Uncovering "coverage"

I wrote “coverage” of a screenplay for a new author, and it turned out to be a fairly good statement of my understanding of problems first draft usually encounter. So I have taken out specific references and am so bold as to share my thoughts with you here.

While there are some exciting events in this script, I think you need to do substantial surgery on it to create a compelling story that somebody would want to produce.

Writing a screenplay is tough because you have to engage and delight a whole bunch of different audiences, one after the other. These include:

• Yourself: Is this a story you would watch if someone else had written it? Do you love the characters? Does the ending make you smile, or cry?
• A reader: Studios and independent producers employ assistants to read scripts and evaluate them for possible production (what I am doing in this paper, in fact). They look for hooks—places to engage the audience—and also for odd things like the potential for product placement (if a key point in the scene has the hero shaving the beard he has always worn, maybe we can get a shaving-cream company to pay us to feature their product...). They think about whether the script takes advantage of trends (lots of room for another zombie movie!) or bucks the trends (I have never read a script before about a location scout who is a serial killer...), and other stuff out of the author's control, like whether the script is too similar to another script the studio has already optioned.
• The producer: Can I make money off this, or convince investors that they will? How much will it cost to make? How would I pitch it? What is its category?
• The director: Why would this be a fun script to work with. How would it stand out? What would be the memorable moments people would pirate and post on YouTube?
• Actors: How will playing this character let me do something I have never had a chance to do before, or strengthen the bond between me and my fans?

Having to please a sequence of people who each apply a different lens to the script is one of the reasons it is so hard to get a script produced. A screenplay that tells a good story that is easy to summarize, with one or more prominent characters the reader can identify with or love to hate, and that offers some jolts of excitement and some surprises, has a better chance of getting produced than a script without those things.

There are at the moment problems of fact, problems of story-telling, and problems of structure. Here are some notes under each heading.

Problems of fact

In this section I identified some specific errors in the script, problems with procedure in the courtroom scene, statements by a politician that are too incorrect to qualify as rhetoric, and so on. Each script has these, and it often takes someone who is not the screenwriter to identify them.

Problems of story-telling

Story-telling includes drawing the audience in, giving them something or someone to care about, providing surprises and delights, and drawing all the threads together in a satisfactory way in the end.

• What is the elevator pitch for this movie? An “elevator pitch” is what you would tell a potential producer while the two of you were going up in an elevator in a not-very-tall building. You have less than a minute to outline your story, give a little of its savor, and plant a hook so the producer wants to find out more. The ideal elevator pitch is a short sentence that forces the producer to ask more, not out of politeness but because it's interesting. Here's a pitch sentence for the first Star Wars movie (I guess really episode 4): “A young farm boy joins a princess in the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire.” And you wait for the producer to say, “And then what happens?”
  
  I have been trying to write a sample for you, but I have not yet succeeded. That is probably because of some of the following problems.
• What is the story? Is it about a caper gone wrong? Is it about a father very ineptly trying to reconnect with his son? Is it about a second wife discovering her step-son might be a better partner than her current husband? The script starts with the caper and ends with the love story, and this may be a big reason it feels disjointed.
• Who are we rooting for, and rooting against? Is this A's story? B's? C's?? These are the most likely characters to be either the hero or the villain, but I don't see any of them clearly enough yet. And if one of them is the hero, who is the villain that person is struggling with? The three main characters in your script seem to move mainly in parallel with each other, and are rarely in conflict, but they are not really allies—B, for instance, knows nothing about the money-laundering until quite late in the story.
• Why are people doing what they do? Why did B (a young woman) marry C? Why is she now casting an eye at A (C's son by a previous marriage)? If C is so wealthy, why is he involved in this dubious scam? Why is the governor in on this—is it just about the money? Most of the schemers already seem to have a ton of money.
• Twists: the only twist I see so far, and it's a good one, is that C is bringing A onto the scene not to redeem him, but to use him for criminal gain. The story would benefit from a couple more surprises like that.
• The love story: I understand A being involved in the scam, but I don't see at all that he is interested in B, or why he would be interested; and since the story ends with the resolution of that line (he gets in her car and they drive away), I think the viewers need to see their developing relationship much more clearly. One classic way to deal with unlikely lovers is to start with them colliding, scrapping, misunderstanding each other. And in the effort to defeat this nasty person, each comes to discover that the nasty person is not so nasty after all, that in fact they are meant for each other.
• Save the cat: Once you have figured out who your main villain is, have that person do some nice thing that shows he or she is more than a cardboard cutout in a shooting gallery. If the villain is also a Big Brother or a Big Sister, it makes the villain much more interesting, and also adds complications to the villainy.
• Feet of clay: C is, I guess, a greedy liar; A is a thief, or at least an ex-thief. What is B's weakness? What is her character flaw, or what temptation does she succumb to? Just as the bad guys have to have tiny redeeming features, the hero characters cannot be perfect and flawless. And while we're on the subject, what are her good points? She seems too featureless, too perfect, to be the character we root for.

