193 | Ten Common Traps That Will Kill Your Script (Pt. 2)

We're back with part TWO of our ten common traps that will kill your script. Take notes, TSL Fam!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Lorien: Hey everyone, it's Lorien. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to tell you about something that Meg and I are really excited about. It's called TSL Workshops, and we're going to be launching it soon. And it's a TSL membership site where you can join Meg and I during twice a month Zoom workshops, like the ones we do on Patreon, they're Q& As and Story Workshops.

But as a TSL workshop member, you'll also get access to these masterclass style workshops that we've put together from me and Meg and Jeff and with industry pros like Sheila Hanahan Taylor and story consultant Pat Verducci. And we'll be adding to these as we go. So we'd actually love to hear from you about who you'd like.

For us to invite to do a masterclass. And we'll also be posting resources and recommendations and maybe I'll have something called the chip corner. I'll update you with my latest chip obsession. Currently I'm deep into kettles, jalapeno chips, but I've almost reached my max, so I might be moving on.

So if you want to get more details, not about my chip obsession, but about the TSL workshops and our upcoming launch, you can sign up with your email address. It's here at the screenwritinglife. co slash workshops. It's not dot com. It's dot co because we're that special. So the screenwritinglife. co slash workshops, or you can click the link in the description of the episode, which Jeff will do magically and give us your email and we promise not to spam you because we know how annoying those are.

And so we're really excited and that's the cool thing we've been working on for about a year, stay tuned. We'll be launching it soon.

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna, and today is part two of our very exciting series, Common Traps We Fall Into As Writers, or, as we're calling it, Ways to Kill a Great Script.

Meg: But before we do that, we're gonna talk about our weeks, or what we like to call Adventures in Screenwriting. Lorien, how was your week?

Lorien: I wrote a lot this week. I delivered three different things this week. I have one more thing to deliver today that I'm not sure I'm actually going to be able to finish, but I'm going to try really hard.

And, um, deadlines of course serve me very well. What I'm struggling with today is I could get to the point where I'm like, you know what? I don't know what I'm doing right now. I'll just stop. But I am gonna get off this podcast and I have to go back to it. What I'm realizing is that when I'm writing a pitch or I'm 30, 000 foot or like an outline, I will just skate right over the emotional stuff.

It's really hard for me, but when I'm writing the scene, I'm all in it. So I'm trying to find that way where I can articulate the emotion without being really self aware like, Oh God, like describing something that somebody feels without feeling like I'm being obnoxious about it because in dialogue or scenes, I can really do it well.

Meg: Are you talking about trying to sending in something that's like a synopsis or a treatment and you want to be able to communicate the emotional experience and yet if you say it too directly, it feels sentimental?

Lorien: Yeah.

Meg: Yeah, it's a whole art form. I think.

Lorien: Yeah. So I'm working on it.

Thank you for articulating that much better.

Meg: We can cut that if that was obnoxious of me.

Lorien: No, I love it. No, I love it because probably everyone in the audience is like, “what the hell is she talking about?” But I've been writing all week.

And so what's happened then too, is like everything else has fallen off my books. Like I got it together to go to my daughter's opening night performance and some things, but everything else fell off. And so I'm very much in writer brain right now. Obviously, I used up all my words in my writing and I have none, nothing to offer to the episode today.

Meg: What's also interesting is I think when somebody says I've been writing all week, our brains, at least my brain, immediately think script pages, right? That's writing. But of course, the synopsis, the treatment, figuring out the story, that's all writing too. So I think that my brain immediately jumped to, Oh, you're writing script pages.

And then I couldn't follow what you were saying from script pages. It's my own bias. And I think a bias that we use as a hammer against our heads, which is I didn't write today. Is that true? Because you figured out a story, you wrote a shitty synopsis. Like that's writing too. Like just because you're not at the script stage yet, doesn't mean it's not writing.

Lorien: I had a pitch. I had a full feature. Treatment, synopsis, whatever you want to call it, and and a script. So I'm jumping around in different parts of my brain, but overall what I've noticed is when I'm very broad, articulating the emotion is trickier for me to sell it in a, not in a pitch necessarily, but in that feature treatment for some reason.

Meg: Treatments suck. They just suck. I hate them.

Lorien: The bottom of the second act, right? Where I'm like, what? What the low moment is. That is what I struggle with. Like I'm great at that, but the truth is this and this, but that low moment like I could see it in my head. I can see her body language.

