Saturday, October 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
gettingtoYES
GETTING TO YES: How NOT to Collaborate on Scripts
By Chris Keane
1. There's nothing worse than a bad collaboration. I have had them. In one a collaborator tried to steal the material, making it his own; thinking it was his own, to make matters worse. And this was after a contract had been signed.
There went the trust and here came the feeling that I never wanted to see, much less be in the same hemisphere, with this guy again. But we had a contract, that same contract that bound us together in the first place and now had me shouting: LEMME OUT!
Rule 1 advice: Sign a contract first. What if you didn't have one! Think of the hell you might have then. Be grateful. Work it out. Explain that you worked out the contract according to time spent, yes, but also time working in the business counted, and that you actually THINK about the work when you're not at the computer or yellow pad.
2. Contracts have nothing to do with (and everything to do with) TRUST: "I have done more work than you have, so I want at least half." The WGA breaks down the writing process loosely as this: $25% for the story; 75% for the screenplay. Story is compiling, writing is putting the movie on the page. They overlap but that's the breakdown.
I had a collaborator once who kept insisting that everything was hers because she had spent all those years compiling and thinking about character, while I spent my years writing and having produced movies and TV and books. She didn't know how to put the movie on the page. She thought she did.
She became PROPRIETARY over the work. It's mine, she'd scream. Mine! She's throw a tantrum. That's how she got a lot of what she had. Tantrum perks, she called them. I tried to explain, I threw my own more amateurish tantrum, and then finally, I said, no. NO is a stopper. GETTING TO NO is good. But only half way there.
3. You want to Get to Yes. To agree on item after item, so that you’re thinking in tone, story, reversals, etc. And still thinking individually. (GETTING TO YES is a also a very good book about negotiations.) Yes, I agree that you have done work, you say to your partner but ... or: Yes, I agree that you have done work, okay; I'll give you another five points.
Be careful here, though. That old adage: give an inch, they'll expect a mile -- can kick in. Or the collaborator will be grateful and work harder. Count your blessings.
No Ego is the mantra. The only objective is a better script and then the best script possible. If things are deadlocked, there always should be one with final decision-making abilities.
Many if not most scripts produced these days are written by teams. It makes sense. All those decisions can be made and discarded quickly. One writer often is better with dialogue, another with structure. One has a memory, the other has a concept. One is fearful, the other has his or her own problems.
I recommend, for romance, working with a lover. For a good script, I would recommend against it.
Every day before you start reread what you've written from the beginning. It was lock you in and not waste time. Get up and move around. And always ask yourself: does this suggestion based on my ego want my own way or my desire to produce the best script.
By Chris Keane
1. There's nothing worse than a bad collaboration. I have had them. In one a collaborator tried to steal the material, making it his own; thinking it was his own, to make matters worse. And this was after a contract had been signed.
There went the trust and here came the feeling that I never wanted to see, much less be in the same hemisphere, with this guy again. But we had a contract, that same contract that bound us together in the first place and now had me shouting: LEMME OUT!
Rule 1 advice: Sign a contract first. What if you didn't have one! Think of the hell you might have then. Be grateful. Work it out. Explain that you worked out the contract according to time spent, yes, but also time working in the business counted, and that you actually THINK about the work when you're not at the computer or yellow pad.
2. Contracts have nothing to do with (and everything to do with) TRUST: "I have done more work than you have, so I want at least half." The WGA breaks down the writing process loosely as this: $25% for the story; 75% for the screenplay. Story is compiling, writing is putting the movie on the page. They overlap but that's the breakdown.
I had a collaborator once who kept insisting that everything was hers because she had spent all those years compiling and thinking about character, while I spent my years writing and having produced movies and TV and books. She didn't know how to put the movie on the page. She thought she did.
She became PROPRIETARY over the work. It's mine, she'd scream. Mine! She's throw a tantrum. That's how she got a lot of what she had. Tantrum perks, she called them. I tried to explain, I threw my own more amateurish tantrum, and then finally, I said, no. NO is a stopper. GETTING TO NO is good. But only half way there.
3. You want to Get to Yes. To agree on item after item, so that you’re thinking in tone, story, reversals, etc. And still thinking individually. (GETTING TO YES is a also a very good book about negotiations.) Yes, I agree that you have done work, you say to your partner but ... or: Yes, I agree that you have done work, okay; I'll give you another five points.
Be careful here, though. That old adage: give an inch, they'll expect a mile -- can kick in. Or the collaborator will be grateful and work harder. Count your blessings.
No Ego is the mantra. The only objective is a better script and then the best script possible. If things are deadlocked, there always should be one with final decision-making abilities.
Many if not most scripts produced these days are written by teams. It makes sense. All those decisions can be made and discarded quickly. One writer often is better with dialogue, another with structure. One has a memory, the other has a concept. One is fearful, the other has his or her own problems.
I recommend, for romance, working with a lover. For a good script, I would recommend against it.
Every day before you start reread what you've written from the beginning. It was lock you in and not waste time. Get up and move around. And always ask yourself: does this suggestion based on my ego want my own way or my desire to produce the best script.
squeezeIT
SQUEEZE IT, BABY: Compression Will Set You Free by Christopher Keane
This is a compressed piece on compression, one of the most overlooked and least understood screenwriting art.
In screenwriting compression comes in three major flavors: Time, Space and Language.
Compression of Time
In the compression of Time, the question you want to ask yourself is this: can this screenplay of mine that, in movie time, takes place over a seven-month period, be told over a weekend?
The answer, in almost all cases, should be a resounding YES.
If it’s a NO then ask your self why? And list the reasons. Why does your story have to take place in seven months? If a pregnancy gets in the way, she should have the baby before the story begins, or at the beginning. If it’s about a year in college, what’s wrong with a couple of weeks toward the end?
Movies are usually about a rapid series of events swirling around the main character in a very short period of time, especially in certain genres: comedies, thrillers, and action pictures.
