DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story? — Transcript

Did you get my stream of consciousness notes from my nap this afternoon?

I thought someone got a nap.

Hi, I'm Chas Fisher.

And I'm Stu Willis.

And I'm Mel Killingsworth.

And welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where three, I can't really say Australian, but three filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And on today's episode, we're kind of doing our annual Backmatter, but in typical DriveZero fashion, we're kind of abandoning the format we've been using for the previous Backmatters.

What is format?

So, basically, we did a call out for questions for Backmatter. And we got one question from a Patreon Anders, and he wrote to us, in your own pre-writing process, how do you know you have enough for a feature? And do you have a specific pre-writing method you're going to? I know process is very subjective, but what have you found to work for you? And I thought that was a really good jumping off point for a general discussion for us to talk about methodology. And it's part of the reason that we brought Mel on here, again, breaking with back-matter tradition, because it means it's kind of a crafty question, but not empirical. Like this is literally us talking about what works for us and debating some of those processes in the hope that it kind of maybe sparks something for people. I mean, maybe what they spark is, you're wrong, and they just unsubscribe from Drow Zero.

Who knows? I mean, I always love just hearing about other people's processes to see if there's something I want to try. But, Stu, you flagged that this episode will hopefully, as much as we are branding it Back Matter for now, will hopefully sit in our development tools run, which we've previously had Stephen Cleary on to talk about short documents. So, I think there'll be some references to that in terms of, you know, prep for writing process. And also, we did an episode on pitch decks. Am I missing one?

Thematic log lines and yeah, like treatments, longer documents, I guess. I mean, the short, long ones, the long, short ones.

But I feel like we're going to probably be talking a lot about the long, short documents humans, because I mean, I don't know about you guys, but that would be the only way I can tell if I've got enough. I'm going to use the phrase and I'm going to explain where it comes from at an appropriate point, but narrative fuel.

Interesting. So how do we want to kick this off? Does anyone have kind of a methodology that they stick to?

Go on, Mel. I feel like the audience has heard a bit about SUMI processes before, so hit us with your development process.

I think the more I do it, the more the process evolves, of course. And part of what was really interesting for me about this question is the specificity of how do you know if you have enough for a feature. For me, the first question is, is this best as a feature? Not even do I have enough, but like, should this be a pilot? Should this be a play? Should this be a short story? The last couple of years, I've had several projects where I started with a concept and had a really good idea or had a really good scene, but then it was figuring out what is this? And that wraps up neatly with a bow or even if it's open-ended is is this a story where i know the end point because for me that doesn't work so much for a pilot um not only are pilots open-ended but in theory you want to keep something where the story is satisfying but can go on indefinitely you know in australia maybe six episodes uh in the u.s maybe 22 episodes uh in the uk maybe like two episodes every five years but in general is there something that is a long-running continuing thing? Or is this, I know the beginning, middle and end, or at least the beginning and end of this story. So that tells me it's probably better suited for either a play or a short story or a feature. And then I figure out, is there enough? So the enough question is interesting. And I know that I personally really tend to use a five-act structure on anything that's longer than 20 pages. I just find it more helpful for me to have five acts and the turning points and the climaxes and etc within that. So for me, if I want to know, is there enough for a feature? Are there five acts? Acts? Are there turning points within those? Or is there enough material for that to sustain, you know, five acts? Is there something happening within each of the five acts? And if there's not, it doesn't necessarily mean, oh, I don't have enough. Do I add a C plot line? Is there maybe another character that could have something going on that right now is either very simple or just sort of supporting or serving another character? And so you start, for me, I start working through all of that. If I come up with something that is self-contained to some extent and has five acts where something happens within all of them and there's, you know, interesting thing for me, I say this is probably enough for a feature. It's just about, you know, putting the meat on it and figuring out all of the other little bits and then I move on from there. So that's sort of the more interesting one for me. If I look at it and say, oh, this is really open-ended, I think there's maybe only, you know, two, maybe three acts in here. This feels like a massive world with tons of characters. I think maybe it's a pilot. And for me, that's actually in a lot of ways easier to write. You don't need to conclude anything. And you can hopefully if you sell it, then you get a room of people and then it's all of your problems, you know, as opposed to just your problem and you're banging your head up against the wall on page 80 going, Oh my God, what have have I done? Or sometimes for me, sometimes it does help to write the thing out as either a short story or even something very simple as like a very simply sketched play and then figure it out from there. Is there more that goes on here? But that's sort of the first thing is what is this? And then is there enough? And then, I mean, we can get to methodology a little bit later.

I mean, you've covered quite a lot of methodology, but I'm really glad that you started out with ending because I think this question about like when do you know you have enough is uniquely a feature problem because and this could be my biases as having written more features than having written that many pilots but I'm like if you've got good characters and a good world you can just keep iterating that indefinitely like there's kind of any amount of story options because like you say you're aiming for a satisfying ending to a pilot you're not aiming for it necessarily a satisfying narrative piece, or thematic ending and so when you've decided this is a feature because you've got a story and you've and you've got an ending in sight that's when i can imagine that you could hit that problem that i think anders is describing i've heard other other people talk about it as well where they've gone to this point where they know that they want to start writing and they start and then they get to like 70 or 80 pages and they've hit that end point and then they go oh Ah, shit. Has that happened to either of you?

No. I would say it depends. I've co-written a lot, not just with Chaz. For example, with Matt and I, we probably wouldn't do a shitment or a scriptment in the same way that you and I have, Chaz. Our first drafts were quite long, right? Right. That I think it was because Matt, as a writer, is someone who likes putting words in his character's mouths. Right. So we often would overwrite the dialogue particularly and too much top and tail and then would have to color it off. So, you know, we might write a first draft that's 150 pages and then, you know, 140 pages and then just color it all because it's like, oh, we don't need any of that stuff. But it's just that the script became the way of working that stuff out. And particularly because we were and we have kind of done the email exchange version of writing where you're like, hey, either I've written an act or a couple of pages in email and back and forth. And I guess it was a way for both of us to kind of learn who these characters were. So, I've not fallen short. I've the opposite.

That, for me, still comes much later. When I say I've decided it's a feature or a pilot or a short, I am like five to seven pages max of just outline real bare bones. Here are events that happen. Here's a character development that happens. Here's a conflict that happens. For me, that, I usually get there, but it comes much later.

It feels like we're possibly the three worst people to be answering Anders's question because it feels like all three of us have the opposite problem of just like we usually end up with too much material early on rather than not enough.

But sometimes I end up saying actually I don't have enough so it's not a feature I don't have enough so this is a 20 page short story I don't have enough so this is a pilot you know.

I think it's also worth having potentially some discussion here and now about, so I use the term narrative fuel because I was in a Film Victoria. Now Vic Screen, so an Australian funding body workshop that was meant to actually identify projects for pitching. So, it's good that you called me up, Stu, earlier on, is it only at the long documents that I know whether I have enough fuel or not, because we were at the logline stage having debates in the workshop around whether there's enough fuel in this idea just from the pitch. And because it's like, does that concept or the way that you're pitching it in your listeners or in the room spark sufficient content or material or ideas or conflicts and all that kind of stuff? So, I think it can be determined early on, as you said, Mel, in terms of your decision tree as to is this a feature or not? I think it is something you can figure out. But one of the things I'd like to talk to you guys about is whether you think this is a uniquely sort of Western hero's journey issue. Because I think there are other storytelling traditions where you just keep telling the story until you've finished, right? There's not this idea of, I've only heard secondhand. So one of the producers I'm working with has been working with a filmmaker of, I believe they're of Indian origin, but like Asian storytelling tradition. And they just refused to have a finished script before they started shooting. They're like, no, no, we're going to find the story as we're shooting it.

I think that's less of an issue of our tradition as writers, because I do that with a lot of different writing and more a fact that if you're ever going to potentially actually actually get it made as a film in particularly Australia, you have to have not necessarily a hero's journey, but a finished script.

Yeah. I mean, I think I agree with Mel. That seems to me what you were, we are mistaking the, culture, we're mistaking culture for industrial culture, if you know what I mean, creative culture for industrial culture.

I have a lot of things where I just write and find out where it goes, but those aren't things that I know will be saleable or help my career in any way, shape or form.

But I can also imagine that there are scripts or scriptments and stuff out there that might only be 20 pages and they can make a feature from it. Do you know what I mean? In terms of identifying narrative fuel or whether something's finished.

I'd love to see that in Australia.

Well, I guess most of these are either independently funded or they're Terrence Malick films, if you know what I mean.

Or like a ghost story probably looked like that when it was released.

