10 Quick Practical Tools in Review (12 minute read)
Happy Friday!
The holidays are here which means this will be the last newsletter of 2021. To celebrate I’ve put together this "clip show" with a quick recap of ten of my favorite practical tools and devices I used this year. Hopefully one of them shakes something loose for you this week.
Last week I watched WEST SIDE STORY and TICK, TICK... BOOM. I found them both inspiring for different reasons and both continued my mourning/celebration period for Stephen Sondheim in their own way.
I didn't know much about Jonathan Larson's pre-RENT days. During the movie I heard him say so many things I've said out loud or felt, not just when I was trying to break in but even now, like this week.
No other way to say it, 2021 was one long cold streak. I took out a few pitches with no success. I got replaced on a project I loved at the beginning of November, a project I went to bed thinking about and woke up thinking about for a year and a half. "Discouraged" is an understatement.
I can't help but think about Christmas Eve in 2012. Julie and I were driving from her family's house in Chicago to my family's house in Ohio when her parents' car broke down midway. We were stuck in a hotel in Indiana overnight and while we were there I got a call from my boss at the time letting me know they were ending the marketing campaign that I had been a part of. I was fired on Christmas Eve, no prospects for the future, no way to get anything going for at least a few weeks.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I pulled out my laptop and I worked on a feature script called THE MARGINAL WAY that I was writing as part of a contest sponsored by The Writer's Store. Sure, I knew that maybe there was an opportunity waiting at the end of that process if I won. But mostly I started writing that night because it was a thing that brought me joy. It was one thing I could control, doing the actual creative work.
I won that contest a few months later. A few days after that EXTANT placed in the TrackingB pilot contest and gave me my break.
It's easy to stay positive when everything's clicking. It's much more difficult when you're back to square one, feeling stuck and out of sync. Full of self-doubt. Hearing Andrew Garfield sing, "Why," about how telling stories and making art is a great "way to spend the day" I'm forced to agree.
Because despite the setbacks I wrote some things I'm really proud of in 2021, including 30 issues of this newsletter. Now it's time to rest, recharge and get ready to focus on the next one.
Because that's what we do.
We write the next one.
And the one after that.
And the one after that.
Speaking of, when I come back on January 7th I'm going to devote part of each week to walking through the entire process of one piece, start to finish. You're welcome to work alongside me if you'd like.
If you’ve been here since the first issue I want to say thanks for staying with me and for the support and encouragement. If you just subscribed thanks for checking it out. I hope you find it helpful for your own process.
It’s been a few weeks since I said it but for the newcomers, this isn’t meant to be a “how-to,” it’s more of a “how I’m currently” doing it.
Happy Holidays, see you in 2022!
10 Quick Practical Tools (in review)
1) “Great characters are subconsciously at war with themselves.”
That quote is from John Yorke’s fantastic book Into the Woods.
Think about your current protagonist. What is the public image they’re trying to maintain? Who do they want other people to think they are? Who are they really when no one is watching? Do you have moments where you can show both sides? There's a lot of drama to be mined in that struggle.
2) Keep your scenes “on the axis”
An axis is “an imaginary line on which something rotates, or a straight line around which things are evenly arranged.” Take a look at every scene in your character’s journey and ask yourself, “Is this scene on the axis of the character’s journey from Point A to Point B? Is it moving the story forward? If not, what is it doing there?”
Every scene, every line of dialogue, has a job to do on that axis.
3) Now work backwards.
From Backwards and Forwards by David Ball: “Going forwards allows unpredictable possibility. Going backwards exposes that which is required.” Starting at the end of your story, take a look at every event and see if you can identify the link to the previous action that triggered it. This will help you understand why everything happens. I write them down in a list starting at the end of every new piece.
4: A few quick tools from my dialogue pass toolbox:
Don’t break up the dialogue with too many action lines. Set up as much as you can in the action line just before and let the dialogue flow in between before the next absolutely essential action line. Otherwise you never settle into a rhythm.
Revise toward specificity, honesty, simplicity. If your banter is just a warmup to the real meat of the scene, give it a job (an action or character revelation) or just cut to the heart of the scene. (*If this is stylistically and tonally appropriate.)
Test for varying rhythms and speech patterns. Do all of your characters sound the same? Do they all just sound like you?
Michael Green had a great tweet that compared writing dialogue to packing for camping. “Lay out what you think you need then take out half.” I remind myself of that before each dialogue pass now.
4) Surprise yourself (and therefore the audience)
Aristotle said the best endings are “surprising, yet inevitable.”