I can see her, I can see everything. I can hear her tone of voice, but like articulating emotion without sending sentimental or taking you out of the story.

Meg: Do you feel like maybe sometimes I find when I start feeling that in a synopsis, it's because I haven't put the story into behavior. And I'm relying so much on the actress or dialogue let's say, for example, when you and I worked on Inside Out.

That moment of her picking up the memory and Pete's amazing idea to let it go backwards and forwards. Like suddenly just the action, we're experiencing all that emotion with her because she's watching that versus turning to bing bong and talking about it. I'm not saying that you're doing that.

I'm just saying that sometimes that's a cue to me. Oh, I have an actual, I haven't put this into action. I haven't put this into the story.

Lorien: I hadn't earned it yet. So I had to go back to act one. Huh. Yeah. I had something in there, but it was also things were in the wrong order in the bottom of the second act.

Yeah. Things, so I had to keep moving things around oh, that's there. And I kept having to try things until it really worked. But it was, it's hard. Whereas if I just could write the scene, you know, I'd be able to get there and then go back to act one and figure it out. But so this is a, just a just a new level of craft I'm trying to rise up to, which I feel like will be happening my whole career, my whole life.

The acknowledging where the bump is.

Meg: I totally can get so involved in the plot math and structure and where are the, where's the tone? Where's the genre? Where's this? And suddenly I'm like, wait, what is any of this about the emotion of the characters, the relationships? Because that is the note you will get.

Yes. Are you ready? I don't feel anything. Why do I care about this? There's no emotion. And then of course, if you just do all emotion, they're like what's the plot? You have to do both. It's so hard. I do the exact same thing.

Lorien: But it's incredibly humbling to get a note from a producer. I'm so proud of the fact that I can write emotional true characters, to get a note like “you're missing an emotional beat here”. It's Oh God, the shame, right? I'm like, Oh, face, face it. Like it's just it's just humbling, and we'll always get notes like that, that surprise us. But this is the thing I'm so good at. This is what I'm known for.

And then, it's okay, at least they expected it. Like they were looking for it,

Meg: producers, they're looking for that.

Lorien: Yes. But so just, guess my week was about I feel really good, not just because I was productive, but because I solved some story problems that felt good to solve.

I am struggling through some craft stuff, right? And, and that yeah, I think that's it. And I'm tired. Writing is exhausting.

Meg: It is, it's brain tiring.

Lorien: Yeah, but I'm good. I feel good about it. I feel hopeful.

Oh my god, I feel hopeful! Oh my god, mark the day! Let's just go down on TSL History that I'm saying I feel hopeful after my week.

I know, it's a big deal.

Meg: I also we can mark this day because I also feel hopeful. Which of course terrifies me, but.

Lorien: Oh, believe me, I'm deep in conversations with my therapist about this. I have lots of thoughts.

Meg: I'm just like, oh my god, please don't help too much. You get all those crazy.

Like usually my anxiety brain is chomping with my imagination to tell me all the shit that could go wrong. But I get into these tiny little pockets where I like what I've written. In this case, with a co writer, so much that my imagination starts to see good things happening. But like wildly impossible things, like my manager's gonna this so much that he's gonna give it to his famous directors and say, you have to direct this, which of course didn't happen by the way.

Lorien: The Oscar is on its way right now in your house.

Meg: But in a weird way, you have to have these fantasies, but I don't like to I like to catch myself because this process is up and down. You love it. They hate it. Like it can happen. It can really happen. So I'm trying to stay in the middle, which is just, I'm proud and happy that Joe and I really like this script.

Whatever happens now, it's out of our hands. It's, their opinion is like none of our business in a way. It's their opinion because of what their company needs, what they like, the widget they want. Is this going to be with the widget they want? I don't know. We'll see. I'll let you know.

But so we're about to go in, but we're doing that kind of manager pass. This is, we can talk about this on a different WGA show, there's like multiple passes with your manager, then it goes into the producers and there's possibly multiple passes there. Then you have to go, then you go into the studio with a quote unquote first draft, which is just so many drafts.

But in this case, we're at a place that I love and yet is hard for me 'cause I'm a blow up person. I'm like, okay, it doesn't work. We have to blow it all up and, but we're, we have to turn it in. Like we have to turn it in. So it has to be surgical at this point. And I'm very attuned. And Lorien, you will remember this, I'm very attuned to band-aids.

