Category: drafts

No, it’s not what it sounds like, or even pop culture. I’m just trying to boost the hit count a bit. Of course, some of you read this at work, so I probably just got half of you blocked.

So, two weeks back I mentioned an online conversation I had with a friend of mine. At least, the first half of it. I wanted to ramble on a bit now about the second half of that conversation and expand on some of the thoughts and ideas it sparked.

The topic is, what do you write?

There’s two ways to read that question. One could be reworded to that ever-popular, where do you get your ideas? I’m sure most of you reading this have heard a few of the punchier answers to that query. Some people want to sit down and write, but have no idea what to write about, while other people polish off a new screenplay over a long weekend.

There’s one very important thing any writer needs to understand if they want to be successful. Ideas are cheap. Ridiculously cheap. They’re a dime a dozen. I would guess on an average day I have at least ten ideas for books, short stories, screenplays, or television episodes. Last year one blogger (and for the life of me I can’t recall who) posted an idea on her page every day for the entire year, just to demonstrate how simple and cheap ideas are.

Now, from where I’m sitting, there are two issues beginning writers often hit when it comes to ideas, and they’re really two flipsides of the same problem.

Some folks lament that they never have good ideas. Yeah, they have a couple clever thoughts, but none of them are on that high level like Jurassic Park or American Gods or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The ideas these people come up with are… well, kind of pedestrian. They’re not worth writing about, so these folks don’t write. They hold off and wait for the good ideas to strike.

The second group has too many ideas. They’re barely done writing their fourth screenplay this month when they get an idea for a series of epic novels. And they’re only on the second one of those when they think up a hit television series (which, naturally, leads back to a movie franchise).

Both of these groups are suffering from the same misconception. They think anything that goes on the page has to be pure, award-winning gold. The difference is that the first group won’t put anything down because they know it isn’t gold, and the other folks are assuming it must be gold because they got it on the page. Make sense?

The catch, of course, is that most of the stuff that you put down isn’t going to be gold. It’s going to be rewritten and edited down and polished. Don’t think of story ideas as gold, think of them as diamonds. When a diamond first gets discovered, it’s a black, crusty, misshapen thing. Its got potential value, but not much past that. Diamonds need to be cut and recut, measured and examined, cut one more time, polished, and placed in a setting. Then they’re worth something.

The first group is tossing out all those black, coarse stones because none of them look like engagement rings. The second group is sticking the little lumps on gold bands and asking three months salary for them. Hopefully it’s easy to see why neither of these is the right approach.

So, once you’ve got an idea, it needs work. It’s not ready to go as is. Which brings us to the back half of this week’s rant.

The second way to read “what do you write?” is to ask which of these ideas do you pursue? If you have three or four solid ideas, which one do you start working on? How do you pick the idea you start with?

Well, first you need to keep in mind that one idea all on its own rarely translates to a story. “Some kids go to a haunted house,” is an idea, yes, but there’s not really a bestselling novel there. Likewise, you can’t do much if all you’ve got is “a girl who wants to build a time machine.” Just like cooking, you can’t make a story with only one ingredient. An egg on its own is an egg. An egg with cheese (and maybe a little turkey and a dash of pepper) is an omelette.

Once you understand this, then it just comes down to writing. How do the kids going to the haunted house and the girl who wants to build a time machine intersect and overlap? Is the girl one of the kids? Is the haunted house her secret lab? Is she going to rescue them? Is she hiding there after being made fun of and they’re coming to save her? Is anyone going to die in this house? Will anyone make it out? Is it just part of a plan cooked up by Mr. Haversham, the carnival owner?

Is that a hand in the back? Ahhh, yes. The question is, but what if the idea leads to a dead end? How do you know it’s a good idea until you actually sit down and write it? This one’s easy to answer.

You don’t.

Again, this kind of thinking goes back to that “it has to be gold” mentality. Sometimes you work your way through a hundred pages and discover there’s just nothing there. You wrote a chapter (or a bunch of chapters) that don’t work for one reason or another. Maybe more than one reason. Sure you could cheat a bit, tweak a few things, maybe toss out a deus ex machina or three, but in the end it doesn’t work because it doesn’t work. There’s no clever phrase or substituted word that’s going to change it.