So how do I get there? What has been working for me lately is trusting the characters to drive the story more. If I ask myself, “What’s the most obvious thing they would do here?” Then ask, “What’s the most surprising thing they could do that still tracks emotionally” that leads me to some really interesting places and keeps it from just going along "on a rail."
5) Write your story as an “oral history” to help brainstorm character POV
I came across an oral history article about an episode of TV and it gave me an idea about how to brainstorm a new idea for a series. I decided to use my morning pages time to write a stream-of-consciousness oral history of the events in this new series from the perspective of different characters, shifting voices whenever I felt moved. It helped me figure out the plot as I go but more importantly it helped me understand each character’s point of view about what happened and to develop their own specific voice. Here's a more recent example of an oral history:
The oral history of 'Mars Attacks,' Tim Burton’s misunderstood sci-fi masterpiece — www.inverse.com By the mid-1990s, Tim Burton had reached a level of success few other filmmakers could dream of, but he was about to come crashing down to Earth.
6) Unlock your lead’s POV with three devices from the theater.
ACT ONE - I WANT (SONG) MONOLOGUE (lay out their goals and desires)
ACT TWO - SOLILOQUY (wrestling with core conflict mid-story)
ACT THREE - 11 O’CLOCK NUMBER (what they’ve learned, how they've changed, what they’re going to do going forward)
Put together, those three pieces should be a pretty effective emotional road map you can translate to scenes in your script.
7) Story Darwinism
A few questions I use to test the stickiness of my ideas:
“Is this a compelling, unique character? What is it that makes them different? Would a great actor want to play this role?”
I think a lot of us picture actors in the roles that we’re writing but we don’t ask ourselves, “Would Denzel WANT to play this role? What is it that would get him on the hook? What are the top five scenes he’ll instantly start imagining himself playing?”
“If this is TV, does it have a clear, communicable engine?”
“Why will the audience care? Can I hook them emotionally on the logline? If I’m relying on the concept or mystery to hook them, how fast can I get them hooked emotionally once they start the script?”
Since I wrote this it seems like it's even more important to ask yourself what it is about your project that's going to cut through the noise of the hundreds of new movies and shows being released every year.
8) The Beat (not the "pause" kind)
When I think of the word “beat” I think of the most basic unit of a scene. It has a three-act structure just like the story itself:
Event
Emotional Response/Processing or Appraisal
New Action
Imagine a scene with a character who is a neat freak. We’ve seen sequences of them wiping down the white quartz countertops, putting away every dish after use, sweeping up crumbs with a hand vac, etc. They take pride in a spotless kitchen. In this scene they come home from work late at night, they turn on the kitchen light — and they discover a brown ring from a coffee cup on the white quartz countertop.
Part 1, the event, is seeing the ring. Part 2, the appraisal/emotional response/processing part is the character realizing someone was in their house. “Are they still here? Am in danger?” Part 3 is the new action. Maybe they very quietly slide a knife out of the butcher block for protection before checking the rest of the house.
9) Pity, Fear, and Catharsis
This past weekend I watched a TED Talk called “The Mystery of Storytelling” by a British lit agent named Julian Friedmann. He talked about three-act structure via Aristotle in a way that I’ve never really considered before but after I heard it I found myself thinking about it all week.
He believes that, “A writer’s primary relationship has got to be with an audience and not with your characters,” that you have to know what you want the audience to think and feel and how to guide them through it. Lucky for us, he believes Aristotle cracked it a couple thousand years ago.
Step one: You need to make the audience feel pity for a character. You do that by having them suffer some misfortune, injustice, or indignity which enables the audience to form an emotional connection to that character. Once they identify with the character you have some measure of control over them and you can move on to the next stage.
Step Two: Put the character into worse and worse situations so that the audience fears for them.
Step Three: When you finally deliver that character from whatever jeopardy they’re in the audience will experience catharsis.
10) Be Your Own Antagonist
Think about the moment in your life where you’ve been the villain in someone else’s story. Think about a past nemesis. What did you do, or could you have done, to hurt them? Why would you do that? What’s the ultimate goal? If you really wanted to, could you have ruined their life? What would your “bad guy plot” have been?
I had a new one play out in my head yesterday.
For the past year and a half there’s been a construction crew renovating the building next door. They’re driving me batshit crazy by this point. They blast music, they take our parking spaces so they can walk back and forth all day taking one tool out and putting one back in. In my dream I meet their boss and he apologizes for any inconvenience. I tell him, “No worries, these guys are a lot of fun to have around. Yeah, they’re laughing and joking all day, they’ve got music going. I saw them giving each other haircuts the other day, it’s just a really nice vibe. If I were them I wouldn’t want this job to end.”
