Self-Editing versus Pro Editing: What You Can (and Can’t) Do Yourself
by John Robert Marlow

It’s no secret that the publishing and film industries are getting tougher, with more submissions competing for fewer spots. The bar has been raised, and first-time writers whose work would have been accepted a few short years ago might now be turned away at the door. To understand why editing can keep that door open, it helps to view things from the editor’s / agent’s / publisher’s / producer’s perspective.

WRITING AS COMBAT

Publishing and film are among the most competitive industries in the world. When you approach an agent or publisher or production company, you’re no longer competing on a local or even regional level; you’re stepping into a global arena and going head-to-head with writers from all over the world.

Most of these writers are bad to average. Some are terrible. But some are very, very good. And if you step into the ring with one (or several) of them—unprepared—chances are, you’re going to get clobbered.

Now, talent is talent, and the people who succeed in these industries know how to spot it. So they might say, “Man that kid looked good, in the two seconds before he hit the mat.” But they’re also pressed for time because everyone and his brother is vying for their attention. And so it becomes a practical matter of, “How much potential does this writer have, and how much time am I going to have to invest to bring that out and start making money?” Remember: this is their business, not their hobby.

So unless you look like the second coming of J.K. Rowling or Terry Rossio (see my Terry Rossio interview here), the smartest thing for an agent or publisher to do is go for the writers whose work is already “there,” or close to it. Less work, more money. That’s just the way it is. The kid who looked good for two seconds will be back again next year—and if not, someone else will be more than happy to take his place.

EDITING AS TRAINING

Editing your work is like training for a fight: the more you do it, the better and more skillful you become. If you already had a good deal of natural talent to begin with, that might very well make the difference between winning and losing, between someone saying “This guy is a good bet, I’ll sign him,” and “Too much work; not good enough.”

Often, though, the decision depends on who else is competing that day, or week, or month; who you’re up against. That’s something you cannot predict or control; you simply have no way to know. What you do know is this: the better you are, the less it matters who you’re up against. And the best way to get better is to train.

SELF-EDITING

All writers benefit from good editing. Most of us can make significant improvements through self-editing. The trick lies in knowing what to look for. As with writing, the more we edit, the better we get—at both writing and editing, because after after a while, we remember what not to do while writing and subconsciously self-edit as we go. Even so, few if any writers ever reach the point where editing becomes unnecessary.

So it’s a good idea to edit yourself, even if you plan to hire a professional editor; it improves the work and makes you a better writer overall. When the pro comes on board, he or she will spend less time on the easier stuff (because you’ve caught it yourself) and more time on the things that take a pro to spot and fix.

In some cases, you’ll also save money when you do hire an editor. For example, line editing (”polishing,” in Hollywood parlance) is a literal, line-by-line edit of the entire work, and the price you pay is based on the difficulty of the job. If every line needs fixing, that price could be three to five times higher than it would be for a work that’s “almost there.”

But there is a flipside to all of this. When you edit yourself, you’re applying principles you know or read about to a work with which you are emotionally involved and intimately familiar. It may be the first book you’ve ever edited and,if not, it’s likely one of the first few. Regardless of how good the writing is, your editing experience is limited, and your perspective is biased.

Your work will be better after the edit than before. But there’s a lot to learn, and you will miss things. All writers, for example, tend to miss their own typos. Why? We know how the sentence is supposed to read, so that’s the way we read it, regardless of what’s actually on the page.

By the same token, we know what’s going on in our own story—the explanations behind events, the motivations underlying character actions, how things link up in the end. Because of this, we tend to read the work as we know it should read, and not as it actually does read. We have inside information that enables us to bridge gaps we may not even realize are there. Thus, things that make perfect sense to us may make no sense at all to someone not already intimately familiar with the story and where it’s going.

Friends and family can help with this but, again, there are problems. Depending on how often you’ve discussed the story with them, they may know it almost as well as you do. They too are biased, as it’s their job to be your friend and not your editor. Because they know and like you already, they may not want to risk hurt or hard feelings by pointing out mistakes or deficiencies. (“Dude, this makes no sense at all.”) They may also be reluctant to admit they don’t understand something, for fear of sounding dumb. (“Dude, this part about the strangelet quarks? I don’t get that.”) They may have noncommercial tastes. (“Dude, the only film better than Battlefield Earth is Plan 9 From Outer Space.”)

Even if they are willing to risk these things, their editing experience is likely limited or nonexistent. They don’t know the marketplace, which means they can’t advise you on your story’s commercial potential. (Not all good stories are commercial.) They’ll miss things, and many of the things they do catch, they won’t know how to fix.

PRO EDITING

Getting back to the combat analogy: you can read about basic principles, even advanced techniques, and practice them on your own. And you’re definitely better off having that knowledge and that bit of practice under your belt. It can get you through some tough moments. It might even make you the best fighter on your block. But once you submit your work, you’ve entered that global arena—and being the best on your block might not cut it anymore.

To improve the odds, you may want to train with someone who’s been down this road before—and emerged victorious. Like an akido master, the seasoned editor, whether male or female, knows the moves. He’s practiced them all a thousand times. He’s made his mistakes and learned from them, as well as those of others. He can see your strengths and weaknesses in an instant and tailor a training program specific to your needs.

The master knows what happens in the heat of battle: how, where, when and why things go wrong, and how to make them right. His experience lends perspective; the ability to see things as they really are, and not as he wishers they would be.

If a new challenge comes up, he draws on years of experience to formulate a plan. Perhaps most important of all, he’s witnessed a thousand literary deaths, and can prevent you from straying into the same lethal situations.

The professional editor is experienced and unbiased, and has probably seen and fixed problems like yours a hundred times in the past year alone. Like any seasoned warrior, the pro has a well-stocked arsenal of from which to draw solutions. He or she is completely unfamiliar with your work, and so able to give it a fresh read, based solely on what’s actually there on the page. The pro knows the requirements and, often, the preferences of buyers. He or she will tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

The professional editor might wind up a friend, or not. Either way, the editor’s job—like the aikido master’s—is to keep you alive, to make your work better, make you a better writer, and guide you on the path to victory. And while the thrill of victory, if it comes, may be shared—the glory is all yours.

DECISIONS

In the end, either path—self-editing or professional editing—will improve your craft. Truly professional editing is affordable for most, but that’s not to say it comes cheap. Editing yourself costs nothing but time. If your writing and editing skills are outstanding, you may make it on your own. If not, going it alone may const you more than time.

On the other hand, hiring a pro does not guarantee a sale. What it will do—if you choose wisely and listen fully—is save you the time it would take to learn what the pro already knows. In many cases, that could be years. Ideally, you do both: edit yourself and then hire a pro to catch what you missed. As time goes on, you’ll miss less—and become a pro yourself.

And in an industry where—as on the battlefield—your first impression could be your last, you want at least one pro in your corner.

(This article originally appeared in the September/October 2011 issue of Writers’ Journal magazine.)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

The Wandering Hero: No Goal, No Plot, No Chance
by John Robert Marlow

Imagine, if you will, a lead character who wanders aimlessly through 120 (or 300) pages, with no particular destination in sight. As an editor, I don’t have to imagine it; I see it again and again—and yet again. The aspiring author sits down to write, and does—with no purpose in mind save following the exploits of their lead character. Trouble is, not every lead is worth following.

And therein lies the problem.

PSSST, HEY BUDDY…

Let’s say someone comes up to you in a bookstore, or outside a theater—perhaps even someone you find quite charming. And they say, “Hey dude, come with me, let’s hang out.” The first things you’ll want to know, of course, are where he wants to go and what he wants to do. So you ask. “I dunno,” he answers. Would you be inclined to go with him?

Or let’s say he comes back with this: “I thought maybe we could wander around aimlessly for the next seven hours and, who knows, maybe have some fun?” Chances are, you’d turn him down flat. First off, you don’t know this guy (as an agent, editor or producer doesn’t know you)—and for all you know, his idea of fun is jumping off the Empire State Building without a parachute (just as an agent, editor or producer has no idea what kind of story you consider worth telling). At least he’s not asking you to pay him for the pleasure of his company.

Without a solid concept consisting of a Who (your lead character or hero), a Goal (something he or she sets out to accomplish), and an Obstacle (which must be overcome in order to reach the Goal)—you’re going to look (to that same agent, editor, or producer) an awful lot like the guy you just met. With one difference: you’re planning to charge for the experience.

THE CRUCIAL QUESTION

To be worth following, a lead character must lead. Not blindly, but with purpose.

Think back over your favorite books and movies. Now ask yourself the same question about each: what is the hero trying to accomplish—his goal, desire, or mission? Is it to get the girl, rob a bank, escape the bad guy—what? Another way to phrase the same question: does the hero succeed or fail at the end? Because once you know what he’s succeeded or failed at, you’ll know his goal.

Without even knowing what your favorite books or movies are, I can state with absolute certainty that—if those stories were commercially successful—then 999 times out of a thousand, you’ll be able to answer that question. Why? Because as a general rule, stories with aimless heroes do not get bought, published, or made into movies.

In those few cases where this does actually happen, those books and movies are almost invariably—by money-making standards—miserable failures. And while an established author or filmmaker’s career might survive such a debacle, the beginning creator’s career may not.

If your lead character is to be worth following, he must be moving toward something. That something is the goal. Without this, plot cannot exist. No plot means no story, means no audience. End of story (if there was one). With no goal, there can be no consistent obstacle for the hero to confront and overcome. (Think back to the obstacles in those same favorite stories.) No obstacle means no conflict—which again means no story.

And so, instead of guiding your would-be audience through a real story, you (and they) wind up stranded in…

MEANDERVILLE

What you get instead is a meandering collection of random events connected by nothing more than the lead character’s presence at the time they take place. And while you may believe that the force of your hero’s magnetic personality is strong enough to overcome this—it’s not. In fact, chances are the hero is no hero, but is instead as deficient as the nonexistent plot itself.

The reason is simple: people who wander aimlessly through life with no overall purpose, no particular goal, no burning desire they feel compelled to fulfill—are, quite simply, boring. It makes no difference whether they’re trust-fund brats or street people; dull is dull. Even if they’re fascinating in the short run—funny, charming, whatever—in the long run they will inevitably come off as shallow and (because of that) ultimately uninteresting. At best, they’re fun in small doses. Books and screenplays are not small doses.

In the case of a fictional character (or even a real person in a true-life story) with no goal, there’s nothing for the reader or audience to get behind, nothing to root for, no ultimate satisfaction in seeing something achieved—because there is nothing to be achieved. It’s like being lost in the desert without compass, map—or desire to get out. You just keep plodding along until you drop. No one’s going to buy that. And if you publish it yourself, no one’s going to read it. Better you find out now than later. Because of the thousands of stories I’ve encountered, I’ve seen no exception to this rule.

Now, your hero can–to a certain extent–be aimless and carefree at the very beginning of the story. (Even in such cases, there’s often a glimpse of some redeeming quality early on.) But the hero then finds his goal and struggles to attain it, embarking on this journey at the turn of the first act. And he’d better be a damned interesting fellow regardless, all through that act.

THE PITCH FROM HELL

How do you pitch something like that? Probably with something like this: “Well, it’s about this guy, and he…” And already you’ve lost them. For good examples of pitches from hell, think back to Miles explaining his unpublished novel to Maya in the Sideways movie, or (more recently) Eddie explaining the plot of his unpublished manuscript to the guys sitting at the bar in the Limitless movie. Miles gets lost, and Eddie seems to bore even himself.

Do not pitch a work that has no plot; it has no chance of success, and it might even get the door slammed in your face when you try to come back with something better. Don’t do it.

REPLOTTING THE PLOTLESS

Your best bet, if you already have (or think you may have) a work like this, is to step back and reassess. Take a look at the Story Development for Writers series on this blog. Once you’ve finished the series, reevaluate your story to see how it measures up.

If it doesn’t, decide whether you feel the story is important enough to rework. If not, move on and do better next time. If you do decide to rework it, follow the recommended steps in laying the groundwork for the revision or rewrite. You can tackle that alone, or seek professional help. The next time around, you won’t have to rework things in this way, or to this extent—because you’ll lay the foundation before you start writing.

The first story—like the first million—is always the hardest.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Using 7 Kinds of Readers to Bullet-Proof Your Book
Guest Post by Book Agent Michael Larsen

The following is a guest post by literary agent Michael Larsen, who will take it from here….

Using 7 Kinds of Readers to Bullet-Proof Your Book

You won’t get your book right by yourself. So before approaching agents or editors, you must ensure that every word is right and your proposal or manuscript is as enjoyable to read as you can make it. One essential step: create a community of seven kinds of readers to advise you on how to improve your work:

1. Friends and family

2. Potential buyers of your book

3. Literate, objective readers

4. An on or off-line critique group whose members will give you feedback as you write your proposal or manuscript and when you finish it.

5. Experts and authors who are knowledgeable about your kind of book

6. A devil’s advocate, a mentor who can combine truth and charity, spot everything in your work that you can improve or remove, and show you how to do it

7. A freelance editor, an optional possibility if you’re not getting the help you need from your reading network. Use your networks, the Web, or Literary Market Place to find an experienced freelance editor who has worked on books in your field that have been published by houses that you want to publish your book. But don’t rely on just one edit or pair of eyes.