Compression of Space
Never let the characters get too far away from one another. Don’t do what they did in The Color of Money where two-thirds of the way through the picture Tom Cruise and Paul Newman split up and went their separate ways. What!
It was as if a balloon had its air let out. Tension seeped out, conflict vanished. Story disappeared. We’re left with a flaccid leftover.
If the writer of The Graduate had decided to put Ben Braddock’s house down the street from Mrs. Robinson’s house, instead of next door, there would have been no movie. Or if the writer of American Beauty had decided to put the two houses down the street from one another, there would have been no movie.
In Hollywood they say the best movies are the ones in which the characters are pressed so close together that there’s hardly any breathing room.
Compression of Language
Always try to use active sentences. “Batman whacked the Joker across the street” instead of The Joker was whacked by Batman. This is a movie you’re writing, a motion picture.
The language should reflect the form.
Eliminate as many adverbs as you can, replacing them with colorful, energetic verbs. The sentences themselves should be descriptive but compressed.
NO: Matt turns the corner. Before him he sees a large three-storey home built around 1850, with gables and a window’s walk. Many windows peer out over a lawn that hasn’t been mowed in months, a haggard tree with a rubber tire hanging from a branch. Broken bicycles are sprawled on a broken sidewalk. The house needs paint. Panes on the lower floors have been broken. Dirty white pillars hold up the porch.
YES: Matt turned the corner. He has arrived at his destination, a dilapidated Victorian mansion.
It’s that simple. Compression works. Try it. It will give your script a tempo and pace and a sharper sense of its world.
Christopher Keane
Chris Keane new screenwriting book, Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make debuts April 2008. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), The Crossing (WB) The Huntress (USA Network series) plus screenwriting books: How to
Write A Selling Screenplay & Hot Property. He is also a script consultant.
Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or email him at Keanewords@aol.com
He teaches and lectures at Harvard, LMU, Emerson College, Harvard, NYU, and Smithsonian Institution.
This is a compressed piece on compression, one of the most overlooked and least understood screenwriting art.
In screenwriting compression comes in three major flavors: Time, Space and Language.
Compression of Time
In the compression of Time, the question you want to ask yourself is this: can this screenplay of mine that, in movie time, takes place over a seven-month period, be told over a weekend?
The answer, in almost all cases, should be a resounding YES.
If it’s a NO then ask your self why? And list the reasons. Why does your story have to take place in seven months? If a pregnancy gets in the way, she should have the baby before the story begins, or at the beginning. If it’s about a year in college, what’s wrong with a couple of weeks toward the end?
Movies are usually about a rapid series of events swirling around the main character in a very short period of time, especially in certain genres: comedies, thrillers, and action pictures.
Compression of Space
Never let the characters get too far away from one another. Don’t do what they did in The Color of Money where two-thirds of the way through the picture Tom Cruise and Paul Newman split up and went their separate ways. What!
It was as if a balloon had its air let out. Tension seeped out, conflict vanished. Story disappeared. We’re left with a flaccid leftover.
If the writer of The Graduate had decided to put Ben Braddock’s house down the street from Mrs. Robinson’s house, instead of next door, there would have been no movie. Or if the writer of American Beauty had decided to put the two houses down the street from one another, there would have been no movie.
In Hollywood they say the best movies are the ones in which the characters are pressed so close together that there’s hardly any breathing room.
Compression of Language
Always try to use active sentences. “Batman whacked the Joker across the street” instead of The Joker was whacked by Batman. This is a movie you’re writing, a motion picture.
The language should reflect the form.
Eliminate as many adverbs as you can, replacing them with colorful, energetic verbs. The sentences themselves should be descriptive but compressed.
NO: Matt turns the corner. Before him he sees a large three-storey home built around 1850, with gables and a window’s walk. Many windows peer out over a lawn that hasn’t been mowed in months, a haggard tree with a rubber tire hanging from a branch. Broken bicycles are sprawled on a broken sidewalk. The house needs paint. Panes on the lower floors have been broken. Dirty white pillars hold up the porch.
YES: Matt turned the corner. He has arrived at his destination, a dilapidated Victorian mansion.
It’s that simple. Compression works. Try it. It will give your script a tempo and pace and a sharper sense of its world.
Christopher Keane
Chris Keane new screenwriting book, Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make debuts April 2008. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), The Crossing (WB) The Huntress (USA Network series) plus screenwriting books: How to
Write A Selling Screenplay & Hot Property. He is also a script consultant.
Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or email him at Keanewords@aol.com
He teaches and lectures at Harvard, LMU, Emerson College, Harvard, NYU, and Smithsonian Institution.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Shave it. Cut it. Chop it. Blunt it.
Shave it. Cut it. Chop it. Blunt it.
By Christopher Keane
Mark Twain once explained to a friend that he would have written a shorter letter but he didn't have the time.
Take the time. Brevity is one of screenwriting’s ten commandments. Who wants shaggy dog stories? Or Matthew Arnold-like run-on pages? Or thick paragraphs you can choke on? Or mind numbing anal-retentive detail that makes you want rip up the script and throw it in the trash, which you eventually do.
I once had an algebra teacher who would construct such elaborate sentences that by the end of them you couldn’t remember what he began them with.
The amateur writes:
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road and saw the house. It was about a hundred and thirty years old and big and it needed paint. The front porch sagged. The misshapen windows missed panes. The stairs leading to the porch missed most of the stairs themselves. The lawn needed mowing. A tire hung by a piece of rope from a tree branch. The half dozen kids’ toys lay broken on the sidewalk. The gate leading to the house was off its hinges. On the porch two stray cats tried to overturn a broken dish.
The professional writes.
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road and saw the dilapidated Victorian mansion.
We are talking about essences here. More screenplays have never made it through the process because the writer had fallen in love with unnecessary detail or the brilliant cadence and iridescent majesty of his own words that he read aloud to himself late at night when he was too tired to drag his effervescent butt to bed.
