Screenwriting: Would You Hesitate?

None of my extensive experience collaborating with writers was as fun and rewarding as when I teamed up with my sister of the quill, Janet.  Folio and I worked on a few screenplays, winning awards and generally having a great creative time.

I never thought of myself as a screenwriter; I happened into it.  I've written over a dozen collaborative and solo scripts.  I've had one short script produced by director Erich Toll and another I worked on behind the scenes produced.   I wrote a series of screenwriting posts for PPW's Writing From the Peak Blog beginning in November 2010.  Over the course of the next several days I'd like to reshare them with our readers. 

I was a novelist and food writer. I never intended to write screenplays. The format and story formula seemed like foreign languages. The industry insiders were untouchable. The prospect of marketing (rent The Player) intimidated me. Why would I, a mere land-locked Coloradan, consider taking a peek into big screen craft and that clicky California world?

FADE IN

I may never have explored screenwriting if it hadn’t been for a pitch practice session at a writer’s conference and a Hollywood producer intrigued by my log line for a novel in progress.
Enter KEN BERK who offered to get my story into the right hands if I would write it as a feature-length script. There’s not enough room in this blog entry for the number of exclamation marks I felt at the offer. Did I hesitate?

Not for one BEAT. I saw dollar signs and my character MATCH CUT with JULIA ROBERTS. I drove home—floated home—and crash-learned the industry expectations. I cut the story down to two hours, one page per minute. I made it more visual with pithier dialogue, vivid action, and grand reversals.

About the time I was doing my fourth polish of ACT I my screenwriting career was punctuated by its first dramatic reversal. I received word that ACT III had ended too soon for the young producer. Not exactly the climax I’d hoped for and not the one expected by any of us who know him. Ken Berk, my “inciting incident,” my connection to the industry, and, at the time, my muse, had died.

I could have let the pursuit take a quiet FADE OUT. But I didn’t. Thanks to the inspiration of Ken, and another screenwriter I met through PPW, Jan Jones, I continued writing in this new and dynamic form. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of writing (and co-writing) eight completed feature-length screenplays in six genres (several more in progress) and five short scripts. I’ve been represented by a Hollywood agent, an entertainment attorney, and NY agents who sell books to Hollywood. I’ve worked on short scripts with an indie producer and an indie director—one script was produced. I’ve been honored with a dozen screenwriting awards and am now using many of the screenwriting skills to power-up my fourth novel.

Have you ever seen one of my stories in a movie theater? No, but I hope you will in the future.
The side-trip took quite a bit of time away from my novels and literary cookbooks. If I had the chance to go back in time, would I hesitate to make the same decision? Not for one BEAT.
There’s power and excitement in learning a new skill.

Would you hesitate?

If not, check in on my future blog entries in which I’ll discuss the basics of screenwriting format, the business, story expectations, representation, and adapting your novel, short story, or memoir into a screenplay. Most importantly, I will encourage you to take a valuable detour, write a screenplay and see how it will improve your storytelling and prose. Until next time, keep your dialogue snappy and your directions brief. Don’t step on the director. Avoid dusk and dawn.

Inky will tell you why you should avoid dusk and dawn in a future post. 

PARADOX OF BEING A WRITER

Each writer is a living paradox.  Emotionally vulnerable, we squeeze our blood onto the page.  And yet we must be thick skinned to face our weaknesses and elbow our way past rejection.

Most of us are introverts.  We spend a lot of time alone.  The keyboard, the cat, and a cup of coffee are company enough.  But we are also expected to taut ourselves, “turn on” to pitch at conferences, stay active on social media, sign books and work our way up to being keynote speakers.

We need to steadily move forward, butt in seat hands on keyboard.  We also need patience.  Some agents take months to respond.  Some don’t at all.  We have to withstand the paradox: hurry up and wait.

Stick to a formula or try something new?  Janet Evanovich’s editor would have screamed had she written two Stephanie Plum mysteries then switched gears to write a western sans humor.  But formula be damned; we grow by trying new genres.  A romance author writes sharp pithy dialogue after trying a screenplay.  A mainstream author absorbs lessons learned from a suspense detour. 

While we want our own goals to be within reach, our characters’ goals should be damn near impossible to reach. 

