Internet advice

A few years back I had gallstones and they really, really hurt. My doctor told me the only solution was surgery to have my gallbladder removed. Oddly enough, I’m a little adverse to having bits of my body cut off and became convinced there must be a better way; after all, they got in there without surgery, there must be a way to get them out.

Enter the Internet.

A quick Google later and I found numerous people who claimed to have solved their gallstone nightmare without surgery. There were numerous testimonials from a diverse range of people and since there was nothing to buy and no one to pay, I decided to give it a go. After all, I had nothing to lose except endless nights of crippling agony.

And so it was on one lonely night I locked the doors and drank a pint of olive oil and half a pint of lemon juice.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever drunk a pint of olive oil; but if you haven’t … don’t.

I mean, seriously, don’t. It’s fucking rank.

In the cold light of day you might think this was an incredibly strange thing to do; but at the time, whilst faced with crippling pain and impending surgery, it seemed perfectly logical and reasonable. It’s the same logic which drives people to pay large sums of money to Homeopaths for a mixture of sugar and water - the alternative isn’t very nice and there’s anecdotal evidence to say it works.

But here’s the thing, anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence. It’s just people talking shit.

A year or so and several gallstone attacks later, including one which led to me being hospitalised with pancreatitis on Christmas day, I had the operation and have lived in gallbladder-less comfort ever since.

The point is, the Internet is full of dodgy advice. There’s no regulations so anyone can post any old shit and claim to be an expert.

Now to the real point.

I keep reading the exact same advice from various ‘experts’ about how to create, write and sell scripts. They all say the same thing and it all sounds reasonable and correct; but, and here’s the thing, not one of these people have ever had a script produced. Most of them have never even had a script optioned.

This is not to say their advice is wrong, but it should be treated with a degree of suspicion. These people haven’t learnt their advice first hand, they’ve read it in books. Books written by other people who’ve never achieved any success but instead have chosen to earn a living by selling the ‘SECRETS OF WRITING’. The information and advice in these books, which may or may not be true, gets retold, embellished and re-distributed around the net by people who profess to know THE TRUTH.

They don’t.

Or at best they might be partially right.

I’m just a beginner, but already the advice I read just doesn’t quite marry to my experiences.

I just think people should be careful whose advice they treat as gospel. If someone claims to have had massive success with their career based on a particular website or method - where’s the evidence? If it’s done them so much good, why haven’t they got any IMDb credits?

This is not to say you should automatically ignore everything everyone says, but surely it’s better to add more weight to the advice of people who practice what they preach? Even advice from unproduced writers can be useful, but it’s not to be slavishly stuck to. Listen to what people have to say and then ignore the bits you don’t like.

Basically, have a healthy degree of scepticism.

Don’t just blindly follow advice, no matter how many others swear by it - unless it’s someone whose work you trust and respect. Question everything, ignore what you want and never, ever believe what people write on the Internet without proof.

Hell, if I was you I wouldn’t even believe this post.

I don’t.

Ivory tower

People seem to have a really odd attitude towards attaining success as a writer, particularly when it comes to competitions. It’s almost as if the industry is an unscalable tower with the professionals forever out of reach at the top. At the bottom of the tower are thousands of aspiring writers who are desperate to get up there, but feel they are being ignored.

They throw their scripts at the people at the top, who are not interested despite every single word being pure genius. It’s a hopeless, frustrating situation. One which dooms you to perpetual failure and obscurity.

Until a competition comes along.

A competition is perceived as a lift which will take you straight to the top and make all your dreams come true. This is your only chance, you have to get on that lift or all is lost!

Except, the lift only holds a few people and there are thousands of you. The odds are against you, even if you were all superb writers of the highest calibre - only a couple of you can get on that lift. Naturally, the majority of writers are disappointed and spend the next few months/years whinging about how unfair the lift is, how it’s prejudiced and how the people chosen to board weren’t worthy.

Until the next competition comes along and the cycle starts again.

Here’s the thing I don’t understand: THERE’S A STAIRCASE!

Instead of trying to cram yourself into the lift or waiting for someone to peer over the edge and pick you from the crowd - take the stairs.

