The Challenge of Writing A Time Travel Story

    The best time travel movies have one thing in common. The portal to the past or future is believable. Back To The Future is the best example of a believable way to go back in time. If you've seen the movie you know that the character played by Christopher LLoyd takes a DeLorean automobile, soups it up and with some bells and whistles enables Michael J. Fox to go, well, back to the future.
     If you haven't seen the movie what I've just said won't be a spoiler. As the title implies, Michael J. Fox is definitely going back in time, it happens pretty early on in the movie so nothing has been ruined for you.
     I bring this up today because I'm reading Stephen King's new novel 11/22/63 which is a time travel story. The basic premise is that a guy goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK.  It's much more than that, but you should read the book and take an incredible ride. As usual, the story is amazing and I literally can't put the book down.
     My only beef is the portal Mr. King has chosen for his main character to do his time travel. I won't say what it is here, but I expected more from the master. Simply, it's too easy. One of the things I was looking forward to was an imaginative portal so I sighed in disappointment when I found out what it was.
     OK, there. I'm throwing a little pinprick at a giant.
     Once Mr. King gets his protagonist and us into the past, then he shines. The rules he invents made me smile at how clever they were.  For me, next to having an imaginative portal, the other challenge of time travel stories is the do's and dont's a character must follow. In 11/21/63 Stephen King dazzles us with how things work.
     I'm assuming the book will be a film and it'll be terrific. My only wish is that whoever writes the screenplay takes some creative liberties and finds a better portal.

The Most Important Reason To Complete A First Draft Of Your Screenplay

     This is so fundamental it's ridiculous, but a screenwriter can never hear it enough times.
     You finish a first draft to see how good or bad your screenplay is. If it's more good than bad, you commit to completing a second or third or fourth draft until it's finally done. If it's bad you have 3 choices:
     (1) Decide if it's worth rethinking
     (2) Put it aside for the time being and let the idea germinate
     (3) Junk it permanently
     Don't be ashamed to junk it permanently. It's better to cut your losses before you get even further into the miasma of trying to make something unworkable work. Kind of like the economists say: don't put good money after bad.
   
   
   

A New Screenwriting Book Worth Checking Out

     As the author of one book on screenwriting and another on filmmaking (The Portable Film School), I'm always wary of the competition. To be honest, there are lots of good books for new or newish screenwriters. None of them are really bad. It's just that some are really good. Superior. 
    All how-to books on screenwriting pretty much say the same things, but in different ways. It's like there are 100 books on Italian cooking, but at the end of the day, the recipes they teach are all dealing with the same ingredients. The key is the author of the Italian cookbook. He or she has a uniqueness, a certain style, a way of making difficult tasks seem easy or a way of making an experienced cook grow. 
     Viewing screenwriting books is the same. Some writers need lots of handholding, others want to be motivated, then there are those who like tough love. Whatever a screenwriter needs can be found out there. You may have to go through a few books or ask friends for recommendations, but you'll find 2 or 3 that will be a good fit. 
     "Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You can, Too!"by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon delivers on several levels. It's informative, entertaining as hell and gets into the craft of writing screenplays in a way that inspires. I've been a fan of these guys since Reno 911. I think Thomas Lennon is an amazing comic actor. I've heard him (and them) interviewed and these are two guys who know their way around Hollywood. This is a very solid book for any screenwriter. 
     As I said in the title of this review, their book isn't as good as mine, but it's damn close. BTW, they are not paying me anything to say all these nice things.

Be Your Own Mentor

     Whether it's in life or in the context of pursuing a career as a screenwriter, the presence of a mentor is important. Nobody does it alone, without guidance, without someone to motivate you or push you or talk some sense into you. If you're lucky enough to have someone who cares enough to want to inspire you to do better or to overcome those demons that have immobilized you and are preventing you from completing the first draft of your screenplay or getting the energy to start that rewrite, you're a fortunate person.

     But some of us don't have a mentor. Or we had one or two, but we were too arrogant or insecure to listen to them. Add to the mix the fact that you're no longer in high school or college and finding potential mentors becomes increasingly narrow. Or you're too egotistical to want to listen to anyone.

     But I'm not here to judge. I want this to be a judgment-free environment.

     Let's just say that you would like to have a mentor, but the pickings are slim.

     What do you do?

     As the title of this post says, be your own mentor.

     Learn how to inspire yourself, to push yourself, to get focused and to face the harsh reality that your career is not moving forward (let alone your screenplay) and the only person to blame is you. (I know I said I want this to be a judgment-free environment, but don't think of those last 7 words as judgement, but rather fact.

     Just as you know when you've eaten too many Mallomars at one sitting or had too many Margaritas or behaved irresponsibly in some situation, you also know when you're not writing. You know what it's like to turn your frustration outward, when you should be turning it inward. By looking at yourself in a critical way, if you have the guts, you'll pinpoint what's preventing you from writing at all or completing your script.

     There's nothing like a little fire in the belly to jumpstart a day at the computer. And there's nothing like some solid introspection and self-analysis to bring you to a moment of clarity.

     It's real easy for all of us to bullshit our way into or out of anything, but that's negative behavior. No mentor worth his or her salt will ever BS you. Mentors tell the truth, whether we want to hear it or not. And, guess what, we don't want to hear it.

