You’re thinking to yourself right now: “I could do that… I could really do that. But how can I? I can’t even get anyone to even look at my work. So, how could they ever be connected?”
How many of you have an agent that represents your writing?
(Several audience members raise their hands)
Out of those of you that have literary agents, how many have had a script sold through the auspices of this agent.
(No hands)
None? Okay, I’m not surprised because it is very difficult for an out of town representative to get material read because they are in the publishing side of the business not the entertainment side of the business.
Yesterday, in the workshop seminar we did there was a very nice woman who told me that an agent represented her and that she liked her agent very much. However, although she liked the person who was her agent, she was totally disappointed in them. They weren’t get her books read or sold. So, for those of you who are sitting here today in despair because of what I am telling you, don’t feel bad if you don’t have an agent.
I’d rather have “no” agent than one who is not or cannot get me results. Why don’t they get results? Maybe they are only effective in certain areas of specialization or maybe they only have contacts at some publishers or maybe they are not very good at what they do. In any case that’s not a problem for you because you are going to develop and idea – a book – a screenplay that is inevitable.
The only thing you need to do is to get your work out there by any means that you can. The universe will take care of the rest. Don’t worry about rejection. Every time you get a “no” it brings you closer to “yes.”
29
WRITE LIKE YOU’RE A POLE DANCER IN A STRIP CLUB
The First Ten Pages
WE ARE ALL an audience. We said that. But we are all also consumers. Every morning when we get out of bed until we set our heads down at night – we are barraged with a cacophony of images and messages. These messages ask us: to buy certain items, to do certain things or behave in a certain way. A lot of you sitting here today are saying to yourself “Not me… I am not swayed at all.” However, what if I say to this to you?
“Winston tastes good…” You would say?
(Audience: “Like a cigarette should!”)
You know how old that slogan is? Probably the 1950’s and they stopped running it in the early 1970’s. But yet we still know it today. Even if we don’t smoke. Why? Because it was hammered into our consciousness remorselessly in print, radio and television ads. So we know the slogan by heart and could even say that there is certain inevitability in it. That’s what we have to do with our writing. We have got to get it out there no matter what and make it inevitable that it will be produced. They will have no other choice.
(Audience laughter)
Doesn’t this sort of sound like one of those motivational seminars. In a way it is, I want you to commit to creating an exciting, compelling and inevitable first ten pages to your work. Why? Because you can do it and because you should do it! So let’s stop thinking of ourselves as just writers. Let’s also think of ourselves as consumers. When we are exposed to those remorseless ads that somehow take root in our minds – what are we actually exposed to?
A promise. No matter what we hear or see or taste or smell or touch, a promise is made to us. Buy this and your teeth will be whiter, do this and you will be thinner or smarter or look younger. Isn’t that true?
(Audience nods in agreement)
So what if we were to write that way in the first ten pages of our work? Let your title and the first ten pages of your work intrigue the reader with a promise and take them right up to the moment when you will deliver that promise – but then don’t fulfill it. Now I’m going to be inappropriate – just for a moment. Write your first ten pages as if you were a pole dancer in a strip club.
(Audience laughter)
I bet none of you thought I would ever say anything like that.
(Audience laughter)
Now I want to say that I know absolutely nothing about stripping or pole dancing. Is anyone here today a pole dancer or stripper?
(Audience laughter)
Just checking… could be your day job… or night job.
(Audience laughter)
I wrote a segment one time for a very popular television series that I will not name. I was asked to write a short scene in a strip club. So I did and when it was finished we read it and the producer said to me “you obviously have never gone to a strip club.” And that is still true today. But here goes… I’m going to use this as an example.
(Audience laughter)
If you were watching a stripper and they came up on the stage and took all their clothes off in ten seconds – then would be just dancing up their naked – it would get boring because there would be no tension or no sense of mystery. Just a naked body on a pole going up and down… am I right?
(Audience laughter)
But, if they got up there and danced and took one little piece of clothing off at a time and just teased you – to see what you could through the see through mesh… they would create tension and interest. Why because we all want to see what they would reveal next.
(Audience laughter)
Well writing in this case is like stripping. You give them what they need a little at a time to pull them in, no more… no less. You need to write like you’re a pole dancer in a strip club.
(Audience laughter)
No, really. Your goal is to keep them interested and engaged. You take them all the way through to page ten and the BANG! You stop. They are caught off guard and don’t know what to do. All they know is the want… they have to see the rest. GIVE IT TO ME! You will “give it to them” but they will have to read the rest of your manuscript to get there.