That, that work and band aids that are making a band aid monster now and they're actually hurting the script more. There's a couple of things that I think, because we didn't just give it to our manager, we gave it to Pat Verducci, the consultant that we always recommend. She's a really expert in the genre, so I really wanted to get her input.

And she had some, she had one or two ideas that to me toned the script. Too big for this moment. Like I could bandaid that, but then I think it'll draw attention to it. Like it'll just become a bandaid monster versus having a discussion with my co writer and saying. If they also have that note, it gives them a note to have.

Like at some point you want the producers to have notes. And so they feel part of it and they feel like they helped you create it and they are part of it and they may not even have that note. So there's a couple of bigger things that I'm, we are choosing not to Band Aid. And then there's one or two things that we're like, that's a Band Aid, but.

It'll work it'll get what we're trying to do. And then there were two things that my manager had that he was like, you have to do these before we turned it in because there's so many producers on that side. That it's just there's you have to make this super clear. It was too muddled So we did that and it made it better which is always a fun thing when you're like, oh my god I know it was good.

It made it better and aren't we smart? So that was fun. So I'm doing that and we're turning that in and that's really exciting. Oh, part two of this will be but And then the other thing I wanted to talk about real quick for our weeks is this is the time of year Where everybody is graduating and I've done a couple of talks now by zoom to some writers who are graduating at NYU and there was a film fraternity that I spoke with and it's always a very logical question.

What do I do now? Like I've been in this bubble and how thick that bubble is can depend on the school. Meaning, is your school really just focused on your voice and your art? Is your school also focused on internships? Are you in L. A.? Are you not in L. A.? There's so many variations of that bubble.

Which, and there's different bubbles. They're good for different people. No judgment on any bubble. But I just thought, okay, Lauren and I spoke about it and we thought, what we're going to do is we're going to post on the Facebook group, a list of the things that we think if you're graduating, here's some things to think about as you move off into the real world, and then we're going to reference episodes for you to go listen to.

So for example, of course it's keep writing and quantity over quality, which I know is going to break everybody's brain. Cause you're like, I'm graduating. I need to have my samples and get a job. And it's odds are you, your samples aren't really ready yet, and you have to do many more drafts, and you got to write a lot of different scripts, TV or feature.

So quantity over quality still goes in my opinion, even if you just graduated. And you're going to have to go get a day job and. That could suck the life out of you and how do you do that with your commitments? You still have to keep learning your craft, put your people, we have a great episode about how to get your people together for your own support system, both in craft of writing and just the work and of doing this job, making contacts and, agents, managers, all of that stuff.

So what we're going to do because we've done episodes on all of that is post it on the Facebook group. So if you're graduating and you're having a flood of overwhelm, which I know you are. Number one, go listen to some of these episodes, there's some good tools for your toolbox. And the last thing I want to say is, about that is, I know everybody who talks to graduating classes warns them.

The town is retracting, this is a terrible time, it's impossible, you're one of thousands, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I know, we've heard it all. And they're, not that those people aren't right. But what I also want to add to that soup is, we are looking for you. There are people out here looking for you, and your story, and your voice, and your specific human view of things, and view of humanity.

Yes, you have to get your craft level up, yes, you have to do some other things in order for us to find you, but we are looking for you. So keep going. Okay, now, and congratulations, you did it, you got through school and you're coming to join us out here in the big world.

Lorien: Oh, and one thing I want to say is something about being hopeful is that what I'm working through is that it's I can feel safe and feel hopeful at the same time that feeling crappy doesn't make me feel more safe.

It's not oh, I'm prepared. The bad thing's going to happen. The bad thing's going to happen no matter what. That's just life. That's how life works. Shit happens. So I can keep myself like you were talking, like where that middle ground is.

How to be safe and hopeful, not oh my god, this is gonna, not projecting so far I'm gonna sell this and make all this money and I'm gonna go buy a car. It's more I did my best, I'm gonna keep working. Because it turns out, writing begets writing.

Meg: Sure does.

Lorien: Yeah, anyway.

Meg: It sure does. I love that being hopeful is not dangerous.

Anxiety tries to tell us that it is. Anxiety is very uncertain about joy. Joy feels very dangerous to anxiety. But once you try it.

Lorien: Perhaps you've been deep in that world for a while with the movie coming up.

