What I accomplished by writing an hour a day for most of a year
My goal for the past few years has been to write for an hour a day, every day. If I write for an hour and want to keep going, then I can–there’s no upper limit aside from what the day demands in other obligations.
I was hit or miss for much of that time. Writing in the evening was hard after a long day of work and often there would be a rehearsal or a show or a social event that would sabotage me. For a while I tried waking up early and writing for an hour before my nine to five. I loved this because it liberated me for the rest of the day–my real work was done, the rest was easy. But waking up at 6am was not easy for me, mostly because I have trouble going to sleep before midnight.
But in July I quit my job to do freelance consulting instead and this freed up my schedule. So since then I’ve written almost every morning for 1-3 hours. I probably miss it once a week, maybe two if I’m traveling or have the flu.
I can’t recommend this method highly enough, if you can swing it. It trains your brain to be ready to write every day and the sheer force of habit means that I just sort of show up at the cafe near my house every morning, no matter what my mental state is (half-asleep, hungover, feeling good, hungry, whatever).
And at the end of the year, I like to look back at my writing folder on my laptop to see what I did, because at any given moment there’s a 75% chance that I feel like I haven’t accomplished much lately. This is what I produced this year (quality varies, of course):
- A full-length play (later adapted to a one-act play)
- Another short play
- A 20-page treatment for a screenplay
- A 20-page outline for a screenplay
- A 117-page screenplay (on the 2nd draft now, not quite complete)
- A 12-page short film
- A dozen or so sketches, plus many one-line jokes for The Radio Television Theater Hour
- A six-episode treatment for a web series (around 15 pages)
- Four short treatments for feature films
- Five or six short satirical pieces
- A hundred or so headlines for my (rejected) Onion News Network submission packet
- Assorted brainstorming, journal entries, and other ideas that went nowhere
I’m not putting this out there to show off. It’s not special, it’s just what happens when you show up every day. Give it a try.
My Adobe Premiere workflow for editing improvised scenes
I’ve been editing the first episode of my web series, Words Fail Me. The actors have a set of circumstances that they know in advance but all of the dialogue is improvised. It’s the first improvised video I’ve had to edit and it’s taken me a while to figure out a workflow that makes sense and isn’t insanely time-consuming.
I should say that this is the first time I’ve done this and that I’m still very new to editing in general, so your mileage may vary. But I’m putting it out there in case it helps someone.
With a scripted scene, you usually have 3-5 takes of the scene for each shot (wide, medium, CU, etc.). So basically the editing is about telling a predefined story using the different shots. But with this shoot, I had a general idea of where I wanted things to go, but the actor had a lot of input and free reign, within the basic constraints that I had laid out. All of that is to say that what we ended up with, story-wise, was a bit messy.
For this episode, we did a wide shot (without sound), a master (medium shot), and a CU. We did a few takes of the medium and CU, but there was no script and the dialogue changed. After each take, we took the parts of the story that we liked and emphasized those moving forward, but we didn’t make an effort to repeat the dialogue verbatim. The story beats stayed the same, but the dialogue changed. The beats within any given take also tended to change–some takes only had a few of the major story beats and they were often in a different order.
That’s challenging to edit because each take is a little different. With 45 minutes of footage, I would have to spend a lot of time searching for what I needed. So, I came up with a solution to break the process into smaller chunks and make it more manageable.
Here’s what I did to simplify the process:
- I reviewed the footage to get a general sense of how I wanted to structure the story (while putting together the trailer).
- In Word, I wrote an outline for the story, sketching out nine beats for the story, and then created sequences in Premiere for each story beat.
- I dragged all the clips onto the timeline and went through all of them, cutting them up into chunks that related to the various beats. If the first two minutes of a clip were related to beat 1, I would cut and paste that part of the clip to the Beat 1 sequence, and so on.
- By the end, I had nine sequences (one for each beat of the story) with five to six clips related to that beat. These were much more manageable chunks to work with (3-7 minutes each). I edited each of these sequences individually to come up with the best possible version of each beat.
- Once I had all nine beats the way I wanted them, I put them all on a master sequence and connected them.
- Finally, I massaged the master sequence to get it to work together smoothly, using the wide shot as a cutaway for any moments where I wanted the dialogue but didn’t want to use the video.1
The nice thing about working this way is that it separates three distinct tasks (‘writing’ the story, searching/organizing the footage, and crafting the actual edit to tell the story) into separate chunks so you don’t have to switch between cognitive modes. This freed my brain up to focus on one thing at a time. And it forced me to figure out how I wanted to tell the story before I started any of the actual editing.
