John August

QandA

Specs, treatments, and pitches

QandA, Treatments

What’s the difference: spec script, treatment, pitch and
outline?

–Fabio Bueno

These terms deal with different forms or stages of a screenwriter’s work.
A "spec script" is a completed screenplay, probably about 120 pages
long, that a writer wrote on his own. That’s the "spec" part, meaning
that no one paid the writer in advance to write it, just like a house built
on spec doesn’t have a buyer until it’s finished. Most writers’ first screenplays would be considered specs, because it’s rare for someone to hire a writer without
reading his or her work first.

"Treatment" and "outline" mean different things to different
people, and one writer’s treatment might be another’s outline. Regardless,
treatments and outlines map out a movie story, often as a precursor to writing
the full screenplay. An outline might be one page or might be ten; a treatment
could be three pages or could be thirty. James Cameron is known for writing "scriptments" that
are 70 pages or more. Ultimately, the length is less important than the function:
hopefully, an outline or treatment will help a writer spot problems early on,
so that the finished script will be better. Treatments are usually written
in paragraph rather than screenplay form, but there are no hard and fast rules.
Outlines are often more rudimentary, with just sluglines to refer to sequences.

A "pitch" is the oral presentation of a movie idea, where screenwriters
explain to studio executives that their movie is "Ghostbusters meets Titanic." God
knows why screenwriters – who spend most of their days typing in dark rooms
– are supposed to be able to suddenly become eloquent and impassioned hucksters,
but such are the weird realities of Hollywood. Ideally, a pitch should feel
like how you describe a really good movie to a friend who hasn’t seen it yet.
Casual but excited. Truthfully, I usually write every word I’m going to say
ahead of time, then internalize it so it feels like I’m ad-libbing.
There might be situations when you give a "written pitch," but truthfully,
that document would probably be an outline or treatment.

I’ve been on panels dedicated to the topic of pitching, and I’ve come to the
conclusion that it’s not a skill that can really be taught. It’s like stand-up
comedy. You have to learn through practice in front of actual human beings.

Story first, then characters

QandA, Story and Plot

I often find myself writing
half of a screenplay, and then throwing it on the scrapheap because my characters
have totally lost their direction. How do I build on my characters to help
me, by taking the story in their own direction?

–Colin

In your case, I would urge you to really figure out the end of your story
before you begin writing. Otherwise, it’s very easy to keep writing scene after
scene and end up with interesting characters in a mess of a story.

One trap that many beginning writers encounter – especially those who’ve read
some of the more notorious screenwriting books – is taking the truism "character-driven
story" too literally. Yes, the most successful and engaging movies are
those where the characters seem to be in control of their own destiny, where
every turn of the plot seems to derive from an element of their personality.

But it’s naïve to think that all a writer has to do is come up with amazing
characters and watch them go to work. The truth is, great characters are useless
unless we see them doing interesting things – and coming up with those things
is the screenwriter’s job. Don’t start writing until you know both who your
characters are and what they’ll be doing.

Voice-overs

Formatting, QandA

I have noticed that many films seem to depend on voice-overs,
especially films adapted from novels, I worry about overusing voice over in
my own script writing
because it seems like a kind of compensation when one can’t write the action
of a scene, or translate a character’s thoughts into a compelling visual. What
guidelines would you suggest for writing voice-overs?

–CIM

Voice-overs have a bad reputation for exactly the reasons you cite. Often,
one senses that that writer didn’t do a good job finding visuals and dialogue
to tell the story, and thus fell back on the voice-over as a crutch. And it’s
an especially pervasive problem with movies based on books, because the voice-over
is often the easiest way to translate prose to the screen.

My advice – nothing revolutionary – is to do everything you can to plan out
your story without using any voice-over at all. That means creating scenes that give the important information while moving the story forward, and using
images and moments in place of explanation.

But there are some instances where a voice-over is appropriate. BIG FISH,
which I adapted from a novel by Daniel Wallace, uses voice-over extensively,
because the movie is about unraveling the elaborate stories that a man tells.
Since storytelling is at the center of the movie, it makes sense that characters
will be narrating these tales, both on-camera and off.

What’s important is that voice-over should never replace actual scenes, nor
should it be redundant to what we do see. If a character opens a box and finds
a gun inside, the voice-over shouldn’t say, "When I opened the box, I
found a gun inside." That voice-over adds nothing, except an explanation
for the blind. But if the voice-over had said, "My uncle had many ways
of keeping us in check," then you would have changed the dynamic of the
scene in an interesting way.

Another important factor is which character is doing the voice-over. Whoever
you pick will automatically get elevated to Most Important Character status
unless you deliberately state otherwise (such as THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which
is narrated by a character outside of the world). Just make sure that whoever
gets voice-over power is worth the investment.

Finally, a pet peeve. In my opinion, movies should either use voice-over throughout
or not at all. If a movie starts with a voice-over, then never uses it again,
I get frustrated waiting for it to come back. Similarly, a voice-over that
just kicks in at the end is bewildering, because it seems to break the rules
of the movie I just watched.

More research

QandA, Writing Process

How important is the research process, and how long do you usually spend on
it?

–Adam Foster

The obvious (but not very helpful) answer is that it depends on the project,
and one’s definition of "research."

Most of the projects I’ve worked on haven’t involved a lot of research in
the classic sense, such as pouring through books, searching the web or interviewing
experts. For instance, neither CHARLIE’S ANGELS nor SCOOBY-DOO called for tremendous
historical or scientific accuracy. In fact, the best gauge of whether a detail
in your script works is usually the "Yeah, I’d buy that" believability
test — whether the average uninformed person off the street would accept that
item x could do y, or that historical event z coincided with with Korean War.
Even genuine, certified facts are useless if they fail the "Yeah, I’d
buy that" believability test.

Both Charlie’s and Scooby did call for tonal accuracy, by which I mean the
sense of being true to the spirit and rules of the original series. That meant
looking back at old episodes to remember the details that set them apart, be
it the hair-flips or the offsetting forces of Shaggy’s hunger and cowardice.
Technically, that’s research, but it doesn’t quite feel like it.

In the case of JURASSIC PARK 3, the producers wisely referred to an expert
paleontologist named Jack Horner, who was always on-call to answer dinosaur-related
questions. But it’s important to note that even he would fall back on a, "Yeah,
I’d buy that" test, although his opinion was much more informed than the
average person’s.

A few times, I have had to do serious research. A project I’ve been working
on for several years involves everything from evolutionary brain science to
cult formation, so that’s involved a lot of orders from Amazon and several
dinners with various smart people to discuss theories. Ninety-percent of what
I’ve learned won’t make it into the script, but the research process itself
has led to new questions and insights.

One technique I’ve found helpful for all my projects is keep a fat file for
each one, and add to it anything that strikes me as interesting or helpful.
Thus, my Fantasy Island file has articles and pictures of yachts, sea planes,
the Lincoln asssasination, various abstract sculptures and lots of scraps of
paper with ideas and snippets of dialogue. Again, most of it won’t be used,
but it’s the process that often helps ideas take shape.