Thursday, April 3, 2014

Reader questions: Save the Cat, gender-benders, and writing from abroad

Stephen writes in:

I just wanted to drop you an e-mail and let you know that I really dug your Guru Beat Sheet video from January 8th. I stumbled across it just now after doing a little bit more internet research into Beat Sheet theory and found it refreshing to find someone, let alone someone as experienced as yourself, decrying people's need to be a slave to it. 

I, like most people who message you I'm sure, have been working on my first feature script and, having sent it out for notes and thoughts to a few knowledgeable friends, was a bit taken aback by one friends insistence to not only read Save The Cat (which I did) but by his diehard, unshakable fervor in regards to the Beat Sheet. Having since gone back into my War Room to readdress some structural elements, I began to try and see how well it matched up with the Beat Sheet and, long story short, found that some elements hit it perfectly, others were maybe a page or two off and, yes, some were way off. 

I was wondering if being a page or two off truly mattered at all as long as thematically, and structurally, the story still flowed; and, integrally, if a script has a lot of dialogue, how does that translate to the Beat Sheet, if at all? I feel as though the Save The Cat theory, although sound, is heavily slanted towards more mainstream movies and may not apply so rigidly to more indie scripts/movies, which is how I would approach mine. This has been a point of debate between me and my friend, and I was wondering as to what your thoughts were in regards to it.

This is why so many professional writers hate Save the Cat, because it advances the notion that certain things HAVE to happen on precise page numbers.  Do not be a slave to this.  I think it's good to know the range of pages where these sorts of plot turns often happen, but the script's natural pacing should always, always be the first concern.

Basically, you're 100% right in what you say in the last paragraph.  Don't treat Save the Cat like it's a "paint by numbers" guide.  That's not the way drama works.  If Save the Cat says that your inciting incident needs to happen on p. 15 and in your script it happens on p. 14, that doesn't mean you need to go back and add another page of story.  If your inciting incident is happening on p. 25, though, that might be a sign the story takes too long to get going.

If you must use Save the Cat, then treat everything it explains in there as a loose guideline, not a bible.

daykinpatrick asks:

I am currently working on a couple of script and have a few questions. One I have a character who's sex is misleading I want people to believe she is a boy and then later reveal that she is a girl. Should this be written earlyer in the script so that the director is awear and not confused or reveal it at the end of the scritp when the audience will know. Also how would you do something like this when giving detail to how the character looks in a script? 

I'm of the opinion that those kinds of reveals should be reveals to the reader at the same time they are exposed to the audience.  In other words, don't put in the description "she's a woman pretending to be a boy" unless that's a disguise that's going to be extremely obvious to us when we watch it on film.

Question two what is ur thought on having a time laps as a prologue? For example I have two sequences that take place at the same place but at different years, back to back in the script how is this done and or is it a bad idea? I plan on using a visual that ages as a transition! 

That seems totally reasonable so long as you make the transition clear to the reader.  Showing the same characters at different ages sounds like a simple enough way to pull that off.

Question 3 I have a sequence where a group of kid vandlize the protagonist's house, but don't want to reveal the house until the end of the movie. So I only want to show the kids vandlizing almost like a reverse pov, how should I handle this. Let's say the reveal of the house doesn't happen until a few sequences later! Thank you if you got this far reading my dumb questions and responce would be much appricated. 

I would just note in the action that "Though we see them throwing toilet paper and eggs at the house, we never see the impact or even the house itself."  Or something of that nature.

Incidentally, when you guys write it, it really helps if you break your questions into paragraphs. I got that email as one long chunk of text.  I also left in the typos just this once because there were a lot of them and I wanted to see if it annoyed the readers as much as it did me.

Tonio writes in with a question I'm going to kick to the hive mind:

I studied and graduated with a degree in scriptwriting, and still pursue it as a career, even though it's not the most lucrative career choice, especially where I am. I live in Cape Town, South Africa and while we certainly have extensive creative talent over here, our film industry is in the early stages of development, or rather, it's stagnant in what our audiences will go see, since majority of our screened films are from the USA. As a country we are just too diverse for local films to really have box office success, unless like Leon Schuster, you focus on slapstick comedy, poking fun at all the different races and subcultures within our country (this has been my experience). 

My question then is, since it's near impossible for South Africans to get a work visa in the States, especially working in an industry that does not guarantee that you will become a contributing member of society, what advice would you give to aspiring writers who are working and living abroad, should they be interested in pursuing or furthering their careers in Hollywood?

I don't know that I really HAVE any advice for that scenario.  I've never really been in the position you've been in.  The only thing I can really think to say is to consider the example of Declan O'Dwyer, who became the Black List's first (and as far as I know, only) international success story.  This article has all the details, but basically, he posted the script from Ireland, it caught the attention of a manager, and that manager got Thunder Road to buy it.