Our readers force paradox upon us.  They want bigger than life characters, conflicts with impossible goals and story arcs.  Ironically, those same readers expect believable characters, relatable situations, and inevitable resolutions.  They want to hate the antagonists, but also want them to be heroes of their own stories with a soft side.  Readers want bad guys to get their comeuppance.  On the other hand, they relish redemption.

We can't please them all.  Typical readers seek breezy page turners, but Pulitzer Prize judges wallow in complicated, lyrical works.  Readers want to be surprised, appalled, and tickled.  They want to see the world anew through strange eyes.  Paradoxically, they also want to close the book and realize they’ve just read about themselves.

Inkpot wonders: can you think of any job that is more paradoxical?

Non-Fiction Collaboration

Why collaborate on a manuscript?  Is the sum truly greater than the parts?  In this case it was!

This week I’ll share lessons learned while collaborating with my husband Richard on Fogg in the Cockpit, a military history bestseller released world-wide by Casemate Publishing in 2011.

First I might mention that the book is based on the diary Richard’s father kept while flying Mustangs and Thunderbolts out of England during World War II. When Richard and I disagreed on an issue, because it is his father's diary I felt Richard’s opinion should carry more weight. As I’d recently seen my first novel published, and since I also spent more time on this book than Richard, he often tried to defer to me. Most small issues were resolved in this manner, but we did have periodic debates where one of us had to persuade the other to his or her way of thinking. Unfortunately, there were two issues we discussed a number of times with no resolution. We just didn’t agree, and ultimately, one of us simply acquiesced.

We recommend you discuss how you'll resolve a major difference of opinion before you start writing. Describe that process in a memo or letter agreement, or better yet, include it in your collaboration contract. As a side note, our publisher recently complimented us for “putting together such a clean package of text and photos,” so they didn’t stumble over either of our two problem-children. Whew!

Non-fiction lends itself to collaboration. Tasks can be allocated. Research, writing, tracking down sources and supporting documents or photos, requesting releases, editing, all of it is easy to share, more so than when writing fiction.

I started Fogg in the Cockpit by transcribing Howard Fogg’s 1943/44 diary and immediately realized what a fascinating document we had. Once the transcription was complete, Richard and I decided to create a book around Howard’s words. Richard researched significant events during the War that were concurrent with Howard’s service while I worked with the Historian from the 359th Fighter Group Association, Dartmouth College, and other sources to track down photos, maps, and reports about the 359th. Richard also tended to research technical material, such as compressibility or P-51 engine specifications, while I developed a mission map and verified geographic references. We shared efforts researching other supplementary material, including pilot terminology, military abbreviations, descriptions of the aircraft used by Allied and Axis powers, and so on.

We both drafted text for the supplementary material and we both edited our own work and each others. We were extremely fortunate to have an enormous number of reports and photos available from the Group Historian, and Richard and I spent days studying everything and debating what to include. Since then we’ve discovered that the Historian had a few other reports we were unaware of. While we might not have used them, I do regret not being aware of those documents until very recently. Lesson learned? Keep asking your sources what else they might have!

The week before our submittal deadline Richard double-checked facts we presented in the supplementary text while I edited based on the extremely detailed Author Guidelines from Casemate – both nit-picky, time consuming tasks. I also coordinated the 116 image releases while formatting the images electronically, as Richard drafted and refined the accompanying 15 pages of captions.

I should now mention where collaboration saved us. We had a working draft before sending out queries, but Casemate wanted a bigger book, and they wanted that bigger book submitted two months after we signed the contract.

We brushed up our original draft, verified facts, finalized images, and added 121 pages in a combination of new text and excerpts from the 1944 Group Historian's Reports - all in 53 days.

It’s good to have a partner!

What if you’re the “writer” partner collaborating with an expert in some obscure field? Or you've been asked to ghost-write a story? You need a contract that describes how you'll work together, who's responsible for what, how decisions will be made, how you'll share royalties or be paid, and who gets credit for what. Be clear before you start.

Next month, when I look at collaborating on a novel, I’ll include a list of points for you to discuss with your collaborator, as well as an example of a simple collaboration letter agreement.