I know a lot of people have trouble accepting this, even though it’s something we’ve all seen in other jobs. Chefs come up with recipes they never use. Architects design buildings that are never constructed. Hell, how much money does the auto industry spend on concept cars each year?

Consider this…

Once or thrice here I’ve mentioned a rule Stephen King talks about in his phenomenal book On Writing (there’s a link to it in that carousel at the bottom of the page). Said rule is–

Second Draft = First Draft – 10%

You remember that one, yes?

Well, if Mr. King follows his own rule–and we’ll assume he’s not a hypocrite–lets do a little math. The final version of Under The Dome is 1072 typeset pages. Even if we say there weren’t any other cuts in later drafts, that implies he cut just over 119 pages from his first draft. In standard manuscript format (Courier, double-spaced), that’s closer to 240 pages. Heck, that’s almost half of Ex-Patriots. It’s almost 2/3 of Ex-Heroes. Think about that. He typed up 240 pages of character and plot and description… and then tossed all that work.

Y’see, Timmy, almost every writer puts out a fair degree of material that’s never going to be seen by anyone. Again, don’t get paralyzed wondering if the next words on the page are going to be gold. Odds are they aren’t. But you will find some diamonds in the rough, and once you know how to spot them it’ll be an easier (and quicker) process to find them.

For now… take what you’ve got and work with that. There’s a good chance there’s a diamond or two in there somewhere. If you really put the work into it.

Next time, on a somewhat related note… well, contest season is lapping at my ankles. Which means more bad scripts to read. So we’ll talk about some of those.

Until then… go write.

You’ve probably heard at least half of this week’s title before. If you’ll indulge me for a bit, I’ll explain the other half.

Since I’ve been waist-deep in the drafting process, I figured I could toss out a rough guide of what that usually means to me. I’ve given lots of suggestions about this sort of thing before, but I thought it might be cool to show a step by step, solid example of how I take a project from a pile of rough ideas to something I’ll show friends, to something I consider worth showing to… well, people who might give me money for it.

Before going into this, I also want to remind everyone of the golden rule.

What works for me might not work for you, and it almost definitely won’t work for that guy.

As I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, we all have our own way of writing. Doing these drafts in this way helps me, but you might need to do something a little different.

That being said…

The 1st Draft— This is just the “get it done” stage, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t worry about catching typos or crafting every subtle moment in the plot. I just want to finish this draft with a beginning, an end, and the majority of points in between.

I tend to skip around a lot in the first draft. I’ll scribble down random beats or dialogue exchanges that occurred to me while the idea was fermenting in my head and drop them more or less where I think they’d go. This serves as a very, very rough outline, just enough so I can start writing on page one and go.

At this early stage, if I get stuck on something (an awkward conversation or complex action scene), I’ll just skip it for now. I know I’ll be able to go into the exact details of Wakko’s nervous breakdown later, so I’d rather keep moving forward and leave those snarls for Future Peter to deal with. Again, for me, the most important thing is to get the overall framework done. It’s a lot easier to think about the little things when the big things aren’t looming over you.

I also don’t hold back here at all. I let dialogue, descriptions, and action scenes go on forever. I know I’ll be cutting eventually, so there’s no reason to worry about length now. For this stage, it really is quantity over quality. I mentioned this visual once before. Think of the first draft like prospecting for gold. If you wanted to find a pound of gold, how much soil would you dig up? Seventeen ounces? Five pounds? Five hundred pounds? Where are your best odds for finding that pound of gold?

I don’t show this draft to anyone. My lovely lady may get an out-loud reading or a little peek if I think I’ve done something exceptionally clever. There have been one or two times she’s called me out on something that sounded good in my head but was kind of flat and awkward in someone else’s. I also don’t do much past a night off to celebrate the end of this draft before diving into…

The 2nd Draft— Now it’s time to smooth it out. All those problems I left for Future Peter to deal with need to be dealt with. Gaps get filled in. All those awkward knots get worked out. Because I can see a lot of these elements in relation to the whole story now , I’ll usually find the answers to these problems are more apparent.

The goal with this draft is to have a readable manuscript. No more little notes to myself or trailing paragraphs that need to get connected somehow. Someone should be able to pick this up and read it start to finish without thinking they lost a few pages or only got my notes on a chapter.

