Just the facts, Ma’am…

The Secret Ingredient - high concept!

So before we put high concept away for another day, let’s take a look at what I’ve come to know as the FACTS:

Now I could sit here and make another list about non high concept screenplays but why bother? Unless you absolutely LOVE taking the hard road to success, I think the above facts speak for themselves… No, I can’t cite any resources that lend more credence to the facts I’ve come to know are THE FACTS but then again, it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the above facts ARE THE FACTS.

Let me go on to say that THIS ONE FACTOR seems to be the biggest problem I see in screenplays that I read i.e., they are just NOT high concept ENOUGH i.e., they are NOT unique enough i.e., they wouldn’t appeal to a wide enough audience i.e., you can’t SEE THE MOVIE.

Of course you have to know how to write a high concept spec script for this to work but assuming your writing is already at a professional level, maybe kicking your spec up a few more notches so that it becomes a high concept spec is the brass ring you’ve been looking for.

BRASS RING?

That’s right… Take another look at THE FACTS above. Read them again. Done? Good. Okay, so now let me ask you…

WHAT ARE YOU WRITING SCREENPLAYS FOR?

If you’re like me and damn near every other screenwriter and wannabe screenwriter I know, you LOVE MOVIES. You love them so much that you want to write them. You want screenwriting to be YOUR DAY JOB instead of the day job you have right now. Maybe like me, you eventually want to move up to producing and directing… No better and EASIER way to accomplish this than by writing outstanding high concept screenplays and selling them.

So unless you WANT to take an extra 5 to 10 years to break into this business, you may want to take the facts more seriously than you have been – assuming you’ve taken them serious at all.

How long does it take you to write a spec script? A month? Six months? A year? More than a year? No matter how long it takes you to write it, I’d be willing to bet that most of you don’t spend an enormous amount of time on your concept.

SOMETHING about your concept grabbed you enough to make you write or start writing a screenplay around it… You’d be surprised at how many people tell me some idea popped into their head and they immediately started writing around that idea… This might work for the prodigies among us but for most, this is equivalent to cutting off a few fingers.

Meaning that YOUR CONCEPT deserves as much effort and work as the screenplay you’re going to write around it. Meaning that you owe it to yourself, and anyone else relying on YOU to do the best job you can possibly do. Meaning that your concept is JUST AS IMPORTANT as the screenplay itself.

WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND THAT ONE…

YOUR CONCEPT IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE SCREENPLAY ITSELF.

Hmmm. That’s almost something you might want to start chanting before you hit the rack every night (go to bed)… Turn it into a positive affirmation and BELIEVE IT.

That doesn’t mean you have to spend just as much TIME on your concept as you do your screenplay… Not at all. It just means that they are of EQUAL IMPORTANCE so why not TREAT it as such?

I think I would personally go so far as to say that coming up with a high concept is actually HARDER than writing the screenplay that goes along with it. Spend enough time with the concept to make it high enough and the writing part of the process becomes much easier BECAUSE of the HIGH CONCEPT you came up with because remember… With a high concept idea, YOU CAN SEE THE MOVIE.

Don’t make your high concept too general… If we’ve seen it before, tweak it – flip it – beat it until it’s UNIQUE… Don’t make it predictable. Don’t allow US to immediately draw closely related comparisons to other movies. We don’t want to see the same movie over and over again even though we seem to be doing that a lot these days. Don’t fall into what a lot of screenwriters call the HIGH CONCEPT FORMULA i.e., basically rewriting the same shit we keep seeing at the theater. It’s okay to write something with a similar concept but you’ve GOT TO DO THE WORK to make it UNIQUE from the comparisons we will immediately draw from.

MAKE IT DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING WE’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE.

Unk

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Another rewrite weekend…

More rewriting… LOL. Thanks to those for the emails asking if I’m still alive.

Still alive and kicking…

Taking a quick break to browse the Scribosphere and found some interesting stuff…

Dave over at Writing On Spec has a great post on the ABCs of Character Development. Definitely worth reading and copying down. This post also goes hand in hand with a post over at $1000 Spielberg — good stuff.

Speaking of Scribosphere.org, there was a great online CHAT event yesterday about HIGH CONCEPT. Lots of good discussion there — check out the chat function when you get a chance… You NEVER KNOW who’s going to be in there talking about screenwriting.

And of course a few interesting screenwriting articles…

Hollywood maverick succeeded on his own terms

Why Akiva Goldsman is not the Highest Paid Screenwriter in the World

Screenwriter Goldsman Given $4 Million To Not Fuck Up ‘Da Vinci’ Sequel Too Badly

Academy’s fellowship is screenwriter’s ticket to Hollywood

Guest Article: In-film product placement: What does it mean to screenwriters?

The Pixar Way — Part I: “What We Didn’t Know” or “My Journey of Pain”

Eric Roth’s Screenplays Get Made, Except the Ones That Don’t

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Unk

Are you worried?

Are you worried?

As a matter of fact, I wasn’t worried ENOUGH.

Huh?

Well, I’ve been locked in an apartment in Phoenix for the last two weeks working on my rewrite and I thought I would be finished by now.