Again, I’m new to this. YMMV. And please contact me if you know a better way or have any tips!
I wish we had shot more b-roll because it would’ve this easier and created some diversity in the imagery. Lesson learned. ↩
A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity
This quote from Harold Pinter’s 2008 Nobel Prize lecture was quoted by Charlie Kaufman in the screenwriting speech I mentioned yesterday:
A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
But it is the thing that wants to live
Via Four Eyes, a tumblr that I really enjoy, comes this lecture from Charlie Kaufman. I really liked this bit:
I now step into this area blindly, I do not know what the wound is, I do know that it is old. I do know that it is a hole in my being. I do know it is tender. I do believe that it is unknowable, or at least unable to be articulable.
I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.
It is the thing from which your art, your painting, your dance, your composition, your philosophical treatise, your screenplay is born. If you don’t acknowledge this you will come up here when it is your time and you will give your speech and you will talk about the business of screenwriting. You will say that as a screenwriter you are a cog in a business machine, you will say it is not an art form. You will say, ‘Here, this is what a screenplay looks like.’ You will discuss character arcs, how to make likeable characters. You will talk about box office. This is what you will do, this is who you will be and after you are done I will feel lonely and empty and hopeless. And I will ask you for my two hours back. I will do this to indicate my lack of love for you.
I will do this to communicate that you are a waste of time as a human being. It will be an ugly thing for me to say. It will be intended to hurt you. It will be wrong for me to say. It will lack compassion. And it will hurt you. And you will either dismiss it or take it in, but in either case you will hear it and it will affect you. And you will think about what you can do next time so you can be more lovable, and with that your wound will be buried further. Or you will think about how hateful people are and how your armour needs to be thicker so that you can proceed as planned with your ideas. With that, your wound will be buried further.
Beautiful.
Can data help you write a better screenplay?
I saw this article linked from the Scriptnotes Episode 171 blog post but I haven’t listened to the episode yet. I wanted to read it beforehand before Craig goes full-bore umbrage-taking on it, which I think I’m safe in saying that he will.
The post is titled “How Data Can Help You Write a Better Screenplay” and I see a lot of data but not a lot of actionable recommendations (sorry, my day job is marketing analyst).
My first thought was, “what the hell is Sword & Sandal? That’s an actual genre???” I guess that would be like 300 or Rome? I didn’t see 300 but everyone wore sandals in Rome (I know, it was a TV show, not a movie) and they used a lot of swords and large knives and I learned that there were two average Roman-type guys that were pivotal in many major events in Roman history and that is all true because it was on HBO.
My second thought, as a novice screenwriter, was this: “what the hell would I do with this?” So let’s say I scrap what I’m working on now (a weird comedy) and use this data to write something with a higher chance of success.
One approach would be to look at the genres that get the highest average scores and pick one of those. One problem is that we don’t know anything about the people writing in that (or any other) genre. Film Noir gets high average scores but maybe better writers are attracted to that genre. Or maybe that genre draws an older crowd of writers who have more experience. Higher scores in the genre might just mean that you’re going up against stiffer competition, not that the genre is actually easier to work in.
But even if it was easier on average, that wouldn’t really help. Because to sell the screenplay (or to land an agent), you would have to not write just an average screenplay, but a very excellent screenplay. Scoring a 6 doesn’t guarantee anything. No score guarantees anything but it’s my understanding that it takes an 8 or above to really get noticed on The Black List.
Another issue is that the average here is a bit misleading. If scores were assigned randomly, then your expected outcome would be higher if you chose a genre with a higher average. But scores are not assigned randomly, they are given by a qualified reader that reads and rates spec screenplays for (at least part of) a living. OK, maybe that’s not completely fair. Maybe the averages do indicate something about the ease of writing in a certain genre.
But even if a Film Noir is slightly easier to write, it still doesn’t help you. Because the thing is you have to stand out. If the average Film Noir is pretty good, then the bar for writing a remarkable Film Noir, i.e. one that someone will be compelled to pass on to their boss, is even higher than say a Musical Comedy, which on average scores the lowest during the survey period.
