2nd Act Problems (13 minute read)
Welcome to Issue #18!
A quick update on the past week: I started scheduling meetings based on the personal development slate that I told you about a couple of weeks ago. I also had a recent general meeting on the feature side. A few days ago I took the time to boil down a feature idea into a quick 5 minute mini-pitch that I could test the waters with if the opportunity came up, which it did. I'll let you know if that results in a chance to pitch the whole thing, but I was glad I thought ahead and rehearsed it a bit. Not throwing away my shot, etc.
It was my 48th birthday last week, the eighth anniversary of selling EXTANT. I've been able to do so much cool stuff since then. After two seasons of EXTANT I got to work on MARS for NatGeo and sat in the writers room with Ron Howard for an afternoon talking about APOLLO 13. I got to work on THE STRAIN for Carlton Cuse, Chuck Hogan, and Guillermo Del Toro, made some great friends in the room, and spent four weeks in Toronto (in January) prepping two episodes. I sold REVERIE while on staff there and spent a year making that on the Universal lot with my friends at Amblin. I had a world premiere of a new play at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston. That was all in the first five years after breaking in.
Now things have slowed down a bit. I've sold two projects in the past three years, one that didn't go forward (BARBARELLA) and one that is still in progress. I've done some uncredited rewrite work and been part of a couple of great mini-rooms that also won't show up on my IMDB. I'm not the new guy who came out of nowhere with a crazy story anymore, in fact it didn't even come up in the general. I'm one more writer in town trying to do stuff that I'm proud of with people I like while keeping the lights on and the dog in rotisserie chicken and that's fine.
I am proud to say I'm not jaded or cynical about any of it after eight years. I still get a thrill when I'm driving through the neighborhood and see the yellow crew parking signs and Star Waggons, the tell-tale signs that someone is trying to capture lightning in a bottle up the block.
I still love the writing part most of all.
Except when it comes to these goddamn second acts...
2nd Act Problems
I had some time after turning in my latest contracted draft to dive back into a personal feature spec. I’ve been working on this one for a year and a half now. Closer to two years if I count the time that It spent rolling around in my head before I started putting it down on paper.
I sent the first draft to my feature agent back in March and we made of list of potential partners, then took one targeted shot with an actress/producer and her pod. When we got the softest of passes we went back to the list to figure out who to send it to next but in the few months in between I picked up the script again and saw it in a whole new light.
Something about it wasn’t right. I knew it, I could feel the pea under all the mattresses. I loved my set up, I loved where it ended, but the middle was kind of a mess.
I’d kicked things off with this big hook in the first five pages that laid the foundation for the central mystery but somewhere along the way I lost faith in the strength of that hook. I put the pedal down hard around page twenty with what I thought was a very pulpy, propulsive sequence that turned the story in a new direction. The problem is that it was such a big tonal shift from the first twenty pages that it just felt rushed and, in hindsight, a little schlocky.
In my desire to keep the story moving and keep it interesting I had actually provided a convenient off-ramp for anybody who had been with me to that point. I could see the exec putting it down, saying, “Well, that went off the rails quickly.” As I was reading through it I also heard the voice of a showrunner I worked for who, after hearing some crazy new sequence the room cooked up, would say, “It’s too fanciful. You need to simplify.”
So I told my agent that I wanted to spend some time on a rewrite and laid out my basic plan. He was all for it and said that it actually helped align it a bit more with something people are looking for now. To give you the shorthand, it's a little more GONE GIRL and a little less THEY LIVE.
Rewriting an original spec now is harder for me than rewriting a pilot or a script I’ve been contracted to write. It’s not just about the monetary motivation, knowing I can invoice for the draft once I turn it in. Since I don’t have other creative partners at the moment I’m strictly going by my own instincts and internal artistic compass.
It’s one thing to keep asking yourself, “How can this be better?” when you know you have to turn it in to the producers or the studio in a couple of days for their judgement. It's a whole other thing when you know that asking those questions and being honest with yourself means you also have to have the self-discipline to follow through with the changes. There’s nobody to please, nobody to give you a pat on the back for finding a clever solution to the note. It’s just you vs the problems you’ve created for yourself.
I handed myself a huge homework assignment, essentially rewriting the middle 60 pages of the script, and the minute I sat down to begin my body had an intense physical reaction. My brain got tired immediately. The task seemed overwhelming.
