How do I go about it?

(Note: The below is largely based on dramatic short films. If you have a comedy… as long as people laughs, there aren’t really rules. And if they don’t, no advice will really help beyond ‘make it funnier’… and I’m not the person to tell you how to do that.)

My preference is bottle scenes: a scene of 2-3 people in a room having a conversation, often where years’ worth of relationships are merely implied and the tension is already high. “Six Years After” is definitely one of these: two people with a heavy history, finally having a conversation they’ve both thought about for a very long time. I got pretty experienced at these, as they are the bread and butter of university courses like mine: you write a bottle scene and film it, allowing instructors to judge each member of the crew on what they know and rotate everyone over the course of the semester. My first-ever filmed script, “The Interview”, was one of these: a job applicant comes in to interview for a job, only for the hiring manager to use the opportunity to ask a never-ending series of offensive questions to drive him away. “Rubble” was also one of these. In fact, most of my classmates’ films were of this breed; 90% of them were ‘bad date’ stories, often where a homemade meal goes horribly wrong.

Sometimes they can be more ambitious. Those ones are tough because of the limited page count. In a short film, just like in a short story, scaling down the page count means every detail is of huge relative importance. A quiet beat that might feel throwaway in a film can be a crucial, everything changes moment in a short film. A character detail can explain the backstory of an entire character. Small things, in short films, matter. I’m currently writing a short film that is this ambitious, and one of the toughest parts of it is managing the exposition and character development in such a small space. In the span of ten pages or less, characters experience an entire emotional arc, which requires a keen sense of their development and an ability to say a lot with a few words.

When coming up with a short film concept, it’s hard to find the budget to wow the audience with visuals, and not much time to explore complicated ideas, so in my experience it’s good to find interesting character relationships. Two characters who aren’t comfortable with one another, who come into conflict. You want to think of dramatic conversations you’ve had, and what made them so; and uncomfortable dialogues you’ve been forced to witness from a third-party perspective. You want to think about unusual situations, or familiar ones with an odd spin. Stories where a whole film’s worth of story has already occurred, where we’re just seeing the climax.

Have you written much in the genre? Any tips?

Please note that this is a class project, written and shot very quickly as an exercise for my group. I wrote it (and we shot it) two  and a half years ago, and this isn’t so much a portfolio piece as a curio for your interest… Also, the first 20 seconds are titles and bars, so might as well skip those.

• The Inhuman Condition
  Dramatic Webseries (Season One: 16 Webisodes)  // Third Draft
  Fourth Year Practicum Project, Ryerson University
• Untitled Commercial Project #1
  Commercials (Four) // Second Draft
  Commissioned by a client.

I’ve also moved the Wreckage pilot to Future for the time being, as I don’t foresee polishing off that draft until after the semester is over. However, I’ve added Dead City Blues to my Current projects, a script-only urban fantasy webisode series, dramatic, I’m doing for a scripted entertainment website. I’ve written four webisodes and have fallen pretty far in love with the characters. I’ll be working with a staff on the season as a whole, so it might not end up being an appropriate portfolio piece for copyright grey area reasons, but it’s a great learning experience, and is great fun.

Screenwriting Tip #101: Write even when you really don’t want to. Often that forced, un-fun, “I’d rather do laundry” writing turns out to be surprisingly good.

He’s right on the money with this.

I’ve known this tip was true for years, and I think plenty of us do, even those of us who use writer’s block as a way to hide from our script. It’s so easy to assume that feeling shitty will translate to shitty writing, or that writing that comes when we feel like not doing it will somehow be uninspired. Perhaps it is for some writers… but I’ve found that my voice is remarkable consistent, whether I wrote in a frenzied, religious rush of inspiration or chiseled it, piece by painful piece, from that mythical stone block in the middle of my path. And often, writing through the block creates inspiration.

Because pushing through when you have no ideas means writing, which can create the seed of new ideas, new excitement. Two characters start a conversation that just works, driving forward with ease. An action sequence turns when you realise the best obstacle that pulls you in and makes the tension more urgent. Your characters enter a location that blossoms within your minds eye, creating a playground you can’t wait to enjoy painting in Final Draft for everyone to see.

One strategy for these is a forced writing sprint. Jane Espenson, a veteran TV writer who worked with Joss Whedon (among many illustrious credits, including an amazing advice blog for screenwriters), will regularly announce these on her Twitter feed. By announcing them to her 50k followers, suddenly she’s got a pressure to follow through. If you told fifty thousand people you were going to do something, something so simple as focusing on writing for an hour, wouldn’t that make it a bit harder to punk out? And there’s something freeing about being an outside participant of these. You don’t have the hump of being the one to push the button – Jane does – so you can just relax and focus on completing the sprint alongside her.