Once they make the commitment to stay then you have them where you want them. Your tools are description, dialogue and action and you want to use them a tautly as possible. No waste… every word you include counts toward your goal of keeping your reader engaged. Anything more should be cut. You don’t want to cut the heart of your work – somewhere in the middle is the answer. I have an exercise you can try at home. Take ten lines of description from your book and boil it down to just two lines without losing the tension, impact or meaning. Try that on a couple of passages to see how it feels.
(Audience member: “Aren’t you cutting everything out of it?” No…
(Audience member: “For the sake of brevity?”)
No you shouldn’t lose any of the original impact of your writing. In fact it becomes, if anything, more compelling. These opening ten pages are where you draw them into your characters and story.
- Let the reader know your location and setting
- Introduce your main characters
- Set up your premise. Give them an inkling of what is to be… just a peek (like the stripper.
- Set the tone of the piece – just like you would with a piece of music and give them a hint of how it might end.
A good example is Saving Private Ryan (1998). The film opens with a cemetery scene and the hard cuts immediately into the American landing on Omaha Beach. You really get the end of the story and major character in the first three minutes of the film. As he makes his way, with his family following, to a specific grave, he finds it and tears well in in his. A moment later, literally through his eyes, we are transported back in time to D Day and Omaha Beach. In about the fourth minute of the film, we are introduced to the main character of the film Captain Miller (Tom Hanks). The rest of the movie takes the audience on a journey to that one moment at the cemetery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HUf68gFGEE
So we have two elements operating here.
We create a compelling beginning in the first ten pages of the script. We introduce our main characters and story and create a sense of inevitability wanting our reader and audience to want to see it through to the end
We create a promise. What is a p
romise? It is an agreement to provide something in the future. If we set up our story as a thriller, a war movie, a romance. We have then to deliver that promise through to our ending. If we fail to do that, we have a problem.
I bought a book many years ago called THE NEXT TEN THOUSAND YEARS. I bought it on a rainy day like this, thinking that I would curl up and get a glimpse of the future. Where ever I was at the time (think I was in a hotel and there wasn’t a great selection of books, so I figured what the heck? I’d like to know about the next ten thousand years.
(Audience laughter)
So, now I’m reading the book and am about half way through it, I realized that the book and its writer were a little bit crazy. As I read each chapter of the book, the premise of the next ten thousand years seemed farther and farther away. When he got to the chapter when they were going to dismantle Jupiter, I had enough and threw the book across the room against the wall where it remained until I checked out.
(Audience laughter)
Why was I angry? I will tell you. Because the promise on the cover of the book and the title stated that it was going to show me what it would be like in the next ten thousand years. Once I got half way through the book I realized that the promise made to me was not going to be kept. So I felt ripped off. I bought this book and the promise was not kept. The title and illustrated cover of space ships in space promised to tell how it was going to be in the future and then did not. Also, my time was wasted.
What does this story have to do with us? When we write our novel and then our screenplay there is an implicit promise made to an audience or reader. It starts with our title and then it begins with our very first page. When you think of your book or screenplay I want you to think about what your promise is to your audience. I would rather you have this clearly in your mind than a log line. I hate when they ask you: “What’s your log line?” I hate the idea of an artificially cute log line that is designed to give the reader an idea (in a line) of what your story is about. I’d rather you tell them your promise. If you read this, this is what I promise you. I like this better. We can do log lines all day and they mean nothing.
Producer: What’s your log line?
Writer: Moby Dick…
Producer: Right.
Writer: In outer space.
Producer: Great!
(Audience laughter)
What does that mean? I’m not sure. Our stories and characters are not served by a log line. Give the producer or reader something they can understand rather than reducing your work to a label or slogan. Instead, read my screenplay or invest in me and I promise you this will be an adventure you will never forget for the rest of your life. Or invest in me as a writer. If you don’t like this script I have ten more stories I can talk to you about. Become that person, the one who writes the nail biting thrillers, the adventures or romantic love stories. Think of the late Nora Ephron was best known for her romantic comedies and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Writing for When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and Julia Julia (2009). You can develop a promise around yourself for certain types of stories and characters.
Make a promise to your audience and keep it. Which takes us back to our pole dancer in a strip club. What does a pole dancer promise us? This goes back to our first premise. They promise us that we will see and experience something in the future. They take us through the motions bit by bit until the end. Let’s change the way things are done.