Yeah, I mean, I think there are alternative ways of making those films and you can kind of find it in the edit. And I've worked a lot in documentary, but even then there's this sense of where, like the experience you want at the end. But in terms of, you know, coming to Andrew's questions and us speaking in our experience, right, I can kind of step through what I would get someone to do, right? right? Because you've already been highlighted, like, I don't love log lines in the sense of, I've had better luck pitching projects to financiers in a different format, which I'll, if I remember, kind of talk through because I actually ended up helping with someone on Twitter. But I think what is useful about the log line is the traditional kind of log line of when something happens to this protagonist, they must blah, blah, blah, blah. It's essentially, it's talking about your inciting incident. And whether we talk using the inciting incident, and talking about the Sid Field paradigm, or you're talking about the first act turning point in a five-act play or a television five-act, you're talking about the first- the kind of disruption of the status quo, right, is a way of thinking about it. What is it that causes the disharmony in the story, or further in the Shakespearean understanding, like- There's a state of pre-existing conflict, which is, you know, that there's these two families that hate each other. And for Corona, what makes that pre-existing conflict worse, which is their children falling in love. And so I think a logline is about identifying that. And you can kind of develop a nose for it going, is there enough conflict in this from the inside incident that can be resolved? But I would say that the next thing to think about, and I sometimes think it's useful to write your midpoint in the logline, because a lot of stories will actually run out of their steam. By their midpoint if they haven't thought about what it is because the midpoint you know it's the force victory it's the voice hope it's where the story you know we did a whole podcast talking about it but if you think about like the inciting incident for alien it's like when a crew answers a distress beacon they find an derelict alien starship and then one of them gets sick i mean it doesn't actually tell you what is propulsive enough because the engine that kicks in is the The second half of the film is the alien running around. So, I would write that into the log line. So, for me, often when I'm structuring stuff, the first- one of the early questions for me structurally is what is the midpoint? Because the midpoint will help me work out whether I've got enough juice. And look, we've had this thing where we've mistaken what was the- oh, that's not the midpoint. That's actually the first day of turning point. Or vice versa, where you're like, oh, wow. Okay. What I thought was the first day of turning point is a lot later. But essentially, what you're then identifying in this- In writing a logline with a midpoint is what is going to keep your story going into the second half and requires you to be more specific.

Well, I think both your point about a midpoint and Mel's point about five acts, both of what they identify, which is possibly a narrative fuel problem, is what does the second half of the movie look like? Like, you know, I think there's a lot of people that because writing second acts is so unpleasant that they want to skip to the, you know, the low point and then the, and then coming out the other side. I'm assuming that a lot of writers who find themselves in Nanda's situation where they've got to 70 and 80 pages and have run out, I'm assuming, like I have a bias or a prejudice that the bit that's missing is that post midpoint. Sequence or the act you know mel your act three or four because most people in my experience when i'm reading other people's scripts the first act is the thing that they have most clearly and the ending also relatively satisfying and it's making sure that the middle is placing the building blocks in between the two but maybe that's just me speaking of you know and i think one thing you can do is is layer a whole other story like a whole other plot in do you need a And a lot of rom-coms now have a secondary romance.

I mean, a lot of rom-coms in the 30s and 40s had a secondary or tertiary romance that helped carry that midpoint through. And a lot of romances now, a lot of rom-coms are starting to do the same thing because that's super helpful and it helps both break it up and also can parallel and can cause other events. And so I think that, yeah, I think you're right in identifying that's a thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean you don't have a feature. It just means maybe you need to, you know, add a whole different thing. And as opposed to trying to pad it or write something out or change your existing characters, maybe there's something else you can do there.

I still think the midpoint is often the most structurally important thing, right, that it's effectively your- the audience is getting bored, what do you give them new, what do you give them that's new? In songs, it's often the break into the middle eight, you know, the kind of the bridge. It doesn't matter whether you're in a feature in a television or in a three-minute trailer, you will see these patterns where roughly in the middle, we kind of reverse something. There's like a three-minute video from Apple where at the middle, the background goes from white to black, right? Just to generate interests. For me, plotting, and we haven't talked at all about character, so it'd be interesting to see whether people have character processes here. But I do start thinking about what my subdivisions may be. In terms of process, which is separate from plotting, I will do a brainstorming stage and I just come up with ideas of what things could be. But when I start putting it into order, often the first tent pole or whatever you want to call it that I'm trying to put into the ground is what does the midpoint look like? And that's why I think coming back and adding it to your logline, even if it's just for you, can be really useful because what Chaz is talking about, that people don't have enough narrative fuel, that they haven't worked out what they're actually doing in the second half of their story is because they're just relying on their logline to tell them. They've written their logline and they're like, well, the logline says, you know, and it's like, well, no, the logline is just telling you what kicks the story.

I wrote my logline last. Sometimes after the whole script is finished. You don't write like a conceptual one paragraph for you a paragraph for me is like page 18 yeah, yeah i do i do write a conceptual thing it would not function as a log line in any way shape or form what do you try to get done in that one paragraph uh what is the story about but a log line is so much more concise like when i say what is the story about i want to talk about themes i I want to talk about character. I want to talk about story. I want to talk about vibe. I want to talk about sometimes, you know, get ideas for genre through there, not necessarily using the genre terms. But the logline is such a much, much, much more boiled down version of that. And I get really, to be frank, I hate writing loglines. And I think that they're often too... Either abstract or small and so I save it for the end because at that point then I do once I have written at least my scriptment and I know we'll talk about process in a minute and I have a much better idea of what's bigger what's hookier what is actually true in the logline and I know it's meant to be a selling point but I also do think that it should accurately reflect if you write a logline and it's really hooky but it doesn't actually really reflect anything that takes up more than 10% of your screenplay, I find that pretty disingenuous, not just disingenuous, but unhelpful. Anyway, so yes, my paragraph is like a good 18 lines of this is the concept of what the thing is about. And then the log line comes at the end for me.

So have you, speaking of, I know we're ping-ponging around to your listeners, but. Mel, like if you're going into something that you know is going to be a TV show, show do you kind of sit around in bible land for a while or do you just go to pilot or do you work up like something approaching a bible uh depends on whether or not i'm writing by myself or with a partner with a room uh with a partner i usually go to cards pretty early um with the room most of what i've done has been bible and series outline and characters first for myself i tend to try to to write the pilot and write about the characters um so it is a slightly different process for each one okay because i found with television i will tend to live in bible land quite a bit longer than i would necessarily with a feature right and i think maybe that's because i'm trying to work out does this have enough in it character wise world wise situationally to justify multiple multiple episodes and so that will kind of be the equivalent of what i would call like a an extended screepment or screepness i definitely said excretement if you've read some of the stuff that we've uh like but like in a in a feature i'm not going to necessarily do tons of short docs on character and stuff like that i'm more likely to go to cards and and plot it out i mean i'll have notes on character and i'll often write stuff by hand but it's not as like as rigorous But maybe that's also because it feels like with television. That's part of the expectation of how you're going to pitch, that it feels like that might as well be a starting point.

I build more of the Bible, but I also, for me, as I start writing the pilot, I'm figuring out a little bit about the world, about how the character, not just the characters, but how their relationships work. And then I'm sort of writing, I spend more time in the Bible land, even by myself, for a pilot than for a feature for sure. Sure. But then I also write more of it as I'm writing the pilot in terms of pilots and TV rather than a feature. Like, to be honest, I've written a whole feature and all I have is a one sheet for it because I've written the feature like the script is there. It is done. I've got these ideas on characters. But really, if you want to know what the world is, you should read the script in TV is quite different.

What about you, Chas? Has that been your experience running television?

Well, the only pilot I've written started out as a feature concept. I had pitched to a producer and he was interested in the idea, but he was like, I'm only working on TV. I'm only pitching TV now as a reflection of where the Australian industry was at the time. But then he came back to me, I don't think it was too much later. He's like, I think if you just take the first act of of that feature idea, it would be a great pilot because he had- He could see narrative fuel for various episodes that I couldn't, see at the time, maybe just because I wasn't looking to- Like, I was only looking to write as a, feature, but the characters and the setup and the conflicts were all there. And I mean, you guys have both read the pilot and hopefully you can see that there was fuel at least for six Australian episodes. So, I'm not a good judge on that. that. I think, you know, the first act of almost any feature could make potentially a good TV pilot.

So, I mean, I'm trying to lead us now a little bit more into the nitty gritty. Like for me, having a bit of a process is a little bit of a blanket. It answers the question of what do I work on next, right? Oh, I've got an idea. You know, we're hopefully starting some fresh material next year, Chas. And it's like, oh, I have a process and I just kind of follow these things And I kind of trust that we will get through the end.

Did you get my stream of consciousness notes from my nap this afternoon? Thought someone got a nap.