But I’m not.

Why?

Because I’m just not worried enough. I kind of finished the rewrite and then tried to sit on it for a day but the screenwriter inside just wouldn’t let me because both he and I knew I wasn’t worried enough.

What am I talking about?

Scenes.

I realized while going over the rewrite that certain scenes that read well and even have some pretty cool stuff in them just don’t EVOKE WORRY in me…

So that got me to thinking…

If some of these scenes don’t worry me, then they might not worry the audience either. It was like one of those little light bulb balloons in the comics when a character has an idea. BAM!

WORRY.

Let’s take a look at that word…

wor-ry [wur-ee, wuhr-ee] verb, -ried, -ry-ing, noun, plural -ries.

–verb (used without object)

  1. to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret.

  2. to move with effort: an old car worrying uphill.

–verb (used with object)

  1. to torment with cares, anxieties, etc.; trouble; plague.

  2. to seize, esp. by the throat, with the teeth and shake or mangle, as one animal does another.

  3. to harass by repeated biting, snapping, etc.

-noun

  1. a worried condition or feeling; uneasiness or anxiety.

  2. a cause of uneasiness or anxiety; trouble.

  3. act of worrying.

  4. Fox Hunting. the action of the hounds in tearing to pieces the carcass of a fox.

-Verb phrase

  1. worry along or through, Informal. to progress or succeed by constant effort, despite difficulty: to worry through an intolerable situation.

That’s right… Take a look at the above definition. I sure as hell did and when I did, I realized that I still had scenes in my rewrite that didn’t do the following…

Like a lot of screenwriters, I do put my scenes through the usual tests…

And yeah, I easily meet those tests and to be honest, I pretty much like this rewrite. It’s a lot different from the original spec but it’s also a lot better.

Better is GOOD but I still felt like something was missing from some of these scenes because I felt NOTHING.

Feeling NOTHING is BAD but I still couldn’t put my finger on the problem so I started back at the beginning.

I read.

Once I started reading and came to a scene that caused me to feel some emotion, I stopped after reading that scene and just sat there considering what I was actually feeling. Before today, it was always just some kind of emotion that I never really explored.

Till now.

It was worry. I was worried about the main character of that scene. I was worried for his or her physical well being. I was worried about their feelings. I was worried about them achieving their goal…

I was worried.

Some of these scenes didn’t cause me to worry. Sure there was conflict. Sure one character had a goal and either achieved it or NOT but even with these elements, I didn’t really give a shit.

NOT GOOD.

The rest of the scenes before and after the problem scenes are fine. They do what they need to do and they make me feel some kind of worry so I felt that the problem scenes were probably okay and simply existed to release a little tension.

And to be honest, I could probably leave these scenes as-is and everyone would still be happy…

Except me.

Contemplating this problem even more, I realized WHY I wasn’t feeling worry in some of these scenes… I wasn’t feeling worry because the main character of those scenes wasn’t feeling worry either!

Very interesting, I thought. So I went back to see if this held true with the other scenes and I would say, YEAH it did. When the main character of the scenes that worked felt worry, I also felt it in some way, shape, or form.

Wow! I might actually be on to something here, I thought. Now I apologize to those of you out there that already KNOW this stuff. Maybe this is old hat to you. To me, it was like winning the lottery.

Make somebody in the scene, WORRY.

Sound easy?

How the hell do you do that?

For your character to feel worry, there should probably be an OBSTACLE that threatens their current and future happiness.

Happiness is tricky… Your happiness probably ISN’T MY HAPPINESS. My happiness isn’t necessarily my character’s happiness. So you’ve got to do your homework on your characters so that you absolutely fucking KNOW what they yearn for to make them happy i.e., what kind of HAPPINESS do they want?

Create the RIGHT obstacle that gets in the way of that happiness and you should easily have the character(s) in your scenes feeling some kind of displeasing emotion that equals some kind of WORRY. Some displeasing or unpleasant emotions that come to mind are:

I’m sure there’s more but you get the idea… All this brings us back to TENSION in more ways than one.

We go to the movies for that rollercoaster ride and manipulating the tension that the audience feels results in that rollercoaster ride.

You do remember the rollercoaster ride, don’t you? Sure you do… Remember how we mentally and physically prepare for the twists and turns by gripping a little tighter on the handrails as we approach a long drop? Maybe you close your eyes or hold your breath when you approach or go through a 360 degree loop? No matter how you prepare for the parts of the ride that scare you a little, what you’re feeling is tension right before and during. Then right after you’ve successfully completed that part of the ride, your tension is released a bit…

Just not for long.

That’s what you want to do with your screenplay. Your screenplay IS THE ROLLERCOASTER RIDE. It’s the tracks. It’s the twists. It’s the turns. It’s the 360s i.e., it’s the structure or plan that you implement to make us feel tension or WORRY, followed by a little release or emotions that cause us to feel happiness:

Again, you get the idea so hopefully, your scenes evoke SOME KIND OF EMOTION. Some kind of WORRY because if they don’t, you might not be doing your job.

Unk

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