I would recommend that you look at each scene and figure out what each significant characters wants in that scene, and what they come away with. If you have a scene where what the characters want is not in conflict in some way, and that ends with characters neither gaining or losing their objective, that's a scene to be suspicious of. Scenes like that can work okay in a novel, because you can explore character, location, and relationships in depth; but they are hard to justify in a movie, where you only have a very few minutes and a very few pages to set the scene.

Every character, down to the foreman of the jury, has a character arc, a progression from stability at the very start of the story, through becoming unstable by their own actions or some event, struggling to gain some new stability in body and spirit, and either succeeding or failing. He or she starts in one place and usually ends in a different place. Ideally, the change is because the character acts in response to what has happened before, not just because things happen to the character who takes these things passively. I don't understand the character arcs for the main characters. You can have minor characters with flat arcs (the court clerk is just going about his business), but major characters need to have a character arc that drives them and that the audience can figure out.

Problems of structure

Just as each character has an arc, the whole screenplay needs a story arc. A traditional story arc goes something like this:

• We set the scene and identify the main characters (the characters we identify with) who are balanced.
• An event (earthquake!) or a character decision (kiss the boss's daughter) knocks the main characters off balance.
• The main characters take steps to get back in balance (run away! Steal some money!! Elope!!!) and for a bit it looks like things are going to be all right.
• Things get worse and worse, and the bad guys are closing in. Further efforts fail badly.
• Things are as bad as they can get. The main character or characters is at a very low point.
• There is one last chance and the main characters take it. This last chance is planted early in the story, so the audience says, “Oh, yes! He's a ventriloquist!! He can maybe throw his voice to confuse the gunman...” just around the same time the main character has this insight.
• The last chance either succeeds or fails. The main characters reach a new stability (a new life together; a life in jail; death; happily or unhappily ever after). They may ride off into the sunset together.

I can't follow the story arc in your script very well. And because I can't see the arc, I don't see very many twists and turns in it.

• Bechtel test: The Bechtel test is a way of seeing if women get a fair shake in a script. The rule of thumb is: is there a significant scene or conversation where two or more women talk about something essential to the story that does not involve relationships with men? B is, I believe, the only significant female character, so she seems a bit isolated.
• Voice: Almost all the characters speak the same way. Everybody says “ok” and asks if other people are all right. I can't tell without checking who is saying what. You don't have to go all Charles-Dickens and give every character a catch-phrase; but the way a person speaks rises from who the character is (including their racial, regional, and educational background, and how upset or determined or scared he or she is), so each main character should speak in a way that is recognizably theirs. Additionally, most of the minor characters, especially in the later scenes, speak like police reports. It's pretty turgid.
• Scene rhythm: There are a ton of scenes that take place around desks in offices, or over the phone. We sometimes go from one meeting directly to another, or from one intercut phone call to another. This squanders the rich visual opportunities of a movie over a novel, and also settles the story into a dull rhythm. There are almost no action sequences, and certainly few that break up the talk-talk-talk. B in the shower, and in A's bedroom, and A hitting his escort, are welcome exceptions.
• We know that! There are many, many occasions when we watch character D tell character E something. Then character E goes and tells character F what we as the audience already saw and know. This gets tedious for the audience. Two rules of thumb:




Start the second scene with character F reacting to what E says (which is what D originally said), rather then when F hears the news.

