Bill Martell, in a recent blog but also in his Script Secrets, talks about one of his writing techniques when it comes to writing features: having got the story idea, setting and main characters sorted out he writes ideas for scenes on index cards.
He doesn't write the ideas in any particular order, he just writes out lots and lots of scene ideas - things that could happen in the story. Doesn't even matter if they are self-contradictory, the key point is to just write out lots of scenes - more than you need.
Having done that he starts to organise them into the film structure. He uses the cards so he can shift them around easily. There will be cards that he doesn't use at all in the end. (As an additional factor he likes to have something cool in each scene - doesn't have to be a big cool thing, it can be a little cool thing - but always something.)
So I thought, for Clones, I would try it. But I used Celtx instead, which has an Index Card facility.
I wrote scene ideas, one in each card and just kept adding. After about 20 minutes I had everything I could think of for the first Clones episode, in no particular order. Then I spent another 20 minutes putting them into an order that felt right. Threw some away, and added some others to link between the ones I had.
Then I read it through and added detail. Finally compiled it into a single text document (manually, there's no feature for that) and I had the skeleton of the treatment for the first episode. In just one hour.
Neat.
What's on the turntable? "Souvenir from China" by Jean Michel Jarre from "Aero" (courtesy of Spotify)
Showing posts with label treatment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label treatment. Show all posts
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Read the small print
I haven't been blogging for various reasons. Normal service will be resumed eventually.
I have in fact spent a chunk of my "free" time working on my entry for the Screenwriters Festival Scriptmarket. When I say "spent" what I mean is "wasted".
Wasted because I didn't read the small print or, if I did read the bit in question, it didn't register.
You have to supply a 400 word synopsis with a tagline and it's that which will decide whether your script joins the fabulous 30. But the main page recommends you read two articles, one by Julian Friedmann and one by Linda M James. The latter is about writing log lines, the former is about treatments.
I've read a lot of stuff on treatments and, to be honest, I'm not good at them. I know this. I even went to the "Writing treatments" talk at last year's Screenwriter's Festival. But I dutifully read Julian's article and set about writing my treatment using his article as a basis.
Have you spotted the problem yet?
I finally finished my 4000 word treatment, I'd even sat down with the 36 Dramatic Situations to ensure that I had drama in the treatment in one form or another. I tend to editorialise to the point of cutting out everything except the skeleton, it needs some meat which I had to put back.
Spotted it yet?
I am out by a factor of 10. They want a 400 word synopsis not a 4000 word treatment. Which in my current perpetually tired state, irritated me quite a bit. Why on earth do they have an article about treatments when they want a synopsis?
Of course, I have been stupid. I should have realised but, as noted, I am perpetually tired at the moment (which is one of the reasons for not blogging - there are others, constant irritation is another, resulting in churlish blogs, like this one).
So then I had to synopsise my story instead. I contemplated trying to cut down the treatment but gave up on that. Eventually I went to some of the early script analyses I have had done as inspiration on what to leave in and what to take out. This is working better.
I tell myself that the work is not really wasted because I now have a treatment, which is a good thing. But I am still annoyed - mostly with myself for not reading the small print.
I better stop now before I work myself into a rant.
(Why did Danny Stack post about the Red Planet competition? I had got myself out of accessing my email 99 million times per day and hoping. His post put me straight back into that frame of mind. And it's been a week since he wrote "...Red Planet news will be very soon indeed. Am expecting an announcement any day now, possibly sooner!". Hah! Oh dear, I really am not a happy bunny at the moment.)
Hope your life is running more smoothly.
(Another reason for not blogging is that the launch of the website I'm working on is only 14 working days away and that includes 2 weekends - it is beginning to dominate my life.)
What's on the turntable? "Connecting Rooms" by Sky from "Sky 2"
I have in fact spent a chunk of my "free" time working on my entry for the Screenwriters Festival Scriptmarket. When I say "spent" what I mean is "wasted".
Wasted because I didn't read the small print or, if I did read the bit in question, it didn't register.
You have to supply a 400 word synopsis with a tagline and it's that which will decide whether your script joins the fabulous 30. But the main page recommends you read two articles, one by Julian Friedmann and one by Linda M James. The latter is about writing log lines, the former is about treatments.
I've read a lot of stuff on treatments and, to be honest, I'm not good at them. I know this. I even went to the "Writing treatments" talk at last year's Screenwriter's Festival. But I dutifully read Julian's article and set about writing my treatment using his article as a basis.
Have you spotted the problem yet?
I finally finished my 4000 word treatment, I'd even sat down with the 36 Dramatic Situations to ensure that I had drama in the treatment in one form or another. I tend to editorialise to the point of cutting out everything except the skeleton, it needs some meat which I had to put back.
Spotted it yet?
I am out by a factor of 10. They want a 400 word synopsis not a 4000 word treatment. Which in my current perpetually tired state, irritated me quite a bit. Why on earth do they have an article about treatments when they want a synopsis?
Of course, I have been stupid. I should have realised but, as noted, I am perpetually tired at the moment (which is one of the reasons for not blogging - there are others, constant irritation is another, resulting in churlish blogs, like this one).
So then I had to synopsise my story instead. I contemplated trying to cut down the treatment but gave up on that. Eventually I went to some of the early script analyses I have had done as inspiration on what to leave in and what to take out. This is working better.
I tell myself that the work is not really wasted because I now have a treatment, which is a good thing. But I am still annoyed - mostly with myself for not reading the small print.
I better stop now before I work myself into a rant.
(Why did Danny Stack post about the Red Planet competition? I had got myself out of accessing my email 99 million times per day and hoping. His post put me straight back into that frame of mind. And it's been a week since he wrote "...Red Planet news will be very soon indeed. Am expecting an announcement any day now, possibly sooner!". Hah! Oh dear, I really am not a happy bunny at the moment.)
Hope your life is running more smoothly.
(Another reason for not blogging is that the launch of the website I'm working on is only 14 working days away and that includes 2 weekends - it is beginning to dominate my life.)
What's on the turntable? "Connecting Rooms" by Sky from "Sky 2"
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Moods are for lovers
I really wasn't in the mood for writing this evening. Thursdays are my busy evening anyway, I do the shopping for next week, sort out washing, cook the meal for next week (I do one meal which I eat over four nights - a little boring, but efficient and cheap).
Plus it's been hot, I was tired and ... I really wasn't in the mood.
But that's not very professional. Writing is like any other job. Does a fireman not go to a fire because he's not in the mood or a little bit tired? Okay, maybe not the best comparison but I'm making a point here.
So by 9:00pm I'd done no writing. I had made a couple of phone calls, and listened to a couple of radio programmes on BBC7 Listen Again.
If I didn't do the Blockbuster treatment now, when was I going to do it?
So I sat down and did it now. Finished. (Bar the edit.) Much more about character arcs and progressions, more emotion but still lots of action and I haven't compromised the source material too much.
I think it's good enough now so I shall be sending it off for the old critiques next week and making any last changes before I send it to the potential client. Who probably doesn't need it.
Have I explained the Blockbuster project? A well-known Hollywood Director has acquired the rights to adapt a story that I've always wanted to do. Now he'll need a script and before that he'll need a treatment. So I'm doing a treatment. I doubt I'll get paid, I really doubt I'd get the writing gig even if he saw my treatment and liked it. (If I was him I wouldn't risk $150 million on an unknown writer.)
But nothing ventured, nothing gained. And it's good practice.
So, back to the point, even if you're not in the mood: Write.
What's on the turntable? "The Revealing Science of God - Dance of the Dawn" by Yes from "Tales From Topographic Oceans"
Plus it's been hot, I was tired and ... I really wasn't in the mood.
But that's not very professional. Writing is like any other job. Does a fireman not go to a fire because he's not in the mood or a little bit tired? Okay, maybe not the best comparison but I'm making a point here.
So by 9:00pm I'd done no writing. I had made a couple of phone calls, and listened to a couple of radio programmes on BBC7 Listen Again.
If I didn't do the Blockbuster treatment now, when was I going to do it?
So I sat down and did it now. Finished. (Bar the edit.) Much more about character arcs and progressions, more emotion but still lots of action and I haven't compromised the source material too much.
I think it's good enough now so I shall be sending it off for the old critiques next week and making any last changes before I send it to the potential client. Who probably doesn't need it.
Have I explained the Blockbuster project? A well-known Hollywood Director has acquired the rights to adapt a story that I've always wanted to do. Now he'll need a script and before that he'll need a treatment. So I'm doing a treatment. I doubt I'll get paid, I really doubt I'd get the writing gig even if he saw my treatment and liked it. (If I was him I wouldn't risk $150 million on an unknown writer.)
But nothing ventured, nothing gained. And it's good practice.
So, back to the point, even if you're not in the mood: Write.
What's on the turntable? "The Revealing Science of God - Dance of the Dawn" by Yes from "Tales From Topographic Oceans"
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Getting the treatment
It is entirely possible that a movie treatment is the most tedious and boring piece of writing it's possible to do. I'm not going to say I hate doing them, but it's hardly exciting.
A treatment is a reduced version of a script without dialogue. It can be best imagined as what you would say if you were telling someone the story. Let's say you went to see a film, then got home and, in your excitement, you told a friend what happened. That's a treatment.
Some people say that two pages is good for a treatment, well you can do that, you can even do one page. The trouble is that there really is no hard and fast rule. Personally I prefer the "one page = 10 minutes" approach. So for a typical movie you're looking at 9-12 pages.
My fave reader Lucy at Bang2Write has not been overly impressed by my treatments of the Blockbuster project. The trouble is, and apparently this is common, that writers tend to write treatments as a series of visuals. This is hardly surprising from one viewpoint, after all, I imagine (and I hope) that we "see" what we create in our imaginations (I know I do).
But visuals are the director's department. What we really need to do is communicate the character and the emotion, along with the sequence of actions. Clearly, concisely and not boringly.
As usual the real (and only) crime any writer can commit is to bore the reader. You can't afford to do that. Ever. Boredom is no emotion and contains no motion. Almost every other emotion contains movement, they are good, you can have those, just not boredom.
So, I'm writing this treatment after prevaricating for four days (well, okay, I'm prevaricating now but I thought you might wonder where I'd gone, honest) anyway I've written nearly 4 pages this evening -- 40 minutes of the movie.
This kind of schedule and timing allows you to see whether your movie is appropriately structured too: has life become unsettled for the protagonist by the time you've hit a quarter of the way through? And so on.
I suspect the main reason that writer's dislike treatments so much is that they'd rather be writing the actual script. I don't need a treatment to plan, I use other tools, so a treatment feels like a waste of time.
Unfortunately it's necessary.
What's on the turntable? "Oh Wow, it's you" by Steely Dan from "The Roaring of the Lamb"
A treatment is a reduced version of a script without dialogue. It can be best imagined as what you would say if you were telling someone the story. Let's say you went to see a film, then got home and, in your excitement, you told a friend what happened. That's a treatment.
Some people say that two pages is good for a treatment, well you can do that, you can even do one page. The trouble is that there really is no hard and fast rule. Personally I prefer the "one page = 10 minutes" approach. So for a typical movie you're looking at 9-12 pages.
My fave reader Lucy at Bang2Write has not been overly impressed by my treatments of the Blockbuster project. The trouble is, and apparently this is common, that writers tend to write treatments as a series of visuals. This is hardly surprising from one viewpoint, after all, I imagine (and I hope) that we "see" what we create in our imaginations (I know I do).
But visuals are the director's department. What we really need to do is communicate the character and the emotion, along with the sequence of actions. Clearly, concisely and not boringly.
As usual the real (and only) crime any writer can commit is to bore the reader. You can't afford to do that. Ever. Boredom is no emotion and contains no motion. Almost every other emotion contains movement, they are good, you can have those, just not boredom.
So, I'm writing this treatment after prevaricating for four days (well, okay, I'm prevaricating now but I thought you might wonder where I'd gone, honest) anyway I've written nearly 4 pages this evening -- 40 minutes of the movie.
This kind of schedule and timing allows you to see whether your movie is appropriately structured too: has life become unsettled for the protagonist by the time you've hit a quarter of the way through? And so on.
I suspect the main reason that writer's dislike treatments so much is that they'd rather be writing the actual script. I don't need a treatment to plan, I use other tools, so a treatment feels like a waste of time.
Unfortunately it's necessary.
What's on the turntable? "Oh Wow, it's you" by Steely Dan from "The Roaring of the Lamb"
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
New deadlines
I'm settling into my life here in Reading, Berks. Heading towards the end of my third week it's all ticking along pleasantly. Apart from the fact I slept badly last night because I had things to do.
Things to do.
So, on one of my script writing mailing lists, up pops a fascinating little project: it already has funding, has two major actors attached and no script. They want a character piece. And they're taking submissions (a treatment and sample scene) by the end of May. I shall call it the Bohemian Project henceforth.