So. Another strategy is to pick a genre that has a low average score. Again, you don’t know anything about the writers in that genre. Maybe in Musical Comedy you’re competing against accomplished veterans of Broadway. OK, that’s almost certainly not true. But maybe the Musical Comedy people are very well equipped and still fail to write good screenplays, and so your average attempt will fare even worse. Either way, the big loser is the person who has to read all those bad musical comedies.
The other problem with any of these strategies is that it assumes that you decide to start writing a screenplay one day and then choose what genre to work in, as if picking the genre was something to be decided by big data.
I personally write comedy or some subgenre of comedy, or maybe dramatic stuff that makes much use of comedy.
And I’m 100% certain that the comedy I write will be better than the Sword & Sandal that I’m not going to write, mainly because my main source of knowledge about the particulars of men wearing sandals and wielding swords comes from Rome, Gladiator, a college class on Greek Philosophy and whatever else I’ve pulled out of the ether related to ancient Rome/Greece. So it would be pretty derivative and halfway through I’d realize that it would be much better as a parody, which is to say not that great anyway because parody requires deep knowledge that I don’t have.
I think most people are going to write in the genre that they know and love. Or love and think they know. Not that you can’t write in more than one genre, but I think you get the point. But pushing someone out of a genre they love into a genre they neither love nor know isn’t going to help them write something better. So this doesn’t look like a winning strategy either.
The other data in the article pertains to the flaws most commonly found in scripts. Here are the top five:
- Underdeveloped plot
- Underdeveloped characters
- Lack of escalation
- Poor structure
- Unnatural dialogue
Let’s rephrase these flaws as advice for novices like myself: make sure you have a developed plot, developed characters, action that rises at a suitable pace and to a suitable level, good structure, and natural dialogue.
In other words, the problem with your screenplay is that it’s not good at the things that good screenplays are good at. Be more good. That’s snarky, I know. This list does have some use–I looked at it and it made me think about where the weaknesses in my current script might be.
But it doesn’t really help me improve upon the weaknesses. It just shows where others have struggled. But I think those issues are sort of obvious and that writers struggle with them because they’re all really hard to do really well.
This note I did find helpful, or at least it could be helpful for the first-time writer:
First-time writers tend to go one of two ways, said Kate Hagen, a former reader who now oversees the hundred or so readers at The Black List. They write a deeply personal, pseudo-autobiographical screenplay about nothing in particular. “Everybody basically writes that script at first,” Hagen said. “You have to get it out of your system.” Or they swing for the fences and go in the opposite direction, thinking, “I’m going to write a $200 million science fiction movie,” and plan an entire universe and mythology. Those scripts, Hagen said, tend to fail for entirely different reasons.
In other words, avoid the major pitfalls that most first-time writers fall into.1
One takeaway from the whole thing might just be that writing a great screenplay is really really hard. This insight could help you decide whether or not you want to embark on writing a screenplay or not, or to be less surprised when you write something that sucks, but I don’t think it will help you write a better one.
What might help is knowing that it’s really hard to do well, so if you have the work ethic and commitment to work many hours and improve over the years, you have a good shot of standing out from the pack when you finally do write something remarkable.
Which I think probably goes against the gist of what this sort of article is all about, namely that you can hack your way to success with the help of data.
OK, back to work now.
Should this be phrased as “avoid the major pits that most first-time writers fall into?” Can you fall into a pitfall? ↩
If I had an evil twin brother, this is what he would do…
Sorry I murdered everyone at your party, but as an introvert, I prefer one-on-one interactions to group gatherings.
I’m really sorry that everyone is dead. I prefer animals to people.
Sorry I killed everybody! I just really need my alone time.
Sorry that everyone is dead. They weren’t respecting my quiet power and inner strength. It’s a common misconception that introverts can’t lead; we’re just not always the first to speak up.
Sorry I butchered all of your friends in front of you. It’s just that I’d rather curl up at home with a good book than go to a party.
Via Kottke, full text here.
Happy New Year. You’re running out of time.
I’ve been re-reading the archives of The Last Psychiatrist as I work on a screenplay about a man that struggles and procrastinates with something important in his life (writing a play). No, it’s not autobiographical; I write every day for an hour.
Anyway, I rediscovered this quote. The bold is mine, and it ties in with the theme of the film:
Self-loathing is the defense against change, self-loathing is preferable to <mental work.> You choose misery so that nothing changes, and the Ambien and the drinking and the therapy placate the misery so that you can go on not changing. That’s why when you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, you don’t immediately crank out 30 pushups, you open a bag of chips. You don’t even try, you only plan to try. The appearance of mental work, aka masturbation. The goal of your ego is not to change, but what you don’t realize is that time is moving on regardless.