Meg: I might've done a lot of research about this people. Might've. Yeah.

And had some fun with it too. Okay.

What kills a good script? The traps that we all fall into, not just emerging writers, pro writers, every draft you're going to fall into a different trap, that's very normal. So we did the first five on the last episode, which was about exposition and lacks of conflict and stakes and reactive main characters and not beating your character up enough in act two and repeating character beats.

Part two now, we're gonna Jeff is gonna jump in here Okay, Jeff your turn because Jeff wanted to add to our list lacking subtext.

Jeff: So I think when it comes down to subtext I often find that scripts that lack subtext This is happening in early drafts and I think it really comes down to when characters over explain their emotions or their motivations And it's really another way to say that the writer is a tell don't show writer and not a show don't tell writer.

Again, I think this can happen in early drafts, but, we talk all the time on this show about part of structure is mapping out the emotional journey of the characters. And so in that way, it's important that we're tracking with where our characters are emotionally. But the problem is, I often find that, at least in my early drafts, The characters might be telling us where they are emotionally, especially in connection with other characters.

They might say something like, I was so upset when you did that, or, I can't believe how angry I am at you right now. And while it's important for our audience to understand where a character is emotionally, the best writers can reveal that through subtext. I often find that if we're arguing with someone or whatever, we're usually burying that language and coding it in a different way than just saying exactly how we're feeling.

I think oftentimes when characters are over explaining story or emotion, and they're lacking that subtext, it can be an insult to the audience and really, we need to trust our audience intuit where characters are emotionally. If we can really find the truth and the way people actually express that.

Meg: I totally agree, and part of what I'm doing right now on this script is trying to narrow in on those things, because it is a very tricky balance, because especially in early scripts, as producers and, or readers are starting to try to understand what you're doing and what's going on in the relationship, they can miss it, right?

Because so much of it, so much of those beautiful subtextual lines, it's a lot of acting that's going on, right? And so if you just say, you know what, can you just pass me the salt? It's tricky. You almost have to write into the description, which is what I will do. She now shut down, and her way of saying fuck you is, hey, you know what, just pass me this out.

Whatever. So you might have to clue people in into the description. If it's super subtextual, if they're really super coding up. And in early drafts, I always say, if you're just giving it to friends and stuff, you can say, there's a lot of subtext up on the context because I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing.

Like I wouldn't, to me it's more important in a super early draft, first or second, to let me know what you're trying to do. Emotionally, so that then you can go code it up, right? But yes, in terms of the best writing, it's already coded up, and their behavior usually is the thing that shows you what's really going on, right?

So if she says, pass the salt, and then stands up and walks out of the room, he's yeah, that something else is going on right now. She's just, she's so mad at me. So it's, the behavior will often show what's going on, though people are liars And I think it's a great piece of advice, Jeff, to how people code up and you can listen to people around you.

I, when I was a screenwriting major, this was an assignment we had, which was every week we had to come in and talk about what we observed in people. Either how they spoke, what their behavior was, how they did this coding, so that you can start to see it. Loraine, what do you think?

Lorien: There's a way to write this stuff, like you said, in action.

If you have two people who are arguing, like two roommates who are arguing, and the apartment is a mess, you could say there's, They're cleaning, they're circling each other while they're cleaning the apartment like they're circling another boxing opponent or something like this. So you automatically set that up, but that they're never talking about what they're talking about, like you said about past the salt, but they are talking about what they're talking about.

So if they're, say if two people are doing the dishes together and it's like you left the crud on the fork again, like there are ways to code that stuff. Just in how they're talking about something innocuous like the dishes. This is an argument they've had for 10 years. That kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Meg: And there's, and there's larger subtext too. So there's subtext of dialogue, right? And how people's behavior and finding the way they code up what they're trying to say. Basically we're saying how people are passive aggressive. But also there's the larger subtext of the entire story, right?

So there is a larger subtext of. What you're trying to say this is emotionally about, the kind of reveal, the revelation, the transformation of your character, is not going to come up into the top of the script, into the context, until the end of Act 2.

Lorien: And this is about not setting up the need, in Act 1, so that we already know what it is.

Meg: If you've already given me the subtext in Act 1, I don't, why do I have to do the rest of the movie? Cause I'm just waiting for them to figure it out. There's a blindness to your character in act one, it as the creator, why you're throwing stuff at them and giving them these choices.