By Janet Fogg

Janet is the author of Soliloquy, an award-winning historic romance, and co-author of the military history bestseller Fogg in the Cockpit.

(Originally posted on Chiseled in Rock in 2011)

 

SoWest: Desert Justice

Evil abounds...

Frustrations mount...

Calls for revenge cry out!

In this volume, Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime offers twenty tales you won’t forget. Victims fight back, police pursue bad guys, scores are evened...but when all else fails, get a taste for how the desert claims its own!

SoWest: Desert Justice was released on July 21, 2012, and includes the story "Lucky Me" by Shannon Baker!

Here's an excerpt from "Lucky Me."

...The water surged around us, buffeting the rubber floor of the raft, rocketing us forward into a gauntlet of sharp rocks, white, frothy mountains of icy river attacking us. A lone body in this would be like a single sock in the devil’s washing machine. A lone body would disappear. At the very least, it would turn up with holes ripped through it. Poor Julie.

I slid off the side of the raft into the bottom and huddled close to the center loaded with dry bags tied so securely they’d probably come through the Apocalypse intact. As I landed on my knees I reached forward. My fingers closed around Julie’s slim ankle...

Shannon Baker's first book in her Nora Abbott mystery series, Tainted Mountain, will be released in March 2013 by Midnight Ink.

SoWest: Desert Justice, Volume 4, Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter Anthology, includes stories by Shannon Baker, Susan Budavari, Laurie Fagen, Suzanne Flaig, Arthur Kerns, Deborah J Ledford, Elizabeth R. Marshall, Merle McCann, Margaret Morse, Kris Neri, Nancy Hart Newcomer, Toni Niesen, Virginia Nosky, R. K. Olson, Cathy Ann Rogers, Martin Roselius, Amy Schuster, Judy Starbuck, and Judith Starkston.

..

Why Collaborate?

Is the sum truly greater than the parts? It could be!

When considering this topic I was reminded of an analogy used by one of my partners at OZ Architecture. He described several of our designers as cheetahs – sprinting ahead of the pack to try to land a project and then dragging the kill away to gorge on all by themselves. But then, if they needed help, guess what happened? Suddenly the cheetahs became interested in team work and learned to share. What does that have to do with collaborating on a manuscript? It’s analogous. An award-winning project can be designed by a team and a contract-winning manuscript can be written. It’s fun, often more efficient, you have a partner to back you up when you’re failing, tired, or just plain sick of the project, and yes, sometimes it can be a pain in the ass. But the pain can be circumvented if communication is clear and egos are (mostly) checked at the door.

I’ve collaborated on award-winning screenplays, a military history bestseller, a narrative non-fiction, and a novel. I used to do quite a bit of ghost-writing. I love writing solo and have been published, yet I also enjoy collaborating. It’s nothing to fear, especially if you’re a good communicator and plan ahead.

First up? Collaborating on a screenplay.

What if you have a great concept, start drafting a manuscript, and your wheels won’t stop spinning? Yes, this happens to most writers at some point, but I mean spinning so fast that the wheels carve out a quicksand-filled sinkhole. Should you abandon thoughts of escape? Perhaps not. I’ve collaborated with Karen Albright Lin on several screenplays, and our first effort, Headhunters, began in exactly that fashion. I had a concept, started to write the book, and then hit quicksand. Why? I’m not exactly sure. The story just didn’t sing to me anymore. I was vigorously and thoroughly kicking myself when Karen suggested my concept would make a great screenplay. Voilà! She remembers that I suggested we write it together and I think she did. See? A great collaboration, where each gives credit to their partner! We had a blast and I believe Headhunters was meant for film.

Karen had already written several screenplays so she generously shared her expertise, and together we brainstormed the characters, developed the plot, shared time on research, and then alternated writing scenes. We both edited every sentence. Since then we’ve co-authored another screenplay based on a concept of Karen’s, and have a third in development. All three are award-winners and we’ve even had a Hollywood agent, though we ultimately severed that unfruitful relationship.

We discovered that I was better at writing action scenes (gimmie a car chase and a bunch of thugs with guns!), while Karen excelled at quiet, introspective moments, so we allocated scene drafts accordingly. I’m an early riser and Karen works late into the night. This worked to our advantage when we had a deadline, as we wrote in shifts, emailing a draft back and forth, morning and night.

