I have made no secret of my desire to be hired as a scriptwriter. To be paid for my ideas, rather than my ability to draw nicer versions of other people’s ideas is very attractive to me. But you can’t get writing work without having a portfolio, and that’s what I’ve been working on building lately.
It’s been a difficult process, because my first step was to begin writing spec scripts for TV. A spec script is a story not normally intended for production, but is an example of your writing skills, and is based off a show or movie that is similar, but not the same as the show you are applying to get. I had one problem, I don’t really watch much TV. So trying to find a show that engaged me enough to want to write a 22 or 44 page script was getting me nowhere. So I’ve all but given up on that direction and decided to do what I do best.
It’s the riskier option, but also the one that garners the greatest benefits if successful. I decided to write my own story. I’m good at it, and it is what I really want to do anyway. With my mounting collection of properties, not developing them further would be a waste of time. With this in mind, I had to pick a project, and I grabbed hold of a spy-adventure series of mine. After years of working on my Fantasy Adventure novel, playing in a very different world was due.
Then I hit another roadblock. The outline. I’ve always been good at beginnings. I could write the first half hour of the 120 minute film already, but what happens after those initial minutes I was struggling with. I had a bunch of good random ideas, but nothing was gelling. Every day I’d come up with new characters, plot devices and events, but instinctively they felt random and unrelated. I felt like I was forcing the story along, and it would end up disjointed and contrived.
When you get to these moments, it’s best to take as step back and see the forest from the trees. Outlining a commercial screenplay isn’t really that difficult. If you want to increase the likelihood of a sale, keep it in the traditional three act structure. You introduce the characters and set up the conflict in the first act. Second act, you have your roller-coaster, as each stakeholder in the story struggles to get the upper hand. In the third act you have your final confrontation between protagonist and antagonist, with one of them winning. To a lot of people this is an overly simplistic approach to storytelling. But in the hands of a gifted writer you can tell the most complex and thought provoking stories in this way. It’s really best thought of a guide for timing. When is the stuff you want to happen going to happen?
Let’s say your story is about a man wakes to a home invasion, where he is beaten, tied, but his wife is killed, and the assailant gets away. The man is tormented by the police not able to find his wife’s killer, and decides to go on a hunt of his own. This is your set-up, your first act. The second act is following our hero running down leads to find the man responsible. In the third act, he will obviously find this killer and confront him. With this structure, it’s easy to put all your pieces on the board. You have the hero hunting the killer, the police trying to do the same and not liking the hero in the way, and finally you need your villain. Any of your ideas and characters developed in your brainstorming sessions that don’t fit with that structure can be cast aside.
That’s what I’ve managed to do. By taking a step back and re-examining my outline, I’ve been able to whittle the story down to it’s basics, and now things are starting to move along nicely. Some ideas I’ve chucked, some have come together and led to better ones.
So if you find yourself getting stuck, take a step back and see if you’ve properly decided on an outline. If you can’t define your story in one simple sentence, than it’s probably too complicated, muddy, and may not work. A movie is usually 90 minutes to 2 hours long. You don’t have a lot of time like you do with a book. You need to get your characters and conflict across to your audience extremely fast. The traditional outline process can help that. The signs of the three act structure can be seen in even the greatest films. Don’t ignore it’s uses.
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