Issue #5 - Story Darwinism and a Sample TV Pitch For Download
Welcome to Issue #5!
There's a bit about Story Darwinism (10 minute read), a link to download a sample pitch doc for a series I never took to market, a short story related to that pitch doc, and links to things that inspired, enlightened, or got the gears turning this week.
Story Darwinism (10 minute read)
Last week I had the chance to see my nephew in a review of songs and scenes at my old high school. It was my first live theater experience since I went to see Julie in STEEL MAGNOLIAS in Oregon a week before the world shut down. I never thought I'd get emotional watching a group of teenagers singing “We go together like rama lama lama lama dinga da dingy dong” but hey, that's where we are now.
Wandering around my old lobby afterward I was reminded of what a terrible student I was. From the 3rd-5th grade I played football, baseball, and basketball and I was on the honor roll pretty regularly. Then I did my first musical at the end of my 5th grade year. I never played another sport after that and I'm not sure I ever made the honor roll again.
Looking back, it’s a clear dividing line. Anything that wasn’t as fun or as interesting as music and theater seemed like a waste of time after that.
Dawes (one of my favorite bands) has a lyric that says, “You’re going to have to quit everything until you find one thing you won’t.”
That idea pertains to so many different aspects of our lives. You can just keep zooming in on the next fractal layer down when it comes to relationships, friendships, habits, majors we study, or the jobs we take. At every stage we’re just quitting things until we find the thing we won’t.
I got lucky. I found a thing I wouldn’t quit in the 5th grade, which meant I had a head start on getting good at it. Some people didn’t find their thing until years later. In college I realized that I didn’t just have to say other peoples’ words, I could write my own. That was the new thing I wouldn’t quit. I’m in the act of doing it right this very moment.
The next layer down was deciding what I wanted to write.
This process used to be a lot less complicated before I broke in to the industry for all the external, market-driven reasons I mentioned in the last newsletter. I thought this week I’d tell you about few key creative factors that come into play when I’m trying to decide what I want to write next.
A few years ago I was listening to David Goyer's lecture for BAFTA and he talked about how his process for adapting Batman and Superman involved a process of “Story Darwinism,” where certain aspects of those characters just seemed to stick. I feel like I have my own version of that when I’m trying to decide what’s the new original thing I want to write.
It really is survival of the fittest. Some concepts or characters just stick around longer and demand to be told. Others arrive like a bolt of lightning and everything else gets shoved into the “for the future” folder. But all of them are subject to the same questions. If I've got an idea for a new series here are some of the big questions beyond the practical stuff like, "Is this way too expensive for being non-IP," or "Who is the audience?"
First, "Is there an identifiable engine that’s going to power multiple seasons of conflict?" For EXTANT it was the ongoing battle for survival between three distinct species. For REVERIE it was the tension between Mara’s work extracting people from the program versus the toll it took on her own mental health and the danger of the prolonged exposure. The clearer and more concise the better because I have to explain this engine in the pitch.
Next is, “Why will the audience care?" This is different than, "Is my main character likable?" This is about how quickly can I get people invested in the protagonist's goals. A few years ago you may have been able to get away with pitching "it's a slow burn" to a streamer but the algorithm knows when people tap out and why. My guess is that this data will drive the way we tell stories and before long it will be more like the networks where you're moving the end of your pilot to the end of the teaser. The runways are only getting shorter. "Make em care ASAP" is my new tattoo.
Another key question is, "Is there a role that a movie star would want to play?" Julie and I were watching THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW last night and it was crystal clear what made Amy Adams want to take that role. To call back to Glen Mazzara, there were so many juicy scenes where they could just "Give the character the stage."
My latest big question, one that is relevant to all of these mediums, is, “What will be surprising to me and therefore surprising to the audience?”
When I was making my list of my favorite movies of 2019 I realized that the top three all had a similar reason for being there. With PARASITE, UNCUT GEMS, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, there was a point mid-way through the movie where it was beyond my ability to guess what was going to happen next and it was thrilling.
You don’t get that in the big franchises. At no point did I ever believe that half the AVENGERS were gone for good. I knew that at some point they were going to reverse Thanos’s snap and bring everybody back. Knowing that didn’t lessen my enjoyment and “on your left” was so emotionally satisfying that it didn’t matter. The fun was how we got there.