Write this injunction in large letters on every copy of the proposal or manuscript that you share with your professional networks online or off:

Spare the Reader, Not the Writer

Models to emulate include Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, who share their stories with forty readers, ask them to grade the stories on a scale of one to ten, and use just the 9.5s and 10s. Ask your readers for an overall rating for the writing and impact of your work, and ratings for anecdotes or scenes in your work that you want to have humorous, dramatic, or inspirational impact. Ask them to email you how your book affected their lives, valuable information you can use in talks, books, articles, and on your website.

_____
This post adapted from the upcoming fourth edition of Michael’s book How to Write a Book Proposal (Writer’s Digest, April, 2011; the current third edition can be found here). Mike also wrote How to Get a Literary Agent, and coauthored the second edition of Guerrilla Marketing for Writers: 100 No-Cost, Low-Cost Weapons for Selling Your Work. This is Michael Larsen’s Blog.

Michael is a member of the Association of Author’s Representatives, and partner at Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents, which specializes in commercial and literary fiction and nonfiction (Michael and Elizabeth), and YA, paranormal, genre fantasy, science fiction, and horror (Laurie McLean).

Michael and Elizabeth are co-directors of the San Francisco Writers Conference.

Agent Andy Ross (Interview)
Interviewed by John Robert Marlow

ANDY ROSS is a literary agent and founder of the Andy Ross Agency, which specializes in narrative nonfiction, history, politics and current events, science, journalism, and cultural subjects. Before becoming an agent, Andy was owner and general manager of Berkeley landmark Cody’s Books from 1977- 2006. He was a board member and officer of the American Booksellers Association, past president of the Northern California Booksellers Association, and is author of the Ask the Agent blog.

JRM: Why did you become—and why do you remain—an agent? What got you started, and what keeps you going?

Andy Ross: Most agents come out of publishing. Usually editorial. This makes a lot of sense. They have experience in the decision to acquire books for publishers. They know the calculations that go into making the decision, and they usually know what general sorts of books publishers are looking for.

I came into this job from an entirely different background. I was a retailer for 35 years. For 30 years I owned and managed Cody’s Books in Berkeley. It was an extremely well known and highly regarded store that had a reputation for its unusual selection of titles and its commitment to books of literary and intellectual value.

This gave me an unusual perspective. I like to say that, as buyer for the store for so many years, I have been pitched over 50,000 titles. It was invaluable experience for understanding the tastes of a very wide range of publishers.

It is pretty easy to make a submission list of the imprints from the 6 major publishers in New York (Macmillan, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins, Penguin, Hachette Book Group). But in the tough world of publishing, realistically it is going to be necessary to go down the list to smaller houses. As a retailer, I am more familiar with a wide range of imprints than many other agents.

When I left Cody’s in 2007, I wasn’t sure what skills I could bring to any new job. I had a sense that my future lay in…maybe…sacking groceries at Safeway. But I had a kind of epiphany that I would be a pretty good agent. I think I am. I’ve sold 21 books in my two and a half years at this job. Many are lead titles.

I love working at this other end of the book food chain. And getting an offer on a book is a really emotional experience. Getting rejections is also an emotional experience, but that is another story. Honestly, I love this work. I wish I had started years ago. It’s like Christmas every day.

JRM: Given your seen-it-all perspective, what still gets your attention and makes a query
stand out from the crowd?

Andy Ross: I see a lot of articles and presentations for writers about how to structure a query letter. Some of them even profess to offer a kind of kabalistic secret technique that will assure the writer of finding an agent and a publisher. I don’t buy that. The best kind of query letter is one that pitches a good idea for a book from a person who has the authority to write it and the platform to get attention for it.

You should always look on an agent’s website for submission guidelines. Speaking only for myself, I like a short query (half page or less) sent by email with the text embedded in the email that tells me the genre of the book, succinctly what the book is about, the audience it is trying to reach and why the author has the authority to be writing about this subject.

You have no idea how often I get queries that begin with a kind of breathless narrative. Two long paragraphs later, it is still unclear whether the book is a novel, a memoir, or something else. I don’t like that.

But, notwithstanding, if I get a query with a project that excites me, it doesn’t really matter if the format is different. I just did an entry on my blog called 9 Tips for Effective Query Letters, which conveys a better idea of what I’m looking for when I read query letters.

JRM: What are some of the mistakes you see new writers make, in their approach to people or the industry?

Andy Ross: There is an old cliché that publishing is the marriage of art and commerce. In these hard times it is a kind of S&M marriage with commerce being a rather harsh dominatrix. Publishers are under huge pressure to make money. I suppose they have always been. And their first concern is how to find an audience large enough to make publication a viable commercial venture.

This is only to say that the decision to publish a book is quite different than a judgment about whether a book is high art or intellectually worthy. And writers need to have no illusions about that.

JRM: What are the most important things for a writer to know—in general, and when approaching an agent?

Andy Ross: It’s important for writers to understand that publishers are going to expect the writer to do the heavy lifting in promoting the book. A writer can’t just write. He has to be a savvy marketer as well.

And writers should also be realistic and be aware that we live in a world obsessed with celebrity and driven by mass media. Increasingly the books that are selling are the books that are getting media attention, books by personalities.

Sarah Palin’s rather mediocre book was the best-selling nonfiction book of 2009. All of the best selling fiction books last year were by name-brand authors. Chances are that if you don’t already have a mass following, your book will sell in modest numbers. The most difficult job I have as an agent is managing my clients’ expectations.

JRM: What qualities do you look for—and look to avoid—in a writer-client?

Andy Ross: It is always easier to sell a book by a writer with “platform”. Platform is a word you hear a lot in publishing. It means that you are famous or otherwise important and will have access to media and reviews.

A professor with an endowed chair at Harvard has platform. Anyone you see on the tabloids as you are checking out at Safeway has platform. Sarah Palin has platform. The Chilean miners have platform. Oprah’s hairdresser (or anyone else associated with Oprah) has platform. Writers, like everyone else, are all different. I try to be tolerant of their virtues and vices.

JRM: What should a writer look for—and avoid—in an agent?

Andy Ross: I hear a lot of myths about what is good and bad in an agent. I hear that it is always best to get an agent from a large prestigious New York agency. Certainly it is always nice to impress your friends by namedropping your celebrity agent, but it isn’t necessarily going to help your career. Some of these agents are pretty good. But they may not have much time to work with you. Some of them think that it is their job to flip contracts, rather than help the author develop her ideas into good and publishable projects.

A lot of authors think they need an agent, because they can’t get published without one. That is probably pretty realistic, at least with the major publishers. But no agent, no matter how prestigious, is going to be able to sell a book that would otherwise not interest a publisher.

A lot of writers think that an agent can get them a big deal with a big publisher and negotiate a very favorable contract. Agents generally have some knowledge about what to ask for in a deal and sometimes how to leverage a situation into getting a bigger advance. Some, but not all, agents know the pitfalls of publisher boilerplate contract language and can make some limited beneficial changes. But these are not really the most important parts of an agent’s job.

If you speak to published authors, most of them feel that their agents are essential and that the commissions are well-earned. But they also will tell you that the real value that the agent brings is to be a creative advisor, first line editor, business manager, intermediary with the publisher, a person who works to advance the writing career of the writer, and is sometimes a shoulder to cry on.

Watch out for agents who are not willing to go the distance to see your book get published. Some authors complain that their agents give up after sending their book proposal to a few large houses. Those are not good agents.

I was on an agent’s panel recently, and another agent had a very telling story. A novelist came to her because she was unhappy with her previous agent. She said that the agent had submitted her novel to 40 publishers and it was rejected by all of them. My agent friend advised her that if she could find an agent who would do that kind of work for her even after facing so many rejections, that was a sign of a very good agent.

That said, there are a lot of people selling themselves as literary agents. Some are pretty marginal and some are scammers. Never hire an agent who charges money up front or who accepts you as a client conditional on your being willing to pay for other services. A good agent works on commission only. Anything else is a red flag. So watch out.

It is always a good idea to find an agent with some experience behind them, some one for whom agenting is a full-time job. But new agents can be good too; I was a new agent about 30 months ago. New agents will take more risks and may very well be willing to work harder for you.

JRM: A number of agents and agencies are now rebranding themselves as “literary management” companies. Does this, in your opinion, represent a fundamental change in the representation business-a shift, perhaps, toward the Hollywood model where writers often retain both agent and manager?

Andy Ross: In the book trade, so far, distinguishing between “agent” and “literary management” is like distinguishing between “used car” and “preowned car.” Different words for the same thing. The real distinction is between agents who do manage client’s careers and those who just flip contracts. The former are preferable to the latter.

JRM: You’ve just described the difference between managers and agents in Hollywood, though there are of course exceptions. But in the book trade-so far-they’re all still “agents?”

Andy Ross: Yes. I guess my simple answer is that, in the book world, good literary agents manage their clients’ careers as well as get them contracts. Bad agents just flip contracts.

JRM: What’s the industry-wide average or typical advance for a book by a first-time writer, and how is that paid out? Feel free to break that down into categories, or to qualify it any way you like.

Andy Ross: I can’t make any generalization about typical advances. But I can say that advances have dramatically decreased in the last few years. It is not unusual to get an offer of a $50,000 advance from a major publisher, for a book that may very well be a lead title.

Any agent will tell you that today, $50,000 is a very good advance. Five years ago, that same book might have garnered three times that amount. You read about seven-figure advances, but really these are for the big celebrities.

Advances get split into payments. Two, three, and even four. Smaller advances are often paid in two parts, one on signing and one on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript. Larger advances will have an additional payment at the time of publication.

I have a six-figure advance that has yet an additional payment at the time of paperback publication. So the final payment is likely to come over two years after the contract is signed. One questions whether this should even be called an “advance.”

JRM: Moving more toward the classic Hollywood step deal.

While we’re talking left coast—any thoughts on books with film or other crossover potential, and how that potential affects the likelihood or ultimate price of a sale?

Andy Ross: Most good agents will try to reserve the rights for movie/tv/performance for the author. So a publisher won’t get a piece of that action. But in general, a movie helps the sale of a book. There are a lot of deals for “options” for movies, which give the production company the right to exercise an exclusive option for a given period of time. A lot of these deals aren’t worth much money. There are very few options that end up getting made into movies.

JRM: For readers who may not know the score, I feel compelled to say here that, while this is absolutely true of most options–typically those by lesser-known companies and individuals—it’s also true that many options pay more than a typical book advance, even if the film is never made. In which case, the author gets to keep the money-and option the work again, or sell it.

Also, some options involve the optioning party doing a significant amount of work to develop, improve, or adapt the work being optioned.

Andy Ross: That is certainly true. Options, like advances, come in all shapes and sizes.

JRM: What industry trends do you think writers should be aware of right now—what’s changing, and where is it taking us?

Andy Ross: The big topic of conversation right now is electronic publishing. It is growing exponentially, and will continue to do so as more consumers buy reading devices.

The reading experience with e-books has become pretty good now. I believe that this is the future of book publishing, as far as anyone can really predict the future in this fast-changing world. I think this will have tragic consequences for community-based bookstores and for the communities they serve.

I don’t think online bookselling is ever going to be able to recreate the ineffable joy and excitement of shopping at a real bookstore. I don’t think that e-books will necessarily change the way people write or the content of what they write. It is a neutral medium, just as a blank piece of paper is a neutral medium.

Of course the more substantial and, to my mind, more troubling trend is the reduction of reader attention span due to the Internet. Reading requires patience and time, and a kind of commitment from the reader that is missing when one is simply surfing the net.

And, of course, the culture of celebrity is driving bigger and bigger sales to fewer and fewer titles. These are very troubling trends, indeed.

JRM: Going back to your comment about the pleasures of shopping at brick-and-mortar stores, I have to agree. But there’s another issue in play here.

Once upon a time, the big chains drove the little independents out of business. Now the online behemoths are putting the hurt on the chains. Amazon has driven Barnes & Noble to the auction block, Borders has already gone under in Britain and was teetering on the brink last year in the U.S. The same thing is happening with dvd rentals: Netflix has driven Blockbuster into bankruptcy.

This would seem to bode well for indies, particularly small or niche stores with lower overhead—where the people working there actually know and care about the books they’re selling. But will customers be willing to pay more for that superior service and personal connection, when they can in most cases order the same thing online, for less?

Andy Ross: That is a very good point. My wife works at an independent. I used to be an independent bookseller, and I have a lot of friends who own independent stores. People in publishing and book lovers everywhere think of indies as the heart and soul of the book business.

Barnes & Noble is still a very robust company. It sells about the same number of books as Amazon. But they are closing a lot of stores and using more space for non-book items. In other words, they are having to make very significant adjustments to accommodate the brave new world of publishing.

Borders is a corporate basket case. They seem to be trying to shrink their way into profitability. Not a good sign.

And yes, you are right that smaller independents have some important advantages. They have low overhead and provide the kind of bookstore experience that is matchless. But unless they can find a way to adapt to the e-book revolution, their future will be in doubt.

JRM: What does your experience at Cody’s tell you?