Yes. I mean, that's kind of an interesting project. I'll say what it is because it's the outlier of how I would develop something, which is that script is kind of more of an action movie. movie. So, for us, I don't think we would write it as a script necessarily before pitching it to people, because it's like, there'll be stuff that would be the- like, they fight, you know. I mean, I, you know, do martial arts, and I've worked with my friends and blocked stuff out, and then filmed it, and then, like, transcribed it back into a script. And I'm not going to do that for a whole freaking movie. So, because that's an action movie, it's very kind of sequence-driven. So, I think what will end up with that is, like, a cool treatment broken broken into very clear sequences that we can see if anyone's kind of interested in before we write the script. Cause it's not going to be, I think we talked about this with development tools and it's something that comes up with like, oh, you've got a treatment or a breakdown or an outline of people like, oh, it needs more character. And I'm like- Yes, that's what the dialogue is partly for, like the minutiae of character, right, is what the script is for. You're not going to get the whole experience out of a shorter form. But when it's going to be so abstracted, it's like even a script itself won't necessarily give you the experience of watching a brutal action film. So, that feels like it's an outlier of how we'll do things. I mean, I think in some ways it will have probably a similar early process for how I like to work and then kind of probably sit at a refined stage. But before I kind of go and rant about how I like to work, I wanted to see if anyone else has a kind of a process of how they like to work.

I kind of have a four-step process. The first step is always wildly different and the other three steps fall in line. So the first step, so for example, the feature that I'm working on now, I think I'm up, I'm like 65, 70 pages, literally happened. I went on a run, halfway through this long run, I got struck with an idea and I went, I'm going to keep going. And maybe this idea will keep gestating. I think there's something here. So I kept running and running and running. And finally, I got home and I just like brain dumped into a voice note for like 10 minutes. And then I went to my friend's house that night and I proceeded to brain dump again. And as I was talking, I was like, is there something here? Maybe there's something here. So, you know, thanks to Hannah for dealing with what is actually just an insane person rambling at her for 10 minutes. And then off the back of that, like the next day, I'm like, ah, let's see if there's something here. I looked at my voice note, which was like, you know, three pages of transcribed ramblings with the discussion I had and worked that. But at other times, my first step process has been very, I want to write in this genre. Okay, let me construct. What would a mystery be? This person has died. Work backwards. At other times, it's been, maybe I'll convert this short story into something. Other times, it's been working with a partner who's come up with a concept for a conflict or a fun conceit. So the first one is always really, really wildly different.

So you're talking about what in ad land may be called ideation.

Absolutely.

I fucking hate that word so much.

Sounds very something like James Thurber would make up, but to make fun of ad people. Yeah, so that my first step is always wildly different. The second step is outline form. I usually try what are my five acts? Why does it make sense for it to break here? You know, then you have five lines. Then you start writing in between. Something I did recently, my friend M gave me this idea. So M does this thing where she does like a bullet outline. So once she has her very broad conceit, she literally writes a bullet of, all right, what does this character do in this scene or what happens in this scene? She writes one bullet. And it's a bullet of M goes to Mel's house and brings cake. Mel punches M in the face. And it's just literally one bullet per thing. And essentially she wants to flesh out, start to finish from where she knows the starting point is to the end point, approximately 100 to 120 bullets. And that ends up equating to almost one per script. And I tried it recently because I thought that sounded insane. She showed me her sample of it. And I'm like, one bullet to one page, that really does not make sense. And it worked, which kind of blew my mind. And so what she's got within the bullets, and it doesn't have to be one sentence, it's literally one bullet point, and it's usually one to three sentences. And it just boils it down so simply but it really makes you see where the weak parts are as you're reading it if you read it straight through almost like you would read a short story you know a three-page short story you can see where the weaknesses are or where it seems like too much is happening at once and maybe it needs to move or characters oh I haven't seen this character's name in 20 bullets that doesn't seem right and then she essentially works off of that so that's recently I've tried to use that again I'm still finding different techniques different things that work and then so I do an outline and then that's sort of my second stage my third stage is scriptment and this is actually probably the least structured because for me the idea for a scriptment is this needs to be fun it needs to be interesting I may find at the scriptment phase that this is is boring or I'm not emotionally invested or something like that. And then I haven't really invested enough. I'm very happy to abandon it and it lives in my graveyard folder. But at the scriptment phase, I start... From scene one, and I just write. And if the scene that I am in, so I'll open fade in for my scriptment, I open fade in, I paste my outline into it. And then I also paste scenes, any scenes that I already have into it. So at some point in both the ideation phase and the outline phase, I might get hooked on a concept or even the fact is the idea might've started with a scene of, of, wow, I think this scene or three scenes between these characters who are having a really specific conflict, you know, a confrontation at a funeral, for example, between three women who all come to the funeral and find out they were all married to the same man, right? There's your thing. I think this scene is really interesting. Write these scenes. And then I've kind of got these scenes, whether they're in voice notes or scraps of bit, whatever. So I paste all of that and to fade in. And then I start at the top. And if that scene interests me, I write it. And if it doesn't, I say, you know, do-do-do-do-do, here's what happens. I skip a scene or I write like a vague description. Jay and Andrew fight about humpback whales. Jay leaves angry. Or sometimes I say the point of this scene is to make sure that Jay has an emotional crisis. Great. I'm going to come back to that and figure out what that emotional crisis is later. But then if it it interests me, I might write eight pages of dialogue. It's not necessarily good dialogue. It's like really basic monologue. And usually it's quite literal. Usually it's someone saying, I feel like this. It's not meant to be good. It's just meant to be like, here's what I will come back and make this dialogue good later. And I'll just progress that way through the entire script. Mostly in order. Sometimes I'll finish and then I'll go back to the start and fill in some of the scenes. And then when I'm done, I've got my vomit draft, my scriptment, which is usually somewhere between like 60 and 80 pages because I've got scenes that are just like, they fight.

At what point in that process do you know, oh, this is a feature given what you said before?

I think I usually know at the outline phase.

I think usually by the time I go to a scriptment, usually now sometimes when i go to scriptment i realize it changes there's way more emotional drama in this thing that i thought was a pilot and maybe that's the crux and it needs an emotional resolution this is actually a feature or actually i don't think there is enough this is a tv show but usually by the outline i at least know am i aiming for a feature so that second that second phase because i think you know just trying to keep bringing this back to anders's question question i think we've got kind of three potential problems one is that the story that people with this issue have started out writing is never meant to be a feature it just doesn't have enough narrative fuel in it which which feels like we should talk about how you develop an idea so it does yes and then to me the second problem is like mel you said is it just missing like can you add add a whole other narrative in there that thematically sits and complements what you've got so far? Or three, is it just the wrong format? Because I don't necessarily think if you've got a story that you can tell in 50, 60 pages and it has a very satisfying ending, like going back to your very early point, Mel, and Sue, you've used the term resolve as well, then it probably shouldn't be a TV pilot. Maybe it should be a novella. Make it a play.

Put it on the stage.

Make it a one-hour telly movie, then web series.

If you've got someone who has an anthology going, if you've decided to be, you know, then you can.

So, I think to Stu's point, I think we should talk about developing from a concept so that you have enough narrative fuel before you start writing and also going, what do, in our experience, when do we know we've got enough to go to pages? Pages, because I think that's possibly another issue is that they've just jumped out of development into writing pages too soon.

So, I will say as a general rule of thumb, I want to go to the next stage of the process. And I'm quite, quite structured in how I approach these things, which is surprising given how much unstructured I am in my life, that when I basically have run Like I no longer can get the information I need from this stage of the process. Right. Oh i write a one sentence of the story does. This answer the questions that i have do i need to go to the slightly longer version that's kind of my my rule of thumb you know i have to be like this script is no longer satisfying me as a thing for me to solve my problems i need to go to the next stage to solve those problems coming back to like the example of like no enough about the characters that an outline it's like well that's the right point to then jump into the script right for me If I'm still at the outline and still trying to nut out the plot, then I'm going to stay in the outline for the kind of the broad aspects of the plot, because that to me is like, I'm just lazy, you know, I'm lazy in my old age, you know, as much as I said, we write longer first drafts. I'm also not someone who's at the moment interested in writing 10 drafts, vastly different drafts of a script, right? Which certainly writers do and have done early in their career because they don't have the tool sets or the processes or the structures to kind of understand how to develop the story. So, they're literally doing the story development through drafts. So, they write a thousand pages as opposed to maybe 200 pages all up. So, in terms of the ideation, I say that because I think there's the concept, but you're going to be, for me, refining the concept and building on the concept and yes-ending the concept over, you know, as you kind of go down the path.

And to use the previous project that you've mentioned, that's an action project, and Mel, you've also referenced that every single project of yours has a different first step. I think the seed of inspiration dictates early- I refuse to say ideation- development. development. Because, like, Sue, I'm excited about the project, the action project that we want to work on, but I'm someone who needs a narrative end and a theme. Before I even move out of early stages. So your idea of like, we're going to just develop six kick ass action sequences, I can do that, but I would refuse to go to market even pitching this until I know how the fuck does this thing end and what is it that that ending says about.

I mean, I'm not going to fight you on that. Where there was, you know, we had a conversation about another project where we're actually, pitching on some remakes and it's like, well, we can take it down path A or path B, and And it's true with the intentionality of a particular thing that happens. And it's like both of those things say vastly different things. Yes. So, what is it that we actually want to say? And that's something we can solve in the, like, this is ideation, possibly even in the log line, kind of like, here's my 30-second spiel, that we have to kind of know what it is and what we're saying. Because it is, we're literally doing a series on tone, which is like, what is it that you are trying to say? say. So, I think, you know, for us, I think we're very thematic driven and we want that to be conscious as opposed to be- or we want to be aware of what we're trying to say as opposed to, oh, I'm just feeling it, which is other people work differently and they're just happy to feel what they're trying to say.

