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Do YOU have a WINNER?

Is it a winner?

No apologies for not posting recently. I’m up to my ass and elbows in my rewrite and I have a deadline meet.

Thanks to the five of you who took to the time out to email me and ask what’s going on… You like me… YOU REALLY LIKE ME! Well, at least five of you do. LOL.

My rewrite is going well except that for every ten pages I write/rewrite, I have to go back and layer in new story elements… One step forward – ten steps backward. But I love it.

Why?

Because I have a winner. How do I know I have a winner? I just know.

Do you have a winner?

In February of 2005, I was working on another screenplay, COYOTES ALWAYS COME BACK. I was almost finished but I had some last minute physical research to do. *NOTE: I believe in physical research whenever possible.

I hop in my car and start driving to this place for my research… About a twelve hour drive from where I live but I don’t care – I LOVE TO DRIVE in the middle of the night. I like stopping at places that most normal people would never stop at.

So there I was… Driving at 2:00 in the morning with digital recorder in hand and decided to make a stop at this particular establishment in of all places. As I exited my vehicle and headed toward this establishment, a vision came over me that immediately flashed some of a movie through my brain.

I was in shock! I stood there in the middle of nowhere (my apologies to those of you in Yuma) smiling. I had it. I had a winner! Better than that… I KNEW IT.

I immediately created a new folder within my digital recorder and started recording… Screw the research on the other project, it was time to go to work! I turned around in Yuma and headed back home while I recorded my notes and thoughts about this new idea.

By the time I got back home, I was exhausted and needed sleep so sleep I did but this was no ordinary sleep… No, the WINNER was still there. .

The dream became the movie and I was in it although I gotta tell ya, not much was happening. Little snippets here and there but I always woke up still thinking I had a winner.

After three months of solid research both physical and Internet based, I not only had a handle on the subject matter but I had what I thought was a pretty decent outline.

I was off and writing! I finished the first draft in less than two months and guess what? I still had a winner. Yeah, the damn thing was 168 pages but I knew I had a winner in there somewhere.

I went through the file and did some minor tweaking i.e., typos, better formatting on certain elements… You know the drill. When I was finished, I had about 161 pages. Time to print.

I printed out the monstrosity and began paperclipping all the pages of each scene together because it just makes more sense for me to do this physically rather than inside a fucking computer.

After paperclipping, I laid all these stacks of scenes on the floor. Then I pulled out a bunch of 3 X 5 cards and slid one under each paperclip. I numbered each scene card and wrote a simple logline of what was SUPPOSED to happen in that scene.

After all my work, I stepped back to look at my masterpiece. Yeah, I still had a winner…

So on my hands and knees I went… Crawling up one scene stack aisle and down another… UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL and from a completely different perspective than banging keys on a keyboard… VERY ORGANIC.

I would stop at each stack of scenes and count the pages… Then jot that number in a different color of Sharpie marker on the 3 X 5 card. This took a while but even before I was finished, I could see where changes were going to be made.

Within the hour, I completed my foray into the made up world sitting on the floor. I went to the fridge and got a beer… Guzzled it down feeling pretty damn good. Why? Because I STILL had a winner.

Ah… The beer gone now, I went back to the stacks and walked around, reviewing… Speculating… Squinting… Contemplating… Inspecting. I picked up a stack that had a lot of pages. I briefly read through them and the SHIT immediately stood out after reading the logline of that scene.

Ah… Back to . *NOTE: I have since purchased (back in July) and I gotta tell ya… I’m a new convert. Being able to create two sets of index cards per screenplay is worth the price of admission.

I find that scene within the file and go to work, CUTTING. Ah. I like to cut. It feels good. I don’t kill my babies as much as make them super babies when I cut. Ahhhh. I finish cutting and BAM! More than half the pages are gone and the scene literally slaps you in the face. I still have a winner.

I repeat this process and sure enough within just shy of ten hours, I have 110 pages… Well, technically, a 109 and a half. LOL. But it looks like 110 and that’s what I want… .

I’m not going to go into how I sold it… I will do that at another time as we get nearer to production. We’re trying to fly under the radar here until we actually hit the theaters next year.

Why? Because we have a winner… And that’s my point.

How do you know you have a winner?

You just know. You know so well that even after all the work, you then send that 110 page (okay, 109 and a half) stack out to those you trust and you just KNOW they are going to read a winner too.

I sent it out. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t waiting around for someone to call me. I just knew that the premise of the story itself did half my work for me. HIGH CONCEPT. Yeah, there’s that word… HIGH CONCEPT. Know it. Love it.

Most screenwriters simply do not have a winner to begin with. Yeah, it’s hard work to come up with a winner but I think I can honestly say that when you definitely have a winner YOU KNOW IT and after you write it (assuming you know how to write a decent screenplay), everyone else will too.

We’re not SIMPLY talking high concept here… We’re talking high concept and a premise that’s never been done before. Yes, you have seen story elements of my screenplay before but you have NEVER seen this story. I was able to move the story elements around (that a lot of us are sick to death of) so that I came up with a premise that’s never been done before.

What’s even scarier is that this is based on true events and is happening right now under our very noses… Again, I wish I could share… And eventually I will but that’s not the gist of this post anyway.

The gist is simply this…

Do you have a winner?

If not, why not?

So many times have I read a screenplay that I can plainly see that it took a pretty large chunk out of someone’s life only to have the premise or concept be something unoriginal.