Andy Ross: Cody’s was a large independent store and was probably a victim of history. The heyday of independent stores was in the 1980’s, before the chains started opening up superstores everywhere. Business began declining in the 90’s. And at the end of that decade we began facing extremely robust competition from Amazon.com. Cody’s had a very high overhead and faced eroding sales.

JRM: What do you like most about working with writers?

Andy Ross: I have enormous admiration for the vocation as well as the profession of writing. I think a lot about what Anne Lamott said in Bird by Bird. She advised the writer to stop worrying about getting published. Writing opens you to the world and makes you a better and wiser person. Getting published does none of this. And seldom brings wealth or fame.

I have said elsewhere that the work of the writer reminds me of the final magnificent sentences of Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. Something to the effect that: “the journey itself is enough to fill a man’s heart.” Nothing expresses better the courage it takes to be a writer.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Screenwriter Terry Rossio (Extreme Interview)
Interviewed by John Robert Marlow

TERRY ROSSIO is the second-highest grossing screenwriter in the history of the medium. He prefers to write with a partner, which is almost invariably Ted Elliott. Together, they’ve written the screenplay and/or story for films such as: Aladdin; Godzilla; Shrek; the Pirates of the Caribbean, Zorro, and National Treasure movies; and far too many others to mention here. Terry also co-wrote (with Bill Marsilii) the record-breaking Deja Vu spec script—which sold for $5.6 million. (Read Terry’s official bio here.)

Q & A by John Robert Marlow

JRM: How did you break in, and how did you come to be where you are now?

Terry Rossio: I’m going to try to not give the usual boilerplate answers in this interview, and that means not going along with false presumptions, no matter how seemingly benign. The question about breaking in seems perfectly legit, but really it’s not. A writer must create compelling work, and then try to sell it. Once sold, the writer has to do the same thing again. It’s really not true that the writer ‘breaks in’—that’s an artifact of the belief that the person is being judged, not the work, and also of the belief that there is an inside and an outside, which I don’t think exists. There are too many screenwriters out there with only a single credit for there to be an inside, and too many writers on the outside making sales, to too many markets which are either new, changing, or undefined.

In truth buyers are just not that organized, your buyer is not my buyer, or in some cases, you can become your own buyer. Courtney Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award this year for best screenplay for Frozen River, and she’s never sold a screenplay. Is she on the inside or the outside? In truth, anyone, at any time, can come up with South Park or Superman or Sandman, and that’s all that matters.

I know writers want to think it’s all about access, and it’s true that for me, at this point, I can get a screenplay read, far easier than most. But that doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t sell, and no writer is so inside that anything they write sells. Lawrence Kasdan has three unsold specs. Shane Black has films he wants to get made he can’t get made. When every studio passes on your project, let me tell you, that feeling of being on the inside disappears fast.

Sure, of course, when it comes to breaking in, there are techniques to market work, which should be used. Any single avenue is possibly correct, but you only know the right avenue in retrospect. In our career, we broke in through sending query letters and spec screenplays, but so what? New writers have to try every technique, all the time. This includes query letters, phone calls, networking, contests, seminars, internships, working on spec, blind submissions, creating your own website, making films on your own, working as an assistant, targeting an agent first, targeting a production company first, working in other media, optioning properties, etc., etc., you get the idea. One approach will eventually be effective, but that doesn’t mean the other attempts could have been avoided. You can’t fire just one pellet out of a shotgun.

As to the second half of the question—how did we come to be where we are—I guess the thing that gets overlooked is that we picked projects that had built-in high audience awareness. Aladdin. Godzilla. Zorro. Sinbad. Pirates of the Caribbean. And now Lone Ranger. We’ve created some cultural awareness as well—Men in Black, Shrek, National Treasure—which is more difficult, but great when it happens.

JRM: You make it look easy. You say you chose projects with high audience awareness—but how did you come to be in a position to do that in the first place, when those properties were owned by others? I guess what I’m saying is, that may be how you and Ted became the 800-pound gorillas of screenwriting—but how were you able to convince the plantation owners, so to speak, to hand you the big bananas?

Terry Rossio: It’s not as impossible as it seems. Stephen King gives up rights to his stories to filmmakers for a dollar, if he is approached with the right level of expertise and passion. That’s how Frank Darabont got started. There are many, many titles in the public domain. Anyone could write a Medusa film, or Aphrodite, or Shakespeare in Love. Look what Broadway did with Wicked, based on Baum’s novel. New books are published all the time where the film rights are available. There are board games, obscure comics, foreign films where the rights are unwanted. Heck, you could even approach Disney and try to get them to make a film from a theme park ride, which we tried to do in 1992.

There are treasures to be found on the open assignments list. Ted and I were shocked to find Mask of Zorro was an open writing assignment. Any writer with an agent had a chance to go pitch on that. There are historical events (such as Titanic), biographic movies, such as Walk the Line or Ray, or Milk or Nixon. Look what Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have done in their careers writing household name biographies.

Short of that, writers can choose to work on projects where at least the topic is universally known. Do a disaster film about the moon crashing into Earth, for example. Or a horror film about the monster under the bed. Or a kid catching cooties. Everyday common knowledge is potential pop culture. It’s not up to me to be creative and point out all the possibilities, that’s up to the writer. I don’t mean to say that it is easy, but there is so much mental real estate out there, a screenwriter should be able to grab onto something.

It does no good for writers to take a helpless stance.

JRM: Being probably the highest-paid screenwriter in history—what does it take to get you excited these days?

Terry Rossio: Oh, my. You say that like money is now out of the equation. I wish that were true.

Honestly, I don’t expect to get any sympathy on this point at all, because I’ve made so much money, and even great writers in other fields make relatively little, but let me walk you through it. Let’s talk money, because no one ever does. A top tier screenplay deal these days might be for a million dollars or more. Most are far, far less, but let’s work with those crazy high numbers, in fact let’s say 2 million dollars, though nobody is paying that any more. Wow that’s a lot of money. But consider. With a writing partner, that gets cut down to $1,000,000.00, and after taxes, lawyers, agents, managers, and the WGA, let’s hope you get to keep $400,000.00.

That’s still a truckload of money, life changing, but they don’t give you that all at once. It might take six months to a year just to get the contract done, and the deal is contingent on the film going into production, and if it does that might take a year or three or five, and also the WGA has to grant full credit at the end of it all, which often doesn’t happen. But let’s say it all goes well, which means the ‘highest paid screenwriter in history’ is actually taking home around $200,000.00 a year, at least on that one deal. Which is good money, real good money, more than I ever imagined making, and let me tell you I do own a dream home in the hills … but it’s not in the fly-a-Learjet-to-your-own-private-island-in-the-Caribbean category.

So hey, yes, the money is great, yes, and let’s hope we can all work on more than one project at a time. But it’s also easy to put a couple hundred thousand down on a house, give some to mom and dad, pay off a loan, hire an assistant, put some in savings, loan some cash to starving writer friends … and in a year or two or five it’s clear you’re not through still needing to work for a living, hopefully as a writer, back trying to sell a new pitch.

Of course, writers don’t want to hear this. It makes them angry. They get suspicious, like you’re some kind of financial idiot, or you have a secret drug problem. They want to keep alive the fiction that the top end of financial reward for screenwriters is up there with the actors, directors, and producers. But there is a brutal glass ceiling for screenwriters. If Keira Knightly gets $15 million and a piece of the gross for just one film, that’s more than I’ve been paid in my entire 18 year career, every project combined.

So money is still a motivation. Because money is power in Hollywood. The deal structure of a director, actor or producer can give them the resources to open a production company, option a best selling novel, or finance a low budget film. You don’t see writers doing those things.

But to answer the question. What gets me excited is the same thing that has always got me excited—inventing a story. More precisely, heaving a big heavy idea into the pop culture pond and seeing if it’s good enough to send ripples all around the world.

JRM: If you could go back and spend an hour with yourself before the Big Doors opened, what advice would you offer? Put another way: what do you wish you’d known when you started out?

Terry Rossio: You can guess the first part of my answer. There are no Big Doors. There is only the challenge of writing Network, or The Sting, or Cabaret or Harry Potter. The project is the challenge, always.

But what do I wish I had known? I would tell myself: become a director. My fear was always that as director, I would have to know what I was doing. Over time it has become clear to me, that was a useless worry. Yes, of course, talent, knowledge and ability are valuable assets, but they are not strictly necessary. While many directors are brilliant, for example, Gore Verbinski and Steven Spielberg are so capable and competent they’re like beings from another planet, it was dumb of me to hold myself to that highest standard. Not when there are so many directors out there who are clueless—with ten times the power, ten time the control over content, ten times the rewards of any screenwriter. You can get by in this town, quite often, by appearing confident and yelling. The bad idea from the bully often beats the good ideas from the reasonable person. Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.

This is a key point for screenwriters, because your only hope of success, renown, residuals and more work comes from delivering stellar content to an audience. And the director controls the content. So no matter how well you write it, if the director prefers shit, the audience will be forced to eat shit.

JRM: How do you approach writing—do you have particular habits or working environments that you find helpful, and how does the collaboration process work for you?

Terry Rossio: The only odd thing I do is take frequent long drives. For some reason, story solutions seem to come to me while I’m on the road. This may go back to when Ted and I started out, and every meeting began with a 2-3 hour drive from Orange County to Hollywood.

Longest drive I ever took was from LA to Washington DC, leaving late Friday and arriving early Monday morning for the cast and crew read-through of National Treasure. But that was more about my fear of flying (and relative love of driving) than the working process.

Regarding the collaboration process, the best part of it is story invention through discussion. When you articulate a story problem to someone else, you have to frame it, prep it for the solution. Sometimes your framing is off, and you’re making presumptions you shouldn’t, and your writing partner can spot that. Sometimes the framing is done so well the solution is readily apparent.

Also, alone, the mind can wander. But if you’re locked into a discussion, there is a discipline, a commitment to not quitting until some kind of answer is found.

JRM: It’s been said that nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. So other than the obvious—an abundance of talent—what do you believe makes you different from other writers?

Terry Rossio: Ah, great question. I don’t know the answer to that right off. But you’ve made another questionable presumption. I do believe there are writers with “an abundance of talent” … that would be Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, David E. Kelley, Theodore Sturgeon, Rod Serling, etc. Their first drafts are brilliant and they have a high level of output. Let me tell you, I do not belong in that category.

I’m just an average writer. But I’ve learned the trick of applying what talent I possess many times over to a project, elevating it a little each time. What you do is create from a personal, subjective viewpoint, and then assess what you’ve done from an objective, audience viewpoint, and then switch back to creating, and then back to assessing, etc. Essentially, I am an abundantly talented editor.

But that doesn’t answer the question. It should be noted that all of the success I’ve had has been in conjunction with others, with very talented writing partners. Maybe I’m just good at picking talented partners?

But no, that’s not an answer. A couple things jump out. We’ve never turned in a draft where we felt it couldn’t go into production the next day. There is such a thin membrane between done and worth doing. It takes a certain insanity to achieve the needed level of denial and believe what you’re doing is worth the pain, because most drafts get rejected, most drafts get misread, and every draft gets changed. But we never became jaded, we always managed to tell ourselves this is the one, this is the one they’ll want to make, as-is.

The other thing that comes to mind is we’ve never cared so much for dark, bleak, and cynical. Though the entire town here seems to think that’s what audiences want. And so dark, bleak and cynical screenplays get attention, and dark, bleak and cynical films get made. Fine. That leaves the top of the box office to us, and Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron, and David Koepp. What’s really going on is producers, writers, development executives, directors and actors are overly worried about looking not-cool. They fear “corny” so profoundly they err on the side of long dark coats, neon lights, reflections in the water, smoke, blue lighting, black sunglasses, and sneering looks. They are so afraid of heartfelt they take refuge in dim and bleak and ugly. You’ve never seen anything as funny as a producer wax all excited about how they’re going to reinvent Superman, give him a costume of chain and black leather.

How else am I different? I think I have commercial sensibilities. Of course everyone in town says that. But I truly want to write a film about the monster under the bed, or a window that looks three days into the past. Those ideas seem good to me, more worth writing than, say, a husband and wife struggle to survive a series of affairs and find meaning in their lives.

And I’ll go ahead and add—I never thought of myself as having a great work ethic, I’ve always felt lazy, indulgent and slow. But I’ve discovered over the years that’s not true, I’m a pretty hard worker. I work every night, on weekends; we’ve worked over the holidays; I’ve given up travel and parties and poker games, you could argue I’ve traded having adventures in life for having adventures on the page. Not sure at times whether that’s a fair exchange, but it sure helps with the career.

And I will also add: one does not face this task alone. I have on my side Heinlein, and Bradbury, and Poe. Ellison, Shakespeare, and Chandler. Serling, Asimov, and Christie. Twain, Bach, and Tolkien. Sturges, Simon, and Vonnegut. King, Sturgeon, and Chayefsky. Gaiman, Ashman, and Matheson. You get the idea. Not to mention every episode of the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Dark Shadows, heck, all the great television shows I’ve seen and all the great films I’ve watched, all the great comic books and comic strips I’ve read. You have to come at this job with a background in popular works of fiction, from all media.

JRM: Why did you choose to collaborate, rather than going solo—and what made you decide to continue that practice?