Well, I'm also just going to admit that as much as I got a very firm idea of the theme that I want to explore when I go into a project, my theme either refines or changes. Even once I've finished a draft, I'm like, oh, that's what I was writing about. out. Absolutely.

I agree. I also love a theme. I want to know what the theme is, but sometimes either it changes or every once in a while, somebody else comes and smacks me in the face with a second theme that I didn't even realize was there all along. But I agree. I love having a theme. I love having this, what is this saying about the character or the world at large or whatever.

So, does that factor into your early development? Like, is there specific processes as you have to work through that theme.

I have the theme in mind always when I'm writing and I have the theme in mind especially at the scriptment phase, but until I sort of get to the fourth page, which is actually refining the draft, is not when I'm like –, every scene hitting on this theme because like i always have it in mind i've got it in my short documents you know it's there i've written about it or journaled about it or or whatever but until i get to the fourth phase which for me is taking it from a script into a like decent first draft i'm not saying does this scene touch on the theme does it need to are all the characters you know in some way shape or form saying something about the the major or minor theme or or whatever But it's always in mind.

I mean, what do you, how do you personally define theme?

Well, this feels like a whole other episode worth of a question.

I mean, I'm not going to, like, Chas and I have different opinions on theme. So it's okay if you have your own opinion. But ironically, I think mine is the umbrella thing.

So basically, Stu takes the view that his is the correct interpretation.

Oh, am I about to agree with Stu again? I've been doing a lot of that this year.

I think mine is the superset, if that makes sense. And yours is a subset.

It is. I think theme is quite broad, right? Theme talks a lot about what are these characters? Wow. See, this is, I feel like trying to congeal my opinion on theme into like one or two pithy sentences is something that I am, the homework did not prepare me for.

So, but that does make it seem like for you that early stage of the process would be, what am I trying to say with this particular thing? Because it will vary from project to project.

Correct.

Chas, do you try to do this as a story about someone overcoming grief?

No. So, I mean, I think I used to start out with, And it's interesting that the last project that I've started developing from scratch, you read my kind of brain dump on it that ended up being like a 10 page treatment. And I felt compelled when writing that document. I think I was halfway through it when I'm like, I'm going to go up at the front and say, this is a story about blah, blah, blah. And I'm not sure if that was an instinct for me or for you guys going into reading it that I wanted to orient you in some way. And that was also a project that I didn't know if it was going to be a film or a play. Which is where the running joke seems to come from. And I brought that question into the workshop. Hey guys, is this a film or is it a play? But to me, I don't even bother doing any work on a story until I know how it ends and what theme I'm exploring, whatever theme means to me. So, I need to know those things just from like, you know, doing the dishes or in Mel's case, is going on a run or something like that. I need to have that in my head as inspiration before I even start doing other work.

When you say theme, do you sometimes feel a story has two or even three themes that it's touching on or do you need it to have one centrifying theme?

No, I'm not. I guess to be more specific, I need to go, what is the thing that calls me to write this story? Or what am I trying to say with it? Which might not be the theme or whatever.

For me, to be clear, I think theme is- I mean, to me, it's just the unifying principles of artwork, right? Whether they're kind of philosophical, moral, or aesthetic. Right. Whatever they are, having a sense of what it is that you're using to choose to this stays in the story. This does not.

At what stage in your development process do you have a grip on that?

Pretty early. Might as well talk about it if someone else steals it. I know who you are. One of the projects that Chas and I are looking at next year, and it may end up being a short film first, is about toxic masculinity and the idea that men are willing to sacrifice other men in order to gain dominance right and we're doing that taking that idea and making it supernatural so a group of men who quite literally sacrifice a member of their um group clan tribe whatever you want to call it in order to give themselves power or the feeling of power right so that is the idea that kind of to me is like that's the story i'm interested in we'll build the story around that and then it suddenly leads to me like who are the characters who are the people that would be in in this group, who would be the people that are willing to do this, who is the person that's going to be sacrificed. But who is the person that is the weak one that would want to be wanted by this larger group, right? So, to me, I mean, maybe this is touching on what Mel is saying about talking about it through characters, because obviously me saying theme is the unifying principle of a piece of artwork is almost too abstract, and the fact is, we're making a screenplay, we're working in drama, that means part of the unifying principles is that it's got got people in it right which it's surprising but it doesn't have to is my point and but yeah the thing is like that's suddenly saying okay we're talking about men and then when we talked about this you're like oh there should be a female character to offer a different point of view and so we're kind of expanding the thematic framework there but that is to me almost where i would start only now do i feel comfortable moving into kind of this parallel character plot plot kind of stage which i actually really think is is the first stage the primordial ooze which like it's the ooze of which plotting and character your characters and your plotting are going to come from right because you know if if plot is character over time then you need to know who your characters are but as we as we talked about earlier if if character is time divided by plot then you kind of need to know what your plot is you know in order to work out who are the who are the people that are going to get to the end of your story? The example of the, you know, this is about a group of people that are willing to sacrifice the weakest of them to make themselves stronger. I mean, there's a version of that you could interrogate and go, what if it's about them actually killing the leader, the strongest, in order to divide? Whatever it is, it's got to be about, you know, it's connected to stuff I've seen, but it's going to start informing both character and plot within that concept. And some people may not have a concept, you know, we've been thinking about this for a year or something, just in the back of our minds. And so, it's not like it's just emerged fully grown, but that's kind of where I start. You know, this primordial stage is where I think a lot of people do need to, self-included, this is kind of where I hit people I work with up, like, that interplay of character and plot. As in, but not even plot, it's really, like, the events. What are things that happen because of who these people are? And what do you want to happen? and then who do the people need to be in order for that thing to happen?

Yeah. I find that very chicken and egg, which is why in the outline phase, I'm also usually writing for myself. Here are the characters, here are their main traits. Sometimes I'll do character sheets on all the main characters, but it seesaws quite a bit, right? As the characters develop, you might find that outline or the themes shift and then sometimes the outlines and themes shift and you go, oh, I don't need this character anymore. This character is very different. And so they have to develop to some extent at the same time they're impacting each other. And I cannot, I'm sure some people develop plot entirely first and then character entirely afterwards or vice versa, but I find them both so inextricable from each other as you're going.

This episode of Draw Zero is brought to you by Arc Studio Pro, a modern, fresh app for the screenwriting world. Which of course has industry standard formatting, which, you know, that's the bare minimum. But, exciting for us Australians, it has it for both US letter and A4. Crazy. And it also lets you cheat the margins, which is one of my favourite little features. But it has advanced tools for storytellers that are actually easy to use. You can seamlessly move between drag and drop beat cards into a treatment and into a screenplay and back and forth at any time. And you can color code your beats. Super useful whether you want to tag your beats for characters, narrative point of view, thematic sections or however you want. We got to use all of that on a project where we took it back to cards and then from cards to outline and from outline to pages. The development process was intuitive and powerful. All the while, it was the best remote collaboration experience we've had in screenwriting software, and we've tried a lot. I loved looking at a line of dialogue that Chaz had edited, going to the edit history and changing it back to the line that I wrote. We used the software to present to our producer and script editor at each of those stages, at boards, at outline, and then at pages. who could then leave comments in the app, which is both useful and terrifying. And we could reply to those comments, tag each other to throw each other under the bus, or we could tick them as resolved. It really is as easy to use as Google Docs. And this development workflow has worked so well that Chaz has decided he doesn't need me anymore. And he's using it on a solo project because it's not just from collaboration. And I know I'll be using it on one of my own projects because the development workflow really is that intuitive. We've noticed Arc Studio Pro is being constantly updated and the development team is super approachable and responsive. They've now introduced the new notes feature, which facilitates that collecting of all your scraps of ideas and allowing you to get into the flow of free writing and figuring all your structure all within one spot. Arc Studio Pro. Join the thousands of screenwriters from amateurs to pros and everyone in between who've already made the leap. Arc Arc Studio offers a completely free plan because starting to screenwrite shouldn't cost you anything, but you can also get $30 off the pro plan if you want some of these pro features. If you visit the link in the show notes or go to arcstudio.com slash draft zero, that's draft zero without a hyphen. And now for the third hour of a screenwriting podcast. Except this episode is like 90 minutes. All the better for it.

I think possibly a question we should answer at the end of this is at the end of our first drafts, what do we think is a common problem that we've discovered across our projects? Because I feel that if all of us start our development process and we don't even start pages on a feature, unless we end up with, in our circumstances, too many pages, it usually means we don't have plot plot problems, like a shortage of plot or a shortage of narrative. But we may have, in my case, underdeveloped characters or characters not coming across to the reader the way that they are in my head.