So The Black List can work for that.  Is it likely to work?  I think your odds are longer the further you're out of the country.  Anyone else have any good suggestions?

6 comments:

  1. I used the Save the Cat to write my second screenplay which had some contest success. I think you're right that it's best used as a guideline and not as Gospel. I think it is especially useful for first time screenwriters who are still learning the basics of story telling and structure.

    I also think that it's been overly demonized, as if it were responsible for every bad screenplay and movie made in the past few years.

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  2. "what advice would you give to aspiring writers who are working and living abroad, should they be interested in pursuing or furthering their careers in Hollywood?"

    Hollywood will take you up if you've got something that Hollywood wants, whether it's a Black List script with an outstanding hook or a local success that they can take on and remake. Look at all the Brit, Scandinavian, and Israeli talent currently getting pitching opportunities and development deals on the strength of stuff they did elsewhere. Last year, South Africa's David Golden got a foot in the door with the Indiegogo-financed pilot script of TV series The Message.

    Maybe you could angle for a second-season writing slot on a show that's shooting locally for the US market. Some of those tax deals require a proportion of local talent. Ensure that whatever you do will be square with the WGA, though, and not just some producers' ploy to undercut the home market.

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  3. Yes, I find the typos extremely annoying - but then I'm a Grammar Nazi and proud of it. I believe the language should be respected and that there is no more efficient way to undermine what one is saying than to appear ignorant in the fundamental use of language. I don't want to think what a screenplay written by this poster would read like.

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  4. "Don't treat Save the Cat like it's a "paint by numbers" guide. That's not the way drama works."

    Recently, a friend and I launched a podcast called DRAFT ZERO. Our first two episodes were looking at the script gurus (Snyder, Hauge and Vogler) at seeing how well they fit both Oscar-nominated scripts (Philomena and Dallas Buyers Club) and box office hits (Gravity and Frozen).

    Unsurprisingly, none of them fit the formulas perfectly. Although, both tentpole movies clung far more closely to the Hero's Journey than anything else.

    One of the writer's of Dallas Buyers Club said he learned structure from Save The Cat. But other than a few key beats (such as "saving the cat"), that film didn't really follow the formula - especially in the third act. Yet it was nominated for an Oscar!

    Our conclusion was that while they offer some useful ideas and questions for writers, they're not a template for writing (again, unsurprising).

    If readers are interested, they can listen to the episodes here:

    DZ-01: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
    http://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-01/

    and

    DZ-02: Do the Screenplay Gurus score big at the Box Office?
    http://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-02/

    (And sorry Bitter if this post is a little too 'pluggy'. I'm sharing work that I think may be interested to other readers of this site. Me? I'm a long, long time reader who also fawns over Garek and DS9. And Buffy).

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  6. "I studied and graduated with a degree in scriptwriting, and still pursue it as a career, even though it's not the most lucrative career choice, especially where I am. I live in Cape Town, South Africa and while we certainly have extensive creative talent over here, our film industry is in the early stages of development, or rather, it's stagnant in what our audiences will go see, since majority of our screened films are from the USA. As a country we are just too diverse for local films to really have box office success, unless like Leon Schuster, you focus on slapstick comedy, poking fun at all the different races and subcultures within our country (this has been my experience)."

    "My question then is, since it's near impossible for South Africans to get a work visa in the States, especially working in an industry that does not guarantee that you will become a contributing member of society, what advice would you give to aspiring writers who are working and living abroad, should they be interested in pursuing or furthering their careers in Hollywood?"

    If you really want to be a successful screenwriter from South Africa, then you should sets impossible goals, and accomplish them anyway.

    Why not focus on being the first South African to win an Oscar from Hollywood (U.S.A) for "Best Original Screenplay", or "Best Adapted Screenplay"- I'm sure there must be thousands of great South African bestsellers.

    You could create an uncanny story or screenplay and pitch it to Hollywood, California (U.S.A), etc. Just brainstorm a little.-- U.F.O crash lands in the back yard of a South African woman's home at 2:59am. She investigates, touches a panel and enters into the U.F.O. Before she knows it, the U.F.O is blasting back into outer space. What will she do? Are the aliens friendly? Do the aliens know that she is aboard there ship (or whatever it is). How will she get back home? What is her skill-set/education? Did the robber who broke into her home seconds before it crash, a witness to her disappearance? Will he tell authorities about what he witness? or is he just a cold-hearted robber and keeps his silent for 3 years until that guilt eats him up-- this is so much fun, I can go on and on.

    If you have dreams, you can accomplish them, no matter how impossible the circumstances may seem.

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