30
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
The First Ten Pages
AS I SAID, at the start of our seminar today, I have had the opportunity to spend time at many of the large motion picture studios in Hollywood. I spent the longest time at Warner Brothers and had a reverence for all of the great films that had been created there during the golden age of Hollywood. As a small Italian child living in New York, I had an uncle that was a film collector and he taught me everything about Hollywood and movies. My uncle Marty loved movies so much that he built a small theatre in his home. I am talking about a real movie theatre with a screen, velvet seats and a stage. As a young child he would let me sit in the theatre by myself and play great films with great stars. I would see the likes of Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Betty Davis and Gary Cooper over and over again. These films and the studios they were created in became something that I loved and respected. So when I arrived at the Warner lot, I was very excited about the tradition that studio had. I knew most of the films they had ever made and I believed that it was a magical place.
What I didn’t know was that Warners and other majors like 20th Century Fox, Paramount, MGM and Universal were modeled after major manufacturing companies such as GM and Ford. The old-line studio chiefs ran the production in the studios in Hollywood and the New York offices ran the business of movie distribution and exhibition. I always looked at the movie business as an art but really it was also a business and Warner Brothers was no difference. Back in the golden age of Hollywood, the major studios released 52 films per year for audiences all around the world. This is something we as writers can never forget. That the way things are done at major studios is driven by business over art. It doesn’t mean that studios will make anything for a buck. They want to make quality product but the drive for the bottom line will always win over the drive for the creative hallmark. The old system was what they called a contract system where everyone was hired and put on contract. Today, it is a freelance system, where writers, producers and actors (above the line) are brought in for a particular project or series of projects and often are profit participants in that endeavor.
So movie producers and by extension producers want quality product that an audience will want to spend money on and see. I think we need to rethink the way we approach them. Let’s start a new way of doing things. Let’s develop our projects less on the creative level and more on the business level. If your novel has sales, which are respectable, that means there are people willing to spend money to read your story and characters. Perhaps one way to describe our work then is from a marketing approach – detailing the target audience segment and profit viability. I know you probably all hate what I’m saying but let’s start a new of doing things. Let’s think like we are producers – so that we can answer those questions in a producer’s mind that will come up when there is coverage done on your novel or script.
Some ideas tug and the heart while other have an intellectual appeal. Have both areas covered. When you get back home after this weekend. Look at your work again from a fresh point of view. Pretend you are a producer and evaluate your own work on its strengths and weaknesses for reaching a certain segment of the audience, it’s budget and it’s ability to connect emotionally with an audience. Is it a story that an audience will want to read or see or is it something that you think is off the mainstream? If you are lucky enough to get a meeting with a producer, let’s change the way things are done. Connect with them as a producer would both with the emotion of your story and the intellect of your idea about how the story will fit a particular audience. Let’s change the way things are done. If there are rules let’s break them. I’m not suggesting that you walk into a meeting and flip the desk over and say buy my screenplay or book. But I am suggesting that you connect with a potential producer on a different level. Tell them why they can produce your work – because it is good – but also because it will be successful.
And who doesn’t want to win and be successful?
Also, after you tell them what you tell them. Let them tell you what they can add. It’s important for them to collaborate with you on the vision. This way they will feel ownership in it and want to see it made in the end. Let them feel comfortable with your idea as if it were their own. However, don’t be a “good soldier.” What I mean here is that you have to stay true to your vision even if it means being rejected. No matter what you are told, as Robert Frost aptly put it at the end of his poem “The Road Not Taken.”
I shall be telling this with a sigh
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Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I, I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Be true to your journey and never sell yourself short.
Now let’s get back to your script. You may be thinking, what does all of this have to do with my script and the first ten pages. Okay, let’s discuss this. What does a script contain?
Let me ask it a different way, what elements are present when you write a script? Okay, Description, Action and Dialogue – let’s look at these.
31
YOUR FIRST TEN PAGES DESCRIPTION, ACTION AND DIALOGUE
The First Ten Pages
Description, Action and Dialogue
YOU MAY BE writing for a reader, a producer or an audience and you have got to give. And I’ve we stated before, that’s where the ten pages come in. you have to create a hook in the beginning and once they are on board, they you can roll out any way you need to roll out. How do you get to this with character? Three ways. Description, Action and Dialogue. Essentially on the screen that boils down to what they do what they say, how they look, and what other characters say about them and the physical world they exist within. Your main character may say wonderful things about themselves, but they could be telling a lie. You have to show the truth. Let’s talk about DESCRIPTION.
So, how is the best way to describe your characters in those first ten pages where your character has their initial introduction to the story? Right? So, you have to introduce them in a compelling way. In your novel you could and can take all the time you need. Went to boarding school in France, studied law – add little anecdotes. You don’t have that much time and space in a screenplay. You have to cut to the chase.
INTERIOR – LIBRARY – DAY
Professor Muldoon, a crusty but benign college professor, dressed in tweed and loafers, holds an old book tightly as he hobbles down a long oak stairway into the the living room of the old English manor.
Book to Screen Page 14