I think it's a good question, but I also have to say the first draft is just another development stage. It's never finished until it's on the screen and the edit's locked. And then, you know, maybe in 20 years, if you're lucky, you'll upscale it to 8K and make a whole bunch bunch of changes, you know, that no one asked for.

And it'll make it look universally worse somehow. We've been seeing the same series of tweets.

I think it's a good question. Coming back to what Mel was saying, for me, this is usually where I would do my brainstorming thing. And as I said, I am someone that is socially motivated. I like working with people. I like being in the same room. This is where I'm going to get cards. And I use cards for character and And I use cards for scenes. And often, you know, I've got cards that sometimes it's just an entire line of dialogue. That's it. Because that's like, that is something that speaks to us about the story. It could be connected to a character or whatever. And it kind of ends up being very amorphous. Right. And then you might be like, oh, you know, this character, like, you know, maybe we're talking about this journalist character that was like, you know, her whole thing, like character descriptions, smoke starts, breaks hearts, was this young journalist that had moved to a country town and that was a whole thing and then we started talking about that kind of person oh my catnip yeah right anyway so this is for me it's it's a hard thing to describe it it's essentially that free kind of brainstorming that happens in writer's rooms but you can do it by yourself i think it's easier with someone else but going here's notes on characters and i like physical cards you could use digital index cards but you're capturing everything that's possible And for me, I find scenes in particular, that's usually what I come up with, a scene or a moment before I even come up with plot. You know, I'm like, I can see this thing in my head, you know, the supernatural thing. We've got this idea, this visual, however, it manifests of when they wake up, this boy wakes up to see that his brother who is being tied down as a sacrifice is actually like being torn to shreds. Like he didn't realize it was going to be physically ripped apart. Literally. It was like, oh, he's the loser of whatever our competition was who gets tied up outside. And then it's this moment. So, that's something that I can see and will be in the cards, where it sits in the telling of the story, you know, in the actual sequencing of both the cause and effect and then how that is presented to the audience. I'm not sure, but that is a visual. And that's the kind of thing that will go down in cards. And then you would, at a later stage, I would structure it. But I may be the only one that works like that. Or Chaz when he's forced to work with me.

Am I allowed to reference Michael Haig's six stages yet?

I will say, before you go into that, basically, I will just come up with a whole bunch of index cards, right, some of them, and then I will go into a stage. And I've done this in writer's rooms, where you go, here's all the brainstorming, and now we start trying to put a structure on all of that. And I think the Michael Hay stuff is particularly useful.

Because to me, all it is, like you said, is he's got six stages. It's been a long time since I've used them. them, but I like it because I draw out the graphs and he does it both for plot and for the internal journey of the protagonist. So, and he's just named what all the points are and what all the sequences are in there. And I think it's six sequences rather than five acts, Mel, but you know, however you want to break it up. But by me going, I've got a character, I've got a world, I've got an ending and I've got something to say and asking what those broad questions are, like Like what the six sequences are, what the six turning or five turning points are, what are they both plot wise, like what's happening to this character and then what do they mean for that character's interiority. That is the point where I know I have enough fuel for a feature or not.

If you've got all six. Yeah.

Yeah, if I can fill out all of that, I'm like, there is a feature there. Because ultimately, if you end up with a scene outline and you've got X number of scenes, you'll have enough fuel for a feature.

But you could fill all six and say, great, that's the end of the pilot. And we can just do this in repetition and in syndication forever.

Sure. I think I would use a different model for a pilot because Michael Hay's stuff is about aiming towards that resolution. It is about aiming towards that ending. So I might.

That's the kicker.

Yeah, I might.

But the resolution can be a resolution that kicks off the investigation. I've just started Jack Reacher, and my God, it's great dadcore.

I cannot tell you how many people have been messaging me about watching it this week. In fact, my algorithm, like somehow TikTok has picked up on this and is now just feeding me Jack Reacher content. So it's clearly about to happen.

It definitely, yeah, you will enjoy it.

Yep.

But essentially, and this is somewhat spoilers, but it is the resolution of the first episode, the resolution of the pilot. It it's a series of threads coming together in order to then push uh jack reacher onto the rest of the journey i mean i think maybe jack reacher is the kind of television storytelling that i tend to like which is you know it's based on novels so it's it's kind of it's going to be kind of like multiple mini series with the same character which is good as opposed to stuff that tends to get drawn out you know or if you're going the episodic model if you're doing strange new worlds or you know um poker face it is still going to be finding an ending like there is still going to be a degree of resolution there. With Strange New Worlds, they've talked specifically about the fact that each episode's effectively self-contained, but the character arcs are over multiple episodes. But you can see how you can kind of plot that.

Well, right, because with Poker Face, each episode is fairly self-contained, and your protagonist is the one who has the arc over the season.

So I think it really just, it depends of what you're talking about ending, right? What you mean by an ending. And for me, it's the culmination of, you know, maybe we could just see it as the, it's kind of the anagnorisis, you know, the, what David Mamet, you know, the character is educated or thwarted. And the end of the story is them being that, for that, the point of that episode. And then it kind of leads on to the larger plotting of a season. But coming back to the feature thing with Anders, I, look, I, and we've done it, Chas. Like we'll, you know, we used to use Trello, we'll probably use Arc Studio Pro, you could use Scrivener, like we would give a turning point, a card, each turning point, and you'd kind of sort scenes into this happens before this turning point, because this is how you build to this moment. And this is the stuff between, and then you kind of get roughly the subdivisions. You get the Act 1A, Act 1B, Act 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B. If you were to work in different ways, that's fine. These are just subdivisions. It's all about managing audience attention, really, right? It's like, how do you keep people invested? You give them something interesting every 15, 20 minutes. But then I would go further into that and then start grouping that stuff into sequences, right? The sequence structure, starting to think about what the question is for the characters or the plot, ideally both, you know. Will Chaz come to realise that Stu is going to poison him? Him might be that sequence and and what's good about framing something like that in the question is it's it's you're combining character and plot together right so for me that is part of the idea of what drives things forward and i mean we've got a three and a half hour episode on sequence structure that you should listen to if this is like or re-listen to because this is you can use that not just as an analysis tool but i think you can actually use it as a construction tool as a a way of organizing your material you know looking for those is this a plot is this grouping of scenes driven by plot is it driven by character is it driven by theme and for me i kind of want car i want to get a feature down it will end up between minimum of six sequences you know and when you're talking about six sequences you're talking about 15 pages or it could end up being like 10 sequences that are shorter but that's usually when i know whether i have enough macro macro plotting to go into a more detailed outline is if I can just write down the headings with the rough bullet points or do it with cards. Great thing about cards is you're never actually going to write too much. You're not going to overwrite at that stage. You're looking at me, Mal, like you don't go that macro with your plotting. You just do act one, act two, act three, act four, act five, or do you- She's got a hundred bullet points. But I would say our scriptments are well over a hundred bullet points or my outlines.

I kind of know, the first pass. I've got the bullet points, but when you talk about 10 sequences, I think, well, which kind of, which half answers Chaz's end question for me, is that the problem when I get to the end is usually either genre-based, which is, is this a, you know, action? Is this a mystery? Is this whatever? And I have different problems depending on the genre. But for me, part of the thing where you talk about with sequencing is really interesting because Because I find that sometimes when I get to the end, I might have 150 pages written, right? And it's like, okay, I've written three pages in this sequence, and it is nowhere near enough. This should have taken up more time and space, and it's really rushed, and it really isn't fleshed out, and people aren't going to understand that it's important. And I've written 20 pages of this sequence, and I have the opposite problem. Which I don't know if sequencing it out that way would help per se, but I don't go through and divide it up into 10 sequences before I do that scriptment. And sometimes even before I do that full page. And so then when I get to the end, I find that there's sometimes a little bit of imbalance. It's all there, but it, you know, parts are way too skinny and parts are way too fat. And then it's sort of re-adjudicating where all that stuff goes.

I've been speaking for years about this biopic that I've written, and I have written two different treatments and now three different drafts of the script. And from that very first treatment up until the most recent draft of the script, the major turning points and sequence questions has not changed. There's been a lot of rearranging within them. Plot lines come and go, point of view shifts, reordering, you know, characters coming and going or becoming more or less prominent or their story is moving from one sequence to another. But I think if you do that early work around what the story is, and I guess when I'm saying story and emphasising it, I guess the plot, how does the plot take your characters through a journey that expresses what you're wanting to talk about to your end? I don't think those major beats are going to change that much. And I think, Stu, that's the same for the horror movie we've written together.

We've done so many drafts of that but the major turning points have not they've they've moved within like a five to ten page ranges but can i suggest that that's partly a genre thing in terms of you say a biopic you talk about horror but if you're talking about sci-fi time travel or if you're talking about like some of these things are going to shift more within certain genres than others. Like I think some genres are just inherently going to lend themselves to those sorts of things having to flip more than most.