Then there’s marketing. Whether pitching a story in person or subscribing to an on-line lead service, sharing that burden is not only attractive, it’s cost effective. Quite frankly, it’s also a hoot pitching with a partner. Playing off each other is effective and far less nerve-wracking.

Be aware that if you’re interested in writing specifically for Hollywood, collaboration will be your middle name. If your screenplay is optioned there will be re-writes, possibly by you and definitely by others. Then a shooting script will be developed and the story may change all over again, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be involved in those revisions. Writing for TV is another tale, as episodes for a series are invariably written by a team. You’ll also need to move to Hollywood to achieve that particular goal.

Back to Headhunters. Did we stumble during this three-legged race?  I don’t think we even stubbed our toes. While we had a tendency to debate whether a character should act or speak in an overt versus subtle fashion, they were respectful debates. Together, we pounded out the plot points, just as we shared the writing, editing, and research, and continue to share marketing efforts.

Screenplays lend themselves to collaboration. Action needs to be described in a consistent, crisp style; characters should be well developed with no superfluous dialogue. Karen and I work and play well together. It helps that we have similar goals and are unafraid of revisions. We both want to write great stories and sell them, so we’ll continue to stride towards Hollywood.

But there are other races to be won! Next month I’ll talk about lessons learned while collaborating with my husband, Richard, on Fogg in the Cockpit, a military history bestseller released by Casemate Publishing. After that I’ll look at co-authoring a novel, and I’ll also share a contract sample and suggest discussion points between collaborators.

By Janet Fogg

Janet is the author of Soliloquy, an award-winning historic romance, and co-author of the military history bestseller Fogg in the Cockpit.

(Originally posted on Chiseled in Rock, January 16, 2011)

CONTINUING

When all things seem to work against getting your words on the page and you feel like giving up, there are many tricks that may help you refocus on C.O.N.T.I.N.U.I.N.G.

C – Commitment: make one to yourself. Confidence: use affirmations. Characters: play with them. Control yourself: nix TV and internet use, busy work, and other excuse behavior.

O – Overthinking the project? Original reason to write: what was it? Offer to help: judge contests, volunteer at conferences, beta read, mentor, believe in Karma.

N – Next sale: visualize it. NaNoWriMo and other challenges from friends, or simply blackmail yourself.

T – Therapist talk: what’s your block? Time: willing to put in lots of it? Turn off your editor. Toy with new genres. Target hot spots in marketing and sell yourself as well as your book. Treat yourself to a box of favorite pens.

I – Immediately mount the horse if you fall. Inspect your dominant emotion and understand it. Ignite your fire by rearranging your study or trying new rituals. Ignore skepticism around you: if someone asks, “Where can I find your novel?” tell of your successes.

N – Narrow down your goals. Nestle with your significant other or pet (don’t deny the things that matter). Notice and celebrate successes including agent feedback, contest finals, publications (even small venues), and hang awards on the wall.

U – Understand your theme. Utilize rejection: it’s not punishment; it’s a lesson in persistence, patience and packaging. Up the exercise to keep the blood and ideas flowing.

I – Invite the muse. If you see your chapter can be better, that’s a gift. Infuse energy and rhythm into your writing by reading other writers. Improve your skills by listening to feedback without defending your work (don’t stifle the critic).

N – Never give up: the only writers guaranteed not to publish are those who stop trying. Niche: find your place and your voice. Nothing guarantees a good first draft.

G – Gamble: what do you have to lose? Genre: do you love yours? Great ideas for a next book can be set aside in a file for later to prevent distraction. Gather so you don’t have to wander alone: Good critique groups, support groups, reading partners, conferences; be an editor or mentor.

- Inkpot
(First posted on Oct 19, 2011 Writing From the Peak Blog)

Book Trailers

I love browsing for books, and with the never-ending escalation of social media and the on-line experience in our day-to-day lives, book trailers continue to increase in popularity, though there’s debate as to their effectiveness in increasing sales.

Isn't that what it’s all about?  Getting someone interested in reading your book and looking at your website to see what other books you’ve written?  A good book trailer does both and a great book trailer will be shared by viewers with friends.