That’s my bad guy plot to get the owner to fire them or light a fire under their ass to finish the job.
Andrew Garfield - Why (Official Audio) — www.youtube.com Official Soundtrack for the Netflix Film Tick, Tick... Boom! Featuring Music Written by Jonathan Larson. Listen to the Soundtrack here https://ticktickboom.l...
Bonus section, if you're interested...
(Here's the first chapter of my crime novel, The Kickout. It's about an ex-con who goes to war with the mob to stop them from taking over his beloved neighborhood pinball bar. Oh, and he's battling the recurrence of a brain tumor that triggers intense visual hallucinations, making it hard to distinguish fantasy from reality. Like the love child of GET SHORTY and AMELIE.)
Lonnie saw the Jimmy Page look-a-like step off the curb onto Eagle Rock Boulevard and very nearly get turned into a grease spot by the speeding exterminator truck with the plastic cartoon cockroach bolted to the roof. Lonnie thinking that’d be a pretty surreal way to go, laying there in the middle of the street looking up at those giant antennae silhouetted against the sodium vapor streetlights. The driver blasted the horn to brush the guy back in the nick of time and the guy flipped him double birds and yelled what appeared to be, “Fuck you suck my dick!” which Lonnie thought was a pretty strange way of thanking a fella for not sending you into the mystery, but whatever, some folks are just wired pugilistic. Coast clear, the guy stepped back into the street and shuffled toward Hank’s Pin Bar, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his ratty jean jacket.
Once he saw that Jimmy Page was safely across the street Lonnie turned his attention back to Mindbender. Last pin in a row of eight, next to the window, and the only electro-mechanical machine Hank’s had left. Lonnie preferred the faster pace of the modern machines but Mindbender was a good palate cleanser. It had a predictable outlane drain on the right-hand side which gave him plenty of time to practice his death save, nudging the machine left before giving it a hard pop right, left flipper raised, which sent the ball bouncing off the back wall and onto the playfield again. It's illegal in tournament play but comes in handy if you’re just looking to put a high score on the leader board or you’re running out of quarters.
The slow pace of the game also let him track Jimmy Page as he approached the empty cafe tables on the sidewalk where he casually swiped a leftover glass with half-an-inch of stout at the bottom before stepping inside like he’d been there for hours. He meandered a bit, watching the other players while he sipped the dregs of the abandoned beer and discreetly fished the coin return slots for quarters somebody else might have left behind.
Kacey, the owner, was watching the last inning of the Dodgers game on the TV in the corner. Glenn was locked in on Total Nuclear Annihilation. Rayven was having her palm read by some woman he’d never seen before. This was like a private show only Lonnie could see. He remembered a podcast he heard recently, an ex-special forces guy with a neck like a fire hydrant talking about situational awareness. Those self-help podcasts were his favorite, the ones that got you looking at the world through a different lens. Like right now. He was the only person in Hank’s who was on to Jimmy Page’s scam. He had to remind himself not to stare too long and blow his cover before he figured out the angle.
Next, the guy grabbed an empty basket from another table and asked Kacey for a refill of the snack mix, like he’d been the one who picked it up in the first place. Then he put his glass down and said, “I’m gonna leave this here for a second.” Kacey said, “No problem,” and the guy shuffled through the narrow wooden door that led to the single-stall bathroom that always smelled like pot. Right, so that was the play. Hank’s had a strict “customers only” bathroom policy on account of the rising population of people living on the street nearby and this guy figured out a hack.
Respect.
Lonnie drained the last ball on purpose so he could post up in the corner under the wall of flashing playfield artwork and study the man’s moves while he sipped his Guinness. There was something about him, the confidence with which he glided through the bar, bobbing his head to “American Girl” and cheering along with Kacey after a 5-4-3 double. You couldn’t even see his wheels turning, it was just one continuous flow. He slipped in undetected, snagged some free food and a drink, and made at least a quarter from the slots on his way into the customers only bathroom. It was artful in a way that Lonnie could appreciate.
And then the weirdest thing happened which is the guy never came out again.
Lonnie started to worry that maybe the guy had overdosed and he was the only one who knew he was in there. Finally his curiosity got the better of him so he went in to check and when he opened the door the guy wasn’t there. Lonnie assumed he’d been momentarily distracted by one thing or another and the guy must have ducked out the back door without him noticing. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.