Cause you're trying to change them. You're trying to transform them, illuminate them. You're trying to get them to see the subtext. They will not do it right. You know what it is underneath. You really, they don't say it until they realize it, until they transform, and then it comes up at the end of Act 2, and they can say it, which is like, Joy, oh my gosh, it was Sadness basically all along, I'm totally fucking wrong, but if Joy already knows that, I need to accept Sadness in Act 1.

There is no movie. There's literally no movie. So there's a larger subtext. To the actual transformation of the character, right? And it's tricky because sometimes, I'm working with emerging writers and it's so subtle and so subtextual, I don't actually know what's going on, right? I'm not in your dream with you.

So it's that kind of balance. If you have to get me into the dream of the main character and what's happening to them that I feel and get everything they feel and get, and then you're subtextualizing and hiding and making them blind and the audience blind to the rest of it. But yeah, Lauren we're finding this a lot, right?

Like people in act one are just. Letting that subtext out. Like, how would you say it exactly?

Lorien: Yeah. Oh, I see that she's non confrontational and that's standing in the way from her asking for what she wants. So obviously this movie is about her learning how to ask for what she wants. Instead, I want to not realize that until she realizes that.

I think, when we bury things too deeply, or even when we think we're not burying them, we'll get the note it needs to be on the nose here. Which can feel awful. You don't want to be on the nose. You want to be elegant and clever with your dialogue and how you're rolling it out. It's the same reaction.

I think people get when they're resistant to structure, right? They're like, I know what to do. I know how to tell this story in this beautiful, very poetic way, which is great, but the structure is our guide. It's how our characters moving through. And if you aren't following it, yes, you could break it sometimes if you know it really well, but you aren't following it, then it's just all subtext to me and I don't know what's going on.

It's all lyrical poetry.

Meg: It's like when somebody tells you your dream, their dream and you're like, I don't know what any of these metaphors mean to you. You're having this amazing emotional experience because the grape was separated. And it got, and you're like, I don't know what the grape is.

Are you the grape? Is your kid the grape? What's the grape? I don't get what the grape is. And that's your job in act one. Let's say it is a grape. Your job in act one is that I so know what a grape means to this main character. That I get it. That I get the subtext and the metaphor of the grape. Yeah, so this is and by the way, this is not something you learn and just do like it's draft.This is why you have to write so many drafts because it's almost an unconscious thing that you can't even see it when you're doing It right you have to just keep writing and writing and then when you write again

 Like literally as we're talking right now, I'm like, wait a minute in the script I'm turning in Have I… have we told too much at the beginning?  but I don't think so because I think that the relationship has a fracture in it and Damn it And they each have doubts about the other. That are right and yet not right. Meaning, I have to put, plant the doubt about this so that we can go somewhere.

Though one of the notes was, don't let them doubt and just hit them over the head. And we're choosing to not do that. We'll see in the next draft. Maybe we're gonna go the opposite direction and just make her a thousand percent in with him and she cannot see the fracture. But right now I like it that she's already pushing him a little bit.

You might just be a dreamer schemer kind of thing. She's not saying that. Because she can't even think that herself. Like psychologically, she cannot even process or look straight at, I'm in love with a dreamer schemer. She can't look at that. Which means she's not going to look at it in Act 1. But she is gonna say, “But how are we even gonna get there?”

The tiny doubts of she's starting to get realistic. And that's enough. That's enough. Because the big fight later is, “What the fuck, so I should be like you and just be a dreamer schemer? And have no plan? And it's gotta come out later?” But, and so it's just this calibration that we're doing of how much is she in the audience willing to look at him.

And he's so fucking charming that of course we hope you just like how he's so charming. We'll see. We'll see. This is the work. All of this subtext and planting and how you turn that, right? Is the work that, and why you're doing many drafts and many drafts. Yeah. Okay. Number, uh. Seven. This would be seven.

Yes. Go ahead, Lorien.

Lorien: Poor scene design. And we're not talking about production design.

Meg: Though that can be distracting. Joe and I were watching. A TV show. And he said so many times that I was finally like, shut up. He was like, what is the production design? It's so bad. Is this supposed to be aspirational? Who wants to live in that shithole?

Oh, this is, this looks like a student film production design. This is so bad. I was like, stop.

Lorien: Said the director.