You want to make that sale? You want to write for a living? You want to live wherever you want to live?

Come up with a winner. If it’s TRULY a winner, everybody else will know it’s a too.

Discussion welcome…

Unk

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Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1109|Under Uncategorized

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Comments

14 Responses to “Do YOU have a WINNER?”

  1. Chesher Cat on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1255

    Damn, that sounds just like my screenplay. The one I’ll finish rewriting today. Freaky.

  2. Chesher Cat on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1322

    Re your comment on my blog:

    Sorry to say, it’s true. As a motter of fact, that was me following you on that lonely highway outside of Yuma. And that was me inside your dreams.

    But don’t worry…like you said, there’s room. And I took the story in a different direction. More psychological than horror.

    See you in the winner’s circle. :-)

  3. Scribe LA on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1456

    Winner. High Concept. Definitely liking what I’m reading here, Unk. Thanks for the encouragement to search and dig deep for that winner just waiting to be carved into a screenplay.
    Cheers.
    Scribe

  4. MaryAn Batchellor on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1657

    The problem, as I see it, is that many of us are seeing things that aren’t there because we’re delusional and think we have a winner when in fact, we are looking through glory colored glasses and being that I do now and then see things as they aren’t, the problem, as I see it, is probably not really what I see at all so disregard this post.

  5. Unknown Screenwriter on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|1657

    Hmmm. And I thought I was very cautious that night… LOL.

    Psychological?

    Horror?

    Want me to take a look at it?

    Just kidding. LOL.

    Unk

  6. wcdixon on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|2029

    Dude…you and your ‘links’ - but they tell me…you wrote the next Xmen movie?

    I posted something like this a few weeks ago…

    http://uninflectedimages.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-i-sold-my-first-screenplayor-how_23.html#links

    One difficulty with trying to write it down and explain it is that intangible of ‘knowing’ it’s a winner. How do you know? You just do…

    Cheers

  7. Nicholas J. Robinson on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|2129

    Holy crap dude… Um I want to read it!
    … Back to re-writing I must go (And figuring out how to remove poop water from the ceiling of my apartment)

  8. Unknown Screenwriter on Wednesday: 13 September 2006|0043

    Chesh…

    We both wear the same glasses.

    Scribe…

    Exactly what I was digging for! So many of us write something that’s just a little bit of a twist from something we’ve seen. I recommend working harder and longer on the concept.

    MaryAn…

    Left you a comment. I’d vote for you on American Idol any day. Great voice! Now about those glory colored glasses… Gotta learn how to take ‘em off!

    wc…

    You like my links… LOL. I get a kick out of making them. I figure what the hell? This is supposed to be fun and yeah… YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S IN THERE… LOL.

    Nicholas…

    Read the post… Watched the video. If it were me, her bags would have been sitting out on the curb waiting for her…

    Yuck.

    Thanks all…

    Unk

  9. tomson on Wednesday: 13 September 2006|0445

    Unk,

    it would be great to read more about your thoughts on outlining. Imagining a three months outline I see a polished gem just waiting to leap into format.

    ‘a new folder within my digital recorder’ - is that a Dictaphone you are using there?

    joyous read. Thank you.

  10. Unknown Screenwriter on Wednesday: 13 September 2006|1541

    tomson,

    Actually, it’s an Olympus Digital Recorder… All I know is that it holds over 200 hours of audio and doubles as a flash drive…

    In fact, I probably rely way too much on this thing…

    And it’s an MP3 Player as well. I highly recommend getting one. I used to have the standard 2 hour Olympus digital recorder but on one of my road trips, I filled it up in less than 3 hours of driving… Had to stop and dump it to my laptop and start over.

    I hate having to do that in the middle of a flow… Ya know?

    Thanks for the comment!

    Unk

  11. Dave on Wednesday: 13 September 2006|2107

    I’ve had two winners. Wanna know how I knew?

    Somebody bloody made them before me. Hmmf.

    You do realize, Unk, that if you ever reveal the movie, you’ll blow your cover, right? LOL

    How’s that for a catch-22?

    Thanks for sharing your writing process. I’ll do the same when I write more than a blog. I believe we’d all agree that you learn by sharing with others and part of that education is knowing how to write/rewrite, etc.

    Most of that information - the mundane (what I’d say people assume is the dull stuff) isn’t discussed in books.

    kudos.

  12. Unknown Screenwriter on Wednesday: 13 September 2006|2341

    I absolutely DO realize this… LOL. And I will think long and hard before doing so but maybe I’ll just change my name to Unknown Screenwriter…

    Unk, for short.

    Unk

  13. moviequill on Friday: 15 September 2006|1042

    I am currently working on my winner, I just know it, I can feel it. Every time I toss out the logline I get those big eyes widening back at me and questions and anxiety for me to write it… right now I am stuck in Tulsa in a hotel, 8-5 every day just me and my laptop, no tv, no radio, no wife (she is in a course downstairs) so I am writing my ass off and it’s still a winner. This could be the one, since my last winner needed work before I sent it out but I was too damn anxious

  14. What market are YOU writing for? » The Unknown Screenwriter - screenwriting tips, tricks, rants, and observations... on Wednesday: 1 November 2006|1803

    [...] Here I go again with the HIGH CONCEPT RANT. I get a lot of email and comments about HIGH CONCEPT and before I get deeper into the spec script market, I need to clear up HIGH CONCEPT. [...]

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