XANDER: Thanks! The idea (blame?) for the book belongs entirely to a friend of mine, Will Akers. About six months into the life of the blog, I posted about how Will's book "Your Screenplay Sucks" was the best goddamn thing I'd ever read on the subject of screenwriting, and everyone should check it out. Will emailed me a few days later and said: "Dude, you should write a book".

I was incredulous. What the hell did I know about writing a book? Who would want to read such a thing? And then I thought about it for a little while, and I was still incredulous.

But Will was adamant. He walked me through the entire process of writing sample chapters, cover letter and project pitch, and he used his publishing contacts to put me in touch with Focal Press. They bought it and the rest is history. Without Will's help and guidance, there is absolutely no way the book would exist. In summary: Will Akers is a magnificent human being.

As to what you can expect when you buy the book...

It's so much more than just the blog. For the book, I chose 70-something of the very best tips from the blog and used them as jumping-off points for short, 1-4 page chapters about particular screenwriting topics. So for example, I took the tip you mentioned earlier ("readers will excuse anything if you're funny") and used it as the basis for a brand new mini-chapter about the power of humor in spec scripts, and the other ways in which you can fool the reader into loving you and subconsciously excusing your script's faults.

The book is divided up into eighteen major sections covering the whole process of a script's life, from coming up with a great idea, to outlining, to writing the first draft (fun!), to rewriting (horrible!), and finally to selling your script and dealing with agents and managers. There's even a chapter called "The Dark Point", which deals with how to keep going when you've decided you hate your script and you kind of want to set it on fire.

So it's at least 95% new content, covering all kinds of film and television and even a little bit about video games. It's pitched at a broad range of screenwriting experience levels, from "Writing a movie? Hey, that sounds like fun!" all the way through to "Hmph. Let's see if this Bennett guy has anything new to teach me".

Oh, and it's available now on Amazon.com. You can even read it on your shiny new Kindle.

BRAD: What's next for you? More books? More tips? Graphic Novels? Script sales?

XANDER: Script sales, definitely. Let's go with that.

I actually had a graphic novel published years ago. You can find it on Amazon if you're so inclined. It's so good, the company that published it went out of business.

But I could see myself doing another comic, with the right project and the right company. This is a little sad to admit, but one of my life goals is to write Superman. DC Comics, if you're reading this: call me. Take a chance. We could be good together.

BRAD: If you wouldn't mind answering one last question. This blog, Steal My Script is based around my opinion that new writers (and some not-so-new writers) are overly concerned that their precious ideas are going to be stolen. I think that's (99% of the time) bull shit. I think a great script is just so damn hard to write that an idea is useless without execution. Do you have any thoughts on this?

XANDER: Good question. And I'm 99% in agreement with you. It's almost always the case that what you think is a billion-dollar idea is less than meaningless to somebody else. Nobody could have imagined INCEPTION before Nolan wrote it -- at least not in a way that would have suggested a box-office success. Same with THE KING'S SPEECH, BRIDESMAIDS, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE or any number of surprisingly successful movies. Hell, Matthew Weiner sat on the concept for MAD MEN for almost a decade. And it's clear why -- as anyone who's ever tried to sell their friends on that show knows, it's not exactly an easy idea to describe.

It works in reverse, too. Ever been at a party and mentioned you're a screenwriter? I've had people start pitching me their life story (or the life story of one of their globe-trotting relatives) as a screenplay. That's awesome, but why would I want to write that? HOW could I even write that? It only has meaning for them.

And yet...

I believe that brilliant concepts do exist. You see them in the trades occasionally -- perfect little gems that convey a whole movie in one sentence. You kind of suspect that they sold due to the concept alone; maybe the screenplay didn't even matter.

They're the kind of ideas that, when you read them, a tiny piece of you dies because you didn't think of it first. I think writers probably get one, maybe two, of these in their careers, and that's if they're lucky.

If you ever have one of these ideas, whatever you do, don't tell anyone. Especially not your screenwriter friends.

A huge thanks to Xander for taking the time to answer all my questions. Now, everyone, go out and buy the book.

#49 - Roller Coaster

So I wanted to play with long blocks of dialog.

Indulge myself if you will.

I guess I did that here.

Friends are friends forever.

Two middle-aged men enjoy an afternoon at the carnival.

Again, this is more of a scenario than a story (and no, I'll never forget that), but I enjoyed writing it and when you've got a deadline to make every week, you've got to submit what you've got and let the rest just be.

Hope you enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Turkeys and Pumpkin Pies,

-b

OH! I've got a big surprise post coming up on Tuesday. Huge. Massive. Something I've never done before on the site. Unless you're a hack, you're not going to want to miss it.

Read the rest of this post »