     Compliments are nice, but it's the stuff we don't want to hear that will help us move forward.

     If there's no mentor in your life presently and if you don't see anyone on the horizon, it's time to take charge and get the job done yourself.

     Special thanks to JTC

     

A Few Words About Dialogue

     Dialogue can be lifelike or artificial. Lifelike is how people really talk. Artificial is sanitized lifelikeish dialogue. Much of the dialogue on bad TV sitcoms is artificial. Everybody's funny (in real life everyone isn't). 

     Write how people talk. Two goofball slackers in their Twenties will talk differently than two devout nuns in their Fifties. In real life a clever person will say clever things. A dull person will not. In real life a clever person will be consistently clever or witty as he goes through each day. In your screenplay, most of the time we see him, he should be the clever, witty guy -- if that's the character's dramatic purpose. If you're writing the character for comic relief or to be a buddy/confidant to your protagonist, his job is to say or do funny things. We don't necessarily need to see the dark, sad or unhappy aspects of his life. Sitcoms are good examples of this.

     Characters should speak in what appears to be their natural, everyday language, but they must avoid the repetition and digression of ordinary conversation.  What they say must be carefully designed to move the story forward. 

     Characters in every form of fiction tend to be drawn from real life. Your success as a screenwriter will depend on your powers of observation and on your ability to portray what you observe. Characters are also drawn from what you read and what you hear.   

     Astute, observant screenwriters note the peculiarities, eccentricities and the special qualities of the people around you. Sometimes you'll create a character accurately drawn from a single living model. More often you'll use combinations of personalities that have moved or intrigued you to create a totally original character.

The Curious Case of Parallel Thinking

     There's nothing more frustrating and disconcerting than to be nearing completion of a new script that has an amazing premise, something you feel is totally unique, only to learn that somebody else has already written and sold a similar story.
     Your immediate reaction is to assume that somebody stole your idea.  Yes, of course, that's a natural assumption. But if you've never met the person and you do some digging and discover that he wrote the script two years before you even got your idea, then you know he didn't steal it.
     It's just an example of parallel thinking.
     Two (or 5, 10 or 1,000) people have the same idea.
      Stand up comics go through this all the time when it comes to jokes. A stand up in New York reads something in The NY Post about a talking parrot who recites Shakespeare. Another stand up working in Atlanta reads the same story. Five other comics in Los Angeles also read the same story. And every one of these comedians write a joke about a parrot who recites Shakespeare. They try out the joke that night and it gets huge laughs. Over the next few weeks they each use the joke and sooner or later one of them will hear from a friend that so-and-so comedian is using his talking parrot joke.
     Of course, nobody stole anything from anybody because parallel thinking took over.
     This is a fairly common occurrence, especially when it comes to either high concept ideas or ideas taken from the headlines.  Last week  the movie "30 Minutes Or Less" opened. It's about a pizza delivery man who has had a bomb rigged to his body by a couple of bad guys. If he doesn't successfully rob a bank the bomb will go off and he'll be killed. This is a comedy. However, a few years ago there was a real life story about a pizza delivery man who had a bomb rigged to his body and, well, this wasn't a comedy. The bomb blew up and the guy died.
     Sounds to me like the authors of the movie got their idea from this actual incident. In an article I read they claim that they'd never heard of it. OK. That's what they say and maybe they didn't. But it was a story that made national headlines. Is it fair to say that other screenwriters were  inspired to write a script based on the real incident? I think it's fair.
     I know a bunch of writers, myself included, who wrote a script only to find that something just like it is in production or development or has been sold which, of course, kills any screenplays like it.
     That's just the way it works.
     Don't automatically assume that someone has stolen your idea.
     Is there any way around this? Not really, other than to make sure you don't spend an inordinate amount of time writing scripts. If you took 3 years to write something and then found out it's dead in the water, it'll be a lot more painful than if you spent 3 months on the project.
    So, write fast! Or at least faster!

The Future of Story Conference Is Approaching! Get On Board

     Finding the right story to tell is the hardest part of being a screenwriter (or any kind of writer). Compared to nailing down the right story, writing it is easy. (That’s easy with BIG QUOTES because nothing about writing is easy).

     But without a story that you’re in love with and passionate about you’re kidding yourself. You’re a boat without a rudder.  When you start writing something that you only like or think you might be able to get into over time, you will drift. As you slog through the first 10 or 15 pages you’ll hope that once you get into it you’ll find something to draw you in.

     But most of the time that doesn’t happen.

     That’s why there are false starts.

     Same with relationships. If you’re a guy your whole approach to romance is defined by how much you’re attracted to the woman. If it’s an instant attraction -- and if it’s mutual --  or if it’s love at first sight you’ll behave in an entirely different way than if you just ask out a woman for the sake of trying to find someone to have dinner with on Saturday night.

     If you find yourself rudderless with the script you’re working on help is available soon. I’ve personally contacted many of you over the last few weeks about The Future of Story Conference on Saturday, August 27^th in Los Angeles presented by Michael Wiese Productions and C3: Center For Conscious Creativity.

     Authors of some of the best-selling and most popular books on screenwriting and the film  industry will be there. It’s a one day affair that will give you enough advice and motivation to either finish the script that’s been driving you crazy or start the next one.

     For more information check out this link: http://www.mwp.com/thefutureofstory/