Same goes for detective stories. The writer/director may give us some great twists but there is a limited field of potential suspects or outcomes once all the pieces are on the board. With an origin story like JOKER I knew it was going to end with the character assuming a persona we’ve known for decades. What was compelling (for many people) was how he got there.
2019 changed what was most important to me about my original ideas. If I can see a clear, predictable path through a story or realize that once I’ve put the pieces on the board there’s an inevitable ending, that project falls behind in Story Darwinism. I'm trying to hold out for moments that make me feel like the Spahn Ranch scene in OUATIH or the moment the old housekeeper leads them into the basement in PARASITE.
And let me tell you, it’s really hard.
When a story clicks into place I get such a rush. That feeling is the dragon I'm chasing when I come out to the garage every day. But just because a story has all the necessary components doesn't mean it's GOOD, or compelling. Just because it looks like an episode of television doesn't mean it's worth an hour (or forty) of someone's life.
Liz Kruger, one of my EXTANT season two showrunners, would sometimes say "This is on rails" after hearing a pitch or reading a script. Meaning, "There are no surprises, it's on a straight line, headed for its inevitable end point." She was thinking about the audience. If it didn't surprise her it wasn't going to surprise them.
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'm anchored in their current emotional POV and 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.
Sometimes I make a list of all the things they wouldn’t do, or the things that would be boring or predictable. That will often shake something loose.
I finished a new feature spec in 2020 called HALF-LIGHT. It’s about a young woman whose infant son goes missing after a mysterious occurrence in a national forest and she becomes the prime suspect. (Inspired by driving around while listening to Kate Bush)
I spent months stuck at the end of Act One because I knew the end point I had in mind was inevitable but it sure as hell wasn't surprising.
I loved the set-up so I pivoted to whole different sub-genres of what might have actually happened that night. Finally, I came back around to my original idea but I landed on a turn of events that genuinely surprised me. The kind of moment where I thought, “If I was watching this with Julie I’d look at her and go, “Holy shit."
I had to quit SO MUCH STUFF to get there.
INSIGHT Pitch Doc Download
I wrote this series pitch (and the accompanying spec pilot) back in 2019 and by the time it was finished I moved on from the idea. I hadn't quite pulled off what I wanted to do which was combine my love of genre and Elmore Leonard into something pulpy and propulsive. I wanted to burn story like a pyro. In the end, I just wasn't sure there was an audience for it. It felt a bit esoteric and my tastes generally run pretty commercial.
Eventually I stripped away some parts for a short story (which I'll post just after this link) but I thought I'd offer it for a download for anyone who might want to look at how somebody else structures their pitches. For me, once I've written the pilot I create this document which then becomes the basis of the verbal pitch. Maybe it will spark some idea or new thought as you create your own.
Dropbox - INSIGHT series concept 073119.pdf - Simplify your life — www.dropbox.com Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again!
The Hungarian Incident - short story
Back in the fall I wrote a sequel to The Night Mover, the short story I linked to last week. I repurposed some elements from my INSIGHT series pitch and used them to keep experimenting with that same pulpy, propulsive voice. If you're interested, you can read both and see which parts I took and how they transferred. I had fun writing it, it was a learning experience, but I'm not sure this kind of story is one I can "make live" to quote Flannery O'Connor.
The Hungarian Incident – Extant StoryTech — extantstorytech.com The Hungarian Incident by Mickey Fisher Morgan Vanatta parked his Typhoon at the base of Bonnie Brae and hiked the steep quarter mile up to Chateau De Magie. A steady stream of driverless cabs and luxury EV’s rolled past the guy in the sport coat
Yoda Sessions
Our Weirdest Dreams Could Be Training Us for Life, New Theory Says — gizmodo.com Bizarre and hallucinatory dreams might serve an important purpose, according to a new theory.
1st Place China - Duilian - 13th WWC 2015 — www.youtube.com First place choreographed sparring set performance at the 13th World Wushu Championships from China. Xiao Long Wu and Long Long Shi score a 9.73 with an empt...
David S. Goyer: Screenwriters Lecture — www.youtube.com David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, FlashForward, Da Vinci's Demons) discusses his first script, writing for TV and why persistence pays off.