I mean, and this might be unique to my process, but if you end up reversing to like major turning points in your story, then something in your development process. I think went wrong, because that's like so key to how your story is told that you should know at an earlier stage, or at least that's how I would work. I cannot imagine suddenly going, well, what if my first act turning point and my lowest point were to flip?

I would say some genres have a rhythm inherent to them, and horror is probably one, action is probably another, but the rhythm of it dictates what the sequences are. Where science fiction, I don't think as a genre, is necessarily as driven by a particular kind of rhythm. You know, rom-com is very rhythmic, and I think we'll have a sequence structure that reflects the kind of rhythmic structures that we expect. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean by rhythm? Yeah. I think that's because under the surface, a lot of turning points are driven by character. They're the moment that the character is being changed by the plot, or the character is changing the plot in a big way, either way. So that you know that the inciting incident is so important because you know i've talked about it it's the the the breakdown of harmony or whatever the status quo in the world in roman juliet the status quo may include a pre quote-unquote pre-existing conflict but it's their decision to fall in love that kind of undoes that so i think when you're thinking about the character in the character journey you're going to be expressing it in turning points which is why i think the haig stuff is so useful and is worth writing out because otherwise you may get something make that is not as impactful as you think you can think about even you know what's so great about the the first act turning point in alien so that's after they got the distress call but you got face huggers on what's his face trying to get back in and you get the moment of people remember it as. Keeping them in quarantine. But she gets overruled by Ash, right? She doesn't actually get to enforce her will. She tries, and at, by Ash, the android. But that is a great turning point, because one, it says something about her character, two, it says something about his character, and three, their decisions collectively have shaped the course of the story. So, I agree with you 100% that if you're thinking about moving your turning points, it's because the character work and the way that impacts in the events of the story hasn't been as thought through, right? And, you know, we often have done that when we've replotted stories, Chas, where we're like, let's see what it's actually like if this character, like, I know this means we're going to replot, but what if character actually makes decision C? You know, if that actually is what they should do, then let's just see what that, and just follow that through. And then you're suddenly like, hmm, that is better.

Or what I just did in one of my, in the the feature that I'm actually working on when I was sort of at now granted it is an earlier phase so I think you're right you're still right Chaz but I think I'm still tossing back and forth quite a bit whether I need an additional character to make this thing work if I get to the end of my scriptment phase and find I need another character essentially a fifth character a lot of things might shift because of that yeah but it's also a hard genre which I just think is a little bit easier to do that if you if you throw a fifth character into a straight family drama you might might not shift a lot of those things if you throw it into a sci-fi you might shift some stuff a bit more significantly i can imagine where you've got like a not a chronological timeline that there might be more of that shifting stuff but then in if i was telling that kind of story i would spend even more time in cards and stuff so that i because it's about taking the audience on the journey that you want the audience to experience information as they receive it it almost becomes becomes even tighter and more restrictive. Yeah, I think the non-chronological timeline also, like, for example, it is a rom-com, so it's got these rhythms, but it's also a sci-fi. So if you have something like Palm Springs, you could have completely finished writing that and the first draft and said, wow, I actually need, because of the way that the whole film works, I need something else. And you could drop a whole 20 minutes or a series of sequences even into your, in between your second and third act and changed the structure of it overall.

But I imagine, like, even with Palm Springs, it's predominantly told from the male character's point of view. They would have known... While they could have done wildly different things between the turning points of his journey, I imagine the turning points, what they go is like, what's disrupting him is her going into the cave and her, you know, being in the loop with him. And then it's like them learning the loop together, you know, and those rom-com beats would have been very, I feel like, well-established. There'd have been a lot of shit moving around in between those.

I think that's pretty easy to diagnose in post, but you don't know that their first draft didn't tell both of their stories in parallel, because it might have, and then they might have realized, oh, this will be a major shift, yank all the first stuff and put it much closer to the end.

Yeah, but I still, again, maybe we're just talking about semantics here, but I still imagine those major beats, the things that I hang my story on at the very early stage would have stayed broadly the same, even if they're happening to both of them at the same time you're telling interweaving stories like right i think you're talking about your five acts being the same and i'm talking about your like 27 bullet points being quite different yes reordered yeah yeah a hundred percent and and i and i'm not talking about the five acts i think going to stew's point i'm talking about the questions being posed in an act or a sequence and how those questions get resolved those to me sure stay very much the same throughout the process but you know maybe this is me going i I don't understand how you guys think, therefore it must be wrong.

Sometimes you have 10 and you finish and you realize, I didn't need all of these. I throw one of them out.

Yeah. But I certainly think, coming back to the turning points thing, I'm going to walk back slightly what I said, which is, oh, I will subdivide in between the turning points into sequences. I don't think that is strictly necessary. I do it because, particularly say with like a second act, the gap in 2A is probably, I know it sounds really mathematical. Bye. You know, it's about division of labor. You're talking about like 25 pages or something, right? Like that is just a daunting amount of material without a good structure. So if you can break that up and go into kind of two roughly 12 page sequences, then you know what you're doing there. But coming back to how I would outline at this stage or consider outlining at this stage, and I've done it and I've got other people to do it, is literally do like stage one, blah, blah, blah, bullet points. What is the turning point? point. Because of the turning point, this leads us to stage two or, you know, act two A, whatever. I like Hague's calling them stages. And then these are the things that happen and leads to this turning point. And I want to make sure that there's, you know, the five turning points in there, you know, because that's the one every 20-ish minutes. It's going to be the- and it's kind of the rhythm that most audiences know about. And I think you can embellish beyond that in terms of the skeleton and start breaking that into sequences. But I think that's what you want to know. Well, I want to know.

Well, I think with one of our projects, too, where we've done quite a bit of development on it and we got sidetracked, but we got to a treatment and I don't know if you feel this way, but I think we have too much story. And so, I'm looking forward to still not going to pages, like breaking it back down to cards. We've got a much firmer idea of what we're wanting to say. And even in the most recent version, we were still talking about, can we take these two beats and make them one beat? Can we combine that into one event where both those things happen and thereby, therefore, get rid of that sequence? Like, there was just, it just felt like we had too much story to the point where we're even talking about, should this be a miniseries, you know?

You make it an Australian television series.

Ta-da! But we're both keen to make it a two hour feature script because it can be that. It could be an eight hour, you know, in the same way that I feel like almost all American miniseries are just like unedited features. Not to say they're not super entertaining, but they're just like, we can just do whatever we want. We're just going to indulge in this story for six hours longer than is necessary to tell the story. But we have to focus on making that entertaining.

Yeah.

So, at this stage, after I have an outline, I would consider, and we have done it in the the past, writing like a four-page prosy version of the story. Because I think for me, what I'm constantly trying to do is just tell the story in a bunch of different ways as it slowly gets more and more embellished. So, the story that was, oh, it's about a bunch of guys that are willing to sacrifice the weakest member in order to give themselves some kind of supernatural strength, that story becomes a little bit more embellished. And so, I think going into a prosy version is a a low-cost way of doing it. It's also got the benefit is that you can convince people to read it and give you feedback, right, in a way that an outline is a lot – is just a boring fucking document. An outline's really useful. One of the great tests of an outline is the, you know, the Matt Stone and Trey Parker, therefore, but, you know, you can kind of look at it and go, here's a bullet point, therefore, this happens, therefore, this happens, but this happens, therefore, this happens. Like, you can do that kind of analytical thing. You can kind of do- with the turning points, you can kind of use an outline to go, is this a turning point because it's a decision that the character is making, or is this a turning point because it's something that's happening to the character, right? And then you can sit there and go, oh, this has happened too many times in a row where they're losing, or stuff's happening to them that now it feels like they need to take charge. Like, you can kind of do that larger- Analysis on an outline, but it doesn't tell you what the experience is, where I think a prose version of the story, particularly with a feature, but you can do it with a- I've certainly read one or two pages for pilots, can give you an idea of, is this flowing as a narrative? It's as chunky as it would be. I mean, you know, great friend of the podcast, Stephen Cleary, who will be back, just has gone and metered in so many synopses for stuff that I've worked on with him, where it's like, you're writing one page, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, write two pages now, Now gives you some notes to another two pages, write four now, then write eight. Like he just basically doubles it every time until you get to about, I don't know if that was your experience with him, but until he got to about eight or 12 was when he was like, that's enough. But he just basically started with one, went to two, two to four, four to eight. The other thing I'm going to bridge what I was talking about with the prose version. The other thing I think about, and I know you don't write a logline mail and I know Chaz doesn't. I do find them useful at an early stage. Like a paragraph. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's simply because it's a useful pitching tool in terms of like this adds to my slate. I can talk to people, get feedback, see what is grabbing people's attention. But there's a form that I will use that I'll probably start. So, I will one, write a log line at the early stage with a four-page treatment, partly because I could be like, hey, producer, or hey, friend, this is an idea. This is the log line. Can I send you the four-page treatment? it, right? So, it's a way- I'm not going to just send four pages out of the blue. So, I will do a traditional logline. I do like the when a something happens, this person must blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll add maybe something about the midpoint. But the other structural thing that I like, I don't know how I came up with it, but I've been using it to a bit of success. Is a format that is basically starts with the- I think maybe it comes from like pitching publishing bibles it's like this is a genre and format set in world you know this is a science fiction set in the near future where blah blah blah blah blah then i would talk about main character or characters that will sometimes be the logline and then end up it is a story about theme so you know the the story we've been talking about with the the men you know this is a supernatural um drama set in the world of men's wellness retreats it's about a character called edmunds a self-defined warrior archetype who has to determine who in his group will need to be sacrificed to the gods for them to reclaim their power. It's a story about masculinity and the prices that must be paid. But you see how that kind of gives you an idea of what the story is, who the character is, and kind of what it is. I think that is something that you could possibly use at an early stage. Is it telling you whether or not you've got a feature? No, but it's telling you enough about the concept, the four pages after it. Just before I finish on the logline, and I've made you do this as homework, I do this as homework, I give this as homework, write log lines from the point of view of other characters, right? What does the log line look from the point of Hans Gruber? You know, when a world-class thief breaks into a New Year's Eve party under the guise of being a terrorist, his plans are disrupted by a blue-collar cop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? You kind of do it from the point of view of your main characters, because it's actually going to tell you whether you've got enough story for them, particularly your antagonist, but your secondary characters as well. Right. Obviously, it's going to be lumpy. You know, I know people hate writing log lines, but I just ignore the whole 25 word kind of fucking bullshit. Or, you know, oh, we're looking for an irony when, you know, a screenwriter slash food lawyer. It's like, yeah, let's just don't overcook it. But I think it is really useful from thinking about the story from another character perspective. And that is a really useful tool for me about whether I've got a character with enough juice to drive their own part of the story.

