You don’t know your characters well enough…

I get a LOT of email and I do try to answer it all… A question that keeps popping up is Writer’s Block and how in the HELL do you deal with it?

Well I can tell you how I deal with it and this is a fucking hard lesson for most people trying to become a screenwriter because it involves WORK.

So you’re going along and you don’t know what your character does next… To me, that doesn’t sound like Writer’s Block… That sounds like a structural problem. So before I get started on Writer’s Block and how I deal with it, let me once again recommend that you decide on some kind of STRUCTURE for your screenplay before you sit down to write it.

Once you have your structure ironed out, THEN if you get writer’s block, you need to kick the shit out of your character(s).

That’s right… Kick the shit out them. Beat ‘em up. Put them through a divorce. Make them cheat on their spouse. Make them rob a liquor store on the way home from work.

In other words… KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS.

You’d be surprised at how many screenwriters trying to write and sell a SPEC just don’t know their characters well enough.

I think I’ve said this before but let me STRESS this again…

You absolutely must know your characters as well as you know ANYONE. By anyone, I’m talking about your bestest of friends… Brothers. Sisters. Moms. Dads. Girlfriends. Boyfriends.

If I were to ask YOU what your Dad would do or say if you came home one night and told him you’ve been selling sex on the street… Could you tell me? Could you predict it? Would you be correct?

Well guess what? It doesn’t matter if you’re correct. The prediction is all that you need. In other words, if you at least THINK you know what your Dad will do or say, cool. That’s a start.

Again, let’s say you have your structure totally laid out. Now you’re writing like the crazy and BAM! You hit the wall and don’t know what to write next.

Go back to your characters…

Now here’s where the hard work comes in. Open up that word processor or get out that old typewriter and start writing about your character. By now, your biography on your characters should be complete… I’m not talking about that stuff…

I’m talking about making something up. You’re a writer are you not? Good. Make something up about your character that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with your current screenplay.

Let’s call your Protagonist, Joe. Joe just isn’t doing what you want him to do right now. Fuck Joe. Create a new file in your word processor and kick Joe’s ass. Hmmm. Let’s say Joe decides to follow somebody home from a grocery store one night. He follows them all the way to their house… Let’s say he even pulls into the driveway…

Write about it… Write it from Joe’s POV. Explain how Joe made that decision to follow the nice looking lady driving the Jag all the way to her house. Explain how Joe felt as he followed her. Did he watch her peering through her rearview mirror? Did she try to get away from him? Did she have a cellphone and call the police? Maybe the police were at her house waiting for him…

Write it out. Make it at least a couple of pages but the important thing is to write it through to completion. Give it a beginning, middle and END.

Now here’s the hard part…

This stuff DOES NOT GO INTO YOUR SCREENPLAY!

Sure it’s cool but it sole purpose is to simply expose more of your character to you. The more you do this with your characters, the easier it will be when you’re writing them in a scene.

Everybody has a skeleton in the closet, right?

So should your characters… Write a little two to three page story about those skeletons… Secrets. Same thing. Everybody has secrets. Give your character some dirty little secrets.

Joe’s a great guy TODAY but back in the day, he used to screw his Mom’s best friend. Zing! Pow! Bam!

The purpose of the exercise is to get to know your characters so well that their actions and dialogue literally shoot from your fingertips onto the page…

Okay… What IF you can’t come up with an event or incident to put your character through? First of all, you should be ASHAMED of yourself for even asking this question! You’re writer for Christ sakes… Or is it Christ’s sake? I keep forgetting.

If that does happen to you, spring for a newspaper… Or, if you hate paying for the newspaper, there are thousands of online newspapers… Go through the headlines looking for those weird crazy stories and find something in that story to put your character through.

Don’t ever get rid of this stuff either… It may actually be good enough to use in a future screenplay OR, if it’s REALLY GOOD STUFF, you might want to actually flesh it in but remember, the purpose of the exercise is so that you get to know your characters as well as you know ANYONE.

Unk

July 15, 2006 | Filed Under Characters

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More on Troy Duffy…

The doc actually made me want to Google him to see what’s out there… Quite a bit but here’s the best of what I found in the last 20 minutes…

Article: THE FALL OF TROY

Article: An Overnight Interview

Article: Boondock Saints

Article: The Two Faces of Hollywood

Interview: Troy Duffy

Review: Overnight

Review: Overnight

Read the screenplay: BOONDOCK SAINTS

Unk

July 13, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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Troy Duffy… Mr. Boondock Saint…

Okay, I know this is OLD NEWS but I just can’t help it…

As I bust my ass on this rewrite that MUST be finished by the end of the month, I notice that two NetFlix movies came in. One of the DVDs was titled, OVERNIGHT.

I think I stuck it in my queue about a year ago or so… I have over 300 movies in my queue and I keep finding new ones to jam in there and on top of that, I keep moving specific movies to the top of my queue.

So during this rewrite, I’ve had a lot of surprises because I simply haven’t had the time to check on my queue. As I looked at the DVD, I couldn’t for the life of me remember even selecting OVERNIGHT but after having just watched it, I’m really happy I did.

In fact, I want to right now HIGHLY RECOMMEND this documentary to every wannabe as well as professional screenwriter out there as the BIBLE on WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN YOU FINALLY MAKE A SALE.

First of all, if you’ve never heard of Troy Duffy, he was the screenwriter and director of BOONDOCK SAINTS that came out back in ‘99.

The way the story goes more or less is that Troy wrote the BOONDOCK SAINTS SPEC and sold it to Harvey Weinstein for I think around $300K and the bar that he worked in as a bartender/bouncer at the time. Other sources say he was paid as much as $450K.

Anyway, I have to admit, I ended up neglecting the rewrite and watching this guy. Let me tell you right off the bat that Mr. Duffy has quite the ego and therein lies the problem. There’s nothing wrong with having an ego but it’s been my experience that you have to know when to put your own ego in CHECK and bow to the more powerful ego at the time… The powerful ego at the time being Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and now The Weinstein Company.

Nearest I could tell from the documentary, the egos clashed when it came to casting for BOONDOCK. Rumor has it that Duffy met with Ewan McGregor and didn’t quite hit if off… Some kind of disagreement about the death penalty.

Things go STRAIGHT DOWNHILL from there and pretty damn fast…

The bar that was part of the deal never ended up as part of the deal… Apparently, Duffy was pretty fucking hot at the time because he says so. LOL. This was a guy that was about to have it all but from everything I could see, his ego got the best of him.

He refused to compromise on just about every level and when Miramax pulls out, he’s wondering why…

Various characters then proceed to DIS Harvey Weinstein throughout the rest of the documentary.

At no time did I BUY this guy’s take on himself… i.e., that he and his entourage were all that and a bag of Doritos. I’ve also seen and read BOONDOCK SAINTS and while I like the movie okay (I bought it for $3 at Walgreens), it’s not one that I care to reverse engineer or take apart its structure.

If I remember correctly, Duffy’s structure went something like this…

Beginning — Cool Shit — Ending.

That’s not a put-down… I actually remember reading an interview where he was asked about his structure and that was his reply. The guy can write… No doubt about that but from what I saw in the doc, he’s not very humble and it sure didn’t seem like anyone was happy with him by the end.

The doc ends with the guys in his band all back working manual labor jobs… Apparently, Duffy has written at least one more screenplay called THE PEREGRINS but I haven’t heard anything about it going into production.

Like I said… I highly recommend it as what NOT to do after you make that sale.

Unk

July 13, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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