Meg: Yeah, I know. I know. But he was right. I was actually picking it up, but now we said it. I can't, I watch the dang show. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Lorien: Poor scene design is for me, I'm guilty of this.

Too much in one scene. This is where it's too much subtext, too much plot, too much going on, I'm introducing too many characters, there's too many things going in and out and all around, and it's too much to chew on. I'm just like, here, eat the whole burger all at once, when really I should be like, here's the bun, I'm gonna put a little ketchup on it.

That's the scene, right? Not the whole burger. I've made it off screen and then shammed it all in your face. So it's bun, ketchup, next scene.

Meg: It depends on who the writer is, right? Some writers, like you, have to get, have some reins put on, or some specific, like you said. For you, it'd be like, how, let's try a bun and ketchup and maybe have a pickle, but the pickle is just a tiny little accent to this.

Lorien: No, it's the suggestion of the pickle. We're expecting the pickle in the next scene, but we're not gonna get the pickle.

Meg: But there's other writers I've worked with that I'm like, this is just about one thing. And it's repeating itself over and over, and it's just about one thing. And it has to be about multiple things.

Meaning, what the actor is playing on the outside versus what they're playing on the inside.

Lorien: Are you the bun or the ketchup? Both.

Meg: So it depends on what you fall into as a writer. And I also think when you're writing for television, those pilots are so packed when you read them. You're just like, oh my gosh, this is the whole season.

Like just shoved into every scene. There's so much going on. Let it, you gotta just entice me and set up the engine.

Lorien: We're talking about original spec pilots that writers are writing, not the pilots we see on TV.

Meg: No. I'm talking about when you're writing your spec pilot.

Lorien: Yes.

Meg: You're jamming so much stuff in there now it's tricky because it's a balance. You don't want to also hold up too much, but and the other thing is when this happens to me, so there's two things for me about poor scene design. One is the main point of the scene is the narrative. What's changing in the story?

What's changing for the main character? What's changing in the relationship? That's all narrative drive, and each scene is going to have within it a singular narrative drive. And it goes back to want, which is mine and Lorien’s favorite new topic. She wants to get that. There is conflict to that. That's the scene people like that's the scene as she's getting that want she's learning stuff.

She's getting illuminated. The relationship is shifting. She's making a different choice than she ever made before all kinds of stuff, but that want is singular I think sometimes that's what happens, people like put so many wants and things happening in the scene that I get lost and I don't care about any of it. So part of it is just what is your narrative point of the scene?

And then how does the character's want come into that? What are you driving to, right? What are you driving to in this scene? And then there's the more practical entering and exiting a scene, right? Emerging writers tend to give me way too much shoe leather at the beginning and then they keep going after the narrative question has been answered.

Once she takes the keys because that's what she wanted Why are we still in the scene? Why are you still talking? Why are you still I don't she got the keys Let's what's gonna happen next I want to go So there's different levels of scene design and the last thing I'd say is when you're talking about oh my gosh There's so much in this scene The other can happen which is happening to me when we meet our couple in this scene that were written we got a note and One person's note was add something in and one person's note was take something out.

They weren't the same things You But I like one at all. I just want it all. But now the scene is starting to be about a lot. And I think a lot of that scene packing happens when we're band aiding. Cause, and I have to band aid right now a little bit because that's just the timing that we're in.

But, a lot of that is you're like, fixing the scene or fixing a note by jamming shit in scenes. It kinda doesn't work, people. You kinda gotta go back and say, wait a minute, what is this scene about? Can we bring up that giant thing and that giant thing? Yes, sometimes you can. You can be a super skilled writer and you can.

But just, you have to think it through about what's the main thing you're going for in the scene.

Lorien: I think another piece of this poor scene design is where the scene is in relation to the scenes before and after it. So if I have a character who in the last scene is I have to go make a hamburger because if I make this hamburger and I give it to this person, then they're going to give me something I want.

So I'm going to go, the scene then is I'm going to go, I'm feeling great. I know what to do. I'm focused. I'm coming off emotionally where I was in that scene, which was like a little scared. So I this scene a little scared and hyped up. I go get the bun, I get the ketchup, right? Something gets in my way.

Let's say I do get the ketchup on the bun at the end of the scene. The next scene cannot be me driving down the freeway doing something else, right? If I'm still, it depends on where I ended that scene emotionally, right? I should be like, Oh, I did it. Success. The next scene emotionally has to be the success feeling so that I can track emotionally the rhythm of the scene.