Keep in mind this doesn’t mean I do show it to people. It just means I should be able to. Really, the only person who might see this is my lady-love, and not even her always. Sometimes she has to wait.

A few people have argued with me these two drafts really just amount to me doing a first draft in two stages. That may be true, but they’re not writing the ranty blog, are they?

Okay then, so… now I step away for a couple of days. Maybe as much as a week. I’ll watch movies, work out a little extra (I need it after three or four months at my desk), build little toy soldiers, or maybe even scribble up a few ranty blog posts in advance. Sometimes I’ll play with a short story idea. The goal is to push the manuscript as far out of my mind as possible. Don’t look at it, try not to think too much about it. And then…

The 3rd Draft–Stephen King says to start cutting on draft two, but as I said, my draft two is what some people may call a solid first draft. As such, I usually wait until draft three to start slashing. This is where I hunt down adverbs, adjectives, pointless dialogue descriptors, and so on. Two fun rules I’ve mentioned here before–

2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%

one adverb per page, four adjectives

One thing I really go after here is the padding phrases I have a bad habit of dropping in everywhere (sort of, somewhat, kind of, more or less) that don’t really do anything. One of my regular readers dubbed this Somewhat Syndrome, and I like to tell myself I’ve gotten better about it now that I’m aware of the problem. Sometimes I also like to tell myself that Famke Janssen and I would have a really deep, emotional connection if we ever met…

Anyway, at this point I’ve gone through the whole manuscript at least twice, so a few larger cuts should be visible. The long description of Wakko ceremonially sharpening his katana. Dot’s flashback to the summer she lost her virginity during a midnight swim with a handsome stranger. That impassioned speech Wakko gives against taxing the rich. That’s some beautiful writing there, but is it actually doing anything?

This tightening process is also when I can usually spot flaws in the overall structure. In larger stories, it’s not uncommon to end up with “floating” events that are important, but aren’t tied to a solid point in the script. This one may be here right now, but with all of the story in front of me I might realize it would work better there.

If I haven’t already, this is when I let the lady love have a look. She’s my first set of eyes to let me know I screwed up something (10%) and I’m too close to see it.

For the record, this is where Ex-Patriots is right now.

The 4th Draft–This is the first big polish. I go through sentence by sentence, looking for words that come up too often or stilted dialogue. I also make sure all the cuts and swaps from the last draft haven’t messed anything up. Are the logic chains still complete? Transitions still good? Parallels parallel? Arcs smooth? Did Dot just pull a skeleton key out of her pocket that she shouldn’t have yet? Did Yakko just turn into a woman for a few minutes in the middle of the chapter?

This draft doesn’t take long. Just a day or two. It’s just one slow, careful read of the story.

Once I’ve got the fourth draft all shiny, this is the one I show to folks for comments. I generally send it out to five people. They’re a carefully selected bunch, all of whom have some level of literary background, and I don’t think there’s one among them I’ve known for less than five years. One’s actually been reading and critiquing my work for over two decades now, and she still doesn’t cut me any slack. The key thing is they’re all people who will give honest, useful criticism.

This goes off into the world and it may be a month before I look at it again. The trick here is to resist messing with it while those people are looking at it. Again, it’s a great time to flex different mental muscles. Maybe I’ll do a lot of research on an upcoming project. Maybe I’ll build a model tank. Or maybe I’ll just get caught up on laundry.

The 5th Draft— Now I’ve gotten notes back from whatever folks I cajoled into reading this thing. I sit down with all the comments and go through the whole manuscript page by page. This is one of those times that having a second monitor’s very helpful, because I can have three or four versions open and visible at once.

So, what did everyone think of page one? What comments were there on page two? How’s page three look? As I’m doing this, I’ve also got my own copy of the 4th draft that I’m using as a “master document.” This way I can get all the notes assembled in the relevant place and make whatever changes are required. This document is more or less the 5th draft, and it can take another two weeks or more to finish it with a full book manuscript.

I mentioned above that I get five people to make comments for me, and that’s so I can get a broader sampling on each issue that comes up. If four people like something but one doesn’t, odds are I’ll call that good. Nobody’s going to get every joke or like every chapter. If three don’t and two do (and of course I do, or I wouldn’t’ve written it), I’ll sit and give it a good look. And if nobody likes it, well… I’m smart enough to know when I’ve screwed up something doesn’t work.