Second ball in a new game of Mindbender and he was back in the zone, knocking down drop targets around the playfield and ripping the shit out of the spinner in the middle. The most satisfying part of the game was sending the ball whipping around the outside orbits. If you timed it right you could do two or three in a row. The other bartender, Russell, was pumping psychedelic surf-punk over the speakers which sent Lonnie into hyper-focus. Like the electro-magnetic energy circulating through him had somehow synchronized with the electro-mechanical system of the machine, both of them humming in perfect harmony, his eye trailing the ball and shooting signals to his brain that then communicated with his fingers, telling them to slap the side buttons that relayed that energy to the flippers. The flippers then transmitted that energy back to the ball, whipping it around the orbit for another revolution, all accompanied by the pops and dings and the flutter from the spinners.
It was exhilarating and not unlike the feeling he got at Flour & Fire when the kitchen was slammed and he and the owner Manuel pumped out a couple hundred pizzas in a matter of hours, like what happened earlier that evening. You take the ball of dough from the tray, press it out on the marble, pushing with your fingertips until it forms a circle, flip it, stretch it with your thumb, slap it back down, watching the circle grow with every revolution. Energy flowed through your hands then too and not just energy but heat, which could cause the dough to stick to the peel so you had to keep it moving. Flip it over your knuckles, walk it around, give it a spin, let centrifugal force stretch it a bit more. Then it’s on to the peel, take a ladle of sauce and spread it around in concentric circles to a half-inch from the edge. Then cheese, then toppings, then into the fire where that energy transforms it into a perfect pie.
Press out flip spin sauce cheese top it off and fire it up.
Over and over and over.
He loved working with his hands. Loved being a guy who made things instead of taking things. Most of all he loved working for Manuel. It had taken him forever to find a job after that last nickel bid in Southern Ohio Correctional. Manuel took a chance on him and he hadn’t let the man down since.
A horn outside broke Lonnie’s concentration. He glanced up and saw the cockroach truck speed by and there was Jimmy Page flipping double birds and yelling the whole “s my d” thing again. Lonnie stopped playing and watched the guy shove his hands in his pockets and cross the street, swipe the exact same beer, and step into Hank’s where he wandered the same path, watching the other players and fishing a forgotten quarter from the coin slot. He followed the same exact route to the bar, grabbed an empty bowl, then asked Kacey for a refill before shuffling off to the restroom, everything playing out exactly as it had before.
Lonnie’s chest tightened and he inhaled deep through his nose, out through the mouth. He charged into the bathroom and just like before the guy was nowhere to be found. So Lonnie raced back over to the window and there was Jimmy Page getting ready to step out in front of the cockroach truck again. Horn suck my dick hands in pockets cross the street holy shit.
Now Lonnie was thinking there was a good chance he was in a time loop.
That got the heart pumping real good because if there’s one thing he knew about time loops it’s that they’re a huge pain in the ass. You gotta figure out whatever lesson it is you’re supposed to learn or whatever thing you have to set right. That could take years, decades even. With all the movies and stories he’d seen about time loops the main character had at least twenty-four hours to process what was happening. They could try a bunch of stuff, fall asleep, wake up, it’s the same day over and over again but at least they get a whole day to work with. This was less than five minutes, four and a half tops. What if he was stuck here reliving this four and a half minutes for eternity?
Instead of checking the bathroom this time Lonnie went in the opposite direction and busted out the front door to get some air only to find himself staring at Jimmy Page across the street, and to the right, the oncoming roach-mobile.
Everything started moving like the universe was a Gravitron and Earth was the metal cage he was stuck to while the sky spun black and silver overhead. With no warning whatsoever the sidewalk up and cracked him one in the jaw and Lonnie found himself laid out in front of Hank’s, rolling over onto his back as the roach-mobile screeched to a halt nearby to check on him.
That’s when it finally hit him.
He was on a “bender,” his nickname for the peduncular hallucinations that started when he was seventeen years old, back when he first lost touch with reality and the world went all funhouse mirror on him for a spell. The last time it happened was that whole business in Cleveland that led his first stay in a federal hotel, which wasn’t all bad because he had access to doctors. Those doctors had access to the MRI machines that discovered the occipital tumor in his brain. After they took it out they told him he was lucky, the “low grade” variety was more common in younger people. The doc said, “The older you get the more dangerous it is.”
Lonnie was forty-seven now so that was, you know, more than a little concerning.
Kacey and a couple of the guys managed to get him to his feet. He was a buck seventy, solid, and too groggy to be of much help but they got him seated upright at one of the tables outside. Kacey ran to get a towel so she could stop the steady trickle of blood from the scrapes on his face. As his breathing calmed down Lonnie sat there thinking about the past few minutes and his life in general. About centrifugal forces and orbits. How everything comes round again.
Circles and cycles, man.
Fucking time loops.
Fucking revolutions.