Terry Rossio: Lack of that ‘abundance of talent’ you referred to earlier.

JRM: What goes through your head when you sit down to write—what are you thinking?

Terry Rossio: Well, okay. Starting from the beginning … the first issue to me, and most important, is whether the concept of the movie is intrinsically compelling. I like to feel with absolute certainty that the fundamental idea for the film is, without a doubt, an exceptional premise, one that implies that a film must be made from it, without question. You want to cross the finish line at the beginning of the race.

Next, I would ponder exactly why the concept is compelling. This is kind of like examining a diamond from every angle under different lighting, against different backdrops. Yes, you know it’s pretty, but what makes it so? And how does it achieve its beauty, and could it be enhanced even more?

Once you know, perhaps, the several different ways a premise is compelling, you can attempt to know how best to present it … would the ‘interesting stuff’ in it be better explored as comedy, or a drama … a police procedural, a western? Even if you have a genre in mind that seems obvious, it’s worth thinking about how the idea plays in other genres.

Right away Ted and I start to see key images. There is nearly always a series of filmic images naturally associated with every good film idea. As those images come—trailer moments—we try to think of ways to link them or group them, to write toward them and away from them … a plot starts to form. (It’s sad when—much later—one of the early, key images drops out, or falls away from the spine of the eventual storyline.)

Next I would spend some time thinking about the all-important second idea. Since I fear working on something that isn’t great or compelling from the start, I want to stack the deck in our favor by taking the first inspiration and going past it, add to it with a second inspiration. This is hard to describe because it could be ‘adding’ or ‘merging’ the first concept with another concept from another movie idea, or it could be coming up with some twist that derives from the original idea and pushes it further. I guess at all times we keep thinking, ‘how can we push this’ more than what we have already. Can we do the entire concept in the first thirty pages, and then go from there, and really blow the audience away? Again, this is all fear-based … is it good enough? No, not yet, it can get better, we can do more …

I shouldn’t go too far without starting to think about the main character relationship or relationships in the film. (Note, not the main character, or characters, their histories and such. That’s not so important. To me, the relationship between characters is what needs to be defined, those are the moments audiences want to watch, and the actual characters can be adjusted to make the main relationship or relationships the most interesting). That leads to thinking about what kind of character, and character situation, is best to mine the concept, or take best advantage of the concept or story arena.

As always, I would try to think of ways to push the characters into extremes, because this is my personal weak point, and I would worry that my characters are too timid, or bland; too much a reflection of myself, meaning my actual self or the self I wish to present to the world, and not enough a reflection of my hidden self, my fears, experiences, dreams, wishful thinking, intuition, hang-ups and psychosis; or at the least, not compelling or unique enough in an external-to-myself sense, as in, the world’s greatest detective (Sherlock Holmes) or a man ages backward from birth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) or a man who lives 2000 years (Lazarus Long); etc.

I try to think of situations, or evolving situations. I would start to explore what I would visualize as possible ‘umbrella’ situations (overall issues that are simple, and so allow for complex exploration) as well as interesting sub-situations. My goal is from page one to present whatever the story is in only a series of ‘characters in situations’ where the information and issues appear as a side effect of people dealing with immediate problems, with no relief.

I ask myself: have you made the mistake of making the secondary characters more interesting than the leads?

Early in the process I want to focus on the ending. Nothing else matters, nothing will happen, no project will be begun or get anywhere or make any progress at all until the ending is known. If there is no satisfying ending, or at least the glimmer of one, then the idea will sit on the shelf. Good endings are hard. But once you have it, then everything else derives from the ending, because it’s all, in a sense, setting up that final twist, or emotion, or feeling, or thematic statement, or rush of excitement, or chill, or brilliant payoff, or sublime wisdom, or whatever.

You always ask—what is the tone? Again, as part of that, back to genre … are there genre conventions that can be mixed, or used to advantage? Is this really a Romeo and Juliet story, hiding, in disguise? Is it really the Count of Monte Cristo? Is it Guns of Navarone? Once Upon a Time in the West? Is it an innocent on the run like North By Northwest? Is it a combination of story patterns, or, is it something that’s not been done before, or at least, I don’t know that it’s been done? If so, how do I see the pattern in my head?

What’s the title? If the project doesn’t call to mind a cool title, then I start to suspect that it’s not a good project, or I’m not ready to write it yet.

Has a theme emerged yet? It’s almost impossible to have the makings of a story without a theme implied, but then you ask, is the theme trite, or is the opposite of the obvious theme more interesting, or is there an entirely different theme that is actually better, more sublime, more compelling? I would also explore whether all aspects of the theme, or central question of the screenplay, can find form in the story—perhaps characters or character relationships can be invented by assigning them different aspects of the thematic argument.

What is a compelling opening image?

At some point, after having a few scenes and images in mind, some characters, I would start to wonder—what is the point of view? It usually starts off flying all over the place to explore the story, but is there some way to limit the point of view that would actually enhance the telling of the story. (What if we revealed stuff from this character instead, how does that change the emphasis, how does that change the unfolding narrative from the audience’s point of view?)

At some point I would double check—is the setting right? What if I changed the gender of my lead, would it matter? What if I opened at the end instead of the beginning? Would the whole thing be better if the leads were ten years old? These are just routine questions used to double check the whole creative process, shake things up, and make sure I’m fully exploring all options.

I might ask—is this all really best suited as a screenplay … is it really a novel, a short story, or a play, or a comic book or a television series just masquerading as a feature screenplay?

I would double check—is this castable, is the budget under control, is it something that a director might like to make … are actors going to want to be in these roles … I want the thing to get made!

I would also double check—have I fulfilled, and also exceeded the genre? If it’s a horror film is it actually scary, if it’s a romance is it actually romantic? What are the reference films the audience will bring to this?

I would wonder—does it require a character as villain or is it not that type of film, is the conflict not imbedded in one person? What if there were two villains? What if the villain turned out to be the hero? What if we told the story from the point of view of the villain? Again, these are just questions I would ask to assure myself I’m not missing some obvious opportunity.

I guess at this point the process of generalizing breaks down … hopefully I’d have enough answers to start getting into specific problem issues and story problem solving. I would start to generate ongoing patterns—character relationships, setting up reversals. I would want to build in surprises. I’d play around a lot with the ‘lines of force’ which is just tracking each character through the story, understanding that each would continue toward the path of what they want, unless their wants change; but all actions are a result of intent and intent comes from desire. So if I want the plot to work the character’s desires have to be designed such that as a by-product the plot works.

Over and again, I would ask: what’s cool? What’s a cool sequence? Character? A cool line of dialogue? A cool set, a cool exchange, a cool sequence? A cool relationship? What’s a cool demise? What’s a cool fight sequence, a cool visual? A cool opening image? (And by cool I mean actually cool, as in Superman becoming Clark Kent in one shot, or Jack Sparrow stepping off a sinking ship, or Howard Beale yelling “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more,” or Elliott and E.T. riding across the face of the moon, not the Hollywood version of cool as mentioned before, all wet streets, neon lights, long black coats and grim-faced killers shooting each other.)

Repeat this whole process several times, as needed, until in an excruciatingly slow process, each solution asserts itself and declares itself, ‘good’ and finally, when everything is good or you run out of time, it’s done.

THEN you can start writing the screenplay …

JRM: What are the most important things for a writer to know?

Terry Rossio: The first impulse is to say ‘the difference between good and bad.’ But that’s not right, because there are many, many people who can recognize the difference between good and bad. The most important thing for a writer to know is how to move something from bad to good. This may be different for each writer. But unless you have a method, a process, a technique, or an ability to move your work from not so good to better to okay now it works, you’re in trouble.

The first step of knowing what’s cool, I guess, is recognizing what’s not cool … which is very rare when it comes to your own writing. The worst thing a writer can do is be finished and all satisfied with the work, and be delighting in how good it is, because that means the work will stop, and if it in fact sucks it will never get to not sucking, and your work will turn people away rather than attract them.

My second impulse is to say … www.wordplayer.com! (But then I have to add John August’s site as well.)

JRM: What gets your attention and makes a script stand out from the crowd?

Terry Rossio: There are buyers and sellers in Hollywood. Writers, agents, even most producers, are sellers. I’m a seller. The opinions of sellers don’t count, this question is more properly asked of a buyer. I don’t look at scripts to buy them, I don’t look at other people’s screenplays much at all.

Having said that, when I see a writer accomplish something I have trouble doing or I can’t do at all, of course I’m impressed. Karey Kirkpatrick understands how to write those minimal scenes, and uses a straightforward, clean style to great effect, cutting through all the unnecessary embellishments and getting to the heart of a story. Damn him. I admire that. John Logan writes performance dialogue so well; his dialogue is both natural sounding and reveals character. Love his work.

The times I have read spec screenplays and been impressed, I have noticed, those screenplays have a voice from the very first line, a sense of control, a sense of purpose. Every line is a statement to a purpose. The writer leads and the reader follows.

JRM: What makes you think a script will be a chore to read, and is there anything you find particularly lacking in today’s scripts?

Terry Rossio: It’s far too difficult to try to catalogue or characterize ineffective writing. It comes in so many varied forms.

But … I will point readers to a recent Wordplay column, called Scene Character [linked below]. So many screenplays, professional and amateur, execute scenes that are just kinda basic. They look like scenes and smell like scenes, and the writer no doubt feels a sense of accomplishment because writing anything coherent is difficult, but the real work of screenwriting hasn’t even been attempted. Anyone can write a scene. The job of the screenwriter is to give scenes character, make each scene distinctive, the way characters are unique and distinctive.

We all know the basic forms. So if that’s all you’ve accomplished, then why does anyone need to hire you? In the article I make the argument, if you take the trouble to give character to your characters, then go to the trouble of giving character to your scenes. Push past writing the basic scene the basic way, try something ambitious and memorable.

I will also add that many screenplays out there seem woefully deficient regarding character patterns. That issue makes up the largest category of screenplays that demand rewrites. Great stories examine evolving and interesting character relationships; the character interaction patterns are as important, or more so, than the plot patterns. Too many writers, I think, don’t even consider their stories from this point of view—too bad, because more than anything else, that’s the part of the work that will be judged, by the studios, producers, actors, directors … and the audience.

Finally, I will say … beware of timid characters. Polite is your enemy. Meek is a fiend. Go for it.

JRM: What are some of the mistakes you see writers make in their approach to people or the industry?

Terry Rossio: The most idiotic approach will work if the writing is genius. The best approach in the world won’t work if the writing is mediocre. The biggest mistake a writer can make regarding their approach is to worry about their approach. Win the game by having better content than anyone else, and the whole approach issue goes away.

This especially applies to when you get ‘in the room.’ Have an opinion, and make sure you can back that opinion. Essentially, be right. Be the person who has solutions, or at least the path to the solutions. Be the person overflowing with character ideas, plot structures, filmic premises, references to relevant novels and short stories, or works of nonfiction, applicable foreign films, etc.

It’s crazy to expect the big contract unless you can actually slam dunk the ball. And hit your free throws. And make three point shots, and box out for the rebound. For writers, that means providing ideas, answers, possibilities, solutions. We are the content creators of the town, so ultimately, that’s how we will be judged. I hate to say it, but most writers I know who are not successful don’t actually have Shawshank Redemption sitting on their hard drive, and can’t speak with confidence about point of view to executives, or haven’t come up with one or more of those instant-sell high concept ideas. Given that harsh truth, why waste time worrying about your approach?

Essentially, don’t try to be Peter Benchley if you don’t have Jaws. Don’t try to be Michael Crichton if you don’t have Jurassic Park.

JRM: Aside from the script itself, what says to people in the business—”Hey, I want to work with this writer?”

Terry Rossio: Humor. Making people laugh. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe not the most important, but it’s a factor. Funny is appealing.

Perhaps the most needed ability a writer must possess is the ability to instill a sense of confidence in the buyer. They need to believe you have the answers, they need to believe the solution to all their needs has just walked into the room. You have to alleviate their fears. They need to believe you are not crazy, that you’re not on drugs, that you’re fast and capable. It makes them feel more secure if you can show that you know the film must be marketed, that they are going to have to attract a director, and movie stars, that the budget can’t get out of control. That you are willing to take on their problems as your problems. They want to know that you will work with them on notes, that you can work with a director, or the studio head, or an actor, on notes. They want to believe that you have a legitimate, successful take, and that choosing you will never be a mistake, will never make them look bad … that you have the solution and can deliver the final shooting draft next week. And there’s where the need for good content comes back, only good content can truly, effectively allay their fears.

JRM: What says “I don’t want to work with this writer?”

Terry Rossio: Well, the opposite of the above. The kiss of death is when a writer thinks something is really super cool that just isn’t cool at all. If the aesthetic doesn’t match, then, to quote Jimmy Buffett, it’s over from the start.

JRM: What are the odds of selling a spec as opposed to getting work from a spec that doesn’t sell?

Terry Rossio: There are no odds. Not in either case. That question presumes a reality that is in no way connected to actual reality, making it difficult to form a response. (Have you noticed a pattern? I’m challenging the presumptions behind many of these questions.)