6th Draft— This one’s yet another smoothing, polishing draft. I need to make sure everything still works now that I’ve made those tweaks and changes from my reader’s notes,. So, yet another line by line reading, adjusting as I go.

And honestly, at this point… this is usually when I’m done. There’s only so much a given writer–in this case, me– can do with a given story. There comes a point when further work accomplishes nothing. If it’s not ready to show to a publisher by now, it probably means I screwed up something big right at the start. Perhaps when I first thought I could adapt To Kill a Mockingbird into a hardcore tween vampire romance starring the Animaniacs.

Y’see, Timmy, there’s a real danger that if you keep trying to come up with reasons to do another draft, you’ll keep finding them. I’m sure we all know someone who’s just been working on the same manuscript for years and years and years because they’ve got another one or two drafts to put it through. After a while of that, your story stops looking like a coherent tale and a bit more like the Frankenstein Monster. And not the nice, clean Boris Karloff version. I’m talking about the seriously messy Roger Corman one.

Maybe even, dare I say it, Mr. Stitch.

Next time it’s going to be Christmas. Well, the Eve of Christmas Eve. So I might prattle on with some ideas about how you can have holiday fun.

Until then, go write

This week’s rant is a bit screenwriter-centric, but it really applies to any sort of submission anywhere. The following words are going to be a bit harsh (even for me), so if you’ve got thin skin… well, next week I was going to talk about characters a bit. If you’re quick to offend, maybe you should just go check out John August’s blog for now and come back here next week.

So, last night I was at the Nicholl Fellowship dinner to see the five new folks get awarded their fellowships. I couldn’t help but notice a lot of you weren’t there. In fact, lets be honest… most of you reading this weren’t there. I’d even be willing to bet a few bucks none of you were there.

Granted, I’m betting not all of you entered the Nicholl this year, but I’m pretty sure a couple of you did. And you weren’t there last night, were you?

A shame really. The steak was fantastic. I mean, seriously, it was amazing. Three of the best meals I’ve ever had have been at Nicholl dinners.

But I digress…

First off, let’s get one thing straight. Nobody deserves to win a contest. Just because all your friends won doesn’t mean you get to as well. It’s never your turn, it’s never about time, and luck has very, very little to do with it. We’re not talking about statistics. A screenplay contest (or any writing submission) is not a lottery.

With that being said, the ugly truth is, most of you reading this don’t deserve to win a contest anyway. Especially not one as prestigious as the Nicholl. That’s all there is to it. You can argue all you like but that’s the way it is.

Let me explain.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s say I’ve decided to hold a contest for horror screenplays. One grand prize, with four lesser prizes. Everyone who subscribes to the ranty blog enters, and let’s say some folks past that, too. By fortunate coincidence, I end up with 100 entries.

Let’s look at those 100 scripts (or short stories, or novels, or whatever it is sitting in a big pile in front of me).

Well, first off, there’s the 50% rule. Out of these 100 screenplays, odds are half of them are going to go right out the window. Figure some people submitted comedies or dramas that features zombies, but they figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. Some of them probably didn’t even have a horror element–they were just straight romcoms or fantasy or sci-fi. I’ll probably recognize their genius and give them an award anyway, though, won’t I?

Plus a few of them will be short stories, not screenplays, and probably a few that are in stage play format, too. One or two will be novels that were very poorly converted into a screenplay template (I mean, it’s all essentially the same thing, right?).

And some will just be God-awful. No other way to say it. Twenty blatant typos on page one. Characters so flat they could slide under a door. Dialogue that makes it sound like English is everyone’s second (or third) language. A plot that sounds a lot like a five year old explaining where dinosaurs came from.

So right there, 50% gone from my horror screenplay contest with almost no effort on my part. Maybe as few as 40. Perhaps as many as 60. In my experience, though, 50% is a great rule of thumb.

The next level of cuts will be those scripts that just don’t measure up. They’ve got an interesting premise, maybe a very clever take on an old idea, but they just didn’t do enough with it. Maybe the writer didn’t work on the screenplay enough because they took the lottery mentality and tried to enter four or five scripts that all could’ve used another two or three drafts. Or maybe it was just one script and it really just needed one more polish.

