Personal Development Slate (9 min) / New Character Tool (3 min)
First of all, thank you so much to everybody who joined the listening party for the immersive audio piece. I sincerely appreciate it.
It's been a busy couple of weeks. I turned in a new draft last, had a meeting with my reps to go over my personal development slate, and got to pitch a take on an OWA that I really dug. I thought I'd give you the rundown on that personal dev slate process then show you a new tool I used as a lens for looking at my characters in a current piece.
As always, this isn't a "how to" it's a "how I'm currently." Hopefully it inspires something new for you as you do the work this week. Thanks!
Personal Development Slate (9 min)
I was fortunate enough to sell a pitch at the beginning of last summer with a co-writer so I’ve been on contract for one project for a little under a year. It’s my second time developing with a streamer and the process takes time. There’s no ticking clock like there was on the broadcast side, at least not like how it was when I sold REVERIE.
A few months ago I took out a (non-IP based) pitch with an Oscar winning director and his producing partner that unfortunately didn’t sell. I loved the concept and I’m a massive fan of his so that was heartbreaking. Word on the street among writers was that it was a particularly brutal season for selling new stuff, likely because of the backlog of projects that were bought and developed during Covid, or projects that never got out of the gate in production when the world shut down. I was seeing people like Glen Mazzarra and Steven DeKnight tweeting about how tough it was so I felt like I was in good company.
I did what I always do when I come up on one of these roadblocks, I focus on the things I can control, like generating original material. Over the past year while I we were waiting for notes in between drafts I pivoted to writing short stories, experimenting with immersive audio dramas, and doing things like documenting my process with this newsletter, which led me to experimenting with new ways of unlocking stories.
Looking back it’s like I was amassing mounds of clay on a workbench, out of which I could mold new things. (As I was working on this entry I saw John Rogers tweet about building "notebook time" into your writing routine. That time is where a lot of this raw material came from.)
By focusing on quantity and going where the fun was for a bit I freed myself up and got back into a state of play that opened up new and better ideas. In some cases short stories that I spent a week or two on laid the foundation for a whole new story world, in other cases they introduced me to interesting characters or let me explore themes I was drawn to. Taking a step back and examining WHY I was drawn to those ideas led me to sharpening my point-of-view.
Two months ago I finally started to distill a bunch of these ideas into three key projects that became my own personal development slate and spent time writing pitches for them. One of them is a dark comedy series that’s a bit outside my genre comfort zone but gets at the heart of the “why now” question, not just in terms of why it’s relevant to audience but also why I’m passionate about it. The second project is a genre procedural where I feel like I finally found my way in to an X-FILES type of series that doesn’t cover the same alien/paranormal ground. Lastly, I have a feature pitch that sets up a near-future story world that I’ve been obsessed with for going on eight years, a grounded emotional way in to a sci-fi franchise.
So I put all of these ideas together in one doc that I sent to my reps to help me strategize. I figured if the buying isn’t going to pick up again for a few months I wanted to figure out the best way to spend my time. It sounds like the spec market is still glutted and I already have a new writing sample in my last pilot that didn’t go forward (RIP Barb). Because of that I’ve decided not to spend time writing any of these on spec and instead focus on meeting with some producing partners to talk about them.
In the case of the feature pitch it’s going to be a tough sell without it being based on pre-existing IP. I kind of figured that. So instead of writing the spec I’m going to keep pushing myself to build up to writing a novel. The biggest thing I’ve written so far is a novella at around 30k words and it’s absolutely terrible but I’m building up stamina and learning to dig deeper into detail and emotional POV. I've always loved Stephen King's description of writing as an act of telepathy, I'm trying to hone that skill.
It is difficult to stop myself from writing a new script on spec. The two things of mine that actually made it to air started that way. Scripts are what I know. But I also know that the business is changing every day and that what worked even a year ago may not work today. Because of that, I feel like the best thing I can do right now is prioritize adaptability over comfort. It’s a recurring theme in this newsletter but I’m engaged in an ongoing battle between expansion and contraction. By zeroing in on my personal development slate I’m visualizing the next few years of my career and concentrating on things that help me expand.