While photos alone can be used to create an effective trailer, I personally enjoy the combination of live-action and photos and used both when creating the book trailer for Fogg in the Cockpit.  Using Windows Movie Maker software I blended photos with a 1944 gun-camera clip.  I did spend quite a bit of time learning the software and fine-tuning the duration of the images against the music, a process I thoroughly enjoyed.  One decision was whether to include text across multiple photos, and as you can see, for this particular trailer I decided to let the images stand alone, with just the opening screen, closing screens, and the first gun-camera slide providing text.

I want to also mention the “special effects” that I created for Fogg in the Cockpit.  At the end of the video a P-51 taxis across the screen towing a blacked out screen.  This was done with Movie Maker and Photoshop, as I emulated the early days of stop motion by separating the P-51 image from the background, moving the fighter across the background screen a few frames at a time, and then creating a jpg of each specific image.  It took 160 jpgs for those few seconds, plus another 100 or so beforehand as I figured out spacing and timing.  Would I do it again, even though it was tedious and time-consuming?  Yes.  It was a challenge to see if I could pull it off, and I’ll use that clip in the credits on future (non-book) videos related to the 359th Fighter Group.

What about the images you plan to use in your trailer?  You should either own the copyright on those images or have permission to use them.  There are a number of royalty free sites, though some require that you give credit to the original artist.  Read and print-out their terms of use, or request permission if terms are unclear.  There are also sites where you can purchase the rights to use affordable stock photos.  Again, make sure you understand their terms of use.

Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, be aware that video size does matter when posting on some sites, though 100MB is the topset that I’ve seen most often.  My recent non-book related video was about 13MB and it was over two minutes in length, so I suspect it’s unlikely you’ll exceed the max.

For music?  There are royalty-free sites such as musopen.org, or you can purchase music from a site such as freeplaymusic.com.  There’s another choice though, and that’s creating your own, which can be done with software such as GarageBand, which was used by the designer of my Soliloquy book trailers. Yet another option would be to narrate your trailer, which might work best for non-fiction, though it could also work for fiction.

Now let’s compare a teaser trailer to a regular trailer.  I hired my friend Matt of Infinite Improbability Productions to create a trailer for Soliloquy, and he created two.  Before we started Matt read my long synopsis for the book, and then we met to discuss goals and review my preliminary text for the trailer.  He then read the book before creating story boards.  After I reviewed those and fine-tuned the text, he took over.  It was his idea to first release the teaser trailer and then the full trailer.

Soliloquy "teaser" trailer:

Soliloquy full trailer:

Similar yet different, and many shots were used in both though Matt created unique music for each.  The teaser trailer was released several months before the full trailer so I could (hopefully!) create buzz when announcing each.

If you decide to hire a designer to create your trailer, look at samples of their work to make certain they create the type of trailer you’re envisioning, and get a written proposal that includes a schedule for completion and payment.  Think about whether it’s important to you to have live action or special effects, as that will dramatically increase the cost of the trailer.

Where are you going to post your trailer?  Where aren’t you going to post your trailer?  You can post trailers on your author page on Amazon, Goodreads, AuthorsDen, and ManicReaders, on blogs, websites, on Facebook, and in chat rooms.  There’s also YouTube, Veoh, Blazing Trailers, MetaCafe, Dailymotion, Trailerspy, and many other video viewing sites.  Before posting, remember to carefully consider your key words or tags.  Oh, and search for book trailer contests and review sites just for trailers.

To summarize, whether creating your own trailer or hiring a designer, have an idea in mind for your storyline and write it out.  Then find images that capture your vision.  Think about music, sound effects, live-action footage, narration, and whether you want to have text flowing across your images or separate screen shots of text.  Find music or compose original music.  Decide on your opening and closing credits, and there you have it.  Okay, maybe it’s not quite that simple.  But the end-result?  A movie about your book.  A video preview that can be found based on keywords you’ve selected.  A trailer that captures your book’s passion and pain, its guts and glory, ending, of course, with your website and ordering information for all those voracious readers out there.

Hey!  Where’s the popcorn?

By Janet Fogg
Janet is the author of Soliloquy, an award-winning historical romance, and co-author of the military history bestseller, Fogg in the Cockpit.