Yeah, I think that's a really useful tool for writing. I think my shortcut for me in terms of trying not to do that so early is I usually try to pick to establish stories that have something to. So my current feature, I'm sort of like it's inside Llewellyn Davis if it was written by Stephen King. Like that's my way of pitching it or trying to explain to someone what it's about or sell it. But it's not really, it's not a logline of my story per se. That's the, it's more of the elevator pitch.

Oh, yeah. In the Elevator Pitch version, I've used the general format in-world characters. It's about theme. There is a version of that where I add comps at the end where you'd go, you know, it is a story about blah inside Llewellyn de Ayla Smith's blah, right? Just to help kind of solidify that in your head. And it's a development tool, not necessarily a kind of a plotting tool. But I think the thing is, it's hard to plot if you don't know what your story is about and who your characters are.

I mean, the thing that I like about the project that you've been talking about, Sue, is that we're deliberately thinking about developing it as a short film, right? Because that's something that we want to be able to go out and make as a kind of proof of concept. But as we're developing the short film, we're starting to go, is there enough fuel here for a feature? Not to say that we will write one, but it could be that we were thinking of it as a- as a concept or a proof of concept for a different feature. And it could be that it ends up being a proof of concept for the feature version of itself.

Yeah. Or both. I mean, it's just thematically ties into a bunch of stuff that we're interested in. So, I'm going to quickly summarize what I would do next. We possibly talked about this with Stephen Cleary on the development thing, but there's usually two interim stages that are a bit amorphous for me before going to pages. One, which is more of a bullet point outline, and then one, which is more of a scriptment or or a scene breakdown, depending on the level of formality. I do like bullet points for an earlier version of an outline because it can be more technical, but I would take that like bigger, like the macro one I was talking about and go into almost like, almost scene level, more detail than a- I mean, we had one for Tooth and Claw, didn't we, Chaz? Kind of before we had the scriptment, we kind of had like bullet points.

I think we did a beat outline, didn't we?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you could call it a beat outline, I guess. And often what's good about that is you can lead, like, annotate a bunch of stuff. This happens, this happens, this happens, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then after that, I would consider going to excretement.

Astuism has actually, I think, led to an actual coined word that I will use in the future.

Instead of vomit draft, it's even more evocative. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And look, that's the informal version. And then the formal version would be a scene breakdown. So, effectively, it's, is this for us or is someone else going to read this? And that's got a different tonality in terms of how you write. But that is definitely at the stage I will know whether or not I've got enough juice for pages because I'm solving most of the story problems. And one of the big things I talk about, and I think it's really important, important is when you kind of actually summarise dialogue, don't just go, right, they talk, do something like, you know, Stuart lectures Chas on screenwriting processes, Chas gets prickly, he knows what he's doing, is something that I would write in a, a script and that's actually really useful you could take that idea of writing a summary of what your dialogue scenes are before you even write the dialogue because you're actually going to be talking about the the subtext of it without it being you know when i when i first started writing subtext was like almost like symbolism and everything stuff came out trying too hard subtext is just what characters want and how do they try to get it and what is their response to that the kind of stuff we've been talking about for for ages to your to your point sir like mel you referenced your bullet points being doing something similar, like, or those scenes that you skip over, you want to write the intention or the effect of the scene.

And I know a member of our writer's group, I mean, I don't usually write beat outlines, but he does. And it's a good format, like, write the slug line for your scene, write a one sentence summary of what happens in the scene, and then write a one sentence summary of like, why is that scene kind of important either either to the character or the story.

And I think the other thing that you can do sometimes is note, it's an additional step, but it's sometimes helpful if you're trying to figure out with your outline is whether you are ending the scene. For example, if you have one main protagonist, or if you have whatever on an up or a down, like is the character going up? Is the character going down? And if you've got like eight downs in a row, probably need to look at that and vice versa. And it can just give you an idea of the overall trajectory and how your flow or like I think Stu was saying earlier, a rhythm was going but also just an idea of you know do you need more do you need less is it too repetitive before you're writing them all we're you know spending a lot of time on five page scenes that are all serving the same purpose i had to do with the biopic i a previous draft i'd written every single scene deliberately in the point of view of the main character to really create empathy with that character but that meant that there was never any dramatic irony irony or tension.

The audience was never ahead of the character. They were always either with or behind the character. And so, what I ended up doing was when I went back to cards is in Arc Studio Pro, I did a color code of every single scene just on before or ahead or behind the, character just to visually go, oh, I've got like four of those in a row. How can I change that up? up.

So here's, I guess, the big question, how do you know at this stage, you've got a outline or a scriptment or an excretement or a scene breakdown or some longer form document, how do you know you're ready to go to, pages? Is it that you just literally have it?

I- Look, I'm different from both of you, but just in terms of, like, addressing people who are in Anders' situation, get to 40 scenes, 40 bullet points of what happens in a scene.

Instead of not 40 bullet points per scene, I mean, 40 bullet points, one for each scene.

Yeah. It doesn't necessarily- In terms of like, do I have enough fuel to keep going, I think that can- That question can be answered much earlier in this process, as it is for all all of us. Because if you know that you've got 40 scenes, that's a feature.

And look, I think just to get that earlier, because we kind of skipped over the connective tissue, it's like, oh, just write an outline. It's the therefore and the but. It's the chain of the cause and effect that you're looking at. And that includes obstacles, things going wrong. Character comes to the door. The door is locked. What do they do now? Right? And it's finding those obstacles that become believably out of the the world something we haven't talked about a lot but i i do a lot in my brainstorming is actually talk about the given circumstances for the of the world right and how that impacts the characters right understanding where they're coming from but i think sometimes i see that as the floor of the plotting people have basically characters that are unchallenged the the force of opposition isn't strong enough and so you do have to do some development on that i think because certainly that's when i've run out of stuff it's like oh this is this is too easy for the character they They can just walk right in, you know, and you can just surprise audiences. There's the great moment in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, you know, where he spins, the Robert Downey Jr. Character spins the revolver. He's questioning someone. He's like, I'm, you know, he's playing Russian roulette and he fires and it's the first bullet and kills the guy that they're interrogating. And he's like, oh, fuck, what now?

Who taught you math?

Now you have a whole massive other side arc to explore, which is funny and which sets up other things and which, yeah, if you didn't have that, the scene ends and then, you know, you've jumped 20 minutes further.

Yeah, I mean, the nose that you have to develop, Whatever your plotting stage is, whether it's as formal as an outline or scene breakdown, I really think outlining is the plotting, kind of the real detail. But it might be at cards, is developing that nose, that instinct of like how to actually challenge a character to make diversions. You know, they're educated or they're thwarted. There is something that sends them in a new direction. There is a question that the audience asks if the character is in pursuit of something that is answered by the end of the scene, and that answer ends up setting up the new scene, right? We talked about this in the scene questions episode, and I do think it is related to plotting, and you can actually write your plots out like that. I wouldn't necessarily think of it from an audience point of view at that stage. It's going to be more like a character has an intent and this is how they are going about something and this is the consequence of it, usually because of another character doing something, right? That's what's going to make it feel character driven is that the characters are thought or educated because of someone else, not because of a some other thing. This may sound a little bit guru-y, but it's kind of the basics, right? But yet that's where the plotting comes from.