Consider that most projects don’t sell and most writers don’t get hired. The existence of those projects and people does not increase, or decrease, anyone else’s specific chance of getting any type of sale or job … meaning, then, the very concept of ‘odds’ (which requires a playing field) is a delusion.

Even trying to speak comparatively, you can’t arrive at a conclusion. The first problem is with the concept, or term, ‘a spec’ … as if all specs are one thing, as if they are all similar, like jars of peanut butter lined up on the shelf. In the real world, there is no generic ‘spec;’ there are only individual screenplays of varying quality, read by individual people with varying ability to understand them. LeBron James is not in competition with Ron Jeremy to make the starting roster of the Cleveland Cavaliers, even if at some point they might have passed each other on the street. Some screenplays can’t miss selling, which gives them (I suppose) a 100% ‘chance’ while other screenplays won’t sell, and have a 0% chance. Does that mean together, each has a 50% chance? Nope.

Then there is the problem of the buyer. One buyer may have a 100% chance of not hiring anyone, because the budget has been spent that year. A different buyer just sold a series and is looking to ramp up a staff. Yes, there are more ‘assignments’ available than sales, but that means nothing on a case-by-case basis. In the world of film, something happens or it doesn’t … mostly the latter.

We all have an impulse to try to generalize and spot patterns, but asking that question is like asking what the ‘odds’ are of ‘a creature’ coming into your house through ‘either the front door or a side window,’ when the actual task at hand is specifically to go outside and paint a fence.

JRM: There’s a widespread perception that a big part of making it in Hollywood is “who you know.” How true is that—and how does “who you know” stack up against “what you know” and “how good you are?”

Terry Rossio: Here I go again. No, in fact that is not a widespread perception. It is only claimed to be widespread perception. At least not at the point of breaking in. The prevailing opinion I am familiar with is that your level of talent is what matters, because that determines who you get to know. And of course that is correct.

Now, after you get to know people, yes of course, it’s important to know people, this is a town of relationships. You must put together your team, or become a part of a team; that is the only path to success. No film gets made without at least a dozen key people choosing to lay their careers on the line to push it forward.

But that’s like saying a big part of flying up to the space station is ‘who you know.’ We don’t speak that way in the context of astronauts, and it makes just as little sense with screenwriters.

JRM: Related question: It’s been said that there are three crucial elements to breaking in: talent, access, and timing. Can you rate their relative importance—or would you alter the equation in some way?

Terry Rossio: We have to talk about ‘necessary but not sufficient conditions.’ Talent is necessary but not sufficient, because there are many talented people who never break in. Access is necessary but not sufficient, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have access who can do nothing with it.

Timing only seems important in retrospect. If your project is great and it sells, then the timing was perfect. But timing alone won’t make a sale—there are tens of thousands of projects that have equally perfect timing, but their projects go nowhere. In the end, timing is usually something that only works against you—the executive who loved the project gets fired, a similar project is set up just before yours goes out, etc.

So what are the crucial elements? This is a very hard concept to truly appreciate, but Hollywood is a place that grants huge rewards to the exact right thing and exerts disinterested punishment on great stuff that is even just the tiniest bit off, as well as all the bad stuff. It’s a lot like writing a hit song; the difference between “she loves you, yeah yeah yeah,” versus “she loves you, ooh, ooh, ooh” (to steal a moment from Peggy Sue Got Married) is profound. One is not almost as good as the other, one works, the other doesn’t.

This idea is so hard to convey because it’s so counter-intuitive. You think if you get something 90% right you should get 90% rewarded. It doesn’t work like that. The world will give gobs of money to Star Wars to watch Luke Skywalker, but it might not have been interested in The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as Taken from the Journal of the Whills.

In the end you have to come up with the one single exact thing, and it has to be one hundred percent exactly right. Sherlock Holmes. The Cat in the Hat. Mary Poppins. Napoleon Dynamite. In the final analysis, the only element that matters is coming up with the exact thing that can catch fire in the public consciousness. We are kin to the purveyors of the Pet Rock, The Macarena, Catch-22, and the Hula-Hoop. Pet dirt would not have worked. The thing is the thing and only the thing, and not some other thing.

JRM: How does a new guy or gal make contacts?

Terry Rossio: Contacts aren’t really that hard to make, and not really that important. Content is what counts. Having said that, make contacts through—

Internships. Film festivals. E-mails. Message boards. Query letters. Phone calls. Entry level jobs. Parties. Friends. Family. Church. School. Seminars. Since you don’t know what will work, you have to do everything.

I will mention a few little known avenues that most people won’t ever try, but they would work.

1. Offer to work for free with the people in the business you most admire. Sure it sucks to have to work a second job to pay the bills, but this is your career we’re talking about, and you don’t have to do it forever. Six months working at a company you admire, even sweeping the floors, and you leapfrog ahead in terms of learning and contacts.

2. Write a book, or start a newsletter, or author a series of interviews, on the people or companies you admire. Best way to learn about anything is to write a book about it.

3. Throw a series of parties in Hollywood. Only a series of parties will work, and they have to be really good parties. But I will tell you, there is no better way to meet a lot of people.

4. Create something—webisode series, graphic novel, short film, micro-budget film, novel, play. After all, it’s really not so much about getting to know them, you want them to want to get to know you.

JRM: What are the chances of making it in this business without a good rep?

Terry Rossio: Everyone in this business who ever made it, made it without a good rep, at least at the beginning. So the odds are absolute that you can, even if it remains unknown if you will. Really it’s only after you get something to happen, that’s when the agents start to circle.

I think of agents as the water skiers behind the speedboat. It’s up to me to get us all up to speed, and to decide which direction to go, not run aground or hit a pier. I have to aim us toward the ramp. After we reach the ramp, they are free to do their tricks back there, woo-hoo. But the agent doesn’t drive the boat, that’s the writer’s job.

This is true even with an ongoing career. Agents are frighteningly incapable of making anything happen, if the thing just doesn’t want to happen. And I love my agents and my manager, we have the best in town. But agents are not buyers, they’re sellers. An agent can’t make a sale happen if there is no interest, or get a film into production if a studio balks, or stop a director from ruining a movie. What they do very, very well, is manage interest to your best advantage, when the interest is present. Agents can’t really make hot out of cold. But they can turn hot into yummy soup.

JRM: Agent vs. manager—which is best, or does a writer need both?

Terry Rossio: A writer has to get access, somehow, to that open assignments list, compiled by each of the major agencies. And then the writer needs to get meetings to pitch on the best of those assignments, the ones the writer believes can become hit movies, the ones the writer can solve. You have to get in the room.

So I guess I will come down on the side that a writer needs an agent, because you need the agency. But even a hip-pocket arrangement with an agent is enough. Even the most tentative relationship with an agent can work. You just have to get to that binder, somehow. Once the writer spots the job he wants, it’s up to the writer to get into the room (if the agent can’t set it up) and then, once in the room, get the job.

As to the question of agent vs. manager … again, agents do not come in six packs. A good manager is better than a bad agent. What matters is building a team, finding that person who is competent and is truly on your side. That can be an agent, manager, or producer; that can be a studio executive, that can turn out to be a production assistant who eventually goes on to run a studio. Individuals matter, not titles.

JRM: Thoughts on manager-producers?

Terry Rossio: Most of the best producers are not managers, and most of the best managers are not producers. There’s a generalization for you. But the exact right manager-producer could work wonders for a writer.

Keep in mind agents, managers, and manager-producers are sellers. They may try to act like buyers, but don’t get swept up in that. There’s nothing more pointless than a bunch of sellers in a room hyping each other up, with nary a buyer in sight.

While it’s good to have anyone out there on your side working for you (the business is that difficult) ultimately you need a buyer on your side. You need a buyer and a great entertainment attorney. An agent is great, but you can’t fall into the trap of thinking that just having an agent will cause deals to come your way.

JRM: What makes a good rep, and what are some of the things that tell you you’re dealing with a keeper?

Terry Rossio: A good rep takes your phone calls at least half the time right away, and never lets 24 hours pass without returning your call. There are other qualities, of course, but all bad reps violate this rule and none of the good ones do.

Good reps don’t give story notes. Sorry, they just don’t. They may give a reaction to the read, and they should give information to the screenwriter that may help the screenwriter better understand the market at that particular moment, and they can be a sounding board for concepts before a script is written. I don’t know how the tradition of getting notes and doing unpaid rewrites for reps started, but that’s the last thing a writer needs, another hoop to jump through, another opinion to battle. You can make the argument that many writers give drafts to their reps that are terrible and in need of help—fine, but the solution to that problem is not notes from the agent, the solution is for the writer to get better, and to get better on their own. You can’t bring the agent to the story meeting.

JRM: What are some signs of a bad rep—things to watch out for?

Terry Rossio: When you meet an agent, if one of the first things they mention is how good they are at developing material, and giving notes, I say run. They’re just giving themselves an out, a way to excuse not being able to effectively market your work. Everyone wants to be in development, because it takes the pressure off. A lot of agents give notes to help cover the fact that they haven’t done anything else for their client. But if a project can’t be automatically marketed and sold, it’s far better to skip the make-believe that something is actually happening with the agent-rewrite, and just move on to something else.

A writer needs to have the same attitude the Coen brothers had from the beginning of their careers. “Everyone wanted to talk about the screenplay. We told them, ‘No, the screenplay is finished. We’ve handled that. Now we need help making the movie.’”

Now you might point out, that only works if the writer has written something great, if the writer has written something that really works, that doesn’t actually need changes. And my answer to that is a resounding yes. Exactly right. If the screenplay is anything less than that, the effort will fail anyway—and rightly so.

Of course, I do a disservice to all the times an agent read a draft and offered some fantastic suggestions and insights, and the writer went on to reassess their own work, and do a much-needed rewrite, and the work was vastly improved for the exchange, and then went on to sell. There is nothing wrong with that, if it happens. But that should never become the target. You can’t count on co-writing something with your agent. The writer needs to be the expert on the writing. If someone fixed your work for you, with an actual great idea you missed, that should make you really pissed off, and you should endeavor for it to never happen again. The writer should be vastly more capable than any agent, or anyone else in the world, when it comes to a particular screenplay, else how could the writer ever hope to be hired?

JRM: Big agency vs. boutique vs. small agency: what’s your take, pro and con?

Terry Rossio: Big agencies are better, because their open assignments list is more comprehensive, with individual agents covering individual studios, then sharing the information. Having said that, the most important aspect is really the person, not the company. The right person can be found anywhere, better to have a responsive agent who is into your work at a small agency than an agent you don’t like at a large agency.

JRM: And of course, the eternal question: how does a writer get repped?

Terry Rossio: Create popular product.

JRM: How important are loglines, pitch-sheets, and treatments?

Terry Rossio: As important as the letter ‘e’ and the proper use of the word ‘as.’ Meaning, you can’t write without them, and you should endeavor to execute them to perfection.

JRM: Many writers believe it’s all on the page—that once the script is in the right hands, the writing will sell itself. In your opinion, how important is it to be “good in a room,” and to be able to pitch the work in person?

Terry Rossio: All right, here we go.

There is a big problem in this field of screenwriting, and it has to do with the very word ‘screenwriter.’ What is meant by that term, exactly? Not what everyone seems to think. Not even what screenwriters seem to think, for the most part. And it’s the cause of a huge amount of disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, and grief.

People tend to believe this: as novelist is to novel, and playwright is to play, screenwriter is to movie. And that’s just not the case.

But it’s a compelling, persistent notion. The novelist or the playwright gets to define the content of their projects, right? So it follows the screenwriter gets to define the movie, yes? No. The screenwriter may only suggest content, or provide content that is subject to change, or revise the content of other screenwriters until another screenwriter comes along, etc. The screenwriter may have the opportunity to argue what the content should be, but quite often, has to execute the best possible version of the content as defined by others.

As with the novelist or playwright, you’d like to say the screenwriter at least gets to invent the concept of a movie, but that doesn’t happen as often as one might hope. They (studios and producers) have plenty of ideas, they’d rather get your help on one of their marginal ideas than put their weight behind one of yours, even if yours is clearly superior. And consider, there are so many millions of books and short stories written, so many plays, and remakes, sequels, television shows, and old spec scripts, etc., such a monstrous glut of material, in their world, new content is not much valued.

So the only power a writer might have lies in the ability to provide superior content, but in a world where few people can even recognize superior content, this power is greatly dissipated.

So what, then, is a Hollywood screenwriter? What is the more true, actual working definition of that term? Something like this:

1. Person who writes screenplays, but cannot get them read.

2. Person who writes screenplays, but cannot get them sold.

3. Person who sells a screenplay that is considered in need of revisions.

4. Person who, when selling a screenplay, gives up copyright.

5. Person who is forced to sign a ‘work for hire’ agreement, even on a spec screenplay that was not written as work for hire.

6. Person who cannot get their sold screenplay into production.

7. Person who does free revisions, based on notes by non-filmmaking development executives, whether those notes are good or bad, in order to get past that executive and to the actual decision maker.

8. Person who writes and revises screenplays who cannot get a studio to send their screenplay out to directors.

9. Person whose screenplay is passed on by directors and stars, thus stalling the project, but generating more free revisions.

