1. Nobody knows nothing. (Some people have the money to prove it.)
2. Have a story that keeps you up nights.
3. Have a story that 25 million people want to watch.
4. Have a great title.
5. Have a great ending.
6. Have a great lead character.
7. Tell the story to a 12-year old.
8. Tell the story at a dinner party.
9. Tell the story in 25 words or less.
10. Use screenplay format.
11. Write cinematically.
12. Join a screenwriting group.
13. Write fast if you can, but rewrite until you can't.
14. If you can be stopped, you should be.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
HAVE A STORY THAT KEEPS YOU UP NIGHTS
A studio has a pot of money. Its mission is to make movies that make more money. The studio accountants and other "suits" who guard the pot of money want to refill the pot, hopefully many times over. Don't get me wrong; they also want to make great movies. Just like you, they want to make movies that are touching, exciting, fantastical, that deliver powerful experiences that overshadow mere daily life. But they can only deliver if the movies they “greenlight” are profitable. A producer whose name appears in the credits of a movie that makes a lot of money is, not surprisingly, one whose name will appear in the credits of a subsequent movie. He has a shot at a career. Also, and not incidentally for our purposes, it works the same way for a screenwriter.
Each studio executive, therefore, is constantly trying to pluck a script from the piles in his office, living room, bedroom and leased (or rented) Porsche to turn into the next blockbuster. He's searching, he's reading, but he's not often finding.
Then a script comes along. It wows him and everyone in line from the first reader to the prospective star to the studio president, who greenlights it for an astronomical budget. Sometimes the resulting movie does well. Sometimes it's a dud; after a weekend or two in the theaters, the movie disappears. People associated with it move back home to find real jobs.
Almost never, but often enough to keep the dream alive, a fantasy is realized. A film made on a shoestring by some independent riffraff comes out of nowhere like a revelation. The screenwriter is a beginner who broke the rules, or didn't know them to begin with. El Mariachi, made for $7,000, becomes director Robert Rodriguez' ticket to Hollywood; Clerks, in the same budget ballpark, launches Kevin Smith's career. The Blair Witch Project cost $22,000 to produce and grossed almost $250 million.
Whatever you think of these movies, they prove that yes, sometimes the impossible happens. "Nobody knows nothing" also means that the unknown beginner has a chance.
The closest anyone has come to a formula for making a hit movie is “a good story well told.”
Can we get any clarity on what exactly is “a good story well told”? There may be many reasons why a writer turns a story into a screenplay. There are plenty of good stories well told in books and plays and on internet web pages. My daughter's laughter at a story I tell her about her stuffed animals means I've told a good story well. But, for a screenwriter, a good story well told is, by definition, one that sells millions of tickets. This is not cynical. It's one of the rules of the game.
This analysis leaves the screenwriter wondering. Should she write the story that she can't stop thinking about, based on her dysfunctional family, or college romance, or the death of a childhood friend? Or should she go totally commercial and try to cook up a brand-new action-adventure epic with a cast of thousands . . . maybe animated, with the voices of Jeff Bridges and Hilary Swank? . . . and throw in some nuclear terrorism? . . . and a comic sidekick?
There's a different way to think about this. I believe that you, the writer, have to be so excited both by the movie you envision and the conviction that everyone in the world will want to see and hear it that you actually can't sleep. You should feel empowered, missionary, seized by the compulsion to get this thing out there. And seized again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until it's done. If your motivation is any less, at some point you will give up. A story that does not, by its nature, get you up in the morning and prey on your mind and heart constantly is not going to translate to mass entertainment. In other words, the story cannot be mundane. It cannot even be merely good.
People should burst into flames, talk in tongues and crawl on broken glass when you tell your story. Sure, it can be about a college romance that went bad. And it can be totally commercial, with a vampire boyfriend, car crashes, and explosions. In getting from the idea to the finished script, however, you must strive to forge a story that that flies imaginatively higher and delves emotionally deeper than any remotely similar story or movie ever told before. If you can do this, people from friends to studio executives to millions of strangers will be delighted, surprised, thrilled, and involved. They'll forget to eat their popcorn. Only then will you be able to sleep again -- until you're writing your next script.
A studio has a pot of money. Its mission is to make movies that make more money. The studio accountants and other "suits" who guard the pot of money want to refill the pot, hopefully many times over. Don't get me wrong; they also want to make great movies. Just like you, they want to make movies that are touching, exciting, fantastical, that deliver powerful experiences that overshadow mere daily life. But they can only deliver if the movies they “greenlight” are profitable. A producer whose name appears in the credits of a movie that makes a lot of money is, not surprisingly, one whose name will appear in the credits of a subsequent movie. He has a shot at a career. Also, and not incidentally for our purposes, it works the same way for a screenwriter.
Each studio executive, therefore, is constantly trying to pluck a script from the piles in his office, living room, bedroom and leased (or rented) Porsche to turn into the next blockbuster. He's searching, he's reading, but he's not often finding.
Then a script comes along. It wows him and everyone in line from the first reader to the prospective star to the studio president, who greenlights it for an astronomical budget. Sometimes the resulting movie does well. Sometimes it's a dud; after a weekend or two in the theaters, the movie disappears. People associated with it move back home to find real jobs.
Almost never, but often enough to keep the dream alive, a fantasy is realized. A film made on a shoestring by some independent riffraff comes out of nowhere like a revelation. The screenwriter is a beginner who broke the rules, or didn't know them to begin with. El Mariachi, made for $7,000, becomes director Robert Rodriguez' ticket to Hollywood; Clerks, in the same budget ballpark, launches Kevin Smith's career. The Blair Witch Project cost $22,000 to produce and grossed almost $250 million.
Whatever you think of these movies, they prove that yes, sometimes the impossible happens. "Nobody knows nothing" also means that the unknown beginner has a chance.
The closest anyone has come to a formula for making a hit movie is “a good story well told.”
Can we get any clarity on what exactly is “a good story well told”? There may be many reasons why a writer turns a story into a screenplay. There are plenty of good stories well told in books and plays and on internet web pages. My daughter's laughter at a story I tell her about her stuffed animals means I've told a good story well. But, for a screenwriter, a good story well told is, by definition, one that sells millions of tickets. This is not cynical. It's one of the rules of the game.
This analysis leaves the screenwriter wondering. Should she write the story that she can't stop thinking about, based on her dysfunctional family, or college romance, or the death of a childhood friend? Or should she go totally commercial and try to cook up a brand-new action-adventure epic with a cast of thousands . . . maybe animated, with the voices of Jeff Bridges and Hilary Swank? . . . and throw in some nuclear terrorism? . . . and a comic sidekick?
There's a different way to think about this. I believe that you, the writer, have to be so excited both by the movie you envision and the conviction that everyone in the world will want to see and hear it that you actually can't sleep. You should feel empowered, missionary, seized by the compulsion to get this thing out there. And seized again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until it's done. If your motivation is any less, at some point you will give up. A story that does not, by its nature, get you up in the morning and prey on your mind and heart constantly is not going to translate to mass entertainment. In other words, the story cannot be mundane. It cannot even be merely good.
People should burst into flames, talk in tongues and crawl on broken glass when you tell your story. Sure, it can be about a college romance that went bad. And it can be totally commercial, with a vampire boyfriend, car crashes, and explosions. In getting from the idea to the finished script, however, you must strive to forge a story that that flies imaginatively higher and delves emotionally deeper than any remotely similar story or movie ever told before. If you can do this, people from friends to studio executives to millions of strangers will be delighted, surprised, thrilled, and involved. They'll forget to eat their popcorn. Only then will you be able to sleep again -- until you're writing your next script.
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