When a reader sees a thick chunky paragraph a buzzer goes off in his head that registers intense dislike of the writer, aggravation at the writer’s refusal to read enough scripts so that he wouldn’t make this error, and anger at the amount of time he (the reader) will have to spend reading this junk.
Not the frame of mind you want a reader to have when he picks up your script.
Simple declarative sentences will do. Strong verbs with some imagination. Active (rather than passive) sentence construction. No repetition.
You've already got the slug line up there: EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY. Don’t write in the first paragraph: “In the neighborhood” but rather “Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road…”
Don’t go over three lines in any paragraph. Don’t go over 105 pages, unless you’re writing an epic. No, that is not an epic you’re writing. It may end up having epic proportions at 135 pages.
One studio that will go unnamed – Warner Brothers – will not look at a script over 130 pages, and that was last year.
Brevity is the soul of discretion. I heard that somewhere. Give a working title to all of your new work: The Soul of Discretion. And play What Is! What is! The Soul of Discretion?
Answer: Don’t look. Starts with a B.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
By Christopher Keane
Mark Twain once explained to a friend that he would have written a shorter letter but he didn't have the time.
Take the time. Brevity is one of screenwriting’s ten commandments. Who wants shaggy dog stories? Or Matthew Arnold-like run-on pages? Or thick paragraphs you can choke on? Or mind numbing anal-retentive detail that makes you want rip up the script and throw it in the trash, which you eventually do.
I once had an algebra teacher who would construct such elaborate sentences that by the end of them you couldn’t remember what he began them with.
The amateur writes:
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road and saw the house. It was about a hundred and thirty years old and big and it needed paint. The front porch sagged. The misshapen windows missed panes. The stairs leading to the porch missed most of the stairs themselves. The lawn needed mowing. A tire hung by a piece of rope from a tree branch. The half dozen kids’ toys lay broken on the sidewalk. The gate leading to the house was off its hinges. On the porch two stray cats tried to overturn a broken dish.
The professional writes.
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road and saw the dilapidated Victorian mansion.
We are talking about essences here. More screenplays have never made it through the process because the writer had fallen in love with unnecessary detail or the brilliant cadence and iridescent majesty of his own words that he read aloud to himself late at night when he was too tired to drag his effervescent butt to bed.
When a reader sees a thick chunky paragraph a buzzer goes off in his head that registers intense dislike of the writer, aggravation at the writer’s refusal to read enough scripts so that he wouldn’t make this error, and anger at the amount of time he (the reader) will have to spend reading this junk.
Not the frame of mind you want a reader to have when he picks up your script.
Simple declarative sentences will do. Strong verbs with some imagination. Active (rather than passive) sentence construction. No repetition.
You've already got the slug line up there: EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY. Don’t write in the first paragraph: “In the neighborhood” but rather “Roger turned the corner onto Vibrata Road…”
Don’t go over three lines in any paragraph. Don’t go over 105 pages, unless you’re writing an epic. No, that is not an epic you’re writing. It may end up having epic proportions at 135 pages.
One studio that will go unnamed – Warner Brothers – will not look at a script over 130 pages, and that was last year.
Brevity is the soul of discretion. I heard that somewhere. Give a working title to all of your new work: The Soul of Discretion. And play What Is! What is! The Soul of Discretion?
Answer: Don’t look. Starts with a B.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Getting to Yes: Coillaboration
GETTING TO YES: How NOT to Collaborate on Scripts
By Chris Keane
There's nothing worse than a bad collaboration.
I have had them. In one a collaborator tried to steal the material, making it his own; thinking it was his own, to make matters worse. And this was after a contract had been signed and I had done 80% of the work.
There went the trust and here came the feeling that I never wanted to see, much less be in the same hemisphere, with this guy again. But we had a contract, that same contract that bound us together in the first place and now had me shouting: LEMME OUT!
Rule 1: Always sign a contract first, no matter what. Figure out how much responsibility each of you will contribute, and go for it. What if you didn't have a contract! Think of the hell you might have then. I had one of those in a collaborations with a major A-list writer, my best friend. I thought, to my later consternation, that we didn’t need one. We were best friends. In fact, it never occurred to me. At one point he offered to give me an interest-free loan as my part of the bargain. That's where the friendship ended.
The script, which studios were waiting for because it was good and they had had a sneak peek, went nowhere because my agent and his agent couldn't work it out. Thinking back maybe I should have taken the scraps just to get it made.
But ALWAYS have a contract. No matter what.
Be grateful. Work it out. Explain that the contract represents time spent, yes, but also time working in the business counts, and that you actually THINK about the work when you're not at the computer or yellow pad.
Rule 2. Contracts have nothing to do with (and everything to do with) TRUST: "I have done work on story than you have, so I want at least half." The Writers Guild of America breaks down the writing process loosely as this: $25% for the story; 75% for the screenplay. Story is compiling, writing is putting the movie on the page. They overlap but that's the breakdown.
I had a collaborator once who kept insisting that everything was hers because she had spent all those years compiling and thinking about the characters, while I spent my years writing and having produced movies and TV and books. She didn't know how to put the movie on the page. She thought she did.
She became PROPRIETARY over the work. It's mine, she'd scream. Mine! She'd throw a tantrum. That's how she got a lot of what she had. Tantrum Perks, she called them.
I tried to explain. I threw my own more amateurish tantrum, and then finally, I said, no. NO is a stopper. GETTING TO NO is good. But only half way there.
Rule 3. You want to Get to Yes. To agree on item after item, so that you’re thinking in tone, story, reversals, etc. And still thinking individually. “Yes, I agree that you have done work,” you say to your partner but ... or: “Yes, I agree that you have done work. Okay, I'll give you another five points.”
Be careful here, though. That old adage: give an inch, they'll expect a mile. Or the collaborator will be grateful and work harder. In that case, count your blessings.
No Ego is the mantra. The only objective is a better script and then the best script possible. If things are deadlocked, there always should be one writer with final decision-making abilities.