If you really must have a person tell what the audience already saw or heard, have that character get it wrong, or try to twist it to his or her own advantage. The audience loves getting outraged at bad-guy liars and cheaters (and cheering for tricky good guys), and you make a strength for the script instead of a weakness.

• Conclusion: At the end of the story C is up his neck in trouble, the money-launderers and possibly the governor are in trouble, and B and A are in a car together, evidently starting out toward a new life. I don't get how that new-life thing works exactly, since I have not seen a real change in their characters and have no real evidence of their affection for each other. B just running away is a stunning change for a person who, to this point, has seemed efficient and dutiful. It makes a certain visceral sense for these two to end up together, but in both practical terms and in terms of character (C, for example, has learned that crime gets him both money and the girl. This does not bode well for their future) it is not convincing. The conclusion feels like something the author is imposing, rather than something the characters are discovering.

Good news

I hope you didn't slit your wrists yet. This is a great first draft, and far better than many scripts I have worked on. I would not spend this time on it, or suggest that you do so much surgery on it, if it did not have the kernel of something very good at the center.

The script runs about 100 pages right now, which is about right. You gain a lot of space by cutting down repetitive reporting of what the audience already knows, and can use that space for building up the relationship between A and B, establishing the main characters better so you can throw them off-balance better, and inserting some action that takes us away from board-room tables and cell phones.
Again, this is a good first draft. The really interesting bit is what you do with it next, to get to a very good second draft.

Andrew

The sun never sets

Was just reviewing the list of clients for whom I am writing these days, and decided to plot my editing empire on a map. The realm of Cottage 14 is in blue:

Makes it fun (harrowing fun, but fun just the same) to check the inbox first thing in the morning and see what new task has come in from Moscow or the United Arab Emirates.

Two kinds of writing

I am doing a lot of freelance editing these days, and many of my clients find me through a freelancing site called oDesk. I have worked with a bunch of freelance sites over the past decade or so, but am finding oDesk to be ahead of the pack in several ways: the jobs offered seem to match my skills pretty well, the contracting and payment processes are straightforward and--so far--I have not had a tiff with a client.

They let you add a link to a video in your profile, so I thought I would create one. I am not delighted with the technical quality, but the light glinting off my glasses at least partly conceals when I am reading my notes rather than looking into the camera.

The video is below. The burden of what I had to say is this:

Here's a thing I've learned about writing: it comes in two broad categories.

The smaller category is writing that calls attention to itself: if you're a playwright, a speechwriter, or maybe a marketing person, you sometimes want text that is tangy as lemons off the tree, words as rich as chocolate, phrases the reader wants to read again just for the delight of it.

This writing is a lot of fun to put together, but unless you do it right it can get a little tiresome. Think of a meal of nothing but chocolate...

And the larger category is writing that's a vehicle for the important information you want to deliver. You have a point to make, a process to explain, a product to describe. For this you want writing so clear and efficient that the reader hardly even notices it.

I'm good at both kinds of writing, either editing and improving what you'd already got, or creating new material to do what you need.

And, of course, I'm very good at the essentials that both kinds of writing require: correct grammar, no punctuation or spelling mistakes, the right word in the right place in the sentence.

Let me know about your writing project. I can help make it clearer, more effective, and more worthy of what you want to tell people.

My profile on oDesk is here. Drop by if you need some writing or editing help.

