A Simple Idea Can Go a Long Way

I was recently struck by the revelation of how one simple idea can develop into surprisingly divergent stories, and this came from watching – of all things – House of Wax, the 2005 edition. I predominantly write horror themed material, but don’t necessarily feel compelled to watch it – especially if it’s a remake. But I occasionally feel guilty about that, and the movie happened to be on cable, so I forced myself to sit down and know about it.

House of Wax is a typical slasher movie with typical college cutouts on a road trip to a big event. Two of them get stranded – their hot rod breaks down, and they are saved by a creepy guy in a creepy truck who leads them to an abandoned town where they can get a part to fix the car. I didn’t think anything special about this setup until the movie cut to a scene of our couple arriving at the town, Ambrose. The image of the town was a single street. Abandoned, run down, reminiscent of an era lost in time.

The first thing that popped into my head was Radiator Springs! Radiator Springs is the town in a totally different movie. It has a single street that feels abandoned, run down, and reminiscent of an era lost in time. And we are brought there because of a car that gets lost, essentially breaks down and is befriended by a creepy guy who happens to be a truck. That’s right; House of Wax has a very similar bare bones setup as Disney Pixar’s Cars.

There is a very strong throughline that couples these two very different films. That throughline involves abandonment. Our industrious wax maker was essentially abandoned in his childhood, and his talent ignored at the same time when the town of Ambrose and its tourist trap wax museum was abandoned because of the construction of a major highway that blew right past it. In Cars, Radiator Springs becomes lost to the world because of the construction of a major Interstate that makes the historic Route 66 obsolete. 

Then a stranger arrives, Owen Wilson’s Lightning McQueen in the case of Cars, and Elisha Cuthbert and Jared Padalecki as the doomed couple in House of Wax. And just as a side note, Wilson’s character McQueen has some extremely strong abandonment issues… Something that Cuthbert, as the main character in Wax, doesn’t. Her twin brother Chad Michael Murray does, but the story doesn’t capitalize on it.  Regardless, in both cases the pristine nature of the town frozen in time becomes threatened. One barebones story idea, two amazingly different outcomes. I find that awesome.

So what is the point of this rambling on about horror and family film being the same? I guess, as a writer, it’s a lesson in starting simple. Come up with a simple idea, a simple theme that may seem trite and done to death, and then build on it. Once you have that in place, there’s no telling what road your story might go down.

Happy writing, everyone!

Jury duty

Let's talk about jury duty and why every aspiring screenwriter needs to just get it over with and do it once if he or she has had the unfortunate opportunity to serve. Many of you might be saying, "Of course! It makes perfect sense if you want to write a spec script for a show like Law and Order, or Franklin and Bash, or any courtroom drama be it TV or feature. But I don't write those." Well, I've been stuck on jury duty for a full three weeks, and while its often been a long, tedious, boring event, I feel like I've learned a great deal with regard to... get this... screenplay structure, writing, and the dos and don'ts of pitching.

While I'm not at liberty to give details about the case in question, I can describe some of the players. Our plaintiff attorney is a younger Alan Alda without the funny. Even better, he's Sam Waterston of Law and Order. He wants to win this case because it's the right thing to do in a world where people need to be held accountable for their mistakes. He wants us to pity his client and the horrible, despicable events that led to his client's unfortunate situation.

He looks the part. He caters to our most basic emotions. And while he stood before us and spent over an hour pouring his heart out for his client in his opening and closing statements (that's over an hour for each), all I could think to myself was, "I get it. Your client was wronged. You've hit me with the same visual information at least five times and you haven't moved forward. OMG, this guy would make me feel suicidal on the receiving end of an elevator pitch." For me, the courtroom was the elevator, and the elevator was stuck between floors.

What I was witnessing was the bona fide reason for learning to make your pitch short and effective. The plaintiff's attorney was neither, and even though it was clear that he himself believed in his cause, he was incapable of selling it to me in over an hour.

Two other attorneys represented two separate defendants. Again, think of a big Texas lawyer representing some corporate entity, and then a fast talking weasel representing some lower level government operation. These guys really fit some stereotype standards for casting attorneys. The soft spoken yet passionate victim's attorney versus the blustery big jowled defense counsel and his "I should have been an agent" co-counsel. You don't want to like these two, and their physical manners made it easy. Good casting.

But I digress. Because these two had a skill that the plaintiff attorney didn't. They got to the point. They summarized their story clearly, concisely and quickly, and they remained consistent in that talent throughout the trial. Our Waterston wannabe did not.

Our Waterston wannabe felt that it was necessary to revisit the details of what happened to his client with every witness (there were about 20). And he wasn't doing it for the benefit of the witnesses. No, he wanted to make sure that we the jury didn't forget those details. He wanted to make sure that we hadn't forgotten the foundation of the story, so he repeatedly went back to it. In screenwriting terms, he was repeating exposition because he was afraid his audience wasn't smart enough to follow along. A standard rule in screenwriting - don't assume that your audience won't get it unless you spell it all out for them. Doing that slows down the read. It makes the audience lose interest fast. And that was certainly the case in the courtroom.