Many if not most scripts produced these days are written by teams. It makes sense. All those decisions can be made and discarded quickly. One writer often is better with dialogue, another with structure. One is good inside the scenes, the other excels in concept. One is driven by fear, the other by overconfidence.
I recommend, for romance, working with a lover. For writing a good script, I would recommend against it.
Every day before you start writing reread what you've written from the beginning. It will lock you into place and you won’t waste time.
And always ask yourself: is this suggestion or that suggestion based on my ego wanting its own way or my desire to produce the very best script?
Don’t rewrite each other unless you first agree on it.
Before choosing a collaborator always ask to see samples of the other person's work. Maybe you have a genius in your midst who has completion anxiety or emotional problems. Listen to your gut. It’s usually right.
Hold your temper back and watch out for RESENTMENTS. They will surely kill you, and the project.
Chris Keane
Los Angeles
Chris Keane has written The Hunter (Paramount Pictures) The Crossing (WB), The Huntress (book + USA Network series) + screenwriting books: How to Write A Selling Screenplay, Hot Property, and ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make (APRIL ’08)
He is also a script and book coach and consultant. Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or e-mail: Keanewords@aol.com. He lives in Los Angeles where he has just completed a feature, LOST LIGHT, and a TV Pilot, DIVINE JUSTICE.
By Chris Keane
There's nothing worse than a bad collaboration.
I have had them. In one a collaborator tried to steal the material, making it his own; thinking it was his own, to make matters worse. And this was after a contract had been signed and I had done 80% of the work.
There went the trust and here came the feeling that I never wanted to see, much less be in the same hemisphere, with this guy again. But we had a contract, that same contract that bound us together in the first place and now had me shouting: LEMME OUT!
Rule 1: Always sign a contract first, no matter what. Figure out how much responsibility each of you will contribute, and go for it. What if you didn't have a contract! Think of the hell you might have then. I had one of those in a collaborations with a major A-list writer, my best friend. I thought, to my later consternation, that we didn’t need one. We were best friends. In fact, it never occurred to me. At one point he offered to give me an interest-free loan as my part of the bargain. That's where the friendship ended.
The script, which studios were waiting for because it was good and they had had a sneak peek, went nowhere because my agent and his agent couldn't work it out. Thinking back maybe I should have taken the scraps just to get it made.
But ALWAYS have a contract. No matter what.
Be grateful. Work it out. Explain that the contract represents time spent, yes, but also time working in the business counts, and that you actually THINK about the work when you're not at the computer or yellow pad.
Rule 2. Contracts have nothing to do with (and everything to do with) TRUST: "I have done work on story than you have, so I want at least half." The Writers Guild of America breaks down the writing process loosely as this: $25% for the story; 75% for the screenplay. Story is compiling, writing is putting the movie on the page. They overlap but that's the breakdown.
I had a collaborator once who kept insisting that everything was hers because she had spent all those years compiling and thinking about the characters, while I spent my years writing and having produced movies and TV and books. She didn't know how to put the movie on the page. She thought she did.
She became PROPRIETARY over the work. It's mine, she'd scream. Mine! She'd throw a tantrum. That's how she got a lot of what she had. Tantrum Perks, she called them.
I tried to explain. I threw my own more amateurish tantrum, and then finally, I said, no. NO is a stopper. GETTING TO NO is good. But only half way there.
Rule 3. You want to Get to Yes. To agree on item after item, so that you’re thinking in tone, story, reversals, etc. And still thinking individually. “Yes, I agree that you have done work,” you say to your partner but ... or: “Yes, I agree that you have done work. Okay, I'll give you another five points.”
Be careful here, though. That old adage: give an inch, they'll expect a mile. Or the collaborator will be grateful and work harder. In that case, count your blessings.
No Ego is the mantra. The only objective is a better script and then the best script possible. If things are deadlocked, there always should be one writer with final decision-making abilities.
Many if not most scripts produced these days are written by teams. It makes sense. All those decisions can be made and discarded quickly. One writer often is better with dialogue, another with structure. One is good inside the scenes, the other excels in concept. One is driven by fear, the other by overconfidence.
I recommend, for romance, working with a lover. For writing a good script, I would recommend against it.
Every day before you start writing reread what you've written from the beginning. It will lock you into place and you won’t waste time.
And always ask yourself: is this suggestion or that suggestion based on my ego wanting its own way or my desire to produce the very best script?
Don’t rewrite each other unless you first agree on it.
Before choosing a collaborator always ask to see samples of the other person's work. Maybe you have a genius in your midst who has completion anxiety or emotional problems. Listen to your gut. It’s usually right.
Hold your temper back and watch out for RESENTMENTS. They will surely kill you, and the project.
Chris Keane
Los Angeles
Chris Keane has written The Hunter (Paramount Pictures) The Crossing (WB), The Huntress (book + USA Network series) + screenwriting books: How to Write A Selling Screenplay, Hot Property, and ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make (APRIL ’08)
He is also a script and book coach and consultant. Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or e-mail: Keanewords@aol.com. He lives in Los Angeles where he has just completed a feature, LOST LIGHT, and a TV Pilot, DIVINE JUSTICE.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
THE ACT II Climax
by Christopher Keane
The act II climax is not always easy to mark but it's got one factor that establishes its reason for being. It's the lowest point in the story for the main character the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. In most situations, in real life, most people would give up their lives at this point, but not in a movie. The character can't go back and can't stay put, and looks as if he or she can't go forward either. BUT! Hamlet sees the play in which the player king pours poison in the ear -- a reenactment, Hamlet thinks, of how his uncle had killed his father -- and watches closely for his uncle's reaction... BINGO! There it is. He sees the twitch. Claudius, the bastard, did kill his father!
Hamlet's devastated. Not only did his uncle kill his father, but this also confirms that Hamlet';s own mother was having an affair with his uncle and she is a cocpnspiratpor. The worst possible situation is true!
Hamlet never asked for this. He just came home oin Spring Break from college, for a little R and R. Now he's got his father, dead. His uncle did it. His mother did it. His girlfriend is half mad. The kingdom is in total disarray. And now he's got to kill his uncle, the king, and maybe - maybe? fuck all, real good chance of - losing his own life before he even gets to Claudius.
