Failing Better
You might want to check out the posts over at Doris Egan’s LJ. She’s been a writer on (inter alia) Tru Calling, Skin, Smallville, Dark Angel, and (now) House.
On the downside, she only posts about twice a year.
On the upside, it’s all good, including techniques, behind-the-scenes stories, and a picture of the whiteboard laying out the last season of Angel.
Enjoy.
Dear Bill
Everyone I know adores Has Been. Is there any chance that you could take it on tour? I, and many other people that I know, would gladly pay good money to hear your inimitable vocal stylings live.
Also, while walking home tonight I could not get your rendition of “Just the Way You Are” out of my head, despite the fact that you have never recorded it.
I honestly fear that if you were to actually sing this song, the world would end, as God’s purpose for the Earth would have been fulfilled.
It may be worth it.
Piers
Another draft of Persephone put in the metaphorical drawer, and it’s time to start writing my second feature.
Same rules as before: two months to commit a first draft to paper and never mind the quality, feel the width. I’m facing off against William and Christine, who will keep me honest.
I highly recommend having a competition with someone, if you’re having problems getting motivated. Anyone that doesn’t complete their screenplay on time gets mercilessly teased. It’s just like going to a screenwriting class, only it doesn’t cost you any money.
As a change from tentacle-based Horror, I’ve decided to do a UK Heist Movie. Or possibly a Caper, it’s difficult to be sure at this point.
Basic concept down, it’s time to move to the corkboard.
I discovered the joys of the corkboard about three years ago. To those who haven’t experienced its awesome power, give it a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much easier it makes your life.
You will require:
– A large corkboard (one)
– 3″x5″ index cards (lots)
– A wall to hang the board on (one)
– Drawing pins (lots)
First, hang the corkboard on a wall in an area of your house where you pass by every day. I like to keep it out of my work area, say in the living room. That way it’s always in my periphery, churning away in the subconscious.
Got a scene, or a moment, or a fragment of dialogue? Scribble it down on an index card, and pin it to the board. It doesn’t matter where.
Every time you think of a scene, stick it on the board. The fact that you’re pinning it onto a board soon makes it a sequence. And that suggests other scenes, and other sequences.
The joy of the corkboard is that it’s easy to change. You’ve not committed anything to paper. Just a quick scribble on an index card – the work of a moment to replace. And because it’s easy to change, you’re not precious about it.
There’s no “I can’t lose that, I spent days working on it and it’s my favourite scene.” It can’t be. It’s just a scribble on a piece of card. Ten seconds to write a new one.
Tops.
So the corkboard allows you to rapidly improve your work by trying things out and discarding them. If a sequence doesn’t work, you just pull the cards out and move them about. Scenes can move from the middle to the front to the end of the story at will, split into two or combine into one. Or be thrown away entirely – on my Enterprise spec I went through three completely different A-stories before I found one that worked.
You want to be moving cards around as much as possible. Try it different ways. You can always move the cards back.
How many cards do you need? Well if you’re working on a TV spec, get a hold of a couple of scripts for the show you’re speccing and count the scenes. Then just duplicate that.
For a film, somewhere between 40-60 scenes is about right. I tend to write short scenes, so I like to have around sixty cards on the board. For Persephone, sixty cards worked out at about a hundred and five pages.
When you’ve got the basics of the story worked out and inspiration is starting to run thin, you can set your left-brain to work.
Scribble a little A/B/C in the corner of each card, depending on whether the scene advances the A-story, B-story, and so on. Is there a chunk where only one story’s moving? Add some thematic tension or irony by introducing a scene from a different story to counterpoint. Add or discard subplots at will.
Get some coloured pencils or crayons, and assign a colour to each character. Now put a little square of colour in the corner of every card that character appears in.
Now you’ve got a visual cue to see what everyone’s doing when. Characters only appearing towards the end of the film. Characters who disappear half way through. If you need to cut away to a different scene, it’s easy to see who hasn’t been around lately.
What you can see, you can fix.
The corkboard makes the structure of your film easy to see.
And that makes it easy to fix.
It has hardly touched the mainstream media, and troubles not the UK, but apparently there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
It goes like this:
Every year the President of the United States and the White House Press Corps have a black tie dinner. Speeches are made. The President does a little comedy routine. Someone else does a little comedy routine.
Snug.
This year, Stephen Colbert was invited to speak. His routine directly attacked the President and the Press. It was scathing. Also one of the most uncomfortable things you’ll ever watch.
They were expecting light-hearted comedy. They got something else entirely.
Torrent here. Bush’s routine starts 40 minutes in, Colbert follows immediately after.
For those of you stuck in the 20th Century, C-Span has the whole thing in RealMedia, or you can access WMP and QT versions here.
I highly recommend you watch.
The bad news is that Sky One have cancelled Hex and Dream Team.
The good news is that the programming budget freed up by this is going to make a new series of The Prisoner.
If you haven’t seen The Prisoner already, go and buy it now. I’ll wait.
Back? Good.
While you’re waiting for the DVDs to arrive I’ll tell you this:
The Prisoner is about a secret agent who retires.
He wakes up in The Village, a place where people who hold secrets are sent.
The Village is run by one side or the other.
The series about a man who will not break or bend. Ever.
It’s one of the all-time cult classic shows. And there’s a reason for that – superb acting, superb writing, superb direction.
Facing up to that legacy? That takes cojones, and big ones.
It’s not taking a show that people remember from their childhood but that died unloved and remaking it, like Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica. You’re talking about remaking one of the shows that’s respected by just about everyone that’s seen it.
The new series has the potential to be unutterably brilliant or unutterably awful. I don’t see that it can fall in the middle.
I wouldn’t want to call it one way or another at this point, but damn, that’s a brave move.
And perhaps more than any other show, this one will live or die by the quality of the writing.
It’ll be interesting to watch.
It had to happen.
The Snakes On A Plane Role-playing Game.
“The snakes are always released at the midpoint of a trans-oceanic flight. This is a necessary rule, as otherwise the pilot could just land the plane and get rid of the snakes.”
Nintendo Revolution.
Great name for a console.
Sets out the brand values nicely, tells you what’s going on.
And now they’ve changed it to…
Wii.
That’s right, Wii.
ARE YOU PEOPLE COMPLETELY INSANE?
For the love of God, WHY?
Bill Martell has a blog.
Eighteen of the films he’s written have been produced. Not just sold, mind, actually committed to celluloid.
He knows whereof he speaks.
Go visit.
For those not in the know, Gilmore Girls is a show about two women, a mother and her daughter with only sixteen years separating them.
It’s been running for six years now, and has performed variably in the ratings. But it’s done well enough to be renewed year-on-year, and a six year run is nothing to be sneezed at.
This year, showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino asked for a few things. A director on staff. A two-year deal. And an extra staff writer or two. These are not unreasonable requests.
The show was renewed.
Their contract was not.
It makes interesting reading.