John August

QandA

Welcome to the O.C., bitch

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkWhen you have a character talking on the phone who is not in the scene that the audience is watching (e.g. Bill is in a phone booth talking to Jim who we only hear but never see) — do you use (O.S.) or (O.C.) or something else?

— RMT
Los Angeles

I would use O.S., which means “off screen.” I think the distinction is supposed to be that O.C. (“off camera”) applies when the speaker is physically in the same space as the person he’s talking to, but just not on camera, while O.S. is when speaker and listener are in different places.

Your case is definitely the latter. It would look like this:

Bill holds up a one-sec finger while he answers the payphone.

BILL

Ni hao.

JIM (O.S.)

Where the hell are you? He’s waking up, and I’m out of demerol.

I don’t think the distinction between the two terms is all that useful. In fact, I never use O.C., even in situations where it would probably apply — I just use O.S., and no one is ever confused.

I can’t say for certain what my aversion to O.C. is. It may be that on a subconscious level, I know that the “C.” stands for “camera,” and I try to never refer to the camera itself. I think it takes the reader out of the story, reminding them that what they’re reading is just a script.

However, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with O.C. — most readers will know what it means. So if it floats your boat, by all means use it in appropriate situations. Which does not include this one.

When should a writer become a corporation?

Film Industry, QandA

questionmarkMy writing partner and I have sold a few projects, with, hopefully, a few more to come. The question is, at what point should we incorporate into a film company? Before we’ve sold the next project or after? Once we’re more established as a team? When we start making greater than a certain amount of money per year? What are the perks and drawbacks to making such a move?

–Dara
Los Angeles

Most screenwriters who find themselves making a living at the craft end up incorporating at some point — as do actors, directors, and other relatively well-paid professions in the film industry. I became a corporation shortly after Go.

The idea is that the studios don’t hire you directly. Rather, the studio makes a deal to “borrow” your services from a corporation that you’ve created. These one-person corporations are called “loan-outs,” because loaning out your time and talent is all they really do.

What’s the point? Well, there are two main advantages.

The first is financial. Because the studio is paying you as a corporation, rather than as an individual, it’s easier to deduct business expenses, such as office space, assistants and computers. Your corporation can set up a pension plan for its sole employee: you. You can also avoid paying personal income tax on the money for a longer period of time. (Though you do eventually have to pay it.)

The second advantage is liability. Let me first invoke my I’m Not a Lawyer Disclaimer — so don’t bank on what I’m saying. But the corporation can help shield your personal assets (your house, your car, your toothbrush) from lawsuits that might come up relating to your screenwriting career. If I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, it’s because I never, ever want to be sued.

The only real drawbacks of incorporating is the expense and the additional paperwork — quarterly statements and such. Although some writers manage to keep up with it themselves, I couldn’t imagine doing it without a business manager and an accountant. (Which are not-insignificant expenses.)

As for what point it makes sense to incorporate, the rule of thumb I heard was when your annual income consistently exceeds $200,000 per year, it’s time to form a loan-out. But that was 1999, so who knows what the current figure is.

My suggestion would be to talk with your attorney, and get his advice. He’s the one who would actually be filing the paperwork with the state to get it all set up.

Also, if you’re living outside the U.S., all bets are off. You’ll need to find someone familiar with the specific rules of your country. For instance, Ireland has amazing tax breaks for writers. I suspect becoming a corporation there would be a terrible idea — but you’d need an expert to tell you.

What format should I send my script in?

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI’ve just finished my first script and a few people who I’d like to impress have asked me to send it to them over email. My question is, what is the proper format for sending scripts through email? Do I attach it as a Final Draft document? Convert it to a Word document? Something else I don’t know about? Thanks.

–Ryan
Los Angeles

Since you can’t count on your friends having the right version of any given program, your best bet is to convert it to a .pdf document. Both Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter can do this pretty easily.

In Screenwriter, choose “Print…” from the File menu, then choose “PDF (Adobe Acrobat) File” from the “Print To:” pop-up menu. Screenwriter gives you the option to make bookmarks from all the scene headings in the file, which is helpful.

In Final Draft, simply choose “Save as PDF…” from the File menu. One caveat: in some versions of Final Draft, the .pdfs generated this way are huge.

As an alternate for Mac OS X, you can choose “PDF” from the main print dialog box, which bypasses the program and grabs the real information that would be sent to the printer. This system-wide ability of Mac OS X is a godsend; I use it all the time.

