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.