10. Person whose screenplay attracts a director, who is then replaced the day the director shows interest.

11. Person who spends a lot of time preparing pitches on open assignments.

12. Person who pitches open assignments, but does not get hired.

13. Person who, without being hired, agrees to do free revisions on their open assignment pitch.

14. Person who writes treatments and outlines as part of a pitch or step deal, then gets let go prior to the screenplay step.

15. Person who revises their spec screenplay, for free, according to their agent’s notes, in order to get the agent to send out the screenplay.

16. Person who revises their spec screenplay, for free, so a big name producer might agree to attach themselves to the project.

17. Person who revises their spec screenplay, for free, so a big name producer will agree to send it out to directors or stars, hoping this path will lead to a studio deal.

18. Person who options their work for free to independent production companies who then show the screenplay all around town, hoping to interest a director or star, often after the free rewrite step, based on notes that may or may not be helpful.

19. Person who takes meetings with ‘money people’ who in fact have no money.

20. Person who, when eventually working with a director, must execute the director’s notes, whether the notes are good or bad, and even when everyone in the world knows the notes are bad.

21. Person who is the only person in the room not getting paid, even when everyone else in the room has come to the room because of the project created by the screenwriter.

22. Person who gets no credit when writing the final version of a film, but who will be guaranteed credit on a film that is vastly rewritten, and not reflective of their abilities or sensibilities.

23. Person who creates work that can become the source material for other people to make a film.

24. Person who is forced to co-write screenplays with people who don’t know how to write screenplays.

25. Person invited into the room to offer an opinion to directors, producers, actors, editors, storyboard artists, animators, and special effects people, without any ability to enforce that opinion.

And so, finally, we come to the answer to the question—how important is it to be “good in a room,” and to be able to pitch the work in person?—which is a resounding very. The writer has to be ‘good in the room’ because that is really the job description. Nobody wants to follow the screenplay; the screenplay (unlike a play) is always suspect. It gets in the way of people doing what they want to do, which is define the content of the film.

(In Hollywood, defining the content of a movie is like sex, everyone thinks they can do it, and do it well. And they’re not inclined to give up the chance to do it just so someone else can do it.)

Yes I know I belabor the point, but while the job description of screenwriter does involve writing screenplays, it never involves leaving them in a fixed form, ready to be produced. The real job of screenwriting is interacting with the group mind of the filmmaking process.

(Now, yes, I know, there are those who will happily point out exceptions, such as Juno, or Grand Torino, projects where the screenplay reportedly was the exact description of the final film. Those are the zebras of the horse world, and I must argue from the common case rather than the rarity, the same way I refuse to say all horses have black and white stripes, even when the occasional zebra runs past.)

JRM: For the writer, how important is it to read scripts—good, bad, or indifferent—as opposed to watching movies?

Terry Rossio: Do both. But … my opinion is that volume is more important than format. If you can watch 10 movies or read 2 screenplays, I say watch the 10 movies.

JRM: What do you see as the pros and cons of television vs. feature work, from a writing and a directing or producing standpoint?

Terry Rossio: If you can stand to work in television, you should. If you can handle the unique requirements of television, then by all means you should pick television over features.

How do I justify this bold claim? Simple. Feature writers are generally unhappy, television writers are generally happy. If you go the features route, the most common experience is to never make a sale of any kind. After that, you may make a sale or two, but your life is wasted because nothing ever gets produced. If something does get produced, in the majority of cases, it’s not the way you would wish—the director screws it up, or there wasn’t enough money, or the casting was wrong, etc. If it does get produced in a halfway decent manner, great, but now you’re at the bottom of the hill again, trying to get a second thing produced. (Unlike directing or acting, having one produced credit does little to get you your next produced credit.) At no point in features—ever, doesn’t matter if you’re the number one highest grossing screenwriter in the world—does your creative opinion count, unless the director decides to empower that opinion.

And, as a final insult, if you do actually get something up on screen that resembles what you intended, there is a good chance the WGA will endeavor to leave you uncredited for your work. That is, if a strike doesn’t happen, and the one break you might have had to make your career is gone forever. Meanwhile legions of new, talented, creative people arrive every day, crowding into the overcrowded marketplace, making it more and more difficult to sustain a career.

At least in the world of television, once you’re in, there is slightly more job security, slightly better creative control, and more accurate credits.

JRM: I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to be a liiitle less encouraging here. And, hey—is this the same guy who spoke out against “dark, bleak, and cynical,” who “never became jaded?”

Terry Rossio: One has to be precise in one’s thinking. Audiences crave films that are not dark, bleak, and cynical. Therefore the product need not be dark, bleak, and cynical. That doesn’t mean I can’t assess the Writer’s Guild of America as idiotic in its strike strategies or unfair in its credits arbitration process, or that I can’t hate the tendency of directors to alter good film content to bad. It’s the difference between choosing a strategy and acknowledging a reality. As for ‘jaded,’ as I mentioned before, it takes a supreme act of self-deception to believe that the next project will turn out well, that the next draft will be shot as-is, because it never happens. Screenwriters are the Charlie Browns of Hollywood, and everyone else holds the football.

JRM: What’s your best advice on finding a writing partner?

Terry Rossio: I’m not sure it can be done. Finding a writing partner is like trying to be struck by lightning. My radical position: your best luck is a spouse, or a brother or sister, or a childhood friend, or a close friend who you like to hang out with anyway. Hooking up with a talented person you don’t really know very well so often leads to conflict, legal battles, and wasted time. Most endeavors between writing partners will fail, so you at least should be spending time with someone truly on your side, someone you want in the trenches with you.

The real trick is to find an arrangement where each writer secretly thinks the other writer is better.

JRM: Should writers want to direct or produce—and if so, why?

Terry Rossio: Of course. In features, the only good viable job opening for a writer who is just a writer in Hollywood is ‘screenwriter who has hooked up with an empowering director’ which is very worthy, only it’s just so damn rare. Every other job for screenwriters in town, as mentioned above, lands somewhere between court jester, royal food taster, nursemaid, and political advisor to the King (with a secret agenda to assassinate the bastard).

Be careful, though. You don’t do it the way you asked the question. You can’t be a screenwriter who also hopes to direct, or produce. If you love to write, you should decide quickly whether you want to be a “director who writes” or “a producer who writes.” Don’t position yourself as a screenwriter who wants to do something else, or doing that something else will become very difficult.

But definitely yes, especially when you consider the rewards. Become a director and you have a chance at first dollar gross and creative control. If you have a few hit movies, you even get your own production company, and ‘digs’ on some studio lot. Check out Spielberg’s Amblin’ facility, for example, or Gore Verbinski’s offices. They don’t hand that stuff out to writers, ever.

JRM: What industry trends do you see that writers should be aware of right now?

Terry Rossio: The industry is moving toward the big and the small. I think studios will always want a few of the high-budget high-profile projects. And there will be more and more of the micro-budget stuff. Everything in between is getting cut back, the marketing costs and production costs are too high, they don’t make sense in a world of YouTube, video games, cable programming, etc.

By all means, try to make your way to one of those big-budget projects. But also take time to write and produce on the micro-budget scale, because that’s where we’re all going to live in a few years.

JRM: Any tips for those looking to follow in your footsteps?

Terry Rossio: Not all of those footsteps are worth following. We wasted a lot of time. I would say to have enough faith in yourself to bail when the project goes bad. And have the faith to leave bad people. You can tell when a project isn’t going to be what you hoped it would be, and throwing another couple of years at it really doesn’t make sense. We would have been a lot more successful if we had just learned to move on.

I think of it like this … it’s always worth doing the first draft, or the last draft. All the in-between drafts are suspect. People will insist on them, but rarely are they important. You can tell what the project is trying to be from the first draft. And the last draft is crucial, the one where you’re making all the final creative decisions. The middle drafts, for the most part, those are just babysitting.

JRM: Any suggested resources, other than Wordplay?

Terry Rossio: You know what? Read the books on screenwriting if you want, read Wordplay if you want, but get through that stuff as quickly as you can and then scrap it all. Move on to reading about playwriting, songwriting, novel writing, comic books, directing, special effects, ancient myths, photography, children’s books, performing magic … you get the idea. That type of instruction is superior, in that it forces the writer to think and assimilate and theorize, to explore how those techniques can be used and adapted to screenwriting, rather than read books that promise answers.

JRM: What’s next for you?

Terry Rossio: Oh, no, I refuse to tempt the fates like that. Not in a world of plane crashes and carjackings and flesh-eating bacteria. There’s no telling in this business whether anything I work on will get completed, or produced, or be successful. I’ll keep trying to invent pop culture, through plays, books, scripts, and webisodes, via the studio system and independently, that’s the only claim I’ll make.

JRM: Anything else you’d like to say?

Terry Rossio: Lately I’ve come to appreciate the importance of productivity. As ScriptGirl says, “You can’t sell it if you don’t write it.” You can think you’re being productive, but when you look back over the last few years of work, it’s scary how fast time goes by and how little actually get accomplished. Writers have to write, every day if possible, and you have to finish work, put it out in the marketplace, and move on. In a world of disinterest and disdain, creating product is our only weapon.

The Wordplay website—run by Terry Rossio and longtime writing partner Ted Elliott—contains a wealth of information for screenwriters. Terry is now working on Pirates of the Caribbean 4, National Treasure 3, The Lone Ranger, Lightspeed, Elixir, Magical Law (TV pilot), Under the Faerie Moon (graphic novel), and other projects .

This interview edited by Terry Rossio.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story
(Story Development For Writers, Part 6)
by John Robert Marlow

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN (OR WOMAN) BEHIND THE CURTAIN

You’ve no doubt heard that art is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. Actually, it’s not that simple. If coming up with the concept is inspiration, and the actual writing is perspiration—that still leaves everything we’re doing now: logline, structure, pitch sheet and (finally) beatline. This is the man-behind-the-curtain-work that makes the final product—the art—seem effortless. To the audience, that is; the artist knows better.

HAMMERING OUT THE DETAILS

Now that we have the logline, structure, and pitch sheet in place, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty details of just how, exactly, we get our characters from first page, through all seven story points, past the obstacle (which is usually, but not always, overcome) to the goal—and beyond.

This is the land of story development proper, an area many writers—and most beginners—ignore at their peril. Which sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Every good story is a new destination, never visited before. And unless you have a fondness for blundering through the forest in random directions (a fondness which your readers will not share), you’re going to need a map.

The structure set forth in SDFW Part 4 described the landmarks; now it’s time to zoom in and look at the actual path we—and our characters—must travel between them.

WHAT IS THE BEATLINE?

Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Beatline is. You have to see it for yourself.

Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. It’s best to do both. So let’s start with the telling. A beatline is…

A bullet-point version of your story, detailing (in story order) every significant physical and emotional event that takes place during the course of the story.

Most bullet points should be one to three lines long. Some may include more than one event, if those events are very closely related. No significant event is overlooked. Ideally, a complete stranger should be able to pick up your beatline and follow the story from beginning to end, without needing to read the story itself.

Sounds easy, right? It’s not—but it beats the heck out of any “conventional” outline you’ll ever see. Bad news and good news here. If you blow (or skip) the beatline (or more conventional outline), you’ll more than likely blow the story as well. Maybe partially, maybe completely; you won’t know until you’ve finished writing or—worse—when agents, publishers, or production companies start turning it down. That’s when the endless rewrites begin.

On the other hand, if you truly ace the beatline, your story and characters should be in excellent shape—before the writing begins. Then it’s a matter of making sure your writing does justice to the tale being told. If story revisions are needed, they’ll probably be minor.

GETTING STARTED

This is where the specifics of your particular story come into play and, thus, where an article like this offers the least assistance. That’s because we’re no longer dealing with universals like story structure and pitching, which apply to everyone; it’s now down to you and the unique tale you have to tell.

When working with clients, I know the tale, and a great deal of my development work involves helping clients beatline their concepts (for expansion) or existing stories (for revision or adaptation). Because I don’t know your story, I’ll return to the previous installment’s example and beatline the first part of a story most readers already know.

