#script

Yes, loglines are easy. If you write them first.

Logline instructions usually include describing the protagonist, his challenge, and the course he takes to accomplish his goal. It is often recommended that you describe the antagonist as well.

That should all be wrapped up in one tidy sentence that indicates tone and genre, polished up all shiny and sexy enough to pop off the page. A whole trailer, right there, in twenty words or less.

If you can’t do that, it isn’t because you’re bad at loglines.

Logline problems are really story problems. A story that resists being loglined has not been wrestled to the ground yet. It isn’t sharply focused and you probably don’t have a steeply escalating second act.

My first writing teacher at UCLA, Paul Chitlik, who is wonderful and wrote a wonderful book which I highly recommend, Rewrite, starts with weeks of logline development. Because…

It is incredibly easy to identify the weaknesses in your story before you’ve spent twelve weeks writing it.

If writing your logline feels like herding cats, stop what you’re doing and go back to your story. Is it about someone who has no choice but to do something very difficult that he is uniquely unsuited to do? What is his plan to do it?

• Long ago in a galaxy far away, a simple farm boy must train as a Jedi warrior to defeat an evil empire.  

If your logline is more like, “A high school football player moves to a small town to live with his grandmother and struggles to be accepted at his new school.”, I can tell that your story isn’t clear to you yet, because it should be way more specific than that.

• A high school football star has to join the cheerleading squad to protect his sports scholarship.

• A high school football star falls for a nerd girl and has to become valedictorian to follow her to an Ivy League college.

Specific, rather than atmospheric. If you nail down your logline BEFORE you write, it won’t bite you in the butt later. 

It is an illusion that a screenplay is a transcription of the movie in your head.

It is as impossible to write a movie as it is to write a photograph.

It is only possible to write a story.

There is no spoon.

THE HOT GIRLFRIEND PRIZE

She waits, over there, until it is time for her to be awarded to the protagonist in recognition for his achievements.

JUST THE WORLD’S BEST EVER MOMWIFE

She cares so much. She gets concerned. She just wants to help. She has never needed a drink in her entire life.

MISS READY, WILLING AND ABLE

Whether she’s GIRL 1, PILATES TEACHER or the CUTE CASHIER, her only function is to come on to the protag like she just got sprung from Litchfield Prison.

None of these characters resemble human beings.

Don’t give valuable page space to them. Thrill readers by putting a different spin on minor characters. Hold the cheese.

Double check these when you proof your spec. They pop up all the time.

• Loose/Lose
• Peek/Peak
• Chord/Cord
• Rein/Reign
• Bare/Bear
• Brake/Break

My husband and I watched The Place Beyond the Pines on VOD yesterday after we came back from the US Open. 

When it broke into the third act for the third time, he said, “I think this movie is going into a fifth set.”

That about covers it.

EXT. THICK WOODS - NIGHT (or DAY, either one)

PANTING. Feet RUNNING and STUMBLING.

A GIRL (18-24) races for her life from an UNSEEN PURSUER.

She DIES. With a SCREAM. 

And then we switch to somewhere else and meet the protagonist doing something mundane.

If you have written this, you are NOT ALONE. Word to the wise.

The most convincing argument I can make against starting your spec with the backstory and then jumping forward in time is this:

Casablanca doesn’t open in Paris. 

Start in the now and set up your now problem. Use the backstory to escalate in your second act. It will elevate your game like crazy.

I am married to a musician and I hear lots and lots of music, new and old. There are fifty hours of Later with Jools Holland on my DVR right now.

But I am still not familiar with your favorite band, so when I read song titles in your description lines, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And even if I did, it doesn’t convey any information to me. The odds on me being exactly on your wavelength about that music, supposing I do know it, are worse than a superfecta.

Unless you are making your own film, everything about movie music is someone else’s job.

Example:

I was at a screening of Flight, and there was a Q & A with Robert Zemeckis, and a woman said, “I was wondering about your choice to not have a musical score. How did you make that choice?” and he said, “Well, there was a score, and we labored over it, but the fact that you didn’t notice it means we did it really well.”

I’m assuming she wasn’t talking about “Sympathy for the Devil”, but I am damn sure John Gatins didn’t put that in the script.*

Anyway. Music just doesn’t translate very well to the page.  If you have to describe it, do it in a conceptual way so it will mean roughly the same thing to both of us.

Exception:

The only time I’ve ever seen a specific song title achieve something positive was in a comedy, and it worked like a punchline.

*on an unrelated note:  John Gatins was there, too. The script for Flight had been around for…I can’t remember, seven years? And one day the phone rings out of the blue, and it’s “Denzel is interested in making your movie.” So, there’s that.

It can’t be a revolutionary idea, but I’ve never read it in a book or been taught it specifically by any of my outstanding teachers, so I’ll just say it here.

Write your spec script to entertain your reader, not as the draft you’re going to shoot.