Apply for every job on every website every day. Paid or unpaid, it doesn’t matter - get stuff made, learn the craft by experience, work your way slowly to the top.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t enter competitions, of course you should. They are fantastic opportunities which aren’t to be missed. Winning can leapfrog you straight to the top and you’d be crazy not to apply for every scheme going, but it’s not the only way.

Hell, even people who win things like this don’t always carve out a career for themselves. Yes, it puts you in a much better position - but you still need to put in the hard work when you get there.

The most recent example was the BBC’s College of Comedy - an amazing opportunity and the six winners are incredibly fortunate to have their talent recognised and be selected - but for all those left at the bottom, don’t whine about it or get depressed. The odds are you weren’t going to win anyway. 1400 entries, 6 winners: 233 to 1 against. Not the worst odds, but still not good.

I see competitions as diversions, potential short cuts. I enter them and then I immediately forget about it and carry on plodding up the stairs. I doubt I’ll ever win a competition and I don’t really care because I’m doing alright on my own. Yes, I would love to be given the opportunity and I’d break down in tears of joy if I ever won anything; but I never get upset when I don’t - I just keep plodding onwards and upwards, one step at a time. It’s slow going, but at least I’m moving.

Reading people’s blogs, I often wonder what everyone else is doing - are you just submitting stuff to the BBC Writersroom and hoping? Are you waiting at the bottom of the tower for the next lift or are you actively pushing your career forward? Are you waiting for it to happen to you or are you making it happen?

Basically, are you on the stairs yet?

If not, why not?

How to take a meeting immediately after getting off a long haul flight when you haven’t slept for five time zones

Don’t.

Just … don’t.

A question …

Let’s say, for example, two of your friends are sitting in a bar. One’s a producer, the other’s a director and you’ve worked with both of them before. They’re talking to the director’s sister, who happens to be something like, say, head of production at a fairly major production company.

Just as a random example.

Now, imagine the sister mentions her production company is looking to do more comedy and the director recommends she talk to you. She asks a few questions and the producer, who might be the kind of guy with very good people skills and pretty much talks for a living, pitches one of your sitcoms - something you’ve almost forgotten you wrote.

This isn’t the question by the way, this is just a hypothetical example to set the scene.

So let’s say the sister likes the idea (probably because of the way it was pitched) and asks a very interesting question:

“Would he be interested in a meeting with the head of development?”

Again, not the question I’m building up to, just a hypothetical situation which could possibly happen given the right conditions - feel free to make up your own example.

So the director confirms you would probably sacrifice all the first born of Eastbourne (or any small coastal town, it doesn’t matter) for the opportunity for a one to one meeting. The sister asks the director to ask you to send in a CV.

Everyone with me so far?

The question’s coming - honest.

Let’s say you send in your CV and the head of production gives you a shit load of really, really useful advice about presenting your CV in a better light and asks you to send in some script samples.

Now, to the point: Is it ethical to send in a sample which is in production by a third party? You’ve signed a contract, they have the rights and are currently making the film/TV show/whatever; assuming they’re not available to ask permission, would you send that sample, which I believe morally (if not legally) belongs to someone else?

I’ve always thought no, but then other writers I’ve spoken to don’t seem to have a problem with it.

What do you think?

Outlines

The script’s away. It’s launched and running. It’s hot and in the … no, wait. That’s torpedoes.

The script’s in the mail?

Email.

Which means it’s already there.

Oh dear, this post has gone wrong already.

The producer and the director have the script, now I’ve just got to sit back in buttock-clenched fear until I hear back from them.

I just hope it’s before I finish eating all my fingernails and other such clichés.

Things I learnt whilst writing this script:

There’s no É in Courier Final Draft.

Um … that’s about it.

Well, it’s an important lesson, I suppose.

Something which it has driven home to me, again, is the importance of proper preparation.

A script is so much easier to write when you don’t have to solve all of the problems on the fly.

Which brings me to the title of tonight’s epistle:

OUTLINES

Every now and then I read about some wannabe scriptwriter - and I don’t use that in a pejorative sense, I just mean they want to be professional scriptwriters and aren’t yet - who say they don’t outline anything. They say they just start writing from the beginning and churn out a masterpiece.

And I’ve always thought - if that works for them, great.