BEATLINING THE MATRIX

This is what a beatline looks like…

• Traced phone call: Trinity tells Cypher that Morpheus believes Neo is The One; Cypher expresses doubt, says “We’re gonna kill him” (Neo)
• Four cops move down dark tattered hall with guns and flashlights, kick in door of Room 303; Trinity sits inside bare room, working laptop; she raises her hands
• Agents pull up outside, speak with Lt., who was told to wait for them; Agent Smith tells Lt. the four men he sent are already dead
• Cops move to cuff Trinity; she kills them all with freakish, inhuman abilities
• The Agents enter the building with more cops
• Trinity speaks to Morpheus on cell phone; earlier call traced, hardline cut, Agents coming; he tells her where to find another phone
• Trinity steps into hall as elevator opens, takes off; Agents and cops pursue, large Agent in the lead
• Trinity hits fire escape; Agent Smith on ground outside so she goes up
• Trinity hits the roof; Agent follows; she jumps to next roof, he follows; cops lagging, barely make jump
• Agent fires, misses; Trinity makes impossible jump over street to next building; Agent follows, cops stop
• Trinity bolts across roof, leaps off edge, crashes through small window in next building
• She tumbles down staircase, lands on back with two guns aimed at window; no one follows, she rises
• Trinity runs outside, spots phone booth; garbage truck skids into turn, stops with headlights on phone booth; phone rings
• Garbage truck burns rubber for phone booth; Trinity sprints toward booth
  She steps inside, picks up phone, turns to face oncoming truck
• Truck smashes phone boooth through wall, backs up
• Agent Smith steps from truck, other Agents walk up; there is no body in the phone booth; “She got out;” Smith says their informant is real, and the name of their next target is Neo; a search is already running
• Neo sleeps in front of his computer; news headline about Morpheus eluding police on the monitor
• The newscroll disappears; words appear as Neo wakes: “Wake up Neo… The Matrix has you… Follow the white rabbit;” He tries to shut down but can’t; next message is “Knock knock, Neo”
• Someone knocks on the door; the monitor goes black
• Neo answers, small group in hall; he sells illegal disk to lead dude in hall; dude invites Neo to party; Neo passes, then spots white rabbit tattoo on gal’s shoulder, agrees to go

That’s a beatline. Every significant event is there. (In this case, they’re all physical.) The final level of microdetail—Trinity leaving a footprint in the concrete when she lands on the third rooftop, for instance, or spinning as she sails toward the window of the fourth building—isn’t needed until the actual writing begins. Though you can of course make notes as cool little microdetails come to mind.

As you can see, once you have the beatline in place, it’s hard to write too far astray. On average, I find a tightly written beatline comes out somewhere between 20 and 40 pages long. Novel beatlines run longer than script beatlines.

NONFICTION BEATLINES

There’s no reason you can’t use this same process to beatline a work of nonfiction, substituting topics covered and examples for physical and emotional events. Conventional outlines are klutzy and often hard to rearrange; the beatline is more streamlined, and a cinch to alter.

BEATLINE NEW AND EXISTING STORIES

Simply put, it’s faster and more economical to work in beatline form. While it’s easy to see the advantages of this process for new works, let’s take a look at beatlining existing material.

Many writers know something. What they know they can’t explain, but they feel it. They’ve felt it for some time: There’s something wrong with their manuscript or screenplay. They don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in their mind—driving them mad. Or causing rejections. It is this feeling that brings many clients to me.

In short, they need need to revise their stories—and the beatline works here, for the same reason it works with something new. In this case, you can either plow through 120 or 300 pages (or more), over and over again, changing this and fixing that, and rereading yet again to see if you missed something.

Or you can clunk through a complicated formal outline of some type—in which case, go with God.

Or you can, instead, work with a 20-40 page beatline, where each bullet point becomes, in effect, digital or (if you prefer analog) modular. You can add, delete, move, or alter any beat without worrying about futzing up some multiply-indented, numbered-and-lettered-and-subnumbered monstrosity of an outline.

You can see immediately how your changes affect neighboring scenes. In a matter of minutes, you can see how it affects the story as a whole.

Using a beatline also allows you to keep the whole story in your head while you tinker, because it doesn’t take 2 or 3 or 6 hours to read it through (which also means you’re more likely to read it through in one sitting). In the time it would take to read your manuscript or screenplay, you can rip through the beatline 5, 10, 20 times or more.

You’ll actually get to know your story’s pitchable points better (and faster) this way than you will by reading the actual story. Ghosts, orphans and other oversights will “pop out” at you in a way that just doesn’t happen while slogging through the entire work, in part because you seldom read the entire thing in one sitting.

To break things up a bit and provide points of reference—so you can see, at a glance, where you are in the story—list the seven major story points (see SDFW Part 4) in their proper place in the beatline, like so:

• Neo gets FedEx delivery at work, finds phone inside

INCITING INCIDENT

• Phone rings in his hand; it’s Morpheus, who says he’s been looking for Neo and wants to show him something, Neo may not be ready but they’ve run out of time because “they’re coming for you and I don’t know what they’re going to do;” tells him to look
• Neo looks over cubicle wall, sees Agents (including Smith); Morpheus guides him (as if he can see everything) to outer office and painter’s scaffold, says only ways out of building are walking skyscraper ledge to scaffold and taking that to roof, and leaving in Agents’ custody; Morpheus leaves choice to Neo and hangs up
• Neo goes onto ledge, damn near falls, drops phone, goes back
• Neo escorted from building by Agents, placed in car outside; Trinity watchersd from motorcycle, takes off when Agent Smith turns her way

You might even make the story points a different color.

Once the beatline is complete (or revised), you’ll know exactly where you’re going before your fingers ever touch the keyboard—avoiding the otherwise inevitable blind alleys and endless rewrites that could cost you weeks, months, even years.

Another thing the beatline will do for you is this: help kill your darlings—those choice bits you’ve labored over and become invested in and just can’t seem to part with, even though they don’t quite belong in the story.

Novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman goes so far as to say that this is in large part what distinguishes the professional from the amateur writer: the ability to kill one’s darlings. When those darlings exist as mere bullet-points in a beatline, it’s easier to show them the door.

The beatline is also appropriate for adaptations—where perfectly good stories must nevertheless undergo additions, deletions, and alterations to meed the demands of the new medium.

STRIKING COLORS

A few useful tips I use with clients…

Once you have a complete draft of your beatline, save two versions: an original and a numbered working draft: Brilliant Work beatline (original) and Brilliant Work beatline (working 01). Park the original and use the working draft.

When making changes to the working draft, use strikout for deletions and a new color for all other changes. If you move something, strike it out in the old spot and color it in the new. Choose an easy-on-the-eyes color for this, or you’ll go blind. (You can also track changes in Word, but I find this to be more trouble than it’s worth, through multiple versions and with two people working the beatline.)

Before “permanently” deleting strikeouts, save a new working version (“Brilliant Work (beatline working 02)”). If you change your mind on anything later, you can revert to (or pull beats from) earlier versions.

Note that after a while, it gets really annoying to read through, or even look at, a document with large blocks of strikeout text—so at some point, you’re going to want to dump those blocks and continue with a “fresh” document.

When you reach the end, and have gone through everything and made all of the changes you think best, save another draft as-is, then black all text (changing colored text to black), save as “Brilliant Work v2 (beatline working 0-whatever).”

Now repeat—because there will be things you missed, new “aha moments” as you go through the revised beatline, and new changes to be made. If you need help, or want to brainstorm, find a good editor or story development guy (Hello), and have at it.

Repeat again, as needed—until the story seems flawless.

Then go write it.

Alter your beatline to reflect the new full draft. Check it over for mistakes and possible improvements. Do a final pass on the work itself and—

Viola!

You’re done.

NEXT UP:

Starting this month, the Self Editing Blog will be expanding its coverage with guest posts from agents and others, interviews with authors and screenwriters—and more. Stay tuned…

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale
(Story Development For Writers, Part 5)
by John Robert Marlow

PITCHING AS COURTSHIP

We already know (from Part 2 of this series) that most commercial concepts can be conveyed in 10 seconds or less, via something called a logline. Now we’re going to look at expanding that micropitch into something positively extravagant: a one-minute pitch. (Okay, sometimes it’s a minute and a half.)

Think of it like courtship: you start small to test the waters, tossing out your best line to see what happens. If the response isn’t favorable—that is, what happens is nothing—you move on. That’s the logline stage.

If the other party shows interest, you take the next step—ask them out to lunch, maybe, where you reveal a bit more about yourself. That’s the pitch sheet. If all goes well, you’re on for dinner, where you lay the whole script on the table. If that goes well, you dance around for a while and—hopefully—close the deal. By selling the book, script, or whatever it is you have to offer.

Sometimes the stars align and you’ll go straight from opening line to dinner. But you can’t count on that, so you have to plan on lunch—which is what we’re doing here. Lunch also makes for good practice, so we don’t want to skip it and go hungry.

A good pitch sheet is the written equivalent of a movie trailer. It doesn’t show you everything, nor is it meant to; it is not a synopsis. Instead, it shows you just enough to make you want more. Agent Andrea Brown’s description of a query comes to mind: “It should be like a skirt. Long enough to cover everything, but short enough to be exciting.”

LOGLINE RELOADED

The pitch sheet starts with a logline, which you should have by now. (If not, revisit SDFW Part 2 and SDFW Part 3, in that order.) The idea here is to quickly hook those new to your concept, and refresh the memories of those who’ve already seen or heard the logline—hitting them again with the thing that got them excited in the first place.

With that accomplished, it’s time to start…

UPPING THE ANTE

If you’re wondering how to get started, don’t; you’ve already laid the groundwork by coming up with a logline (SDFW Part 2 and SDFW Part 3) and figuring out your major story points (SDFW Part 4). All of that comes into play here, which is why we did things in this order.

The logline takes 10 seconds of someone’s time. If they decide that’s time well spent, you’ve bought yourself another minute. Your job now is to expand the logline and fill that minute in a way that causes the reader to bump you up from casual-glance status to someone they’re willing to spend a few hours with.

Which is, of course, precisely the working dynamic of a movie trailer. And you already know how that goes. There are three possible outcomes: you’re left with a burning desire to see the film; you’re sort of iffy about it; or it’s really not your thing.

Professionals in the book and film industries don’t have time for iffy; there’s too much new stuff coming in the door. So with very rare exceptions, it’s an immediate “worth a look” or “not interested.”

Here’s how to get yourself in the first category.

BREAKING THINGS DOWN

Title, genre, your name up top. Followed by the logline. So far, so good.

Now, keeping your three basic story elements—WHO, GOAL, OBSTACLE—firmly in mind, take a look at your tale’s basic structure. This, as you may recall from the previous installment, consists of seven things: inciting incident, first act turn, midpoint, low point, second act turn, climax, and denouement or wrap-up.

Let’s start winnowing that down. Obviously, we’re going to need to include the inciting incident and the first act turn, and in the process of doing that, we will inevitably cover the WHO and the GOAL. How hard was that?

We may (and may not) keep the midpoint; it’s more likely to make the cut if it’s a no-turning-back point rather than an unsuspected-element-in-play reveal (see SDFW Part 4). We might also keep or partially reveal the low point, and maybe (but not always) the second act turn.

The climax will certainly be implied (and so reveal the OBSTACLE against which (or whom) our hero struggles), but since giving away the outcome wrecks any possibility of suspense, we won’t be including the climax proper in the pitch. Likewise, we can leave out the wrap-up, which would serve only to give away the outcome of the climax.

So already we’re down from seven to four, maybe five structural elements, along with our trusty WHO-GOAL-OBSTACLE mantra. Now that we’ve broken everything down and stripped away the things we don’t (for the moment) need, it’s time to get busy…

BUILDING THINGS UP

For our working example, let’s use a story everyone is—or should be—familiar with: The Matrix. Our starting point is the logline. When I think about this story, here’s what I come up with:

A young hacker discovers the world we know is a dream, created by intelligent machines to enslave humanity. Now he must lead a rebellion to free Mankind—while pursued by virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Because this concept is a bit more complex than usual, I’ve chosen to employ a setup line with the WHO, followed by the GOAL and the OBSTACLE. Those are the basics. Delving more deeply into this particular concept is going to result in something far too complicated to get across in a logline.

Now let’s get into story structure. As pointed out in SDFW Part 4, classically structured stories have seven major structural elements. Let’s take a quick look at these before we start building our pitch:

INCITING INCIDENT: Morpheus calls Neo at work

FIRST ACT TURN: Neo takes the red pill

MIDPOINT: Cypher revealed as traitor

LOW POINT: Tank, Neo and Trinity about to pull the plug on Morpheus

SECOND ACT TURN: Neo and Trinity set out to rescue Morpheus

CLIMAX: Neo confronts Agent Smith in hall outside Room 303

DENOUEMENT: Phone booth talk / system failure / Neo takes flight

Time to rock and roll. First thing we do is set up our main character, the WHO:

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Right away he’s relatable, to both the cubicle worker and the rebel—and to those who are a bit of both. That’s a massive audience. Of course, we still need a fabulous story…

Next up, the INCITING INCIDENT:

Contacted by the most wanted man on earth, Neo escapes government surveillance for a meeting.

That’s heavy. Lots of danger, along with the revelation that Neo has been under surveillance. We’re oozing tension already. We’ve also brought up two intriguing questions: who is the most dangerous man on earth, and why would he contact Neo?

Time to touch on that FIRST ACT TURN:

“Morpheus” tells Neo he’s a slave in a prison he cannot see, and offers a choice: return to his soul-crushing corporate life, or take a pill that will reveal this prison-called the Matrix.

The world we know is a computer-generated dreamland, wired into our brains to control our minds and bodies. This is the Matrix.

Because the concept is so extraordinary, this part of the pitch focuses on the reveal, setting up the world of the story and generating further empathy for Neo—whose whole world vanishes before his eyes. Any reader worth his or her salt is firmly hooked at this point. Unless we screw up big-time with what follows, we’ve got ‘em. We can now move on to suggest the GOAL:

Believing that Neo is the long-prophesied savior who will turn the Matrix against itself, Morpheus and his small band of rebels train Neo to enter the Matrix with them, evade its defenders, and attack the machines.

Here we raise the stakes, and explain who the most dangerous man in the world is (Morpheus, whose goal is to take out the entire machine civilization) and why he would take the time to contact a cubicle worker/hacker (he believes that Neo can help him achieve his own goal).