This is the moment when the main character knows what he has to do if he wants to solve the problem. But to do it he has to climb out of this pit, buckle up, fight all the forces telling him to go to sleep or run, and march up the perilous mountain (or through the deadly swapms) of Act III, all the while keeping focus (with all the other stuff going on), fight the tougest battle, physically and emotionally, that he or she has ever fought, and hopefully prevail, emerging with life intact, against all odds, and even wisdom and logic - because if she doesn't she will be (if she's not dead) condemned to be free to live the most awful life she could ever imagine.
So the climax at the end of Act II is that moment of decision that will launch youir character into the cesspool of Act III, without an assurance of anything except that if the journey is not made the alternative is too frightening to even consider.
Now there's where your character should be.
Talk about a climax.
The act II climax is not always easy to mark but it's got one factor that establishes its reason for being. It's the lowest point in the story for the main character the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. In most situations, in real life, most people would give up their lives at this point, but not in a movie. The character can't go back and can't stay put, and looks as if he or she can't go forward either. BUT! Hamlet sees the play in which the player king pours poison in the ear -- a reenactment, Hamlet thinks, of how his uncle had killed his father -- and watches closely for his uncle's reaction... BINGO! There it is. He sees the twitch. Claudius, the bastard, did kill his father!
Hamlet's devastated. Not only did his uncle kill his father, but this also confirms that Hamlet';s own mother was having an affair with his uncle and she is a cocpnspiratpor. The worst possible situation is true!
Hamlet never asked for this. He just came home oin Spring Break from college, for a little R and R. Now he's got his father, dead. His uncle did it. His mother did it. His girlfriend is half mad. The kingdom is in total disarray. And now he's got to kill his uncle, the king, and maybe - maybe? fuck all, real good chance of - losing his own life before he even gets to Claudius.
This is the moment when the main character knows what he has to do if he wants to solve the problem. But to do it he has to climb out of this pit, buckle up, fight all the forces telling him to go to sleep or run, and march up the perilous mountain (or through the deadly swapms) of Act III, all the while keeping focus (with all the other stuff going on), fight the tougest battle, physically and emotionally, that he or she has ever fought, and hopefully prevail, emerging with life intact, against all odds, and even wisdom and logic - because if she doesn't she will be (if she's not dead) condemned to be free to live the most awful life she could ever imagine.
So the climax at the end of Act II is that moment of decision that will launch youir character into the cesspool of Act III, without an assurance of anything except that if the journey is not made the alternative is too frightening to even consider.
Now there's where your character should be.
Talk about a climax.
THE SECRET OF SEQUENCES
THE SECRET OF SEQUENCES
BY
CHRISTOPHER KEANE
How do I write thee? Let me count the ways.
Yeah, well, I’d rather write them than count them. But unfortunately some things take study and time and laborious exercise in the art of looking at a screenplay from different angles.
Three of them.
1. Angle One: You can look at the screenplay from the broad perspective: the story itself, the whole shebang, the biog noodle. From beginning to end. You can write it in a four-page mini-treatment, the four most exasperating, and necessary, four pages you’ll write ever.
Page One is the action of Act 1, down to and including Plot Point 1, on page 25, more or less.
Pages Two and Three hold the action of Act II, down to and including Plot Point II, in which the central character is at his or her lowest point in the story.
Page Four is action of Act III, down to and including the climax.
This is the overview.
2. Angle Two: You can look at a screenplay from a narrower perspective, the scene-by-scene movement from beginning to end. How one scene folds into the next, carrying with each scene emotion, motivaton, conflict, tension. Each scene is like a little screenplay.
It has a beginning, middle and end. The characters that walk into the scene carry with them agendas that do not match up with or agree with the others characters and their agendas. Thus we have conflict and tension.
So we’re moving from Angle One, the general, to Angle Two, the Specific.
3. Angle Three is where I wanted to get to in this long, roundabout way. Angle three is the in between angle. It’s not as broad as One or as narrow as Two. Angle Three has to do with The Sequence.
A lot of screenwriters write their screenplays using sequences right from the start. A Sequence is a cluster of scenes that usually take place in one general location, or area. The scenes all have to do with a specific event. Or place. Or moment.
Sequences are like strings of interconnected floating barges sailing across the sea of your story.
Each sequence has a beginning, middle or end. The sequence has a specific purpose. Like the opening Wedding Sequence in The Godfather. This sequence sets up the entire movie. We meet just about everybody we need to meet. The Family.
There are chase sequences, and more chase sequences.
In your screenplay you have a number of sequences. Watch out for them. They will save you so much time, make your work so much better. Learn the secret of sequences.
BY
CHRISTOPHER KEANE
How do I write thee? Let me count the ways.
Yeah, well, I’d rather write them than count them. But unfortunately some things take study and time and laborious exercise in the art of looking at a screenplay from different angles.
Three of them.
1. Angle One: You can look at the screenplay from the broad perspective: the story itself, the whole shebang, the biog noodle. From beginning to end. You can write it in a four-page mini-treatment, the four most exasperating, and necessary, four pages you’ll write ever.
Page One is the action of Act 1, down to and including Plot Point 1, on page 25, more or less.
Pages Two and Three hold the action of Act II, down to and including Plot Point II, in which the central character is at his or her lowest point in the story.
Page Four is action of Act III, down to and including the climax.
This is the overview.
2. Angle Two: You can look at a screenplay from a narrower perspective, the scene-by-scene movement from beginning to end. How one scene folds into the next, carrying with each scene emotion, motivaton, conflict, tension. Each scene is like a little screenplay.
It has a beginning, middle and end. The characters that walk into the scene carry with them agendas that do not match up with or agree with the others characters and their agendas. Thus we have conflict and tension.
So we’re moving from Angle One, the general, to Angle Two, the Specific.