To make matters worse it was my birthday last week. I took that day off to drive to Mt. Whitney, thinking I’d get back to the task at hand the next day. I took Ellie to Laguna Beach and got a room for two days where I planned to dig back in except I didn’t write a fucking word down there. We had a blast, exploring the tide pools at dawn and watching the sun go down over the water in the evening. I needed that infusion of genuine awe. But the whole time Act Two was looming.
Finally, I got back home and was ready to start attacking it again. I desperately needed to get some momentum so here’s a quick list of some things that I did to break up the logjam and get things moving again.
I got back to doing morning pages every morning after breakfast and before sitting down to work. At least three pages, stream-of-consciousness, to get me in touch with my instincts and impulses again, and to open the channel between my creative brain and my pen.
I built fast failure into the process. Instead of overthinking each run of new story beats I would make very quick bullet point style beat sheets working through each new path of the story until it all fell apart, then I took what I learned from that and started over. I was, like Einstein said, looking for “All the ways it wouldn’t work.”
When I found a run of scenes that l liked, I went back to test them for tone to make sure I wasn’t going to run into the same “fanciful” problem again. For me, my archetypal tone was something like UNBREAKABLE or SIGNS. If it veered away from that tone and got too pulpy I started over and kept it more grounded and emotional.
Yoda sessions - In between writing sessions I watched and read great movies to see how these scenes looked on the page vs how they looked on screen. My movie has very little in common with THE CONVERSATION but there’s a thread of paranoia that runs through mine and it helped seeing the way he handled it in script.
When I got through a run of scenes I was happy with I interrogated them one more time through the emotional POV of my character, thinking in first person. “What do I know at the end of this? What do I want to know now? Who has that information, or where can I find it?And crucially, how do I FEEL about what just happened and how do I feel about what I’m about to do next?”
Toward the end of this process I was listening to an excellent interview with Ed Solomon on The Writer’s Panel podcast by my friend Ben Blacker. Ben asked Ed about how he approaches the daunting task of the 2nd act and Ed talked about how he tries to think more in terms of sequences. I’ve done that before but I’d forgotten that trick and when I did it, it absolutely worked. Thinking about the act in terms of 10-20 minute sequences helped make it more manageable. Then it was just about keeping the internal logic of that sequence and being mindful of the transition to the next, again, being mindful of pace and tone.
Reading those bullet points back just now it seems BATSHIT CRAZY to me that this has been my process for the past two weeks. It’s messy, it’s inefficient, but this is what it took to get the job done this time.
And it’s not even done by the way. I’m just now on the downhill slope heading into Act Three, which I think — I hope — is going to hold. But when I get there I'll have to ask myself the same questions, “Is this the best it can be? Is it just working or is it actually great?” And if I have to pull that act up from the floorboards I’ll do it too.
Because that’s the job.
Even when (especially when) the person you’re working for is yourself.
(Btw, I'm linking this episode with Ed Solomon because it's packed with great information and it's inspirational to listen to. After listening to it you should watch NO SUDDEN MOVE. It's a master class in storytelling.)
Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move, Bill and Ted) + Bonus Interview with Craig Moss — art19.com Ed Solomon talks about his new collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, NO SUDDEN MOVES (out now on HBO Max), how the creation of Bill & Ted came from a place of freedom, breaking in too early, writing for It's Garry Shandling's Show, interest vs passion, writing for yourself, and lots more. Plus a bonus interview with Craig Moss, the writer/director of Let Us In and Bad Ass. CONNECT W/ BEN BLACKER & THE WRITER'S PANEL ON SOCIAL MEDIA https://twitter.com/BENBLACKER https://www.facebook.com/TVWritersPanel THE WRITER'S PANEL IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/the-writers-panel
Farewell to One of My Favorite Storytellers
Nanci Griffith passed away last week. If you've never heard of her, check out this short thread that ends with a link to one of her very best stories and songs.
Mickey Fisher on Twitter: "When I was a junior in college the girl I had a massive crush on went home to Raleigh for Christmas break and let me borrow her car while she was gone. The first time I took it for a drive it was snowing, I turned over the engine and this magical voice came over the speakers…" — twitter.com “When I was a junior in college the girl I had a massive crush on went home to Raleigh for Christmas break and let me borrow her car while she was gone. The first time I took it for a drive it was snowing, I turned over the engine and this magical voice came over the speakers…”