Just know that the writer’s block can often be defeated. You just have to remember, you are creating the block, and you have the power to push through. So just do it.

(If my summary of any of these topics is incorrect, feel free to comment below.)

• Morphology itself is the study of forms, and in linguistics, morphology refers to the “mental system involved in word formation” or – and this is mostly what I’m reading about here, “to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed”.
• Morphemes: The smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function. This can be anything from an indivisible word such as lock to a prefix like un- to a suffix like -able. Some languages have affixes that are placed in the middle of a word (these are infixes), and some that attach to both the beginning and the end of a word (circumfixes). Both of these divide single morphemes physically, interrupting either the stem or the affix, disproving the idea that a morpheme is physically indivisible; rather, a morpheme cannot be divided into multiple pieces with each continuing to hold individual meanings.
• A stem is the word that affixes are being attached to. This can either be simple, like adding re- to act to get react, or it can be complex, like adding -ing to underestimate, which itself already has under- as a prefix.  If the stem is the smallest possible core piece of the word, then it is also the root. In underestimating, then underestimate is a stem, but estimate is the root.
• A morph is how a morpheme is spoken. An allomorph or variant is a variant of a morpheme that is pronounced differently than is typical. For example, say these variations of -ed out loud to see how they differ: jumped, repelled, rooted/wedded.
• Words that do not already exist can still be understood, if they are unconventional uses of affixes to a recognisable root. For example, uncry and unreak are not words, but the intent behind them can still be understood, and the very fact that they are not words – and the underlying reason for that being that these are actions that can’t actually be undertaken, merely wished for – is actually used to add poignancy to the song that originated them. Other uses might include rekill, which might make no sense unless you are telling a story in which a monster, such as a zombie or vampire, can be killed again; regift, a term that entered the popular lexicon after a 1995 episode of Seinfeld; or even the common practice of adding the prefix e- to anything to imply an online version of the original: email, ecommerce, e-card, e-vite.
• Often, languages have underlying rules that native speakers don’t tend to notice. For example: in English, plural nouns are almost often marked with an -s or -es, while that is not always true in other languages. Also, pervasive rules like adding -s to plurals often have a number of exceptions, like adding -ren to child or adding no plural marker to fish. Often, native speakers only notice this when comparing their language systems to others that have different rules.
• The book approaches the explanation of theory with specific foundational beliefs: that it is important to focus on how languages differ from one another; that individual languages are distinct from the underlying concept of Language, which is the combined elements that all languages share that define them as language; that morphology, despite not being relevant to certain simpler languages, is a valuable and distinct area of study; that morphologies are systems; that every theory comes with the possibility of being disproved; and any tool is fair game to use in studying morphology.
• Linguistic morphology is composed of two approaches to the study of Language, both key: analysis, which entails breaking words down and discovering the structure of the language, and synthesis, which involves taking the result of analysis to use the pieces in order to understand how greater words are made.
• Here are four basic principles of analysis: Forms with the same meaning and the same sound shape in all their occurrences are instances of the same morpheme; forms with the same meaning but different sound shapes may be instances of the same morpheme if their distributions do not overlap; not all morphemes are segmental; and a morpheme may have zero as one of its allomorphs provided it has a non-zero allomorph. 

This is a summary of the information from the first chapter, with many longer sets of examples and explanations cut away for more streamlined definitions. I also did not include the sample problems. I really enjoyed this first chapter, and the basic look at linguistic morphology that it provided; I also hope, by taking notes and summarising the information, I’m able to retain it better than with a casual read.

I don’t know if more of these are forthcoming, but I enjoyed this process enough to complete this summary for the opening chapter. Perhaps.

(I will try to make the below as painless as possible for Lost non-watchers.)

When Lost premiered in 2004, it blew me away. It was nothing like I’d ever seen before, playing with story and character beautifully. In its sprawling ensemble cast, I had plenty of favourites. Early on, I had no idea that one of those would be Shannon Rutherford, played by Maggie Grace in the show’s first two seasons. She was weak, bitchy, whiny and, as the other castmates kept telling her, “useless”. She was a minor supporting character of little importance.

