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.
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