The weasel, "I should have been an agent" guy was particularly efficient in selling his closing argument, and believe it or not, it was because he adhered to a screenwriting must - stay focused on your theme. He literally stepped up to the plate and stated it from the start. "Stay focused on the ball." His words. Then he proceeded to the definition of "the ball." It couldn't get any simpler than that, and for me, he sold his argument. He kept on point. He kept to his theme.

Now for the deliberations, or how I like to think of it - the writers' room. Technically speaking, I have never officially been part of a writers' room, but they're not hard to figure out. Writers and other pertinent creative decision makers sit in a room that is led by the show runner, the one in charge, and theories are discussed, plot holes are exposed, characters and their motivations are clarified, etc. etc. until a decision is made on the outcome of the show. It's pretty much the same as a jury room - 12 people with decidedly different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs thrown together to interpret material and determine if is right and true to a perceived end.

We had a good mix of intelligent jurors with diverse backgrounds to draw from. We even got along to some extent, and I'm told that it is a crucial element to any successful writers' room. But that doesn't mean that we agreed on the points of the case. In fact, we were far from it.

Our jury foreman, we'll just call her the Showrunner, did not want the job. I'll bet that many a TV showrunner can relate. But she was vocal and expressive and the type of person who naturally attracts attention. Therefore, she qualified. Her first order of business was to remember the jurors in the room by visual identification as opposed to just remembering people's names. I was Coke Lady because I had a bottle of the stuff with me every day. Then there was Oxygen (she had an oxygen tank), iPad Red, iPad Black, Bun Lady (she wore her hair in a bun), etc. etc. I was struck by the fact that screenwriters need to do this every time they introduce a character to their stories. It's not enough to give a character a name to make him or her memorable. There needs to be something for the reader, for the audience, to latch onto that makes the important characters stand out. Sometimes it's a visual trait. Often times its a unique quirk. More times than not, it's a visual cue. Heck, I did it when describing the attorneys.

The discussion in the writers room took two and a half days. We were evenly split over two separate verdicts that needed a nine vote majority on both counts. Opinion came into play. The correct definition of "reckless" was discussed repeatedly and how that definition applied to this case. We assessed the value of witnesses, or in the case of writing a story, characters. And guess what - some of those characters really served no purpose in the plot that we'll call a trial. If this were a screenplay, those characters could have easily been cut. One witness in particular had been on vacation at the time of the incident in question, and while he was an interesting moment of potentially goofball fun, he had nothing to add to the case. Absolutely nothing. An easy character to cut in spite of the potential for an interesting little sidebar.

We didn't agree on the first verdict. It was an evenly split decision. We debated evidence that conflicted with other evidence. We tried to convince each other why the verdict should be what it should be, and we brought our own opinions and experiences together in a creative way to sell our individual decisions, much like how writers in a room might try to sell their take on where a script should go. I was on the side that successfully pitched the deciding verdict to the other side. The "I should have been an agent" attorney was happy, and it reflects positively on the idea of keeping to a theme and staying focused on that ball.

The second verdict in question was also a split decision. We couldn't get past that one, although we tried. Sometimes writers and executives have creative differences. We were deadlocked. The judge, a likable authoritarian, allowed the deadlocked decision, and we were free. I was free. And inspired to write something. I'm still not keen on a courtroom drama - maybe a Franklin and Bash spec one day, but that's not the point.

The point is, for lack of coming up with any reasonable subtext, is that writers can learn ways to master their craft by experiencing jury duty. I highly recommend it because it costs far less than any professional seminar that promises the same results. In fact, you might even get paid a little. So, if you're a writer and you get stuck in jury duty, think of it as a gift and maybe it will help you through it - even if you don't write courtroom dramas.

Obsessing

As a writer I'm finding that my natural state of mind seems to be obsessing about... well, the quality of my writing. I don't believe that I am the best writer in the world. I don't even believe myself to be very prolific. But I still obsess. Does anyone care? Will I succeed in entertaining someone? Will my work be recognized on any level?

In July I was obsessing over the completion of some Supernatural TV specs. I once vowed to never tackle TV, and it was precisely because of what a writing friend of mine recently asked when I spread the news my spec Supernatural - Intervention made the top 10% list at the Austin Film Fest and at Scriptapalooza.

Kevin asked me this - "I just wanted to ask, out of curiosity, when you wrote a script for Supernatural, at what point in the storyline did you write it from? Or was it like a stand alone, "monster of the week" type script? Because I'm only thinking is it not kinda hard to write a script for lets say, where the overall storyline is now, because by the time you have it written out and finished the storyline couldve moved on?"

Spot on, Kev. Yes, the very reason I took so long to tackle ANY TV spec is because of the outdating that a series timeline represents. I obsessed about why I shouldn't do it instead of just doing it... I'm glad I decided to do it.