True story. A few years back I entered a contest that kept their own message boards up so people could talk. One guy proudly stated on these boards that he’d entered over a dozen screenplays. He also directed people to his website, where he had loglines for the three dozen or so scripts he’d written in the past two or three years. When none of his scripts placed, it was all the proof he needed that this contest was obviously a scam.

(I came in third. Got a free copy of Final Draft and a nice certificate.)

If this is the first draft of your script, it’s not going to win a contest. A lot of you may argue that there’s always a chance, I shouldn’t be negative, you may be a truly gifted amateur, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. This is true. It’s also true, by every known law of physics, that random atoms in the air could come together in just the right way as to form an ounce of pure gold that drops right into your lap. True, and statistically possible, but the odds of it happening are so insanely, ridiculously low that you might as well say it’s impossible.

Please note, this doesn’t mean the script is bad or the writing is inherently flawed. It just means it isn’t polished enough. Despite what you may believe, there are actually tons of diamonds in the world. Literally, tons of them. They’re not all gem-quality, though, and not all of the ones that are get cut and polished correctly. That’s why engagement rings cost half a year’s pay.

So, that kills almost 2/3 of the scripts that are left. They’re good, but they aren’t great. Now we’re down to seventeen entries (rounding up, because I’m feeling generous).

Next is the rough one. It’s the human factor, and it pervades every single level of the judging process to a small degree. Readers are human beings doing a job. They have good days and bad days. They can get distracted or they can focus on the wrong thing. Think of your day job– are you 100% focused on it every minute you’re there? Or does your mind wander to your holiday shopping, your personal life, wondering about the cute temp’s personal life, wondering if your boss is that clueless or that brilliant…?

Well, readers do the same things. And, alas, they do it while reading your script.

There’s plusses and minuses to this. On the downside, your sci-fi romance screenplay might land on John’s desktop. John hates sci-fi and he just found out Phoebe’s dumping him for someone else. So today, well… today it might be a little tough for him to be impartial. You’re probably going to lose a point or three from him, and those points are crucial.

Or it might land on Wakko’s desk. Wakko loves sci-fi. Lives and breathes it. He’s got an Enterprise telephone and a TARDIS cell phone charm. Plus, he had his third date with Phoebe last night and… well, the third date went very, very well. So he’s thrilled to get your script and he’s almost definitely going to pass it on to the next level, even if maybe it doesn’t really deserve to make the cut..

Then again, it could go to Dot. She’s okay with some sci-fi, doesn’t mind it, but your script will get a fair shake with her. But little indy character dramas with no plot? Man, she loathes those things…

Maybe you’ll luck out. Maybe you won’t. Alas, statistically, the human factor is more likely to hurt than help. Y’see, Timmy, a good script that gets shot down stays shot down. A so-so script that doesn’t get shot down now most likely will get shot down later and then stay shot down. So if the human factor has a permanent effect, it’ll be a bad one.

At the most though, as I said, we’re only going to lose a few scripts to this. Let’s say three.

Now we’re down to fourteen out of the original hundred. See how quick they go away?

Last but not least…not everyone wins. When it comes down to it, contests have only so many slots for winners, and they can’t hand out prizes to every script that may deserve them. I’m giving away five prizes. That’s it. You can write a spectacular script and still come in second. Or even eighth.

That’s not just math, it’s life.

Keep in mind, while not winning is heartbreaking, it doesn’t have to be the end. Many contests offer feedback and judges’ comments on entries, so losing can still get you valuable information about how your script was perceived. You can use these responses to hone and polish your script even further, so the next time it goes out it will be stronger than ever.

It’s also worth noting that several producers, agents, and managers who keep track of contests look at the semi-finalists and finalists with just as much interest as the actual winners. James V. Simpson was a finalist for the 2006 Nicholl Fellowship. He didn’t get the fellowship, but his screenplay, Armored, still ended up selling for almost half a million dollars and got released earlier this year with a star-studded cast.

You will not win every contest, but–as special-snowflake as it sounds– you can try to make every one a positive experience.

Next time around, I want to talk about character. Because good characters rule.

Until then go write. And don’t get discouraged just because you didn’t win this time.