But it’s not great.

Outlining a story - being able to write a good synopsis or treatment (since people tend to treat the two words as interchangeable) is a vital skill. Most jobs you get, or at least I get, are based on a submitted treatment.

Someone says have you got a film based on such and such. I say yes (which is usually a lie) and the next question is: “Great, can I read the treatment?”

I don’t think it would go down very well if I turned around and said “No, but I can tell you roughly what it’s about.”

Or it might, but they’re still going to want to see a treatment.

It’s particularly important when the director’s already on-board because he’s going to want to have his say - and it’s far easier for him to have his say when you’ve only written ten pages as opposed to a hundred.

In a lot of cases, the treatment is also used as a fund raising tool - it gets included in a pack with the film and sent out to potential investors.

Okay, so you could write the treatment after the script - but that assumes you’re writing the script on spec as opposed to on commission.

Look at this way, you’d turn up to view a house which is already built; but you’d never pay to have a house built without seeing the plans first. If you’re looking for a new house and three architects submit detailed plans and the fourth tells you he just makes it up as he goes along and you’re trying to restrict his creativity with all this plan nonesense - well, I’m guessing you’d instantly narrow your choice down to three architects.

That’s what it’s like for me.

I’m not building houses, obviously; but I haven’t written a spec script for years. What I have done though, is write a lot of spec treatments.

Sort of.

Is is still a spec when someone’s asked you to do it?

My point is, for all those aspiring scriptwriters (that’s a nicer way of putting it) who think outlining is a waste of time - you’re going to have to do it at some point in your career.

And since the decision on whether you get the job or not will be based on that treatment/synopsis/outline, then you’ve got to be good at it.

And since the only way to BE good at something, is to GET good at something and the only way to do that is to practice …

Then you might as well start now.

Unless you’re a genius writer who people will throw money at just for the chance of perhaps owning one of your masterpieces … in which case, just carry on as you are.

Rejection

 There’s precious little* advice on the net about how to handle rejection.

I’m not talking about being rejected. That’s easy to deal with, I have a simple three step formula:

1. Forget you’ve sent stuff to people; that way, if they don’t get back to you, it’s not a problem since you weren’t expecting them to anyway.
2. Understand that this is just one person’s opinion about one product - it’s not a fact and it doesn’t apply to you as a person/your entire catalogue of works.
3. Find out where they live and set fire to their pets.

Easy. I never feel bad about rejection.

Mass puppy murder, yes; but rejection … not bothered at all.

What no one tells you¤ is as you start to get a little bit more well known/successful/lucky, you get flooded† with job offers and you have to turn some of them down.

I’ve been living in denial of this fact for a while now.

“Pile it on!”

“More work!”

“I can cope!”

“Oh fuck, no I can’t!”

In this last week, I’ve had three offers from people I’ve worked with before … and I’ve had to say no to all of them.

I hated doing it, and I’m still not sure if it’s the right decision; but I did it all the same.

Last year (or maybe the year before), working on a low paid project, with slim chances of getting made, was fine. I’d rather be working for a little money for someone who actually wanted to read what I’ve written, than writing a spec script for no money and then have to persuade someone to read it afterwards. It’s a simple formula:

Little money + a first timer pushing your script forwards > No money + no interest

At least in my world.

I still believe that, I really do; but now there are extra factors:

More money + someone famous pushing your script forward > a little money + a first timer pushing your script forward.

My life situation has changed (for the better, but in a worrying way). There’s a lot more‡ work on offer and only so much Phill to go around.∞ In essence, I need more money than I did before and I’ve got more work to choose from.

This doesn’t mean a higher paid project is automatically more worthwhile than a lower/no money project, because it doesn’t quite work like that.

The formula for this calculation looks something like this:

[n(n-1)/2 - 2D]/[n(n-1)/2] = 1 - 4D/n(n-1)

Where ‘D’ means … um … a doggie, maybe? And ‘n’ means I just picked a random formula off a random webpage.

Okay, so I don’t have a formula - which only makes it harder.

There are some well paid gigs on the table right now which might happen, or they might not. There are some high profile projects in production/in development which may lead to even better things, or they may not.