We also throw down another question: Is Neo, in fact, The One? Providing the answer would wreck the suspense—so we’ll leave the reader hanging on this One.

Clearly the GOAL is, in part, to attack the machines. In this case, we’ll save the rest of it for later.

The MIDPOINT isn’t needed here and, if included, would require us to introduce Cypher and explain his betrayal. TMI: too much information, when we need to keep this flowing smoothly. The no-turning-back point was Neo taking the pill.

We’ll use the LOW point to set up the final act:

When Morpheus is captured,

That’s bad. It’s like seeing Obi Wan Kenobi cut down—the fall of the hero’s mentor. Which, of course, places the burden of success squarely on our hero’s shoulders, giving us in one fell swoop the SECOND ACT TURN, the immediate OBSTACLE (the large-scale obstacle is the Matrix itself), and the suggested CLIMAX:

Neo must lead a rescue assault—against virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Clearly, the climax will involve a final battle between Neo and the Agents. (The Agents are here called virtual assassins in order to intrigue without getting bogged down in lengthy explanations; likewise, saying that Neo and Trinity are the assault team’s only members would force us to explain who Trinity is and what happened to everyone else. Again, TMI at this stage.)

This leads quite naturally to the fully-stated CLIMAX / GOAL, and the (large-scale and personal) consequence of failure:

Neo must fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

We will not use the WRAP-UP, as that would give away the outcome of the climax.

Now let’s put it all together in…

THE ONE-MINUTE-PITCH

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Neo will fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

That’s 35 seconds to read on screen or page, and 1 minute, 6 seconds to read aloud. Add the title, genre, author, and logline up top, and you’ve got…

THE FINISHED PITCH SHEET:

THE MATRIX
(action / sci-fi / tech thriller)

by Larry and Andy Wachowski

A young hacker discovers the world we know is a dream, created by intelligent machines to enslave humanity. Now he must lead a rebellion to free Mankind—while pursued by virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.
_

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Contacted by the most wanted man on earth, Neo escapes government surveillance for a meeting.
“Morpheus” tells Neo he’s a slave in a prison he cannot see, and offers a choice: return to his soul-crushing corporate life, or take a pill that will reveal this prison—called the Matrix.

Neo takes the pill and learns the truth: the real world is a wasteland, shattered by a war between Man and Machine. Humanity has been enslaved by a victorious race of intelligent machines.

The world we know is a computer-generated dreamland, wired into our brains to control our minds and bodies. This is the Matrix.

Believing that Neo is the long-prophesied savior who will turn the Matrix against itself, Morpheus and his small band of rebels train Neo to enter the Matrix with them, evade its defenders, and attack the machines.

When Morpheus is captured, Neo must lead a rescue assault—against virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Neo will fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

[Contact info at bottom]

That’s 44 seconds to read; 1 minute, 20 seconds to speak. If I were pitching The Matrix today, this would be my pitch sheet.

THINGS NOT TO DO

Go over one page.

Also—unless you’re attending a pitch fest (where such things have come to be expected)—do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, plaster your pitch sheet with graphics. This includes your idea of what the book cover or movie poster should look like, photos of yourself or anything else, nonstandard (and often hard to read) fonts, and so on.

You’re here to sell the steak, not the sizzle. The more you dilute your steak pitch, the more likely you are to be viewed as unprofessional, or as desperately trying to bling-up a product with no substance.

Exceptions: You’re pitching something where the graphics are an integral part of the work (illustrated children’s book, graphic novel, etc.); you’re pitching an adaptation of an existing work (in which case you might—and might not—want to include, say, an image of the existing work’s cover or case); you’re playing off your own brand logo (which is already widely known); you’ve been asked to do this by the same person you’re sending it to.

Even here, though, words—not images—take precedence. Put bluntly: you’re a writer; act like one.

MAPPING YOUR COURSE

The pitch sheet is a vital tool not only for selling—but for keeping you on track as you put your story together. Think of it as a map to a place you’ve never gone before. You can step outside and wander in the general direction of your destination, hoping to get lucky—or consult a map and know exactly where you’re going before you set out.

Using a map doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments along the way; if a flash flood has washed away the bridge, you find a way around. A map helps you do that—and ensures that you’ll find your way back to the route you wanted to take.

Once you’ve reached your destination, you can review the map—the pitch sheet—and update it to reflect your final route.

[For those seeking professional help with logline, structure, or story development, see the author's contact link below.]

UP NEXT:

SDFW Part 6: Filling in the details with a beatline…

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones
(Story Development For Writers, Part 4)
by John Robert Marlow

SEVEN ELEMENTS OF STRUCTURE

Classically-structured (three-act) stories have seven basic structural elements: inciting incident, first act turn, midpoint, low point, second act turn, climax, and denouement or wrap-up. Though you’ll occasionally hear about “mythically structured” tales (like Star Wars) having more than three acts, all of those acts fall within three major acts, so the structure laid out below still holds true.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Really. And the structure is exactly the same for books, movies, and other story venues—because story is story, regardless of medium. I use movies as examples because they have a broader audience, and readers are more likely to have seen a given movie than to have read a given book. One note of warning: a great many “spoilers” follow.

INCITING INCIDENT

The inciting incident is the event that kicks off your story. That doesn’t mean your hero rolling out of bed in the morning qualifies, just because it’s the first scene; that’s part of your protagonist’s (the WHO’s) ordinary life. The inciting incident is the thing that throws a wrench into your character’s ordinary life—after which, things are never quite the same. Generally speaking, this happens roughly 10% of the way into the story.

The inciting incident can be as seemingly innocuous as a chance meeting of two strangers (Dan and Alex in Fatal Attraction, Connie and Paul in Unfaithful, Rose and Jack in Titanic, Jake and Neytiri in Avatar), or as obvious as a letter (Sleepless in Seattle, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), a new job (Midnight Run, Jurassic Park), or having a friend or loved one kidnapped (Taken, Die Hard) or murdered (Beverly Hills Cop, Ghost, Batman Begins).

While the placement of the inciting incident can occasionally be altered (Iron Man, The Fugitive), this is a rare move most often attempted by seasoned pros—and not recommended for those still looking to break in.

FIRST ACT TURN

This is where the first act ends and the second begins—the point at which your hero (WHO) knows what he must do (the GOAL), and sets out to do it. Knowing alone is not enough, and making a decision (which is passive) doesn’t cut it. There must be action taken toward the achievement of the Goal: a decision coupled with action. The first act turn marks the beginning of the hero’s journey, and typically takes place about 25% of the way into the story.

The “journey,” in this sense, isn’t necessarily physical, but refers to the overall path embarked upon by your main character. This is always emotional, and also includes physical (and sometimes spiritual) elements as well.

Examples include John Anderton going on the run to prove his innocence in Minority Report; Richard Kimball going on the run to find his wife’s killer (and so prove his innocence) in The Fugitive; Neo taking the red pill in The Matrix; Somerset taking one last case and training Mills in Se7en; Steven blackmailing/paying David to kill his (Steven’s) wife in A Perfect Murder (proving that the protagonist isn’t always the good guy, though this is a risky move); the guys in Hangover setting out to learn what happened last night/find their missing friend Doug; Harry Potter leaving the Dursleys to begin his new life (in the first book/movie).

The first act turn needn’t be a single event; multiple, very closely-spaced events sometimes combine to create the act turn, as in Rocky—where he accepts Apollo Creed’s offer (which happens offscreen), takes Mick as his coach, and begins training for the fight. In such cases, the turn takes place over a short span of pages.

MIDPOINT

The midpoint can be one (or both) of two things: the point of no return (beyond which your hero cannot turn back, cannot undo his actions), or the point at which an unsuspected element is revealed to be at work within the story. This happens at the halfway or 50% mark, or thereabouts; hence the term midpoint.

In The Matrix, for example, the first act turn (taking the red pill) is also a point of no return, so the midpoint takes the form or an unsuspected element revealed; this is where we (but not the protagonist) learn that Cypher is working for the other side. In Harry Potter, the midpoint is where Harry (and we) discover that the mysterious package from Gringott’s is now at Hogwarts.

LOW POINT

This is the all-hope-is-lost point, where the main character is as far as it seems possible to be from achieving his Goal. Put another way: if your main character were going to commit suicide, this would be the place. The low point almost always occurs in the second half of the second act, between 50% and 75% of the way in.

This is where almost everyone is dead, and Tank is about to pull the plug on the captured Morpheus (The Matrix); where Rocky realizes he cannot defeat Apollo; where Alan refuses Madison’s touch in the water tank, after they’re captured by the government (Splash); where Mr. Incredible’s family is held captive and they’re all about to die because of his actions (The Incredibles); where Wesley dies and Buttercup gets married (The Princess Bride); where Harry Potter and friends rush to tell Dumbledore that Hagrid has accidentally given away the secret and the stone is in danger, only to find that Dumbledore himself has been lured away—leaving the stone vulnerable to Snape.

It’s also where Doug learns that Fergie will not let him walk away from the trade, and that the FBI has turned Claire against him (The Town); where Tony Stark gets his plug pulled by Obadiah Stane, then collapses just short of reaching his backup power source (Iron Man); where Jake’s previous actions catch up to him, Neytiri turns against him, Hometree is destroyed and Jake is tied up and left to die in the aftermath—and, to top it off, Mo’at seems about to run him through with a blade (Avatar).

SECOND ACT TURN

This is the point where, after what seems a massive, even hopeless defeat (leading to the Low Point), the protagonist comes back with a new plan—taking new action to achieve his goal. This usually happens about 75% of the way into the story.

This is where Harry Potter and friends come up with their own plan to save the stone and set it into motion; and where Jake sets his new plan (the counterattack) into motion by jumping Toruk (Avatar). It’s also where Neo decides to go back for Morpheus, and he and Trinity jack in and enter the building where Morpheus is being held (The Matrix); and where Alan takes action to help Madison escape (Splash). As with the first act turn, the second turn is a decision coupled with action, which can take the form of a single event, or a very brief sequence of events).

CLIMAX

The point of maximum conflict between hero (WHO) and OBSTACLE (usually but not always an antagonist or villain), toward which the whole story has been building. For the hero, this is the make-or-break point, because the outcome of the climax determines whether he will succeed or fail in his efforts to achieve the goal. The climax takes place in the last 25% of the story, most often in (or concluding in) the last 10% or even 5%.

This is the final round (and the decision) in Rocky’s fight with Apollo; Harry Potter’s confrontation with Voldemort; Neo’s final confrontation with Agent Smith in the hall outside room 303 (Matrix); Steven and Emily’s final confrontation in A Perfect Murder; Dan and Beth fighting Alex in the bathroom (Fatal Attraction); Sam’s battle with Carl in the abandoned attic (Ghost); Richard Kimball defeating Nichols and saving Gerard, who now knows he’s innocent (The Fugitive).

It is Anderton confronting Lamar (Minority Report); Harry Tasker’s battle with Aziz to save his daughter (True Lies); Sam and Annie meeting atop the Empire State Building (Sleepless in Seattle); Alan jumping off the dock to go with Madison (Splash); Jake and Neytiri’s fight with Colonel Quartich and Jake’s rebirth as one of The People (because this—and not the fight alone—is the culmination of Jake’s emotional, spiritual, and physical journey in Avatar).

DENOUEMENT

The denouement is the wrap-up, showing (sometimes merely indicating) where things go from here. Because the climax is the high point, the denouement is typically kept short—say, the last 1% to 3% of the story. Enough detail to let people know how things are going to turn out, but not so much that it detracts from the climax-induced high. In faery tales and comedies, this sometimes comes down to a single line: And they lived happily ever after.

NONCLASSICAL STRUCTURE

Nonclassically structured stories can lack any or all of he above elements, including the denouement—and often end ambiguously, refusing to tie things up with a clearly-defined resolution.

TRUE STORIES

Real life, of course, does not adhere to classical story structure. Then again, real life abounds with boring minutiae and meaningless detours that are of little interest to anyone, including the people living through it. In short: few people will pay to read or watch that. Another important difference between reality and storydom: fiction has to make sense.

Which is why it’s crucial, when adapting real stories for the screen, to adapt them in such a way that the finished product adheres to the classical structure expected—indeed demanded—by Hollywood filmmakers. If you’ve ever wondered why such adaptations are promoted with phrases like “based on a true story” or “inspired by true events” rather than “a true story” or “everything happened exactly like this”—ponder no longer. (Fargo, of course, did claim to be a true story—but they were fibbing, so that doesn’t count.)

Even when writing a true story in book form, it seldom hurts to relate the details in classically structured format—assuming this can be done without fundamentally altering the truth of the narrative.

CONCLUSION

Look again at your favorite stories, and you’ll find these seven elements forming the skeleton upon which those stories are built. This is no coincidence—and if you want your stories to appeal to a large audience, this is the way to go. And while there are exceptions to everything, but as Damon Runyon once wrote:

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.

[For those seeking professional help with logline, structure, or story development, see the author's contact link below.]

UP NEXT:

SDFW Part 5: The Pitch Sheet. Look for it Thanksgiving week.

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved