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BPS 304: Zero Draft Thiry - Inside Writing for Hollywood with Scott Myers · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three zero four. Yeah, I didn't get into
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Sundance either. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we
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really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
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screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to
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another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex
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Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now,
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head on over to cover my Screenplay dot Com. Enjoy today's episode with
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guest host Dave Bullis, the founder of Zero Draft thirty is actually the guest
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on this week's podcast, who is a screenwriter and founder of one of the
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most popular screenwriting blogs, Going a Story, which is also the official blog
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of the Blacklist. He also reins also runs screenwriting Masterclass, and he's also
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an instructor, which we're going to get into as well, and without further
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ado, with guests Scott Myers. You know, my guiding light through most
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of my life has been Joseph Campbell and that simple little phrase, follow your
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bliss. Find that thing that you are passionate about, that energizes you,
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that you feel you have a talent for and creatively, I've just always done
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that. And one of the things along the way was I discovered teaching while
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I was writing. I'd go and do these presentations be invited and people say,
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hey, man, you're really good at this, maybe you should teach.
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So that started with teaching online through UCLA Extension. And then when we
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moved to North Carolina where I was a television producer for a production company there
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called Trailblazer Studios for eight years, I started teaching one class semester at UNC
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Chapel Hill in the writing for Screening Stage program, which was great. And
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then the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts here in Chicago came to know me.
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One of my colleagues now here, Brad Riddell, who's a working screenwriter
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and had four movies made. He's now an associate professor here at at the
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program and the chair of our program screenwriting program, And he got in touch
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with me because he knew about my blog. He was a huge fan of
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the blog. So we started talking and very very exciting things going on at
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De Paul. It's a fast growing school with incredible facilities. The school has
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three sound stages that it rents for the students at the largest studio system studio
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facility outside of Los Angeles and North America. There's the same facility where all
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the Chicago fire Chicago, Hope. All those shows are filmed. Empire was
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filmed, There are lots of movies are filmed there. So the students not
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only get a chance to actually get hands on experience making movies like right away,
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a very diy spirit here at the school. They have incredible gear and
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these sound stages and a three time grip truck. They are also segue into
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working for these productions for NBC and whatnot. So that combined with the fact
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that the faculty here is tremendous, the support from the administration is outstanding.
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The school is extremely diverse. A lot of schools talk about, well we
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want to you know, we're into inclusion, we want to diverse student bodies.
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Well, DePaul actually has that. I mean my current MFA cohort,
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the group that's going to be graduating in twenty nineteen. That MFA group is
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fifty percent non white and over fifty percent women, And it's really exciting to
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work with people who have diverse backgrounds and to be able to help them find
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their voice and facilitate their writing process. So, circling back to how I
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got here, it was just one of those things you put yourself out there,
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you do something that you are passionate about. And as Campbell says,
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the universe will open doors where there used to be walls. And the Paul
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invited me to come here and apply for the position, and I got it,
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and I moved here two years ago, and I love it. It's
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just a tremendous place to be and very exciting working with these students. You
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know during the application process that did you know they ask any sort of like
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questions about production or anything like that, like how you would handle something,
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because I mean, I imagine you you were kind of I mean not just
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about screenwriting, so I imagine you you kind of have your hands and you
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wear a lot of hats. As what I'm trying to say, Oh yeah,
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I wear a lot of hats. And the great thing about the Paul
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School Cinematic Arts is that we've got eight eight areas of concentration. So there's
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screenwriting, there's directing, there's creative producing, there's all sorts of a post
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there's an animation group that's terrific. So we we don't have a silo system.
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We work together. Again, the students are I had a freshman last
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year. He was like three weeks in. I mean all my students one
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on one and all my classes. I just think that's important to do.
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And I was saying, well, I hope you take advantage of your time
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here because it's it's really amazing that you have all these facilities and resources to
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go out and make these short films. He said, I'm already making one
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three weeks in. He's already making one. So there's a lot of communication
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between the directors and the writers. We have meetings every quarter whereby students get
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together in this big group and they pitched these projects to each other and it's
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incredibly collaborative things. So yes, I'm involved with helping them with the scripting
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thing, helping them with their edits, helping them with some of the directing
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choices they're making. Is I oversee some other thesis projects and whatnot? You
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know, I should note that just recently DePaul Hollywood Reporter came out with their
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top twenty five film schools, and DePaul's thirteen in that list and rising clearly
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the number one film school in the Midwest. We aspire to be more than
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that variety. We made that list of the top film schools. So it's
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a it's a really exciting place to be and we're having students go to La
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now and shoot some success. So yeah, one of the reasons I enjoyed
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being here is that I get a chance to wear a lot of hats and
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work with students in a lot of different ways. So, you know,
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Scott, you mentioned the student that that, you know, three weeks in
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he was already shooting something or planning to shoot something. Do you ever have
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the opposite? I mean, he is there ever a student who shows up
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and just says, you know, uh, you know, maybe they start
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dragging their feet, or they have to kind of like say, how are
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you hey, aren't you going to make something? Do you ever have that?
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Uh? Yeah? There are students who, you know, and I
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don't you know, I don't denigrate them at all. If they come here
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and they just want to be writers, you know, or perhaps they just
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want to work in post, you know, in visual effects, they don't
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want to go out and do production, you know. Having done some of
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that, I think I agree pretty much with what William Goldman said when he
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said paraphrasing here, he said, the first day, the most exciting day
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of a screenwriter's life is a first day on a set on a movie set.
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The most boring day in a screenwriter's life is the second day in the
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movie set, you know, because it's a lot of setup and just waiting
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her out for things, you know. So I found that when I was
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doing TV, producing out in the field and whatnot, it was okay,
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I didn't really enjoy it that much. I really enjoy more working. So
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there are students who I respect that, But then there are other students who
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have to be encouraged, who they have a creative idea and they've got a
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good visual sense of acuity and say, okay, come on, yes,
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get out there, try it. There's no there's no downside here. It's
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not like if you make a short film and it stinks, well, you've
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learned a lot. There's things that you can only learn, but being out
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in the field and making movies, you just can't learn it all by sitting
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in a room writing. And so I encourage people to, you know,
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all my writers that I work with, whether it's through to Paul or through
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a screenwriting masterclass, or interfacing with my blog or going up to these conferences
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and festivals I've been going to more frequently now, I encourage them to go
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make stuff. This is a time right now where with everything going on and
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the second Golden age of TV or peak TV and digital filmmaking where content is
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King, Queen, Prince, duke whatever, and who is responsible for creating
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that content, for coming up with that stuff at the inception stage its writers.
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And so this is a fantastic opportunity for people who are creative and I
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have a good way with words and know how to write and craft stories.
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We'll be right back a word from our sponsor and now back to the show
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to do that and then see if they have a directorial shops. That way,
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you can control your material a lot more so. Yeah, I have
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students who run the gamut, you know. I have students that come in
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and you know, many of them have they can name for you every single
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shot in a Martin Scorsese movie, you know. I mean, I've had
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those kind of students. And I have students who come in who their parents,
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you know, have them majoring in economics or business or whatnot, but
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they're creative, and so they come in here and they can take a double
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major in screenwriting, a BFA or a BA or even a minor, you
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know, and to see them light up and see them really grow creatively,
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and maybe it's only an advocation for them moving forward and not a vocation.
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Well that's great. At least they've discovered something that they're passionate about and they
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have a talent for and they can do that and uh and have them urture
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and fuller life. You know, I thought you were going to say the
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William Goldman quote nobody knows anything. So yeah, well that's true. I
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mean, oh, we're seeing this right now, aren't we, Dave,
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Like, you know, up until about a year ago, it was like,
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oh, rom coms, you're dead, nobody wants to see romantic comedies.
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Rich Crazy Rich Asians comes out, boom, three of them, Green
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Litton one week, you know, a spec Script Singles Day, the sequel
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to Crazy Rich Asians, and a K pop projects in Korea. So you
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know, um, now we're seeing articles about how Crazy Rich Asians has resurrected
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the rom com So people when they say these things, you know, they
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don't understand the cyclical nature of the business. Um and and yeah, so
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I think that's probably true. Golden says, nobody knows anything. Yeah,
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it's kind of like how zombies. Um, we're always you know, considered
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played out or what have you. And then the Walking Dead came around and
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now suddenly they're you know, they were cool again, and then Ben then
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you know, now let's cool over again. Well, I'll tell you another
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thing, because you know, you know me, I tracked the specscript market.
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I've been tracking it since well, I broke into nineteen eighty seven by
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selling a K nine and then really started an earnest to track it in eighty
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nine ninety. So my blog going to the story, you can go and
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see that I got over two thousand specscript deals annotated. They're dating back to
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nineteen ninety one and up through two thousand and fourteen. Not one time in
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the entire period of tracking specscript market during the twenty se nine years of doing
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that was drama in the top three in terms of genre sales. It was
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always comedy, action or thriller always, and then for the last three years
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the number one genre in the spec script market has been dramas. Again,
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nobody knows anything, so we're in a new cycle here and trying to interpret
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that's quite interesting. I think part of it is that people have grown up
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with reality TV a whole generation and so they're used to and interested in quote
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unquote real people, and so in the case of historical dramas, they actually
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are like real people. I think part of it is nostalgia. We're a
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wash in nostalgia right now, and so when they see a picture, you
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know, like a script that was on the top of the Blacklist of years
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back about Madonna or before that, about Michael Jackson told from the perspective of
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his pet mockey Bubbles. You know, those type of historical dramas they hit
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there, they hit on a you know where the reader or the viewer knows
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of them. It's the nostalgic And I think the final thing really going on
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there is just the studios are way into pre branded content. You know,
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they want content that people will know about, and so historical figures, you
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know, is a way of doing that because people will know about a figure
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in the past, you know. So so yeah, it's it's a it's
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a it's a fascinating time. We really is just an interesting time right now,
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and it's great to be a creator in that type of environment. So,
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so Scott like, what what have you read any like unpublished or I'm
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sorry unpublished? Have you read any any unproduced screenplays recently that have just like
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floored you. Yes, I just got done doing my twelfth Blacklist feature writers
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Lab in LA got back about two weeks ago, and there were six projects
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and all of them were really good, and a couple of them were just,
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uh, we're you know. One of them was like almost ready to
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go. I mean, there's some rewriting they could do on it. You
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could totally see it. It's a genre peace elevator, genre piece. And
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so yes, you know, there's there's great material out there now. The
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spec script market is down this year, and it's compared to last year,
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and last year was down compared to the previous year, and I think in
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large part that's due to the studios. Um you know, again you're just
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relying on pre branded content, franchise material and whatnot. But I still believe
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this to be true that if you write a great script, it'll find its
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way. Someone's going to respond to that. And so yeah, there's great
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material out there. You know. I've got students here written scripts that they'll
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need to rewrite them, but they got strong concepts, great character execution.
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So yeah, there's still some really good content being made that's the key.
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It's just you write a great script. So so let's talk about that.
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You know, when you're working with students, you know, what are some
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of the advice that you give to these college students. Well, the first
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thing is to remind them constantly that movies are primarily a visual medium. There
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are some who will tend to rely too much on dialogue to drive the action.
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Not to say that dialogue's bad, it isn't, but for certain genres
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action, comedy, depending upon the type of comedy that's thriller, science fiction,
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fantasy, those type of movies really lend themselves to visual storytelling. And
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that's the type of thing that Hollywood does better than anybody else in the world,
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you know, visual storytelling. And so I remind them that. Look,
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for the first three decades of movies existence, there was no dialogue.
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It was silent films. Yeah, we have those little inner titles, but
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largely it was just visuals. And in some ways, we're circling back to
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that kind of paradigm, I think because now with the box office receipts,
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the revenues seventy to seventy five percent of those generated by the international markets,
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whereas a joke a line of dialogue. An exchange of dialogue may not translate
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that well from say the United States to China or Brazil or Germany or whatnot.
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Someone slipping out of an antipedal and falling on their asses universally funny.
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So that's the first thing I hammer with them, like every quarter, is,
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you know, it's a visual medium. You've got to think visually.
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You know, whenever you start to construct a scene, that's your starting point
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is a visual storytelling. I'd also say this because you know, I stay
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on top of the business. It's weird that I'm you know, I'm more
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connected now in Hollywood than I ever was when I live to and a half
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miles east of twentieth century Fox because of my blog. You know, is
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there are several things going on relative to cultural trends and technological developments. The
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generation right now, the young general, young people you know up through the
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millennials, but these eighteen year olds up to that they have seen, heard,
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or read exponentially more stories than previous generations. If you consider stories to
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be snapchat conversations and text conversations and YouTube videos that sort of thing, and
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those are stories, you know, at the beginning middle end many of them,
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and so they just intuitively know story on a level that I think previous
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generations don't. So, for example, they don't need as much exposition now
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as it used to be, which is why I think you've seen this shift
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back in the eighties when I broke in what is now what used to be
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the end of act one then is now the middle of act one. You
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just don't need all that setup. Get into the story and get going.
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And that's another thing because young people nowadays are so used to getting their content
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when they want it, how they want it now now that another thing I
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take to teach my students is get into the story. Drop them in.
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There's a Latin phrase in media race, drop them into the middle. Just
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put them in there. They want that type of thing. They want to
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get into the story. They may not even need to know that much about
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the characters. You think about movies like X, Mackina or Lucy. There's
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a couple of movies that come into mind, you don't barely anything about the
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protagonist. Within two to three minutes, boom, they're into the plot.
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And so I think young audience is kind of like that. We'll be right
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back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
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Like, Okay, as long as I'm not confused, let's say I'm here
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with this character and we're into the action, I'm going to find out all
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that exposition along the way, not sort of lay it out up front like
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we we traditionally used to do. So there are definitely some things going on
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in terms of technology and cultural mindset that you know, we need to be
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cognizant of as screenwriters, and I try to pass that along to my students.
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So when when you mentioned that, you know, the the it used
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to be in the eighties, the end of act one is now the middle
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of act one, do you sort of so so let me ask you this,
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let me kind of rephrase that my question. Do you kind of think
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like you know, usually in the Hero's Journey with Joseph Campbell, you know,
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there's a there's the call to action, and then there's the refusal of
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the call. Don't you think that the refusal of that call sometimes can be
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a little who is maybe not needed? And here's what I mean by that.
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You know, if you go to see like a road trip movie nowadays,
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you already know the going on the road trip. So is there really
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any need to have a refusal of the call? Because I mean, hell,
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the you know that then being on the road is the whole reason that
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brought you into the theater, do you know what I mean? Well,
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that's you're raising an interesting point, Dave, which is that the awareness level
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of people going into movies is such based on trailers and the inundation of marketing,
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and I think that does have an impact. So if you know that
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this is a road picture, do you really need to spend twenty five pages
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setting it up? No, you don't, you know, You're just you're
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just gonna You're gonna bore the younger generation. They just they just want things
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to I think, in their storytelling to move much more quickly. So in
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terms of the refusal to call, well, this gets into a bigger area.
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And this is another thing that I hammer my students on, which is
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that you've got to ground your story crafting process in the characters and so in
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particularly the protagonist. And so if you question, for you know, if
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you were like a student that came in and said, I don't know whether
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I should have a refusal of the call to adventure with this character or not.
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You know, I would say, well, don't look at it from
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outside the story universe. Go inside the story universe and get to know that
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character. Are they the type of individual that would refuse or are they the
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type of individual who would leap at the opportunity. You really need to ground
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the storytelling and what I call the protagonist's journey. In fact, I'm working
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up a book proposal right now. I was approached by a publishing company to
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write a potential textbook in which we invert the way we look at I think
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typically, or at least the way that kind of floats around in the screenplay
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universe about how to approach story structure. So much of the emphasis is on
23:03
plot and on these page counts and whatnot, which I think is a rather
23:08
wrongheaded way of approaching it. Much better to go at it by immersing yourself
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and engage in the story universe and engaging yourself with all the characters, in
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particularly the protagonist. The protagonists goal, the protagonists want and need. All
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that stuff basically sets the spine of the story. And so how much better
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to come to the plot by working with the character and determine it's their story.
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You know, it's their fate. I call it the narrative imperative.
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That story that happens to the protagonist. If it happened two weeks ago in
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their life or a month from now, it would be a different story.
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It's happening right now. There's a reason why you type fade in at this
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moment with that story. And there's a reason why that character intersects with other
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characters, the specific set of chas as they go along. There's a reason
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why those events happen and Acts one, two, and three because it's facilitating
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the protagonist transformation that journey. Again, this is inverting the idea as opposed
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to looking at the plot. First, look at the plot as a way
24:18
of facilitating, servicing, and supporting the protagonist transformation. Joseph Campbell said,
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the whole point of the hero's journey is transformation. And so that's another big
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area that I focus on with my students. We do a ton of work
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on character development. In fact, I created a class here called story development,
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and we spend it's an entire quarter working with characters and out of that
24:41
working up an outline. So then you move into writing a first draft.
24:45
So back to your question, I mean this thing about whether there's a refusal
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to call any of that stuff. You have to be mindful of cultural trends
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and audiences in terms of their interests and predilection. But everything needs to be
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grounded and working with the characters as far as I'm concerned, I mean,
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character equals plot, and so let's put some flesh on the bones there and
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actually make that come to fruition. Is it when you see these students come
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in or even when you're working online with different people, do you see a
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tendency to do that formula sort of plot points? Well, there are some
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books and you know them, I won't name them that are that you know
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that that have very specific paradigms, um and um. You know, I
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just have I have concerns about that. I have concerns about that multiple levels.
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If you reduce screenplays to you know, these specific sort of page counts,
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this needs to happen here and this needs to happen there. You're it's
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problematic on several fronts. One, it demeans the craft. It makes it
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look like we're dealing with which jets as opposed to the creative effort and the
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creative skill and talent. That's required to write a rich story with multidimensional characters,
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surprising twists and turns and all the rest. You know, that requires
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creativity. If you're out there espousing something, then you have a software system
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that you can plug things into and come out with a paradigm or whatever,
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then that demeans the craft. And that extends to the experience of professional screenwriters
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working in Hollywood right now. If you're studio executive who maybe got an MBA
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from Stanford or Harvard, and you meet with them and you and they're giving
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you script notes and they say, well, I'm sorry, but you're Act
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one ends too late. You know, it needs to break into Act two
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on twenty five. Well, if that's all they know about story, is
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that sort of formulaic approach to screenwriting, then why do we end up with
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so many formulaic script movies. It's because of that type of thinking. So
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I think that any attempt to codify some sort of so called rules or these
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kind of formulas is really working at counter purposes to what it should be,
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which is a true creative effort. And that again, lean into the characters
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see where they take you. You know, it's exciting to see scripts like
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A Quiet Place. Did you read the script A Quiet Place? Or you've
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seen the movie, right, probably, David, Yeah, I seen the
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movie. I didn't read the screenplay. Well, you know, it breaks
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like so many of the so called rules. I think it's like sixty eight
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pages long. They include photographs and images, they mess around with fun.
28:00
I've actually interviewed those guys and they're actually coming to Chicago and the end of
28:04
September for our Courier twelve conference and going to be panelists here, Scott and
28:10
Bryan and so you read these scripts and see that there are these creative choices
28:18
being made and the stories work. You know, they don't fit the they
28:25
don't fit the sort of formulate paradigm. So yeah, I'm Fortunately for me,
28:33
most of the students I deal with, except for the graduate students who
28:36
may have had more experience in you know, immersing themselves in screenwriting, the
28:42
world of screenwriting and whatnot, most of my students are undergraduate and they haven't
28:48
been tainted by that, you know, which is great because then I can
28:51
just deal with them like you've seen them, you know, thousands of movies
28:55
and TV series and whatnot. Great, you've got in an eight understanding of
28:57
this, and so let's build on that. But let's start with characters.
29:03
Okay, let's start with your characters and see where they take you. Yea,
29:08
So it's it's kind of like you're letting the characters kind of lead the
29:11
plot rather than having, you know, this sort of template that comes in.
29:15
I always see those templates like like training wheels. You know, it's
29:18
fine to use it if you're doing like your first you know, screenplay or
29:22
whatever. But if you start keep doing that, you kind of end up
29:25
with those formulaic movies that you know, you will always talk about. Well,
29:29
and some of those formulas were created back in the nineties, you know,
29:33
are they relevant twenty years later? You know? Apart from three X
29:38
structure and perhaps the idea of sequences, you know, is there anything really
29:45
that is kind of sacrosanct in terms of the craft visa visa this, you
29:52
know, screenplay structure. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
30:00
and now back to the show. I don't think so, you know,
30:06
I think that again, you yes, have follow the characters. It's
30:10
their story, they exist, they know it better than you do. They're
30:14
inviting you to tell the story. They want you to tell the story,
30:18
so it's much better to have you know, we go through these brainstormy exercises,
30:22
like I take my students through. We do six sets of brainstormy exercises.
30:26
We spend an entire couple of weeks just doing brainstorming. You know,
30:32
forget any of the construction construction of the story. The first we just get
30:38
to know the characters. And so they'll do the traditional indirect engagement exercises like
30:42
questionnaires and biographies, and I'll have them, you know, write a scene
30:47
just to kind of with the characters and just to get them loosened up.
30:51
But then we move into these direct engagement exercises, which are great. It's
30:56
like, all right, imagine you're a psychiatrist and you're gonna have this patient
31:00
as one of your characters, and they've been court appointed. They have to
31:06
see you, and they have to answer questions. They cannot get out of
31:07
this unless they answer your questions. And so now you move from dealing with
31:11
the character as an eye it relationship like they're over there, you're dealing with
31:17
them directly as an EU. And so I'll have them do these exercises where
31:21
they interview the characters. Then they'll even get a little bit more into that
31:26
kind of California New Age thing, which is a lot of fun when I'm
31:30
dealing with some students who are a little bit more left brain oriented. Okay,
31:33
so I'm going to have you go into our room, close the door,
31:37
turn off the phone, get a piece of paper and a pad of
31:41
paper and a pen, or get in your computer, and I want you
31:44
to do some deep breathing. It's like meditation. I want you to breathe
31:48
in and out for about a minute or so, and I want you to
31:52
be thinking of that character and get into their headspace. And for the next
31:56
ten or fifteen minutes, it's at a timer. I want you to blind
32:00
type what are they thinking, what are they feeling? And yes, your
32:05
mind will go, well, I have to do this, and I've got
32:07
to go wash the dog and whatever. That's just chatter. Let it go.
32:12
Come back to that character and keep reaching out to them and try and
32:15
get into their headspace. You can do that as like stream of consciousness.
32:19
You can also do that as like monologues, like what are they going to
32:21
say? And so you just blind type. You do that for two to
32:24
fifteen minutes now what you end up with, maybe eighty percent of it is
32:29
nonsensical, but twenty percent of it whatever percentage fifty can be gold. You've
32:39
like accessed that character. Moreover, if it is like a monologue or even
32:45
just articulating what they're thinking or feeling, you're starting to get a sense of
32:49
their voice. And so it is that weird thing I call writing wrangling magic.
32:54
You know, where you're you're you're believing this magical thing where the characters
33:00
exists in this weird way, and so if you really believe that, then
33:06
you'll start to see and hear them. It's like the inverse of that,
33:07
seeing is believing, Well believing is seeing and hearing. You reach out to
33:12
them. They wouldn't have appeared to you, and they wouldn't want you to
33:15
write their story if they hadn't shown up. That they did show up somehow
33:19
in your conscious subconscious or conscious life, and so reach out to them.
33:23
And so we do all this brainstorming. It's great, it's really great,
33:28
And I have to say I've done and I teach it to Paul and Screenwriting
33:32
master class. I had that prep class I started eight years ago, and
33:36
I've done that, Like thirty times. That's the thing that I mean,
33:39
apart from everything else that they enjoy, the writers enjoy about that process when
33:45
we get through that brainstorming and they create this master brainstorming list and they got
33:49
all this content that they've surfaced, ten twenty pages of stuff before they even
33:52
moved toward plotting. I get compliments about that all the time, like,
33:57
oh my god, that was such a mind blowing experience. I can't belie
34:00
leeve how great that was. How much more in touch I am with the
34:01
story? You know, And I've added benefit. When you're in touch with
34:05
the characters and they're alive and they're speaking to you and you're seeing them and
34:09
you're hearing them and you can't get them out of your mind, how much
34:13
more motivated are you to write the story because you're connected with them. So
34:16
yeah, you know, I preach the character a lot. I'm sorry,
34:21
I get off of my soapbox on that, but I just it's a counteractive
34:24
to formulaic writing. It's just working with characters. And moreover, it's just
34:29
I think the right headed way to do it. You can say, I
34:31
think it's kind of like it gives you, like that north Star that north
34:36
Star. That's kind of like, this is where you're going through story rather
34:38
than kind of making the writing of a selfish stream of consciousness, you know
34:43
what I mean. So it kind of it allows them to have a lot
34:45
more or even just you know, anyone doing this in general, it as
34:49
you have a lot more of not where to go, but also you kind
34:53
of know, okay, well, these are some different scenarios or situations or
34:57
what have you that that I've already kind of thought of about. But before
35:00
I get to the outlining phase. Oh yeah, and the brainstorming, I
35:02
tell him, don't pre ate it. I mean, you may be sitting
35:06
there typing right this stream of consciousness and all of a sudden, chocolate milkshake
35:10
pops to mind. You may think, oh, well that's just dumb,
35:15
No, put it down. Imagine what orson Wells if you'd been brainstorming and
35:20
said, snowblobe, what's that? Threw it away? You know, No,
35:24
became an essential part of Citizen Kane. So you'll have scenes up here,
35:29
You'll have lines of dialogue up here, You'll have moments up here,
35:31
You'll have characters pop up. You may be working on the protagonist character and
35:37
all of a sudden, the Nemesis pops up. Okay, go off and
35:39
work with the nemesis. They evidently want to talk to you right now.
35:44
Now that said, you can if you're working with the protagonist, I think
35:50
you talk about a north star. The protagonist is your north star. In
35:53
most stories, the protagonist's journey is what dictates like virtually everything. It's why
36:02
those are the characters exist. If you think about, for example, Robert
36:09
town had that great question. He said, one of the best ways to
36:12
understand a character is to ask, what are they most afraid of? Okay,
36:17
well, let's run with that. So what if you work with a
36:21
protagonist and you come up with an answer to that, what are they most
36:24
afraid of? Right? Clarice Starling in the Silence of the Lambs most afraid
36:30
of confessing that horrible experience she had in the Montana farm where she saw that
36:37
witness the spring slaughter of the lambs. She grabbed a lamb and ran off
36:42
with it. She was trying to save that lamb, but it was so
36:45
heavy. It was so heavy. She says, Well, if you really
36:49
drill down into the psychology of that story, she is that lamb represents her
36:54
father. She's trying to save her father. Her father was slain when she
36:58
was like ten years old, and so what she's most afraid of is the
37:04
boogeyman who killed her dad. The random chance he opens a door, these
37:07
guys are stealing a TV boom boom, they shoot him and he dies.
37:12
So so if she's afraid of facing those the associations that she has with her
37:19
father's death and those bad guys, you know, with that experience in the
37:22
Montana farm, well so what better way to create drama than to have her
37:29
face a boogeyman at the end who is Buffalo Bill. So now all of
37:35
a sudden, you've got a specific psychological connection between your protagonist and your nemesis.
37:38
It's not just generic that that nemesis is a projection or physicalization of the
37:45
of the protagonist shadow using this language. And so okay, that's cool.
37:52
Well then you think, all right, well, so what about allies along
37:54
the way? Well you'll meet like a mentor figure or two, you know,
37:59
while in case of Starling, that's just the great you know, it's
38:01
just that that movie is like the perfect thing for me to teach because it's
38:05
like fits everything that hits everything that I kind of believe about storytelling, mentor
38:09
characters. Hannibal Elector perfect guy for her, not only because he's tied to
38:15
the Buffalo bill case, but also because he's a strength and so he's he
38:20
can absolutely guide her into herself, which is what she needs to do.
38:24
If you look at the story The Silence of the Lamps from a meta standpoint,
38:29
you know, what is the narrative imperative? Why does Clarisse get called
38:31
into this story? It's yeah, it's to solve the case and to save
38:36
Catherine Martin, But on a personal level and her psychological journey, it's to
38:40
intersect with Hannibal Elector. And they do that quid pro quo, you tell
38:45
me, I'll tell you things. You tell me things, but personal things.
38:51
Right, So you know, she Crawford says, don't let him inside
38:54
your head. Boom, she lets him inside her head. And so the
38:58
mentor helps her all the way down and tell that thing that she doesn't want
39:01
to confess, which is the story of the Montanner Farm. So if you
39:06
work with the protagonists and you start thinking in terms of their journey, you
39:09
can even by asking the question, my language system, what's their opening state
39:14
of disunity. What are they disconnected from in their in their psyche, there's
39:21
stuff they're repressing, their their core of being, their their need. When
39:27
we talk about need, not need to obtain something, but need to emerge,
39:30
what needs to emerge from inside? Right, Glinda the good which says
39:36
to Dorothy, Dorothy, You've had the power to go home all along,
39:38
It's already there. Ovid says, the seeds of change lie within and so
39:44
the character of the protagonist has that stuff inside and it needs to emerge.
39:47
So they're in a state of disunion. They're just connected from that. But
39:50
if you can identify what it is that needs to come out, that suggests
39:54
the endpoint unity will be right back after a word for our sponsor, and
40:04
now back to the show positive transformation. Obviously there are stories where the protagonist
40:09
doesn't have a positive transformation. So just by working with the protagonist character and
40:15
looking at their their psychological state to depth, you can surface all sorts of
40:22
things. And of course brainstorming will help surface this subconscious stuff that you know,
40:27
can really enrich a story. Again getting off on a soapbox that date,
40:31
But I'm passionate about this stuff, you know, I want people to
40:34
write stories that are vibrant and alive and you know, not formulaic that there
40:40
were the plot emerges from working with the characters. You know that that's my
40:45
true passion. Yeah, it's just like this interview, like I'm Clarice and
40:50
you're you're kind of like Hannibal Lector. I've come to ask you for over
40:52
over help, and uh yeah, well I I funny. I did the
40:59
London Screenwriting Festival last year Screenwriters Festival, and they invited me back. I'm
41:02
going again in a week and I'll be doing a masterclass and four presentations.
41:07
But I talk about one of the presentations I did last year and they asked
41:12
me to reprise it this year is writing a worthy nemesis. And my thesis
41:19
there is that the best way to come up with a worthy nemesis is to
41:22
start with the protagonist again, what is inside them? If you ask the
41:28
question what do they fear the most? And then put the protagonists in the
41:31
situation where they have to confront that fear, that's just great drama. So
41:37
but yeah, I think the point is that I do a little Hannibal Lecter
41:39
impersonation, but I do that and uh, some people really like that last
41:45
year, so I guess I'll try and try and do that again this year.
41:49
It's something that somebody once pointed out to me. Now I can't hear
41:52
it. It was I ate his liver with a bottle of key kyant,
42:00
Yeah, and somebody said it's actually key keyante or something like. Apparently he
42:04
mispronounced it in the movie and I didn't even notice it. And I'm like,
42:06
now, now, whenever I hear him, kind of like, uh,
42:08
you know, he says it, but I think he's being ironic.
42:12
I mean, I think he purposefully miss mispronounced it because you will listen to
42:15
it. It's hang there he goes with some fava beans and a nice canty
42:20
like he's from New York or something. You know. Uh, that's yeah.
42:23
I think he does kind of mispronounce it or whatever. But but you
42:29
know, I'm gonna have to watch we watched the movie and uh and pay
42:30
attention to that part again. But uh, but you know, I wanted
42:34
to you know, s gott. I know we're kind of pushed on time,
42:36
but I wanted to talk about zero draft thirty. Um, it's it's
42:38
you know, it's uh, you know, I wanted to interview you again
42:42
before it's started, and it's actually starting in what two days? Um?
42:45
First? Yeah, yeah, so two days? So, uh, you
42:47
know, could you just you know, take us through, you know,
42:50
the the impetus for you to start zero draft thirty and what it is for
42:52
those who don't know. Sure, Well, back in October twenty fifteen,
42:59
I've been working on a script project and developing it and it started writing it
43:02
when something happened in the news that basically blew up the story. And so,
43:07
you know, I've had situations where projects had gotten kind of pulled out
43:13
from underneath me, but this was particularly veccine because I put a lot of
43:15
time into it, and so I was very frustrated. Well, I had
43:19
this comedy that I'd been sitting in my back burner for some time. So
43:22
I just said on my blog, all right, I haven't even worked the
43:27
story out, I know the characters, I know kind of where I want
43:30
to go, But starting November first through November thirtieth, I'm just going to
43:34
write this script. And it's like Nantal Writemo. I mean, it's not
43:38
like an original idea. They used to do a thing called script Frenzy,
43:42
but they stopped doing it, I think in twenty thirteen, so I just
43:45
invited people to do it with me while I got picked up by indie wire.
43:49
It was translated into like Spanish and other languages, and I think we
43:52
had over a thousand as far as I could tell, guess them at people
43:57
doing that, and we had dozens and dozens and dozens of people who the
44:00
script. Somebody came up with this idea. I called it zero drafts,
44:04
and then they came up with the idea of zero draft thirty like zero dark
44:06
thirty on the zero draft thirty, and so that became the moniker for it.
44:09
The basic idea of zero draft is it's like a pre first draft.
44:15
So if you have problems with perfectionism and you have problems with procrastination, a
44:20
procrastination largely is about, well, I'm afraid that what I'm going to produce
44:23
is not going to be any good, So that's perfectionism. Well this is
44:27
a great way. It's like a blast at that because it's all about productivity
44:32
rather than the quality. It's about quantity pages, not quality pages. Obviously,
44:39
right those best you can. But the point is to get from fade
44:43
into fade out with the belief that by having done that, you will have
44:46
learned a lot more about your story than when you began it. Even if
44:50
you've outlined your story, and you will cross that psychological barrier which you've gotten
44:55
to the first draft, and so now you can have something to work with
45:00
as opposed to just staring at a blank page. So what happened was we
45:05
did that, and then my theory is, and I always tell people that
45:07
if you're outside the business and you want to break in, you need to
45:10
be obviously watching movies and reading scripts, but also writing pages. And so
45:16
write two specs a year. Even if you did one page a day,
45:21
you spend a month prepping a story you wrote for four months a page a
45:24
day, that's one hundred and twenty pages, and then you spend a month
45:27
rewriting it. Well, you could do two spec scripts a year just by
45:30
writing one page a day. So what I did was in the blog we
45:35
decided to do two zero draft thirty challenges a year, one in September and
45:40
one in March. March is actually thirty one day, so you get a
45:43
bonus day, and so they're basically spaced six months apart. And there's a
45:50
Facebook group Zero Draft thirty Facebook group, which is a public group, but
45:52
it's private in the sense that you have to join it. We now have
45:55
thirty one hundred members. That's an ongoing thing. You know, it's a
46:00
terrific group. It's very much like going to the story. It's everybody in
46:05
there, you know, understands that it's a real hard to road to hoe
46:08
that the competition is fierce. Success is hard to come by. But we're
46:13
also optimistic. We're also we lift each other up, you know. I
46:17
kind of ways just point to myself say, look, I was completely outside
46:20
the business. I knew one person and I wrote my third spec script and
46:23
sold. So you know, I can't deny that reality. It does happen,
46:27
even though the odds are long. So the zero Draft thirty challenge starts
46:30
in September first ends on September thirtieth. I do a blog post every day
46:35
with some inspirational stuff. We I look, you know, there's a hashtag
46:39
ZD thirty script. I look there, I look at the Facebook group,
46:44
I look at my blog. I see what people are posting. Every day.
46:46
I'll select somebody and give them an award. It varies. Sometimes it's
46:52
the Anita Loose a word who was one of the first great screenwriters in Hollywood,
46:57
a woman, and sometimes it's a Dalton Trumbo word. And so they
47:00
just get a little picture with their name, you know, on it,
47:02
and just a little something to motivate people. But it's great. And we
47:07
also this year have a harmonic convergence for reasons which I can't get into.
47:14
It's just too long. But the spirit animal for the zero Draft thirty group
47:19
is a hamster called scamper. We don't go writing sprints. We do writing
47:24
scampers. Again, it's like, have some fun with this, right,
47:27
So we do this thing. We've now done it, I think like thirty
47:30
times every first Friday night or Saturday, you know, twenty one one am
47:34
to Sunday, twenty four hour period, we do what we call our writing
47:37
scamper a thon. So they're twenty four hosts around the world each hour of
47:43
the day, so that you know, you just pick a day, pick
47:47
time slot, you're going to know that somebody's going to be there to usher
47:51
you into your hour and congratulate you on spending that hour writing. The point
47:55
of it is to get people to write on weekends, and the point of
47:58
that is to get people to write every day. You know, if you
48:00
get writing every day, there becomes a habit and you're more productive. So
48:04
it just so happens that this September challenge, starting September first at twelve or
48:09
one am, I'm gonna launch the next twenty four hours scamper thought. So
48:15
if people are interested, they can go to the zero draft thirty Facebook group.
48:21
Just look that up against tremendous group of people there. We get some
48:24
wonderful moderators who oversee things and there's no we don't allow anybody to promote any
48:30
consulting services or any contests or any of that stuff. It's like a completely
48:35
ad free, pressure free zone. It's just people who uh, you know,
48:39
want to support each other and help each other and and um, you
48:44
know, writers groups form off that, you know, private writers groups or
48:46
people will say I have some pages, I'll read pages in exchange for you
48:51
reading pages. You can do that offline. So but anyhow, that's zero
48:55
draft thirty. It's the zero draft approach. There are there are from writers
49:00
who do this. There's a that's Scott Fraser five or six years ago,
49:05
got on Twitter one day and said I'm going to write a draft in twenty
49:07
four hours, and he commented along the way on Twitter, and he did.
49:15
He wrote that draft in twenty four hours. It was a real rough
49:17
draft, like sixty pages. But that became a movie. He wrote the
49:22
script and sold it and then became a movie. So there's real value in
49:28
the zero draft approach, and particularly if you're a perfectionist and you tend to
49:31
procrastinate. Do you know what that movie was called that? I can look
49:39
it up. He's been on Twitter for quite some time, but it was
49:45
I'll have to look it up. I can email it to you. We'll
49:49
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
49:55
show. Okay, yeah, yeah, I just that's actually pretty interesting,
50:00
Scott Um. But w yeah, you know, I'm actually going to compete
50:05
in uh we'll compete. I'm actually going to participate. Yeah, and zero
50:07
Draft thirty because you really don't compete against any movie with yourself. But but
50:13
but uh you know, uh yeah, I want to participate this year.
50:15
I try to do it last year and I just kind of fell off the
50:19
wagon there, I guess I don't. I just kind of it kind of
50:21
fell off the rails and Uh, so I'm going to participate this year.
50:23
I got that handy dandy calendar out right. I was like, so,
50:28
yeah, that thing's awesome. So whoever made that, you know, great,
50:30
it's great work. Stephen Dudley did that. He's one of those zero
50:34
Draft thirty members. And so if you go to my blog, I have
50:37
blog posts all this week prepping people for the challenge, and you can see
50:42
there's a doubt you can download this this wonderful calendar where you know, where
50:45
you can just fill in every day. There's a little motivational things in there
50:49
and whatnot. So yeah, and I'm gonna link to all that in the
50:52
show notes, Scott, just you know, all of the things that we've
50:54
talked about, so, you know, just to sort of, you know,
50:58
put a period the end of this whole conversation, Sky, is there
51:00
anything you wanted to to sort of add in conclusion, Well, just that
51:05
again reinforcing the point that the odds are long, you know, astronomically long
51:12
to be able to make a living as a writer, and yet people do
51:19
you know there it was nice to see that the number of people in the
51:23
feature film side of things in Hollywood in twenty seventeen, there was an uptick
51:30
in the number of people, pretty substantial one, so that you know,
51:34
it is possible to work as a writer in the business. But beyond that,
51:37
just if you pursue your passion. You know, if you're creative and
51:44
you don't give voice to that and you don't pursue that, that's such a
51:47
loss for you and perhaps the universe. Um. But if you do pursue
51:53
it, you know, then you're putting yourself in alignment with some authentic part
51:59
of your self. And you know, again, folly or bliss, it's
52:05
it's more than just three words. It's it's like a fundamental thing. Can
52:08
you imagine this world eight billion people who are each of them able to pursue
52:15
the thing about which they were the most passionate, the thing that enlivened them.
52:22
You know what a place this would be. So I just encourage people
52:27
to don't think about the odds, don't think about anything other than just what
52:32
it is that excites you. If you're a creative person and pursue it,
52:37
whether it's an avocation, whatever it is, you know, woodworking, painting,
52:43
poetry, kite flying, do that, because it's just going to have
52:49
an incredible benefit for you, and you'll know at the end of your life,
52:53
you know, you won't say I regret not doing that. You will
52:58
have done it, and so follow your blisses. I always think, always
53:01
say that's it's profoundly important insight into life. Yeah, it's good. Uh,
53:08
you don't want to live life with regret or you know, we kind
53:12
of look back and say, why didn't I do that? Or what went
53:15
wrong? You know, why didn't I Why wasn't I able to do that?
53:17
Then you know, and uh, you know, I agreed completely,
53:21
Scott, And I think that's a great way to sort of put a period
53:23
at the end of all this where people find you out online. Scott,
53:28
Well, there's my blog. Go into the story. You know. That's
53:31
based on a little anecdote I had with my youngest son. He was about
53:37
three at the time, and I was joking with him while I was overseeing
53:39
his bath. I said, well, you know, my dad, your
53:43
dad's gonna write a story tomorrow, the New Script, and do you have
53:45
any advice for me? And he looked up at me and without hesitation,
53:49
said, go into the story and find the animals, which I just thought
53:52
was, you know, great and So that's my blog, Go into the
53:57
Story. It's now ten years old. Launched in May sixteen, two thousand
54:00
and eight. It's the official screenwriting blog of the Blacklist. There are twenty
54:05
four thousand posts there. It's covers basically everything you could possibly imagine. You
54:08
can follow me on Twitter go into the story at going to the Story,
54:14
I think of fifty one thousand followers at this point, but the very active
54:19
feed there all screenwriting and writing and creative you know oriented. Also there's the
54:27
zero Draft thirty Facebook group which I started back in November of twenty fifteen,
54:30
and terrific community of people there. And then the DePaul's University School of Cinematic
54:37
Arts. If you know anybody, Oh I should I have to say this
54:40
day, I got to tell you this. We just recently starting classes here
54:46
in September sixth will be the first BFA and MFA set of students for comedy
54:57
writing and film writing in conjunction with the Second City. We've partnered with the
55:00
Second City, which is the premier improv group. You know, it's been
55:05
around for fifty years and so DePaul University has partnered with the Second City and
55:09
we're now offering the worlds only to my knowledge, BFA and MFA programs and
55:15
comedy writing and filmmaking. So the students get to actually go to the second
55:20
city site there and work with those incredible faculty that they have who are just
55:25
phenomenal teachers when it comes to comedy and an improv. They actually work with
55:32
them at the Lincoln Park facility over there. I live five blocks from there,
55:39
and then they also work here at our DePaul University taking classes. So
55:44
they're getting they're getting an education, but they're getting an education in which they're
55:47
going to end up with a portfolio of content and an incredible experience developing their
55:54
comedy chops from just like top tier faculty in both worlds, the improv and
56:00
sketch world and then the screenwriting and writing world. So so De Paul University
56:05
School of Cinematic Arts is where I am. And I think that's probably pretty
56:09
much about it in terms of how you get in touch with me. Oh
56:12
can I mention mentioned one other thing. If you're in the UK and you're
56:15
listening to this, I'm going to be at the London Screenwriters Festival from September
56:21
seventh through the tenth. I believe it is or seventh of the ninth,
56:23
sixth of the ninth. Then I'm going to be in Cologne the first week
56:30
of October to Cologne, Germany for a two day master class, and then
56:32
I'm doing a keynote address for their Film Festival, and then I'll be at
56:37
the Austin Film Festival at the end of October. And then if you're in
56:39
France, I'm going to be in Paris in March of twenty nineteen for a
56:44
three day workshop there too, So doing a lot more of this type of
56:47
thing, So I will definitely link that in the show note because Scott,
56:52
I think I think the UK is like the third biggest listener base of this
56:58
podcast, so all right, so well, I think that's a it's a
57:01
good sign. So um but good you know it scotten the link to everything
57:05
you said in the show notes a great having a conversation with you again,
57:07
Dave. I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job
57:12
on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about
57:14
in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv
57:17
forward slash three zero four, and if you haven't already, please head over
57:23
to Screenwriting podcast dot com, Subscribe and leave a good review for the show.
57:30
It really really helps us out a lot. Thank you again for listening
57:32
to guys as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to
57:37
you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.