Yeah, again, I just want to reiterate the point that I was making earlier. I think there are stories out there where a, you know, Mel, you mentioned a ghost story where, maybe a five-page document is all you need to go out and make the feature, right? So, we are assuming Western storytelling, a page a minute, they are common and they exist for a reason. But it's not- I just want to say this isn't like the only way to prove narrative fuel. Like, maybe some of Anders' scripts are only 70 pages long, but you could make a fucking crack of 120 minute feature out of it. But, you know, a film like Leave No Trace, for example, where there's just a lot of silence.

Yeah, I think these are really broad sort of generalizations, but it's that you learn the basic rules and you follow them a few times, then you know when and how to break them and what works for you, et cetera.

Yeah, I mean, that leads us to the last thing, which is the screenplay itself, that maybe the reason that your screenplay is short isn't actually because of your story, but the way of this story is being expressed on the page in terms of capturing the experience, which is something we have talked a lot over the years with Drive Zero, but something I keep on thinking about, which is kind of making sure that the screenplay, this is what I want, that the screenplay writing style is reflective of the intention of the film that we want to make. That's a modern invention, right? There are screenplays historically that are significantly longer than the finished films, right because they're actually literally using almost like as the bible for everything goes into the screenplay this is the document that's got captures or any aaron's and then there's oh really oh you just mean in terms of the dialogue being so fast yeah like his scripts are all like 200 pages long or something i'm talking like kubrick era yeah this is what the buttons on this wardrobe you know piece looks like yeah yeah so yes we're talking about creating a screenplay in a current style. So, you've got nothing else to say about how you know when you're ready to go to script. You just want to talk about what happens when you've got your script and you've read it and go, oh, fuck.

I mean, I guess the reason why I was interested in that question is, Getting to 120 pages is, like you said, Stu, it's one step, right? I live by the first draft of anything is shit. So, I feel like all these development processes that we have, I just want to put them in the context of, you know, the three of us as writers appear to be good at generating sufficient story to get us to finish a feature. And we've got a good instinct for what that is. But that development process may have weaknesses. I've got, there's one writer in particular who she often comes to me and trusts me to give her notes on her work, but I'm usually routinely very brutal because she must have a very not plot oriented system for generating work and wants to iterate more through drafts of the screenplay than iterate in the development process. So from what I can gather, she will just like start sitting down and has got some vague make ideas and we'll just write out a script and then start trying to figure out what the story is and how it should work better, like after having a draft.

And she's not the only person I know who likes that. I just find it exhausting. And I guess maybe it's because I love, you know, what I love when I'm in the zone for writing a script. You know, I love that, you know, sitting down three, you know, writing three to five pages a day and I'm just basically basically improvising the scene in my head and I know everything that is going on. And so, I'm just in this joy of being with these characters and then being on the tips of my fingers as opposed to like my brain being in a different analytical mode. Maybe it's just, it's a different gear that I have all these analytical processes early so I can just be in the creative zone through a certain kind of creation. For someone who is like, just lives in in that world, then that maybe they have to kind of work backwards from it. So, have you had any kind of consistent problems with your first drafts?

I think the two, I wouldn't even necessarily call them problems because I think they are part of the process. But I think the two things that I find when I hit the end of my first drafts, and you guys have read some of my first drafts, so maybe you will actually have more or different insight into this than I will. But I think the two main things that I find really need fixing when I hit the end of my first draft are, A, the thing I said before about like parts are way too skinny, parts are way too fat. And I have to figure out which that is and what I didn't need this scene here. Theme, you know, it doesn't advance the theme. It doesn't advance the character. It doesn't whatever. I've got three other themes to do the same thing. Or, wow, this thing that I know is really important and I have in my bullet point and I have the plot happens in one page. And if you blink, you miss it. So it's that what needs fleshing out, what needs slimming down. And I think the second thing that I find is that because I tend to go somewhat linearly, and sure, I have an idea of the character, I have a character sheet, I have a character page before I start. But as you're writing and as you're realizing, oh, this actually needs to happen here and these characters are interacting in different ways that weren't quite ready or, oh, I realized here if this character does Y, especially, I guess maybe backing up, if you have one main protagonist. Maybe you realize, okay, they feel very different in the second half of this script than they do in the first because something really significantly changed while I was writing it. I've updated the character sheet, but now I realize the whole first half, everything they're doing makes no sense. So then you need to make sure to go back and rework that. The other thing that I think really happens if you have an ensemble piece is that either all of the characters sound quite the same, which is a first draft problem to some extent, but also really leads to a few issues if someone's reading them in terms of trying to figure out exactly what they want. How are they serving the plot differently? How are they coming into conflict? And so trying to make sure that you can really separate out what they're doing and what they sound like on the page. And that's a big first draft sort of issue that I bump against. I know who they are. I know what they want. I know what they need to do, but they sound quite alike on the page. So a lot of times if I'm sending that first draft out, that's something that I've really got to maybe go back through and massage again, or at least, you know, warn people.

And not to say that in any of these are answers to these questions, that this is something that our development process should change to fix. I think it's just highlighting to anyone listening to this going, oh, I'm going to try the MEL development process. I think it's just knowing that there are trade-offs in when you choose to go to pages and how you, what your process is to getting there.

Yeah. I mean, ultimately the most important part of the development process is getting you to the end. Yep.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you fix it. Because if anyone's writing a perfect first draft, what do you need us for?

Yeah. I mean, look, for me, it's just that, and I've seen it happen with other writers, so I don't think I'm alone. It's just that idea that when I first started, it would take me three drafts to get to what now I get into in one draft. And that's part of being a professional is if I'm hired or when I'm hired to write a draft, I can deliver it. I know how how long it takes, I can plan around it. I can kind of be all those things which are professional aspects of being a screenwriter, which aren't necessarily about the art of being a screenwriter, but it's something about the craftsmanship of being a screenwriter, you know. And so, I think for me, just having these processes is the way of doing that. So, I don't do what I used to do, you know, and like. I'm going to open a bottle of wine and just keep on typing until I fall asleep and then spend the next week feeling anxious and stuff. It's like, you know, I just am more controlled in that way in how I do those things. In terms of consistent problems for me, because no one asked.

Because you were rambling on about a bottle of wine.

I was going to ask, but you naturally segued there yourself.

I think similar kind of consistent issues is either like getting a first act that balances pacing with information, like as in inefficient first act. So, does all the character work while also kind of moving at a clip? That I find is a hard problem to solve. That to me is kind of a hard problem. I can plot, but it might be, you know, this plot's good, but it's 35 pages. Now, how can you make it 25 pages? Can you be more efficient while keeping as much of that? That I find is kind of the bit of the hard problem now that we're kind of working for. And the other thing I think for me is the clarity of theme. And I will say that I have a very expansive idea of theme and it's like, theme is the organizing principle of a piece of art. But so, naturally, people look at it and go, well, yeah, but what do you- like, they're wanting something that's a little bit more- not definitive, because I think it's- the other things can exist, but something that's kind of like the clearer idea of why something is in the film. So, they can come away and go, ah, this is- this is what this is. You know, the- beware the fear of being understood. Understood, which is a way too confusing phrase for what it's actually trying to say, which is that I think there's a certain point as an artist where you're actually trying to make things unnecessarily complicated. And in fact, you should just go for clarity. This is what it's about.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Chaz, what do you think your main thing is when you come to the end of your first draft? Like, what are your main things where you've now experienced, oh, this is something that I am used to being something I need to go shore up? up.

Look, I've said this so many times and I've even said it once already. So, two main things is one, people don't empathise with my main character the way I would like them to, or they think of my main character very differently to the way that I think of them. And the other is that perhaps as a connected or direct result of that, they don't buy certain character choices or plot changes. So, then it's about me going back and fixing those things. But I find it easier to fix those things after having a draft written.

100%.

I can't even identify that they're going to be problems at the outline stage. Like all these short documents, like Stu, like you said yourself, they are not good at revealing character.

Not in action. Like you can write... Interviews with characters, you can write letters, you can write biographies, but ultimately the only way the audience is going to be experienced character is in your film. So, everything is kind of theory crafting. I mean, maybe have you considered listening to episode 55 of Draft Zero on character motivations? I heard that was pretty good.

I should go back and listen to it.

So, if you want an episode dedicated to your personal screenwriting challenges, challenges, you should consider becoming a Patreon. In particular, I would like to thank Anders for suggesting this topic.

It was a lot of fun, Anders. It made me write down my process and thoughts about my process and bullet points and everything.

I mean, all our Patreons bring you more Draft Zero more often, whether you want more three-hour podcasts on screenwriting is up to you uh but in special thanks to our top tier patreons lily alexandra malay jen thomas randy jesse sandra theis and krob thank you mel for uh you know staving off your vaccine induced, malaise i want to say this is the shortest podcast i think i've ever been on with you at least yeah wow we we had a run of really short ones for a while oh is that because you didn't invite me on, i hope you all feel like arguing with either stew or myself about anything on this episode or anything in general and you can find many ways of getting in touch with us at our website at draft-zero.com.

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