As we all know I have a fondness for deadlines. Really. It's all those years I spent generating newsstand magazines every 4 weeks. And I really do mean every 4 weeks, we did 13 issues per year.
Can I write a character piece? I have no idea. However I did not know whether I could write a contemporary rom-com a month ago, and apparently I can. (It may not be brilliant, but I can do it.) We shall see.
But there's still the Blockbuster treatment for the Hollywood director to do and my TV script dialogue.
Tight deadlines. Even more fun.
I spent this evening mapping out a new version of the Blockbuster treatment. My professional readers really hadn't liked it much so I went back to square one and thought it through. I worked up some action plot lines for the four main groups of people. Then mapped them out on my Storylines software, I find it useful for getting things in order.
One of the problems with my treatment had been that it was all action and very little in the way of character. There is a problem with the source material for this adaptation in that there isn't a lot of character anyway. However I've already taken liberties with the plot so there's no reason for not taking liberties with the characters as well. (To a point.)
Screenwriting books will tell you lots of interesting things about External Conflict, Internal Conflict and Fatal Flaws. I'm not going to repeat it in detail here but while I didn't need this particular tool for "Une Nuit a Paris" (because the characters flowed well), it was definitely a tool for this treatment.
I wrote out those three things for each of the eight main characters (including the antagonists) and then thought what would be key scenes to go with these traits. Very interesting. I came up with some quite juicy ones and it turned one of the main bad guys into a potentially fascinating, and even tragic, character even though he gets very few scenes in this film. (He gets more in the sequel.)
Having done that I went back to my Storylines software and inserted the key scenes in the appropriate places so now I have both action and emotion. I can now re-write the Blockbuster treatment and hopefully make something better out of it.
I also realised that some of the interesting stuff with my bad guy would transfer very nicely to one of the principle characters in the Bohemian Project. Nice.
What's on the turntable? "Where Opposites Meet" by Sky from "Sky"
Things to do.
So, on one of my script writing mailing lists, up pops a fascinating little project: it already has funding, has two major actors attached and no script. They want a character piece. And they're taking submissions (a treatment and sample scene) by the end of May. I shall call it the Bohemian Project henceforth.
As we all know I have a fondness for deadlines. Really. It's all those years I spent generating newsstand magazines every 4 weeks. And I really do mean every 4 weeks, we did 13 issues per year.
Can I write a character piece? I have no idea. However I did not know whether I could write a contemporary rom-com a month ago, and apparently I can. (It may not be brilliant, but I can do it.) We shall see.
But there's still the Blockbuster treatment for the Hollywood director to do and my TV script dialogue.
Tight deadlines. Even more fun.
I spent this evening mapping out a new version of the Blockbuster treatment. My professional readers really hadn't liked it much so I went back to square one and thought it through. I worked up some action plot lines for the four main groups of people. Then mapped them out on my Storylines software, I find it useful for getting things in order.
One of the problems with my treatment had been that it was all action and very little in the way of character. There is a problem with the source material for this adaptation in that there isn't a lot of character anyway. However I've already taken liberties with the plot so there's no reason for not taking liberties with the characters as well. (To a point.)
Screenwriting books will tell you lots of interesting things about External Conflict, Internal Conflict and Fatal Flaws. I'm not going to repeat it in detail here but while I didn't need this particular tool for "Une Nuit a Paris" (because the characters flowed well), it was definitely a tool for this treatment.
I wrote out those three things for each of the eight main characters (including the antagonists) and then thought what would be key scenes to go with these traits. Very interesting. I came up with some quite juicy ones and it turned one of the main bad guys into a potentially fascinating, and even tragic, character even though he gets very few scenes in this film. (He gets more in the sequel.)
Having done that I went back to my Storylines software and inserted the key scenes in the appropriate places so now I have both action and emotion. I can now re-write the Blockbuster treatment and hopefully make something better out of it.
I also realised that some of the interesting stuff with my bad guy would transfer very nicely to one of the principle characters in the Bohemian Project. Nice.
What's on the turntable? "Where Opposites Meet" by Sky from "Sky"
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Paying your way
So, the job paperwork is complete, and so is the flat rental paperwork hopefully.
The flat rental form (Tenancy Application) is an interesting document, it's essentially an insurance form for the landlord. It's purpose is to determine whether I, as the tenant, am who I claim to be and whether I can actually pay.