Somewhere around the midpoint of the season, my opinion of her began to change. I grew deeply invested in her. Her unlikely romance with a reformed Iraqi soldier. Her distrust of mysterious, spiritually-creepy Locke. Her complicated sexual relationship with her step-brother. Something about her fascinated me, to the point where she was one of my favourite parts of the show. And my disillusionment with the show, which would become famous amongst my friends and family for ages after, occurred in early season two, when the writers decided to kill the character off.

My family suspected I had a crush on Maggie Grace. (Eventually they realised that was unlikely.) I myself didn’t really understand what about the character had drawn me to her so intensely. It’s only now that I understand my reaction:

She was on a journey, one which I’d become emotionally invested in. And when that journey was cut off before it could reach its full potential, that’s where the outrage started.

Let me back up. Shannon was an outsider in the community. She was bored, snarky, self-centred. Lazy. She was also nursing a secret fear, one that flared up whenever someone used that word: useless…  That they were right. And over the course of the first season, she began to realise that she didn’t want to be that person. She realised that she had more to offer than anyone, least of all herself, could imagine. And slowly, she started to become part of the community. She started to stand up for what she believed was right. She showed potential to become someone really impressive.

I realise now, having grown up a little, that I ended up going through that exact same journey. When Lost premiered, I was thirteen years old. I was bored, snarky, self-centred. Lazy, too. Instead of doing anything, I sat back and mocked the idea that it needed to be done at all, or ignored it until it went away. I expect there were plenty of teenage boys like me. What I saw in Shannon, that journey, resonated, despite the fact that I wouldn’t actually become self-aware enough to go through it until I was eighteen or nineteen. Over the course of a few years, I went from a lazy do-nothing to someone who was relentlessly focused on what I wanted. I developed ambition. I found what I wanted, and pursued it like a shark. I didn’t realise it, but I attached so intensely to Shannon because there was a seed of truth to her story that I hadn’t found anywhere else.

I overinvested because, I realise now, I saw Shannon’s journey as my own. And when the writers closed it off, complete with “Well, we just didn’t know where to go with the character…” comments in the media, it was a betrayal of my journey. It was a personal insult.

Why tell this long story about my onetime crush on the leggy blonde that was killed off of Lost 28 episodes into its 120+ episode run?

Because that’s what the audience does. They invest in your characters. It could be merely sympathy (“I can see why this grieving mother guest star is sad about her son dying.”) It could be understanding (“I, too, have trouble talking to my brother!”). And maybe, if you do it just right, you put your character on a journey that deeply resonates with your audience, to the point where they can’t miss another episode/movie/book. If you do it right, then where they end up will become very important to your audience, not because the person has suffered through so much and deserves a happy ending, but because part of them wants you to validate how they see the world. Or how they see themselves.

Sometimes, it’s even people who do horrible things can be redeemed. Sometimes, it’s people who do horrible things never change, so don’t trust them. And if the members of your audience feel that you are with them, and then betray them at the end, that is when you inspire righteous fury. They know, in their gut, that they feel the ending was wrong. Because a character is on a journey, and the steps of that journey should, ultimately, be determined by the destination they are moving toward.

Between seasons one and two of Lost, I was involved in fandom and fanfiction. I plotted out my own version of Lost‘s second season as a labour of love and excitement. And Shannon’s story in that wasn’t one of early, throwaway death. It was of her realisation of her strength, her ascendency to something greater than she thought she could be. Because that is where I saw her journey moving toward. That is where I’d hoped my journey would lead.

Find stories that mean something. Give characters journeys that are going somewhere. Because if you do, your audience will follow you to hell and back.

It’s that feeling that often masquerades as boredom, but there’s something more vicious about this pest: it removes all colour or interest from any task you might want to pursue, forcing you to go through the motions with whatever you may decide to accomplish. Ennui is like being bored and tired and hopeless all at once, and seemingly has no cause. It won’t prevent you from living your life, but creative ventures seem hopeless, and it can even get in the way of enjoying fun fluff activities like video games or watching TV. It will settle on you out of nowhere, and the only cure I’ve found it to fight through it and try a thousand different tasks, until one helps break through the fog.

Often, it will fade on its own. Your eyes will catch the sparkle in a character’s dialogue, or a swoonworthy scene idea, and the fog will lift. I do not know whether these moments are the key to defeating it, or merely the first sign it has decided to leave of its own volition.

It sucks. But it’s a reminder that the creative act is something akin to magic. We can’t ever take it for granted. Because what would we do with ourselves if it left and never came back?