Almost everyone I know uses .pdfs these days to turn in scripts. You can pretty much count on them printing out properly, and it saves a lot of hassle dealing with couriers and photocopiers.

What’s the difference between Hero, Main Character and Protagonist?

QandA, Story and Plot

questionmarkI have a supporting character that seems to fill a far greater purpose
than I originally anticipated. The supporting character fits
Wikipedia’s definition of Hero. However, your definition says hero and main character are synonymous.

In my story, the protagonist is the main character; it’s his story. But everything is affected by this supporting character’s possession of “character far greater than that of a typical person.”

Is it wheels off to have a main character and protagonist not be the hero
in the end? Do you think the audience will feel cheated by a decision
like this?

— Trey
Dallas, TX

We’re venturing into Dramatic Theory 101, so if you’re the type who begins squirming in your seat when professor-types talk about Joseph Campbell and character arcs, you can save yourself a lot of frustration by stopping after the following sentence:

In most cases, “Hero,” “Main Character,” and “Protagonist” are the same character.

Seriously, you can stop reading now. Here’s a nice article about raising orphaned squirrels.

Now, for readers who are still with me, let’s try to come up with more specific definitions for these three terms, and explore why they may apply to different characters in certain stories.

Hero
My incredibly-simplified definition: this is the character who you hope to see “win.” While it’s fine to think of Superman, or Aladdin, the hero doesn’t have to be noble, or courageous, or especially talented. As long as you’re rooting for him, that’s what matters.

Main Character
Just what it sounds like: this is the character who the story is mostly about. Confused? Often his or her name is in the title: Shrek, King Arthur, Tootsie, Citizen Kane.

Protagonist
The character who changes over the course of the story, travelling from Point A to Point B, either literally or figuratively. She learns and grows as the story progresses. Generally, Protagonists want something at the start of the tale, and discover they need something else.

Now, remember, most times, one character is all three of these things. For example, Ripley in Aliens is clearly the Hero (fighting the monster), the Main Character (the story is mostly about her), and the Protagonist (she reluctantly joins the trip, but ends up descending to the depths to fight for her “daughter”).

The same triple-aspect applies to Cher in Clueless, and John McClane in Die Hard. And it’s fine for movies to have “teams” of characters fulfiling these roles; in Charlie’s Angels, Dylan, Natalie and Alex are each Hero, Main Character and Protagonist.

However, in some stories, the Hero, the Protagonist and the Main Character are not all the same person. One very current example is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

There’s no question that Charlie’s the Hero. You want to see him win that Golden Ticket, and for only good things to happen to him. Likewise, he’s also the Main Character — though Wonka’s a close second. While Charlie recedes into the background a bit during the factory tour, he’s still the main focus of the movie’s storytelling energies. When the Narrator talks, it’s mostly to fill in details about Charlie.

However, Charlie is not a classic Protagonist. Charlie doesn’t grow or change over the course of the story. He doesn’t need to. He starts out a really nice kid, and ends up a really nice kid.

In terms of Classical Dramatic Structure, that leaves us one Protagonist short, which leads to the biggest change in the screenplay versus the book (or the 1971 film). In our movie, Willy Wonka is the protagonist. He grows and changes. We see his rise and fall, along with his nervous breakdown during the tour. Charlie’s the one who’s always asking — ever so politely, in the Freddie Highmore Whisper(TM) — the questions that lead to Wonka’s flashbacks upon his rotten childhood. (In Classic Dramatic terms, that makes Charlie an Antagonist. Not to be confused with a Villain. Are you sure you don’t want to read about some squirrels?)

As I pitched it to Tim: Charlie gets a factory, and Willy Wonka gets a family. It’s the whole want-versus-need thing. Charlie doesn’t need a factory. Wonka really needs a family. Otherwise, he’s going to die a giggling misanthropic weirdo.

Assigning labels

Playing “spot the protagonist” can be a good intellectual exercise — up to a point. As I started writing Charlie, asking “Who’s the protagonist?” led to some important decisions about the storytelling. But trying to pin firm labels on the characters in Go or Pirates of the Caribbean would only prove frustrating.

If a story works, it works — regardless of whether characters are fulfilling their archetypal roles. So be wary of trying to wedge characters into defined classes, simply because that’s how they “should” fit.