This is actually the problem: I run all my business through a limited company, and the accounts are completed only up to 2006. At this time income was very low. Although my accountant did have the opportunity to say "your profit has doubled" between 2005 and 2006. This is not, however, saying a lot. But, by my estimates, my profit at least doubled again 2006-2007 and then they'll be doubling again for 2008.
But there's no documentary proof. However I can prove that my income for the next six months will be out the roof. Which will hopefully be enough.
It is my intention to catch up on my accounts, using the income from the new job, and get all my accounts properly in order. I suspect I'll get slammed with tax bills, but I'd rather be honest now than pay even more later when the Revenue men catch up with me and are less friendly.
Of course it was a double shock and a half when I found out how much I had to pay for this flat. I didn't really think it through: one month in advance, and one and a half months as deposit. Ouch. 2.5 x the monthly rent up-front. We can just about scrape this together.
Meanwhile other bills mount up, my membership of the WGGB is up and I have to pay them the annual fee. You pay a tithe on your income from writing but there's a minimum below which you cannot go. I made no money from writing last year. So they get the minimum.
No ScriptFrenzy writing yesterday, but my calculations were off. Even if I'd written nothing so far I'd only need to do 4.5 pages per day to win. So I'm probably on about 4 pages/day.
But I'm in a tizzy about what to work on:
Monsters: TV series which I intend to send to the BBC Writers Room , it's pretty much ready but I want to spice up the dialogue which could take a few days.
Movie Treatment: As described yesterday, needs a lot of re-working to get the plot into something that's actually working properly. But while there's no strict deadline on this, the longer I take the less likely it's going to be accepted.
ScriptFrenzy: 4-5 pages per day
Sometimes you need to sit down and evaluate these things. Particularly when there's so much other stress going on, and moving house is considered to be one of the most stressful things you can ever do. Even though it's only me moving temporarily.
So I suppose I need to write some ScriptFrenzy pages and then work on Monsters before someone comes up with the same idea and gets it made.
Onwards and upwards.
What's on the turntable? "The Great Beyond" by REM
The flat rental form (Tenancy Application) is an interesting document, it's essentially an insurance form for the landlord. It's purpose is to determine whether I, as the tenant, am who I claim to be and whether I can actually pay.
This is actually the problem: I run all my business through a limited company, and the accounts are completed only up to 2006. At this time income was very low. Although my accountant did have the opportunity to say "your profit has doubled" between 2005 and 2006. This is not, however, saying a lot. But, by my estimates, my profit at least doubled again 2006-2007 and then they'll be doubling again for 2008.
But there's no documentary proof. However I can prove that my income for the next six months will be out the roof. Which will hopefully be enough.
It is my intention to catch up on my accounts, using the income from the new job, and get all my accounts properly in order. I suspect I'll get slammed with tax bills, but I'd rather be honest now than pay even more later when the Revenue men catch up with me and are less friendly.
Of course it was a double shock and a half when I found out how much I had to pay for this flat. I didn't really think it through: one month in advance, and one and a half months as deposit. Ouch. 2.5 x the monthly rent up-front. We can just about scrape this together.
Meanwhile other bills mount up, my membership of the WGGB is up and I have to pay them the annual fee. You pay a tithe on your income from writing but there's a minimum below which you cannot go. I made no money from writing last year. So they get the minimum.
No ScriptFrenzy writing yesterday, but my calculations were off. Even if I'd written nothing so far I'd only need to do 4.5 pages per day to win. So I'm probably on about 4 pages/day.
But I'm in a tizzy about what to work on:
Monsters: TV series which I intend to send to the BBC Writers Room , it's pretty much ready but I want to spice up the dialogue which could take a few days.
Movie Treatment: As described yesterday, needs a lot of re-working to get the plot into something that's actually working properly. But while there's no strict deadline on this, the longer I take the less likely it's going to be accepted.
ScriptFrenzy: 4-5 pages per day
Sometimes you need to sit down and evaluate these things. Particularly when there's so much other stress going on, and moving house is considered to be one of the most stressful things you can ever do. Even though it's only me moving temporarily.
So I suppose I need to write some ScriptFrenzy pages and then work on Monsters before someone comes up with the same idea and gets it made.
Onwards and upwards.
What's on the turntable? "The Great Beyond" by REM
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