Freelance page updated

My adventures in freelance-land are continuing, and continuing happily. As soon as I can catch my breath after completing the current fascinating jobs I will share the fun with you.

In the meantime--one of my clients asked me for a detailed list of what writing services I offer, so I have updated my writer and editor page. Have a look!

F-ing the ineffable

I used to have a recurring nightmare where I had to fight someone, as in a physical brawl, with fists. And in my dream I would try to hit the person, but my fist would get slower and slower, as if moving deeper and deeper into a pool of rubber. Then the other person would start to punch me and I would snap awake in a sweat.

That experience comes back to me whenever I am trying to deal with bland inanity. I never, ever mind an energetic exchange of views that has the possibility of some middle position appearing that is actually better than where I or the other person started out. I come very quickly to the end of my tether, though, when the other side's position is either "never mind the facts" or "because I say so, is why."

Last night, in a meeting, we were looking at a set of proposed rules for an event. One of the rules says something like, "Under no circumstances are you allowed to do A before date B. However all the expenses of A that you do before date B must be recorded in the following manner..." I can't even find the best way to sink my teeth into that thing. With my editor hat on I could say, "Let's lose the first sentence, since you seem to be presuming that nobody will follow that instruction." But I anticipate the response will be, "But if we don't say not to do it, folks will do A before date B, and we can't possibly have that."

Decades ago I was completing certification for a thing (a different "thing" than the "thing" at the end of the previous paragraph). At one step in the process they wanted to see evidence that I had done some other thing (yes, a different, earlier, thing), and the evidence was to be a document. I didn't have to send them the document; I just had to say it existed and where it might be found if they really wanted to see it.

The line in the form was "Document sighted: _________________"

Uhhhhh.

I spent more brain cells than it was worth trying to get the issuers of the form to see that the word they wanted was "cited", to no avail. Just fuel for nightmares.

More than just the right word

I've been doing some proofreading recently of documents by authors who are "subject matter experts", but who aren't all that good about transmitting their knowledge. For some, English isn't their first language; others have been so intensely educated that they can't stand to use a short word to describe something when there is a seven-syllable alternative that does almost as well.

Sometimes proofreading is sort of mechanical: a matter of pulling twenty or thirty commas out of a paragraph like burrs off your trouser leg after a walk in the meadow. At other times one could use the Bletchley Circle to help decode what the writer could possibly be trying to say.

There are perfectly respectable phrases in common use in English in India, like "do the needful", that have to be re-rendered into something like "do what is necessary" or "follow the normal procedure" for a global audience. Working with texts like that makes me ponder how often I write and say things that are only truly intelligible to that subset of the English-speaking world who are me.

Sometimes you run into an error in the text so painful that, if the intended reader met it, he or she would just quit reading. I love tracking down those errors and correcting them—preserving at the same time the author's credibility and the reader's sanity. I remember a Kansas romance I edited some years ago: the manuscript as I got it was about 70,000 words long, and I sent back a memo of suggestions and questions that topped 20,000 words. Although the author declined many of my suggestions, as was her right and duty, she picked up many others and made a much better book than it would otherwise have been. The correction that sticks in my mind has to do with a day on the farm when some cattle are being encouraged to go from one place to another, and the author had them going down the "cattle shoot". I was tempted to leave it, but in the end pointed out that "cattle chute" was not only correct, but would distract the reader less from the romantic glances the main characters were throwing at each other during the scene.

Someone asked me why, in the end, I like editing and proofreading. It's because I am happiest when the words and the grammar line up with the meaning of the text, and am all itchy when they don't. I hate it when people—even people I disagree with—undercut their own arguments by bungling their word choice or their sentence structure. I like a document to flow so well, delivering the author's argument in the author's unique “voice” so smoothly, that the reader never, ever thinks, “Well, that was well constructed.”

Presenting a document speckled with typos, misplaced modifiers, and suchlike is like showing up for a first date in a grubby shirt and with broccoli between your teeth.

And I hate it every time I do that.