I’m not a regular Netflix user*, but I got a glimpse at my roommate’s account recently. In there, amongst long-running shows like Damages or Bones, are shows like The Unusuals, a one-season show from 2009, and The Black Donnellys, one from 2007. Unlike DVDs, which are expensive, new viewers intrigued by a show can check it out very easily. Shows that got critical interest but didn’t catch on with viewers, like 2009 drama Kings, can catch the eye of viewers who hadn’t heard of it the first time around.

* Note that I’m in Canada, so Netflix will likely have different offerings south of the border.

As a would-be TV writer, I love that. The idea that even if your show is one of the 2-out-of-every-3 that don’t make it out of season one alive, it doesn’t die. New people always have the chance to discover it, to have it recommended to them, to fall in love with it.

Here’s some notable one season wonders you might find on Netflix (Canada):

• The Unusuals, a cop dramedy starring Amber Tamblyn, Jeremy Renner and Lost‘s Harold Perrineau. I wasn’t a huge fan of the show, but it’s quirky humour and talented cast meant it had plenty of fans.
• Kings, a drama about a fantastical monarchy based loosely on the story of King David of the bible, starring Chris Egan and Ian McShane. Critics gave this show a warm welcome, but the difficult-to-market show didn’t grab enough of an audience to stay on the air.
• Kidnapped, a 2006 drama starring Jeremy Sisto about the investigation of a kidnapping.
• The Black Donnellys, a 2007 drama about a Black Irish family in Hell’s Kitchen, starring Jonathan Tucker and Olivia Wilde. I have been reviewing the show at The Signal.
• Accidentally On Purpose, a 2009 sitcom about a career woman who gets pregnant by a younger man, starring Jenna Elfman and Jon Foster.
• Running Wilde, a 2010 sitcom about a billionaire (Will Arnett) in love with an environmental activist (Keri Russell).
• Bionic Woman, a 2007 reboot of the classic drama about a mechanically-enhanced woman, starring Michelle Ryan.
• My Own Worst Enemy, a 2008 spy drama about a man (Christian Slater) with two personalities.
• Surface, one of the wave of many post-Lost sci-fi dramas, starring Lake Bell as a woman investigating mysteries arising from the ocean.
• The Beast, the A&E drama starring Patrick Swayze as an FBI antihero. It was Swayze’s last performance before he died, and he was heavily praised for it.
• Cashmere Mafia, the 2008 dramedy about four ambitious women in New York, played by Lucy Liu, Frances O’Connor, Miranda Otto and Bonnie Somerville.
• Knight Rider, the 2008 reboot of the 80′s series about a man who fights crime with his talking car.
• Deadline, a 2000 drama about a journalist played by Oliver Platt.
• The Good Guys, a 2010 action-comedy cop series starring Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks.

There are plenty of others out there it doesn’t offer, but it’s nice to see all of these shows have a shot at attracting some new audiences.

A vomit draft is a first draft of a script that the writer pushes through in as little time as possible, caring not about quality or polish in the process. Depending on the strength of the outline and the writer’s connection to the project, a vomit draft can actually turn out pretty well, or it can recall its namesake: quick and dirty. They are actually a pretty common practice in television, or so I hear, and probably are the basis for most screenplays, as well.

It’s a common adage in screenwriting that it’s better to improve a bad draft than take forever to write a good one. The vomit draft is the natural extreme of this. If you can write a 60-page script in one night, then you have the rest of the days you would normally spend on the first draft to improving it for the second draft… and, worst case scenario, you have a draft that somebody can knock into shape should you fall ill or be forced to escape the country.

I myself am divided on this. I think that having a draft complete is a great step for a writer on the way to having a really strong script, but I also have concerns that writing a vomit draft cements things potentially in the writer’s brain and makes them less flexible. After all, in many cases there are only so many ways you can improve a bad script. Unless you’ve trained your mind to be flexible even after completing a draft, there’s the chance that having the draft might make it harder to make sweeping needed changes. It’s definitely the practice that works best in Hollywood, but I don’t have the confidence to say it always produces better work.

That said. If your outline is comprehensive and strong, then a vomit draft contains few pitfalls. After all, you’re really just restructuring the outline into script format with placeholder dialogue. Also, if your script is heavily procedural, then a vomit draft would also likely be very helpful, because pacing out that story would likely come before the character story, which might be added in and perfected in the third and fourth drafts.

And vomit drafting, like all writing practices, relies on practice and your abilities as a writer. You should be able to look at a script and develop a plan for improvement, whether you wrote that draft in 6 hours or 6 weeks. Practice makes perfect.