3. Angle Three is where I wanted to get to in this long, roundabout way. Angle three is the in between angle. It’s not as broad as One or as narrow as Two. Angle Three has to do with The Sequence.
A lot of screenwriters write their screenplays using sequences right from the start. A Sequence is a cluster of scenes that usually take place in one general location, or area. The scenes all have to do with a specific event. Or place. Or moment.
Sequences are like strings of interconnected floating barges sailing across the sea of your story.
Each sequence has a beginning, middle or end. The sequence has a specific purpose. Like the opening Wedding Sequence in The Godfather. This sequence sets up the entire movie. We meet just about everybody we need to meet. The Family.
There are chase sequences, and more chase sequences.
In your screenplay you have a number of sequences. Watch out for them. They will save you so much time, make your work so much better. Learn the secret of sequences.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
ARC, WHO GOES THERE
ARC, WHO GOES THERE?
By Christopher Keane
Let me try to clear up for some of you out there what a CHARACTER ARC is. Everybody bandies about character arcs as if they know what they’re talking about, and some of them do. Some of them don’t.
One of the best definitions I’ve heard is this: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story.
That’s all well and good. He decides to take a bath. She decides to kill her mother-in-law. He decides to kill her mother-in-law. She decides to run a bath to drown out the sound of murder.
Lets narrow down that definition: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act high stakes decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story. A decision making process that involves the choice between two very different and equally balanced options. About five of them per script.
That’s better. It’s the toughest decisions a character has to make, the ones that will give the character his or her character. The decisions that are not overloaded on one side or the other that the writer makes so obvious and predictable that the story flattens out and the character becomes a vehicle for the writer’s lazy half-assed attempt to get across a point.
That leads to the question: What is character?
Character is the behavior that a character shows as a result of his decisions over the course of the story. It’s the writer’s job, let’s call obligation, to balance the choices in such a way that the character, at the most critical moment under pressure, has to make.
Let’s say that the character has five such high stakes, high-pressured decisions during the course of the story. And if one were to study the progression of these decision one might see that the character has, during this time and under these given set of circumstances, significantly changed his or her way of thinking and acting.
A weak woman becomes strong; a confident man turns to jelly.
For instance let’s say a Seattle brain surgeon is rushing to a hospital where he has to perform emergency surgery on, say, a South African heart surgeon who is world renowned for his medical breakthroughs. The South African will not survive unless our Seattle doc operates within the next hour.
Our Seattle brain surgeon is the only man alive who can possibly save this South African, and let’s face it, if successful, which the brain surgeon believes he will be, his own reputation will be greatly enhanced.
Native American tribes inhabit many areas of the Great Pacific Northwest. It just so happens that as the Seattle brain surgeon speeds along a remote highway towards the hospital to perform his emergency operation he spies a couple of Native American women in an old sedan by the side of the road. The sedan is on fire. The Native American women are trapped inside, hands pressed against the glass, crying out.
It won’t be long before they’re engulfed in flames and perish. The brain surgeon is the only one around and he knows it. The question is: will he stop to save the women and certainly lose the famous doctor, or will he push on to the hospital and leave the women to die.
He has a split second to decide.
These are the kind of critical decisions that your character must face in order to show what she’s made of. If her decision comes in the beginning of the story and she chooses to leave the women and go to the hospital, she has room to become someone else by the end of the story. Or if she stops to save the women and the famous doctor dies, she has room to grow and become a different woman by the end of the story.
It’s your decision, your character. Look at the pressure this woman is under. Look at the elements inherent in each decision, the prejudices, the self-interest to consider, the consequences. And they all roll through her in no time at all.
Hit the break or hit the accelerator. These character elements can, and will, turn a mediocre story into a memorable one.
It’s called the character arc. Try it. It should improve your script
===============================================
Chris Keane has written many books, originals and adaptations of others’ books and his own into movies and TV series. Among his books are three on screenwriting. His latest – ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make – will be published in April 2008.
Chris is also a script consultant. See his website – Keanewords.com – for more information.
By Christopher Keane
Let me try to clear up for some of you out there what a CHARACTER ARC is. Everybody bandies about character arcs as if they know what they’re talking about, and some of them do. Some of them don’t.
One of the best definitions I’ve heard is this: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story.
That’s all well and good. He decides to take a bath. She decides to kill her mother-in-law. He decides to kill her mother-in-law. She decides to run a bath to drown out the sound of murder.
Lets narrow down that definition: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act high stakes decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story. A decision making process that involves the choice between two very different and equally balanced options. About five of them per script.
That’s better. It’s the toughest decisions a character has to make, the ones that will give the character his or her character. The decisions that are not overloaded on one side or the other that the writer makes so obvious and predictable that the story flattens out and the character becomes a vehicle for the writer’s lazy half-assed attempt to get across a point.
That leads to the question: What is character?
Character is the behavior that a character shows as a result of his decisions over the course of the story. It’s the writer’s job, let’s call obligation, to balance the choices in such a way that the character, at the most critical moment under pressure, has to make.
Let’s say that the character has five such high stakes, high-pressured decisions during the course of the story. And if one were to study the progression of these decision one might see that the character has, during this time and under these given set of circumstances, significantly changed his or her way of thinking and acting.
A weak woman becomes strong; a confident man turns to jelly.
For instance let’s say a Seattle brain surgeon is rushing to a hospital where he has to perform emergency surgery on, say, a South African heart surgeon who is world renowned for his medical breakthroughs. The South African will not survive unless our Seattle doc operates within the next hour.
Our Seattle brain surgeon is the only man alive who can possibly save this South African, and let’s face it, if successful, which the brain surgeon believes he will be, his own reputation will be greatly enhanced.
Native American tribes inhabit many areas of the Great Pacific Northwest. It just so happens that as the Seattle brain surgeon speeds along a remote highway towards the hospital to perform his emergency operation he spies a couple of Native American women in an old sedan by the side of the road. The sedan is on fire. The Native American women are trapped inside, hands pressed against the glass, crying out.