Then there are the projects with people I know, like and want to work with but who have no money.

It’s all very difficult.

The end result is I’m having to turn people down. I’ve gone from rejectee to rejecter and I don’t like it. In a way, it’s nice a nice position to be in, I have a choice of projects. In another way, it’s horrible and I hate it. I have to say no to people.

Hopefully, these people understand and won’t take it personally. I hate to think I’ve upset anyone … but I’m hiding my cat just in case.

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* I don’t actually know, I haven’t looked.

¤ Or maybe they do? See the above note.

† A very small flood, more of a damp basement; but you get the idea.

‡ One is a lot more than none. Two is a lot more than one. Three, four? We’re getting into loads now.

∞ Although a steady stream of biscuits and an ever decreasing exercise regime seems to be increasing the amount of raw material.

Mixbag

A few random things which have happened in the last few days:

        1) Completed the rewrites to the five day feature, they only took half a day. Not because I was moving at lightning speed, but purely because there were very few notes on the original draft. I could take this as a sign of my blossoming genius, but I suspect it’s more to do with the producer reading the script and giving notes on the same day. The further I get from it, the more little flaws I keep finding; there’s bound to be a few major ones somewhere.

 On the positive side, the producer emailed the revision (which is really the first proper draft) to the money men without reading it. He says he has enough faith in me to know it’s good enough to send out.

Which I thought was jolly nice of him.

        2) Had a meeting with Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp and Jonathan Sothcott about ‘The Summoning’ and other stuff. An intense, short meeting which was basically four people shouting ideas at each other until we had too many. Now I’ve just got to try and sort them into a reasonable order.

        3) Wrote out a list of a dozen sketches for the, as yet untitled, BBC sketch show, and had just sat down to write them when I got a phone call from the producer asking me to tweak the selected sketches from the 30-odd I wrote at the beginning of the month.

The great thing about this was I got to see which of these particular style of sketches are currently in the running (it may change, who knows?) and I get to tweak them so there’s a story which runs through them. Basically, because they were all written as individual sketches, one of the characters gets a little repetitive after the third week. Now she has a bit more to her - assuming the changes are acceptable and don’t get the entire series of sketches binned.

The bad thing about this is I was asked to write them to the specific format they use on this show. That’s not a bad thing in itself, except I was struggling to work out what the format is. It seems to me to be fairly random and to change from page to page. Plus, I had to amend word scripts, so I couldn’t use Final Draft (or Sophocles or Movie Magic. I tried importing the script into all three and they just got confused) which meant I had to type all the character names out by hand.

And the scene headings.

And format everything individually.

Very retro.

Very annoying.

I’ve never really realised how much slower it is to write without proper screenwriting software, it’s a fucking nightmare. By the end of a long day’s work, I’d only managed to tweak the twelve scripts and write two new ones. I think under ‘normal’ circumstances I’d have managed to write at least another five or six.

I finished the day in a blaze of swearing and a resolution to buy the BBC a copy of Final Draft.

        4) The BBC then redeemed itself by telling me who they’re approaching to play the lead in my sketches.

I’m not saying who it is, because he may not do it; but suffice it to say, I was excited enough to shit myself.

        5) One change of pants later, I realised my list of twelve new sketches was mostly shit anyway. So it’s probably a good thing I spent the day swearing at Word instead of committing them to paper.

        6) One of the feature films I’m working on is no longer a feature, it’s something much, much cooler.

        7) I read a script by a guy who’s just had one of his other scripts optioned by one of the top Hollywood producer/directors. Ignoring the fact it was full of passive tense, wrylies, unfilmables, camera directions and bland characters … it was still a bit shit. Good premise, badly done. I read the script he had optioned by said ‘big cheese’ and that was even worse. It didn’t even have a good premise.

        I read another script by a guy who used to be in a soap of some kind and that had absolutely no formatting whatsoever. Dialogue was sometimes in bold, sometimes in brackets and seemed to float around the page. Action wandered about all over the place. Sometimes it was full page width, the  it would be in brackets in the centre, then it turned up inside people’s dialogue.