So, as mentioned, Supernatural - Intervention has made it to the top 10% list of two very relevant screenwriting competitions. It's a relief to be recognized (OMG, someone believes I have talent!). Do I continue to obsess? Absolutely. Can I continue to pull it off? What should I be writing next? Etc. etc. And the beat goes on.

I thank my writing friends and family for keeping me writing. They are an inspiration, and I hope that I'm as much of an inspiration to them to keep doing what it is they are passionate about. For some, it's writing. For others it's... other stuff. Keep doing what you do! Keep obsessing about it - in a good way.

And keep writing. :]

Mid-Year Angst

Well, here it is - July!  And after feeling somewhat positive that the new year would bring good things, I'm now stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the moment when those good things will happen.


It's agonizing. And after checking out a friend's recent blog post about distractions and their role in our writing process, I find myself pondering - and writing this entry with more than the average distraction in the background - teenagers playing video games. I guess that's part of life, though. Since January, I have been productive in completing 3 specs for the TV show Supernatural. But because of life's distractions, I missed a crucial deadline to submit them to a crucial writing fellowship program. The WB Writers Workshop is the perfect venue for breaking into TV writing, and Supernatural is a WB show. But I missed the deadline, and I am left hanging.


I've gotten some really good feedback on the scripts from writing friends, and I've submitted to a few TV writing competitions, but finalists aren't chosen until it's officially Fall, and I'm having a hard time waiting that long. What's worse, one competition sent me feedback from what they call the 'first reader.' Three sentences of general notes that left me feeling ambiguous about my chances. As my son put it - "It's one person's opinion! And (s)he said you nailed the characters. How is that bad?" It's bad because the reviewer was ambivalent about the choice of the main plot. And on that note, no more details...


but my son is right. It's pointless to obsess during the waiting phase. The competition rules even state that the brief feedback we might receive is not necessarily an indicator on how well the entry is doing... And so, I continue to obsess. This kind of obsessing is just as much a distraction as the kids in the background, the chores waiting to be done, the bills waiting to be paid, the holiday events, the graduations (my son is out of high school, prepping for college - distractions, distractions, distractions...).


And then there's the 'could have been a contender' moments to obsess about. I entered a short called Blindsided into the DC Shorts Competition, then received an email apologizing for the mixup about being a finalist... Wait, what? I got an email saying Blindsided was a finalist? Well 'not' being a finalist meant that instead of being in the Top 6, the script was an alternate in the Top 9. How can I complain about making the Top 9 in a national competition? I can't. But, here I am, obsessing over the fact that I was sooooo close.


I guess I'm sort of rambling. What was my point? Oh yeah, distractions. Some of them are legitimate, and as writers, we need to just set aside the time anyway. Muscle through it. But some of them are really our own doing. I need to focus on a feature rewrite - an agent said he'd be interested if I could retool it a bit. I need to focus on a series pilot. Now that I've got a handle on the format of a one hour drama, I think I can retool another old script into a series idea. Someone suggested that years ago, and I obsessed about how I could do that. Now might be the time to stop obsessing, and to stop adding to the distractions not under my control. Or to at least push those nagging worries to the back burner for a while and take a new step.


I guess I started moving forward by deciding to update this blog. It needed it. It got me writing for the day - so I guess a little obsessing is a good thing!


Keep writing, friends!

Making the new year count

We're off to a good start for 2012. And let's face it, we've got to make it count with the advent of the whole Mayan calendar - zombie apocalypse on the horizon.

Speaking of the zombie apocalypse, I just received word that my zombie short - Body and Blood was a first round finalist in the 2011 Table Read My Screenplay Competition.  This is the second time I've done well when entering this competition... I like this competition.

But what I really should be focusing on is the necessity to broaden our horizons. For years, I stuck to my guns and focused solely on features, and predominantly on horror features. It's my niche, and it's where I'm comfortable, and let's face it, Body and Blood is a horror story. But it's not a feature. And if my friend Jay Costelo hadn't put faith in me and convinced me to try and write a few shorts, I probably wouldn't have written this.. So thanks, Jay!

And if my friend Jeff Brown, a writer who I believe has a promising future, hadn't convinced me that Supernatural was a show I needed to watch, I wouldn't have tried my hand at writing a couple of TV specs. So thanks, Jeff for inspiring me to broaden my horizons.

And while we're at it, thanks needs to be sent out to other writing friends of mine - Judith Watson, George Lee and Sharon White who, as a group, participated in a writing exercise with me that inspired me to write Turf War, an animated feature with no horror whatsoever in its content. I still think it's better than Gnomeo and Juliet. Turf War was a top 100 Table Read finalist last year.

One last thank you, to Greg Goyins - another writer, director, producer and a man with many hats - who has inspired me to tackle another short.  I'm working on it, Greg. I'm working on it.

Thanks to all of you, and to anyone in my life who may not be mentioned here, for helping me broaden my horizons and see the potential of the future. Have a good 2012!