It won’t be long before they’re engulfed in flames and perish. The brain surgeon is the only one around and he knows it. The question is: will he stop to save the women and certainly lose the famous doctor, or will he push on to the hospital and leave the women to die.
He has a split second to decide.
These are the kind of critical decisions that your character must face in order to show what she’s made of. If her decision comes in the beginning of the story and she chooses to leave the women and go to the hospital, she has room to become someone else by the end of the story. Or if she stops to save the women and the famous doctor dies, she has room to grow and become a different woman by the end of the story.
It’s your decision, your character. Look at the pressure this woman is under. Look at the elements inherent in each decision, the prejudices, the self-interest to consider, the consequences. And they all roll through her in no time at all.
Hit the break or hit the accelerator. These character elements can, and will, turn a mediocre story into a memorable one.
It’s called the character arc. Try it. It should improve your script
===============================================
Chris Keane has written many books, originals and adaptations of others’ books and his own into movies and TV series. Among his books are three on screenwriting. His latest – ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make – will be published in April 2008.
Chris is also a script consultant. See his website – Keanewords.com – for more information.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Impatience Kills
Impatience Kills!
Christopher Keane
Impatience is a virus, a plague among writers. It crawls into writers'
brains and screams: Hurry Up! If you don't send the script off NOW, they
won't want it. They’ll forget it’s coming. They won’t remember me.
So what if it needs another pass. So what if I haven’t gone deep with
the characters and the story has a couple of holes - the sheer
brilliance of it will override those minor discrepancies.
Or there’s this one: It's been two weeks and I haven’t heard from them.
Hell, call them up, everyday. Bug them. You're a star; they just don't
know it yet. Bugging them will make them pay attention. Don't hesitate!
Pick up the phone, dammit! Crank up the e-mail. Make yourself known!
What are impatient people called? I mean, besides that. Yes! The big
three: Arrogant, Insensitive and Overbearing. Impatience is a huge
career stopper. What causes it: usually, stress. How to stop it: walk
away, or count to ten, or lower your voice.
Impatience has been my plague. I have hounded agents. One of them
actually bought me a plane ticket to Mexico City just to get me out of
town while he negotiated my deal. Funny story? Not from the agent’s POV.
I was a major pain in the ass, to him and to me, and to the process. I
chalked up one more notch in my reputation as being “difficult.” I left
the top agency in town because the agents were not getting it done fast
enough. On /my/ time.
Of course when I think back they were moving at ram speed, but I was at
double ram. I expected their work on my behalf to catch up to my
expectations. This particular agent was probably glad to see me go.
I have also committed impatience’s greatest crime:
Welcome to a horror story: I have a friend, an MD who teaches at
Harvard. He had been working on a novel for three years, for at least
three hours every day. One day he calls me up and asks me to read the
manuscript quickly, again. Why?
His brother is a very good friend of Random House’s Sonny Mehta, one of the publishing industry’s handful of most powerful people. Sonny Mehta has promised to read my friend’s book, as a personal favor to his brother.
I say I will read it over the weekend and give notes. My MD friend
brings me the book Thursday. I go to work. By Sunday I have read it and
call my friend. I tell him it’s excellent, which it is, but that he
has places that need to be fixed.
They will take some time but they will make the book what it should and can be - an excellent literary effort to which anyone, I felt, would give substantial consideration. And he has Sonny Mehta who will, if he likes it, get it published.
To make these changes, I felt, would take, at the
clip my friend works, perhaps two months. There is a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, I hear, “Ah, Chris, when I brought you the book on Thursday I had another copy, which I took to the Federal Express and sent off to Sonny Mehta.”
Now there was a pause on my end, during which I tried to calm mysell. I say, “It’s not bad enough that I spent three days working on this for nothing, but you might have killed your big goose.”
Sonny Mehta read the book over the weekend and in a short conciliatory
note stated that the book was indeed promising but not far enough along
to justify him passing it along to one of his hard working editors.
Would Sonny Mehta have published it after my friend spent two more
months on it? That’s not the point. My friend will never know,
because in this writing business, as they say, you only really get one
shot at the top. For a time my friend was paralyzed by the rejection.
Then he abandoned the work totally because it reminded him of his own
terrible failure.
We’ve all heard the reasons behind why people are impatient.
Self-righteousness. Fear of being taken advantage of. Hysterical
childhoods brought forward. Extremely low esteem. Egoism leading to
unwarranted self-worth. Unworthiness leading to self-sabotage. All true.
So what? If you’ve got it, you need to lose it.
I have tried to learn to wait. I have occupied myself with other things
so that I don’t check my messages and e-mail every two minutes. It’s not
easy. I have hyperventilated over what I imagine others are doing with
my script, when it fact they have fifty other things to do before they
get to it, including taking out the garbage.
I have driven myself crazy imagining every bad scenario imaginable and
linking them all to the fate of my screenplay.
I have been constantly shocked when someone tells me she is sorry she
didn’t call me back yesterday but _she was out sick_. She might have
added; and I’m _really_ sorry that it had nothing to do with your
script. Impatience as paranoia.
I have been convinced that the agent or producer is literally checking
the mail room at ten minute intervals looking for my script, and getting
pissed off at me, thus ruining my career forever, for my not having
delivered it as promised.
If I send it, driven by some fear or other, it usually means that I have
sent work with undernourished characters and flimsily plot lines running
through derivative stories. And I wonder why it hasn’t been picked up?
It’s all about impatience.
What’s the hurry? Why can’t you stand delay? What are you going to do
for yourself? Use patience in all things. Why?
Because *impatience kills*!
Chris Keane has a new screenwriting book coming in April, 2008: Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), Dangerous Company (CBS)
The Huntress (USA Network series) plus screenwriting books: How to
Write A Selling Screenplay & Hot Property. He is also a script consultant.
Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or email him at Keanewords@aol.com
He teaches and lectures at Harvard, Emerson College, NYU, Smithsonian Institution.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
Current Projects: Lost Light, feature for producer Peter Janney.