Consider how you read a novel, and how you direct your own head movie while you’re reading it. It’s exactly the same. The more room you leave for a reader to richly imagine how your story looks, the better off you are.

Your story sells your story in ways that using your words to direct, DP, cast and decorate the sets cannot.

Knock yourself out in your action lines, use your writer’s voice.

For example, everyone has a picture in their head of a seedy bar, it lives in the collective imagination. It’s a waste of words to discuss the dusty bottles on the shelves, the mismatched furniture and dirty windows. That’s a given.

If you want to make it into a thing beyond calling it “the worst bar in town”, which is acceptable, BTW, go at it from a crazy new direction that adds something interesting, like…the bartender traps a roach on the bar with a shot glass and leaves it there.

Now that is a seedy bar.

Passive voice, generic tracking shots, descriptions of things that the reader will do all the heavy lifting to imagine for themselves, those go under the heading of “it took me out of the read”, which loosely translated means, “It kept me from directing it in my head.”

This is not to say that your action lines should fill with flowing, novel-like prose. That is bad. Think in images, but summarize them in your own voice.

Describe your idea more and the set design less.

-@annelabarba

Found footage of my cat. Fade out.

Poe’s Law infers that there is no way for me to know what the pie chart looks like for Ironic Cat-Saving vs. The Book Said to Save a Cat on This Page vs. Cats Saved by Coincidence vs. Other, but it is not an SRS I’m talking about.

I read a lot of literal cats getting literally saved.

Not that it’s news anymore, this very useful piece is over two years old, but it is not an asset to have a spec that hoves directly to this particular beatsheet for the sake of hoving.

The principles in the 2005 book set out some good rules for an ironclad logline before you start writing and some mechanics to keep you from being digested by the boggy mire of your second act. It is not by any means a useless book, but anecdotal evidence supports the idea that specs written to succeed on the model have become recognizable, and not in a flattering way to the writer.

Sort of the way every single episode of Community turned into exactly the same episode of Community.

Sorry, cats.

o: hearsay

rkbaekho​:

i’m gonna have to make sure he makes up for it and tells me everything else he’s conveniently left out, about you and the rest of your group. ( /it’s almost vaguely threatening, even masked beneath the laugh and the grin he gives, but there’s no real threat because he’s sure he’ll get that sort of information out of hyun with no real trouble over dinner - on top of anything he may manage to get of taeyong in the meantime. ) - ( /there’s a brief shake of his head at the apology that follows the onslaught of questions. ) ask as much as you want. ( /and he truly doesn’t mind, if only because he knows he can be the same, especially when something has hooked his interest - though he will admit it’s a little odd being the subject of such curiousity, because he’s never really picked himself to be someone that needs many questions asked about him; the simple sort who he figures most people would figure out easily. ) i don’t go to the gym as much as i used to. ( /and he should really fix that, or at least invest in some weights for at home to keep on top of maintaining his build - he adds both to his mental to-do list. ) i do kumdo every day. been doing kumdo since i was five. the secret was probably military service, really. ( /he’s never really thought about it much, before, that he only really started focusing on his build so much while serving and it was a side effect that he hadn’t really expected (or even noticed until know), but maybe he should have, because even if he had lived and breathed almost three years of kumdo, sports personnel hadn’t been exclusively restricted to their sport and there was participation in more general exercises as well. ) not a secret i’d recommend if you want fast results, especially if you aren’t doing active duty.

everything, huh? ( * taeyong looks baekho over once more, his eyes turning up into pleasant crescents as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other ) if you ever want to know more about me in particular, well, let me know! hyun has a way with words, let’s just say. ( * a playful wink comes out of the statement, and taeyong laughs like he’s with someone who’s been his friend for years — he’s an open book for the most part, and if it weren’t for the spontaneity that initiated their conversation, he would have told baekho himself about all the antics that they’ve gotten into, from his point of view — some other time, as he knows that he’ll be seeing a lot more of baekho around given his friendship with hyun ) kumdo andyou were recently in the army? ( * impressive, he wants to say, but doesn’t — he doesn’t want to sound like a broken record, but it is quiteimpressive to go through all that for your physique — admirableis perhaps a better word for it, because taeyong knows if he were to try something like that, he would break just like a twig ) yeah, i guess that explains it — i’ll be sure to look forward to basic training when that time comes. ( * he’s, of course, joking — he doesn’t even think he’s subject to the service, he has an american passport still ) maybe you could teach me a few moves sometime? i’m definitely lacking when it comes to muscles — ( * he looks at his arms, which are toned but still pretty slender — blame his overwhelming preference for cardio ) … but being an idol has given me enough stamina to keep going for… forever, really. i’m sure you understand, you know how they train us. 

rkhyosung:

thank you (/she says for the gesture, someone who considered her clothes must know something about clothes. It’s not usually the first thing on people’s minds when they work out. she walks along with him to the grassy spot she pointed at) That’s a nice name. I’m Hyosung (/she says with a smile) Hyosung like Yusung (meteor). (/she turns back to the grassy area) So, 4 sets of 4 intervals of 20 second sit ups? that’s to say, you do four intervals of sit ups for 20 seconds and whatever you can fit in 20 seconds then you repeat this process 4 times?