Honestly, you’d think this guy had never seen a script before, instead of having been (or maybe still is?) an actor in a long running soap. Unless, that’s how they write their scripts and all these formatting rules are an Internet myth put about by bored readers who just want to confuse people? I mean, seriously 3) , 7) and  - all three scripts by people who should (and probably do) know better - not one of them has anything remotely like the format the gurus tell us to use.

I’m still sticking to these ‘rules’ because I happen to like them; but really, does anyone else give a shit?

        9) Made up a feature pitch on the spot. It went down well. Now I’ve just got to find the time to write it.

And that’s it. That’s been my week. A lot of little bits and bobs with no cohesive whole.

A bit like most of the scripts I’ve read recently.

Shit

“I’m a writer.”

Those words strike fear into my heart.

Not when I say it, when I hear it from someone else. I get this sudden chill as the doubts run through me:

“Shit. He’s a writer, a proper writer. I bet he’s studied and everything. He’s going to find me out. He’s going to talk to me for two seconds and realise I don’t know shit, haven’t got a clue. He’s going to mention some clever writing term I don’t understand and expose me for the fraud I am.”

Panic sets in, my breath grows ragged, my palms start to sweat, I make really bad jokes - I can’t bear this.

Then, somewhere among the rapid-fire stream of bullshit flowing from my nervous mouth is a gap and this ‘writer’ gets the chance to say something, and I realise …

it’s okay, he’s a twat.

He doesn’t know shit. Sometimes I get as far as reading something someone else has written before coming to the same conclusion and I remember the truth of the situation:

99% of writers can’t write.*

But hey, that’s okay because 99% of actors can’t act. I’m not experienced enough to draw the same conclusion about directors or producers, but I’m betting it’s about the same.

I’ve sat there with writers, who ask questions which are the equivalent of a mechanic asking “Is this the engine?”, and realised why so much shit gets made.

And I’m not talking about the shit which makes it to the screens, that’s the cream of the crap river which spills out of the movie industry. Even the stuff which makes it to DVD is a small portion of the total number of badly filmed turds which do the rounds.

The worst films? Usually from people who are writer/director/producers - one guy who can’t do three jobs and there’s no one there to tell him. I used to wonder why nobody speaks up, why don’t people stop these fucking appalling travesties getting made?

Sometimes it’s because they still get paid whether it’s good or not, but I think it’s mostly because no one knows any better. Even when a film’s made I hear the people involved raving on about how wonderful their masterpiece is.

It’s not, it’s shit.

Which is why I really like working with people who can:

1. Confidently tell others their last project was shit
2. Explain why it was shit
3. Tell me what’s shit about what I’ve just handed them

These are the people I want to work with, honest people who know their limitations and want to improve themselves. With one or two exceptions*, I’ve been very lucky.

Now come on, own up. How many of you reading this think you’re in the 1%?

I like to think I’m a good writer, but then I like to think I’m smart, good looking and still young enough to be ‘with it’.

I’m not.

If I was I wouldn’t use words like ‘with it’.

Still, I know my limitations - I just wish I could shake that sudden rush of anxiety I get when I meet other writers. After all, 99% of us are all wallowing in the same mud.

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* Rest assured, I’m not counting myself in the 1% who can.

* I’d like to think you know who you are, but you probably don’t

The Rules

I’m slowly coming to the realisation that very few of the producers or directors I deal with have any idea about ‘the rules’ of screenwriting.

Very few, bordering on none.

Passive tense, camera angles, we sees, wrylies - they just don’t care; and don’t even know they’re supposed to care. Not that this is a bad thing, it means they judge a script purely on the story it tells rather than the way it’s laid out.

So if they don’t care who does?

It seems to me the only people who know anything about these sort of things are writers who either make the effort to find out or attend courses; which, judging from some of the poorly formatted scripts I’ve been reading recently, is a very small percentage.

Or perhaps, they do attend, but don’t pay any attention?

I find myself bending over backwards trying to describe a scene without resorting to a camera reference which is shorter, punchier and much more descriptive, only to have a director or a producer suggest I add a tracking shot here or a pan there.

And I think to myself, what is the point? If the only people who care about this are other writers who have zero influence or power, why bother trying to stick to these ‘rules’? Whose fucking rules are they anyway? The people who care don’t make the decisions and the people who make the decisions don’t care.