A common piece of advice is “just start!”/don’t procrastinate, etc.
Let me explain, however, why this is a cognitive necessity.
No matter how carefully you plan something in your mind– work through details, procure materials, etc– it can’t take into account everything that happens. Try imagining having sex with Paz de la Huerta; and then try actually having sex with her. The first is masturbation, the second is very tricky, although rewarding, business.
Every creative idea is a dialogue between you and yourself (masturbation); every creative act is a dialogue between you and reality (sex.) You can’t account for that other half of the dialogue until you begin it.
Reality takes many forms: the light of a computer screen, the need for the “great phrase” to be surrounded by words that are less inspired; hunger, the need to pee, fatigue, caffeine headaches, hangovers; relentless, crippling, blackening self-doubt. You can never account for these except through action. I don’t mean they are necessarily obstacles– they don’t necessarily hold you back– but the are real success of any creative act is that it transcended reality not by bypassing it, but by going through it.
Or you can just go back to masturbating.
…Happy New Year. You’re running out of time.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You
I ordered this book by Cal Newport last week after reading about it on one of the blogs I subscribe to. I devoured it in two days (it’s a quick read). It’s very good and there’s something that’s more trustworthy about career advice from someone that does not make his or her entire living out of doling out career advice (Newport’s main occupation is computer science professor).1
I won’t rehash the whole concept because you should just read the book or pick up the ideas for free on Cal’s blog, but basically the thesis is that the advice to “follow your passion” is at best misguided and at worst can be really bad, dangerous advice that will lead you to failure, anxiety, and a host of other problems.
Agreed, from personal experience. Then he goes on to explain that passion is something that is developed once you become really good at something. In other words, craft before passion. And that being really good at something gives you options and control over your career and the opportunity to do fun and fulfilling things.
So if you just start from passion, without the being really good at something, it will not work out for you. It’s one of those ideas that seems obvious in hindsight but that I was completely blind to for most of my working life, and it was fun to look back through various failed business ventures and careers that never worked out and realize that I was committing the exact errors he describes.
Not to mention all the painful rumination I did in my mid-20s (what should I do with my life? what’s my passion? etc. etc.). I didn’t have anything approaching an answer to those questions until I started actually doing things.
I think the big takeaway for writers and other artists is that first you have to get really good (or even great) at what you do. That’s the first step and it might take ten years of diligent practice to get there. But that’s what will give you fulfilling options, career control, and the ability to earn a lot of money.
Here’s a link to it on Amazon.
I’m reminded of when in my real estate days, the sheer number of people who made a ton of money by selling various courses and seminars on how to get rich in real estate, which in hindsight, if you know this amazing secret to making all this money, why would you spend all the hours to put together some special course and then teach the whole world how to replicate your success, when you could just spend your time, you know, making a ton of money from your secret. And sure, it could be a desire to help others, but then why travel the country peddling this course for $395 or $1995 or whatever you’re selling it for–why not just post it online? Oh right, because there’s more money in selling a dream than there is in whatever arcane investment technique that you stumbled upon. ↩
Amazon Movie Reviews on Twitter
Found @AmznMovieRevws via a retweet. It’s just funny reviews of movies on Amazon.com. For instance:
Gravity
Gravity. pic.twitter.com/7lFTxOjTZv
— Amazon Movie Reviews (@AmznMovieRevws) September 11, 2014
and The Wizard of Oz…
The Wizard of Oz. pic.twitter.com/QWh5nsKPE2
— Amazon Movie Reviews (@AmznMovieRevws) September 9, 2014
(I actually sympathize with that sentiment but you know, you should probably know better going into The Wizard of Oz)
My favorite Deadwood quotes
Done with the Western but I compiled a list of my favorite Deadwood quotes. Apparently I love artful profanity…
“That’s what the fuck life is… one vile fucking task after another.” -Al Swearengen
“Tread lightly who lives in hope of pussy.” – Trixie
“I burnt my fucking snatch!” – Calamity Jane
“The rigor in New York City, whatever the fuck that means.” – Ellsworth
“Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?” -Bill Hickok
“Question I wake up to in the morning and pass out to at fucking night: What’s my popularity with my fellow white people?” – Calamity Jane
Any time Swearengen says “hooplehead.”