I didn’t consciously plan this but in hindsight this past year was marked by three periods.
1st Stage: Collect Raw Material
I spent months playing, writing short stories, making experimental audio dramas, writing this newsletter, reading, watching, researching, and more. Mr. Rogers' notebook time. Going where the fun is. Some things from earlier newsletters that helped me get in this mindset and flesh these ideas out:
A) Morning Pages to get me in touch with my impulses (Issue #2)
B) Filling the well with new stimuli and experiences (Issue #3)
C) New exercises, like writing an “oral history” or “I want monologues” for my characters. (Issues #7 and #10)
D) Brainstorming sessions (Issue #9)
2nd Stage: Assessment
Once all of that clay was on the table I spend time looking over what I had and doing some self examination. What were the underlying themes I was drawn to over and over? What was “sticky,” meaning it wasn’t just a one-off that I got out of my system but instead something that I found myself thinking about when I went to bed at night and when I woke up in the morning. Why was it sticky? What is it inside me that’s wanting to come out through this piece? Does this character work in this other world? What does it look like if Character A from this short story meets Character B from another short story? Do those pieces click into place?
3rd Stage: Assembly
I picked my three favorite ideas (keeping in mind Story Darwinism from Newsletter #5) and focused on writing pitches for each. At this point I consciously chose things that were tonally different so that I could open up new lanes of opportunity with producing partners. I put all of this into a personal development slate document and made a board to help me track the progress of each piece.
In this weird moment when so many things seem to be up in the air being strategic like this helps keep me from feeling like I’m just being reactive.
At least I've got a plan and a plan is a wonderful thing to change.
Gardner's Eight Intelligences
I try to approach all of my characters through the basic questions of drama. What do they want? What happens if they don't get it? Why does it have to be now? I need to be able to answer that for everybody.
Still, sometimes my supporting characters end up in a kind of amorphous state, lacking clear points of view and definition.
One thing I've been using to shake that process up and spark new ideas is thinking of them in terms of Gardener's eight intelligences, a theory that people have different kinds of intelligences. Many of us have a combination of them but tend to be really strong in one or two areas.
You can look at your characters through this lens and draw contrast between how they go about overcoming the obstacles in their way. A person with Linguistic-Verbal intelligence is going to be great at talking their way into and out of problems. A person with Logical-Mathematic intelligence may discover hidden patterns that lead to a discovery. A person with Body-Kinesthetic intelligence is going to physically be able to handle themselves (Zoe in DEATH PROOF), and so on.
It will influence how they think, act, communicate, even their look.
Check out this video for more info, it may help you sharpen and define the differences in your own cast of characters.
(A quick note, this theory has its detractors. I'm passing it along for inspiration not gospel.)
8 Intelligences - Theory of Multiple Intelligences Explained - Dr. Howard Gardner — www.youtube.com In his theory of multiple intelligences, Dr. Howard Gardner describes how humans can be intellectually smart in a variety of different ways. There are:Logica...
This is a picture of me (left) and my friend Bobby displaying Body-Kinesthetic intelligence in a breakdancing competition at a citywide festival in the 5th grade. We came in 2nd place! (out of two groups) Notice that we've foregone shoes, presumably to help us spin better?
The Plot Thickens: The Devil's Candy
I've been loving this new season that is centered around the making of THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. It's rare that we get to hear such an in depth discussion about all the various ways, despite our best intentions, that things can and do go wrong in making entertainment. There's a ton of behind the scenes audio from interviews that writer Julie Salamon did on set. It's fascinating.
Link to the podcast: — theplotthickens.tcm.com The Bonfire of the Vanities was one of the best-selling novels of the 1980s and had all the makings for a hit motion picture: a dark comedy with heart and bite, an A-list director and a star-studded cast. So what went wrong?