Or at least, they don’t at the level I’m working at.

Here in the shallow end of the pool, none of the people I work with use readers - they can’t afford/don’t need them. The people I work with tend to read scripts themselves. They don’t care about format, they just want it vaguely readable, yet I am very strict with myself about sticking to ‘the rules’.

Well, okay, not very strict, but fairly strict. I tend to look the other way every now and then.

Why?

Well, as I get better, my scripts get shown to more and more people. Casting agents are getting hold of my scripts and sending them out to actors, so who fucking knows where they’ll end up? I know it’s not important at the level I’m working at, but higher up the tree - no idea. Maybe companies with more money are more strict about these things? I really don’t know, but I’m not prepared to take the risk.

With dozens of copies floating around cyberspace, I don’t want one landing on the desk of someone who might dismiss my work for being incorrectly formatted. A well formatted script takes little more effort than a poorly formatted one, so why not just do it anyway?

Personally, I think it’s great that the guys and gals I deal with don’t care, but sooner or later I may hit someone who does and I want to be prepared. On the other hand, when I see writers on forums arguing over minor format issues, it just makes me giggle - it’s not worth getting bent out of shape over, just make it vaguely legible and move on.

Character vs. Story

I read a quote somewhere on someone’s blog (or possibly I’ve read it in several places, I’m not sure - I get hit in the head a lot) by Tony Jordan which was a rant something along the lines of:

“You have to start with characters, mother fucker. Characters first and then you can start work on your fucking story, you twat.”

I’m paraphrasing, obviously. There may have been a bit less swearing and a bit more information, but that’s it in a nutshell.

And I can’t help thinking … it’s wrong.

 If you start by thinking up some characters and then find a story to fit them in, you end up with, well, a soap opera.

I just don’t think that works for feature films, it’s more of a TV drama thing. I can’t believe, for example, that when they wrote ‘Back to the Future’ they sat down and worked out Marty McFly’s character and then tried to find a story to fit him into. Surely the story must have come first then?

Or at least the basic concept?

The character is the one best suited to tell that film’s story, true; but the story probably came first. And I think that’s true of most of my favourite films, I can’t imagine …

It’s at this point my thinking comes off the rails.

Indiana Jones, Batman, Superman, James Bond … all these films must have started with the character, even the original comics/novels must have started with the character and then found stories to fit them.

So maybe he is right?

Except, I can’t believe ‘Hustle’ started with the characters. That must have been the concept first, then the characters, then the individual stories?

I can’t believe he started with “What about a character who, on paper, sounds like Hannibal from ‘The A-Team; but in reality is about as charismatic as a damp sponge. Now, let’s think of a TV show to put him in.”

Surely it started with “Let’s do a TV show about conmen who get into all kinds of entertaining scrapes, just like that movie ‘The Sting’.”

But is that story or characters first?

And that’s for a TV series where you’re generating new stories every week. In a feature, do you think up the characters or the story first? Or does one define the other?

For example, once you’ve come up with the character of Superman, you’re unlikely to then think of a story about him battling to get his social security money from an unfeeling bureaucrat so he can bring up his kid as a single parent.

Or if you start with that story, you’re unlikely to end up with a character like James Bond.

This got me thinking about what is a film? It’s the story of someone who does something, or the story of someone who has something happen to them.

Can you come up with the concept for a film without coming up with story and character together? Surely they are interdependent, you can’t have one without the other?

Except in the case of Superman, Batman, James Bond, Indiana Jones … etc. Quite clearly every new film starts with the character and then looks for a story. With varying degrees of success.

But then again, as soon as you come up with Superman, you’ve defined your genre and the type of story you’re going to tell. So maybe …

After a little lie down, I came to the following conclusion:

Tony Jordan IS wrong*, but only in so far as trying to generalise. Sometimes the character comes first, sometimes the story comes first; but mostly they arrive at roughly the same time.

Or to put it more succinctly: there are no hard and fast rules, stop pissing about on the net and get back to your writing.

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* I’d like to add as a disclaimer, I may well have misread the original quote and taken this whole thing out of context - I do that a lot. Comprehension is not really one of my skills, neither is paying attention, listening or concentrating for more than thirty seconds at a time.