alright, let’s start then (/like a meteor? Sounded dangerous and fascinating at the same time. kinda liked that name) [/He sat down on the wet grass without laying out the towel since he didn’t really care about his own clothes. But he would do so, when it was Hyosung’s turn to do some situps. Hee Gun was excited. (/that was so obscure. like a scene out of a movie. had to look good.) The male put his hands behind the ears. Slowly his upper body moved up and down. He knew exactly how to turn his body to show off his M.rectus abdominis perfectly. But the shades made it hard to watch her. Her clothes were really short, perfect for the hot weather out here.

rkhyosung:

(/she chuckles and shrugs a bit) well…I’m not com

pletely an amateur. I’m not that good at working out but (/she grins a bit) I still need help with sit ups. It’s not something I can do alone. (/she looks around from a shady area )plus, I want to get to know you (/she says peeking over at him, biting her lip slightly) is that a bad thing? I’m sure you must be a bit curious about me as well. (/hyosung points at a grassy spot under a tree, it was the perfect shade and a nice cushion from the grass) how about over there?

by the way, what’s your name?

[/Seemed legit. He wasn’t really sure about her wanting to know him better since he wasn’t handsome compared to the society’s beauty ideal. But it was alright to him since he had the face of Korea and he liked himself just the way he was.] sure, let’s get there- i’ll lay out a towel so you won’t get your clothes dirty, all right? (/smiling he goes to the spot she chose) [/The peaceful man shoved his doubts aside.] (/Why wasn’t he able to enjoy this fateful encouter of such a beautiful woman? He was sure a lucky man!) 

i’m kang hee gun. and what’s your name?

rkhyosung:

(/she drops the bottle and her hand down by her side and sighs, thinking of how to keep the conversation going, how to keep flirting and how to learn more about the guy in front of her)(/what if she wasted all this time and he turned out to be poor? he was so hot she was willing to see where it went though and she could definitely see him taking peeks at her. Hyosung looked back at him, knowing it was obvious they were both checking each other out. taking it up a notch, she bit her lip and wondered over to him, closing the distance he tried to set) you know, I don’t work out that often, would you mind maybe helping me out? we can do sit-up sets…(/she smiles before continuing, something innocent though she makes it sound like the most intimate thing in the world) I can hold your ankles and count if you do the same for me. I’m trying to keep my stomach toned

[/He was still irritated. What was her plan? Her overly cute side was definitely not natural and he somehow didn’t really liked that kind of dishonesty. But she was so smoking hot and really beautiful, he still glanced at her. That short pants really suited her well trained long legs. He turned his back towards her and tried to divert his mind from the temptation. His fists slashed through the air, Hee Gun’s shadow boxing was a good way of distraction. (/Didn’t he looked like he wanted to show off his material arts skills and his overly well trained body?)The beauty tagged along, asked him a question that made him stop his boxing. His mind went blank and he only stared at her.] … Well… doesn’t sound like a bad idea… Although you don’t look like a total amateur in terms of training… (/his breath came to a halt, this faked innocence was dangerous) Shall we look for a shady place? [/He secretly looked forward to the sit-up sets, he was relieved that his belly was shapely. Nonetheless there was still some suspicion left and he wouldn’t let his guard completely down.]

(/Hyosung wasn’t afraid to admit that her body was killer with little to no effort on her part. This was the first time in 6 months that she’d been running and she did not regret it. Especially, when she saw attractive men. Usually clothing and material things that clue her in to someone’s wealth are what attracts her but when someone is working out it’s hard to tell how much money they must have. Either way, she couldn’t pass up the chance that maybe the attractive man in front of her had some position and was worth her time) (/she strolls over and holds out her extra bottle of water) here, it’s hot out and you don’t want to get dehydrated (/she smiles and lets her eyes look at his body once more before composing herself) so, I’m not very good at this-well, flirting but I’ll be straight up, I think you’re kind of cute (/that, of course, was a lie but the safest default for Hyosung was shy and humble and she knew exactly how that looked and sound from watching the people in her neighborhood)

[/He never thought of running that way. It was his first time that a girl offered him a bottle of water while training. He raised an eyebrow, indecisive how to react. Seemed like she knew although she claimed to be unexperienced how to deal with men since she got a killer body.] thanks, but i brought water with me. you should use it yourself (/he nods and smiles at the pretty face) well, i don’t really think of myself as cute, but thank you regardless (/doesn’t sound true but no need to be rude) [/He continued with some kicks and started to distance himself from the flirty girl. Somehow he was pleased, but also embarrassed and irritated at the same time. Even though he tried to concentrate, he couldn’t really resist to take a peek at the beautiful shape of her body once again. He already had a female muse but she was definitely competitive as well.]