Divine Justice TV series pilot.
Antinous Feature
Christopher Keane
Impatience is a virus, a plague among writers. It crawls into writers'
brains and screams: Hurry Up! If you don't send the script off NOW, they
won't want it. They’ll forget it’s coming. They won’t remember me.
So what if it needs another pass. So what if I haven’t gone deep with
the characters and the story has a couple of holes - the sheer
brilliance of it will override those minor discrepancies.
Or there’s this one: It's been two weeks and I haven’t heard from them.
Hell, call them up, everyday. Bug them. You're a star; they just don't
know it yet. Bugging them will make them pay attention. Don't hesitate!
Pick up the phone, dammit! Crank up the e-mail. Make yourself known!
What are impatient people called? I mean, besides that. Yes! The big
three: Arrogant, Insensitive and Overbearing. Impatience is a huge
career stopper. What causes it: usually, stress. How to stop it: walk
away, or count to ten, or lower your voice.
Impatience has been my plague. I have hounded agents. One of them
actually bought me a plane ticket to Mexico City just to get me out of
town while he negotiated my deal. Funny story? Not from the agent’s POV.
I was a major pain in the ass, to him and to me, and to the process. I
chalked up one more notch in my reputation as being “difficult.” I left
the top agency in town because the agents were not getting it done fast
enough. On /my/ time.
Of course when I think back they were moving at ram speed, but I was at
double ram. I expected their work on my behalf to catch up to my
expectations. This particular agent was probably glad to see me go.
I have also committed impatience’s greatest crime:
Welcome to a horror story: I have a friend, an MD who teaches at
Harvard. He had been working on a novel for three years, for at least
three hours every day. One day he calls me up and asks me to read the
manuscript quickly, again. Why?
His brother is a very good friend of Random House’s Sonny Mehta, one of the publishing industry’s handful of most powerful people. Sonny Mehta has promised to read my friend’s book, as a personal favor to his brother.
I say I will read it over the weekend and give notes. My MD friend
brings me the book Thursday. I go to work. By Sunday I have read it and
call my friend. I tell him it’s excellent, which it is, but that he
has places that need to be fixed.
They will take some time but they will make the book what it should and can be - an excellent literary effort to which anyone, I felt, would give substantial consideration. And he has Sonny Mehta who will, if he likes it, get it published.
To make these changes, I felt, would take, at the
clip my friend works, perhaps two months. There is a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, I hear, “Ah, Chris, when I brought you the book on Thursday I had another copy, which I took to the Federal Express and sent off to Sonny Mehta.”
Now there was a pause on my end, during which I tried to calm mysell. I say, “It’s not bad enough that I spent three days working on this for nothing, but you might have killed your big goose.”
Sonny Mehta read the book over the weekend and in a short conciliatory
note stated that the book was indeed promising but not far enough along
to justify him passing it along to one of his hard working editors.
Would Sonny Mehta have published it after my friend spent two more
months on it? That’s not the point. My friend will never know,
because in this writing business, as they say, you only really get one
shot at the top. For a time my friend was paralyzed by the rejection.
Then he abandoned the work totally because it reminded him of his own
terrible failure.
We’ve all heard the reasons behind why people are impatient.
Self-righteousness. Fear of being taken advantage of. Hysterical
childhoods brought forward. Extremely low esteem. Egoism leading to
unwarranted self-worth. Unworthiness leading to self-sabotage. All true.
So what? If you’ve got it, you need to lose it.
I have tried to learn to wait. I have occupied myself with other things
so that I don’t check my messages and e-mail every two minutes. It’s not
easy. I have hyperventilated over what I imagine others are doing with
my script, when it fact they have fifty other things to do before they
get to it, including taking out the garbage.
I have driven myself crazy imagining every bad scenario imaginable and
linking them all to the fate of my screenplay.
I have been constantly shocked when someone tells me she is sorry she
didn’t call me back yesterday but _she was out sick_. She might have
added; and I’m _really_ sorry that it had nothing to do with your
script. Impatience as paranoia.
I have been convinced that the agent or producer is literally checking
the mail room at ten minute intervals looking for my script, and getting
pissed off at me, thus ruining my career forever, for my not having
delivered it as promised.
If I send it, driven by some fear or other, it usually means that I have
sent work with undernourished characters and flimsily plot lines running
through derivative stories. And I wonder why it hasn’t been picked up?
It’s all about impatience.
What’s the hurry? Why can’t you stand delay? What are you going to do
for yourself? Use patience in all things. Why?
Because *impatience kills*!
Chris Keane has a new screenwriting book coming in April, 2008: Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), Dangerous Company (CBS)
The Huntress (USA Network series) plus screenwriting books: How to
Write A Selling Screenplay & Hot Property. He is also a script consultant.
Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or email him at Keanewords@aol.com
He teaches and lectures at Harvard, Emerson College, NYU, Smithsonian Institution.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
Current Projects: Lost Light, feature for producer Peter Janney.
Divine Justice TV series pilot.
Antinous Feature
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Romancing the A-List set for April 1 release
Christopher Keane's next book caters to Hollywood's A-ListersAuthor/screenwriter Christopher Keane's new book, Romancing the A-List, is as sure fire strategy to get your script made into a movie. The book aims the screenwriter's talent at the most powerful source for getting a movie made: the A-List actor.
Romancing the A-List is set for an April 1 release and is available for pre-order on www.amazon.com.
Himmelstein subscribes to the A-List
Himmelstein subscribes to the A-List
Pre-order Romancing The A-List
"Here's the difference between Romancing the A-List and every other screenwriting book clogging the shelf: Chris Keane has not only been through the movie and TV wars he's still engaged in them. His insights aren't dated or theoretical -- they're as real as the studio notes he got last week. Even more impressive, he doesn't just linger on his successes. He's confident enough to analyze his failures and those hard-earned lessons are some of the most instructive in the book." David Himmelstein, screenwriter, Power, Talent For The Game, Village of the Damned
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