And that at the end of the scene, whatever decision I made about the hamburger. Or whatever the outcome was of my want has to carry through to the next scene. I'll read scripts that jump around a lot, that are assumptions made about like a character will leave something mad and then enter the next scene like really happy and excited and I'm like, I don't know what happened.

Where is this, you gotta carry me along with you emotionally and the plot, right? Did you not want the hamburger anymore? Are you not evolving?

Meg: And then you got to keep evolving. Like at the end of the scene, she was like success. I got the hamburger. And then the next scene the success it's starting to fade.

It's starting to wear out because I'm starting to think about all that shit. And somebody just walked up to me and said, Ooh, nobody likes hamburgers. You're like, wait a minute, but I just worked so hard to get this hamburger. Like the success starts to eke away or it's going into mania or it's it's still evolving

Lorien: But it has to change.

It can't just be like success. It has to be emotionally. And this is why, when I do my outlines, I write every scene on cards, and I lay them out on the floor, and I act my way through the whole movie while walking through it, reading the pitch cards, so that I know I'm tracking emotionally and plot wise through it.

Which is, what I should have done with my my out, my I should have put it on cards and acted it out so I could be like, Oh, there's something the scenes aren't in the right order.

Meg: Now we know what you're going to be doing this afternoon.

Lorien: Yeah. No, I already delivered it. It's fine.

It's out. It's gone. I fixed it. It was perfect. It was perfect. Until I get notes or a response.

It's the best thing I've ever written.

Meg: That's right. That's right. My, we're going to finish this. Today or Saturday. I gotta tell you, Sunday's gonna be a good day. And you know what? It's gonna take them so long to get back to us.

I'm gonna have a good week. That's right.

Alright. Number eight. Too much. Dialogue. Too much dialogue. When I worked for Jodie Foster, I had a playwright write a, adapt a short story. And we turned in, first draft came in, and I gave it to Jodie, to us as producers, and she said, Why is everybody talking about what I should be seeing?

And I was like, Cause she's a playwright! And playwrights express drama and narrative through dialogue because you're on a, you're on a stage. So you say shit like, “on the moors of the”, because we're not on the moors. You gotta tell us where the hell we are. This isn't to say if you're a playwright, you can't do this, but it is a different part of your brain because especially film…

Now TV could be slightly different. And Lorien, you can speak to that. But, film is such a visual medium and it's all about behavior. And of course we love. Writers who are incredible dialogue writers like Aaron Sorkin in film. Of course we do. Of course we love them. Because his dialogue is like music. But even watch how he does the dialogue with the visuals, like how that transfer over. What do you think, this is the show, don't tell which is easier said than done, but what do you think, Lorien?

Lorien: As a playwright in love with dialogue, right? Shakespeare has no six stage directions, right?

It's all the masters that we read so I wrote a lot of dialogue. So transitioning to screenwriting was hard. Still is sometimes when I want to just lay it all down in dialogue, but dialogue can be, I, maybe we disagree on this Meg, I think we've talked about this before, but I think there are ways in which dialogue can be show don't tell in terms of character, and not just in terms of how a character gets what they want, or how a character seduces or manipulates language patterns, it's.

Like people who use a lot, people who end sentences in or, that there's ways to reveal character and behavior through dialogue when used in the right way.

Meg: Absolutely. I should be able to read your script, and this is a slightly different point and yet you need to hear it.

So everybody in this town is reading a million things. They read very fast. And I will tell you, they are not reading character names. They are just reading dialogue boom. Because if you're a good writer, they should know who's talking, by how it's said, and how the scene is unfolding.

Yes, dialogue absolutely is important. I should not be able to transpose dialogue between characters.

Lorien: This is how you can get exposition about who a character is, where they come from, what they believe in is how they talk. You can also reveal extreme emotions, like their word patterns one word at a time.

I'm frustrated. There are ways to use dialogue so that they are showing the audience something. But, if you ask yourself, Can I get the same point across visually or in addition to a visual thing that the dialogue just punctuates in a way or reinforces? Do that as an exercise. At Pixar, sometimes we'd watch the reels without sound to see if we could get it emotionally.

Meg: Yes, because that's Andrew Stanton's thing. You should be on a plane and look across and see your movie and not have to have the sound on and know exactly what's happening. And that also speaks to when. When we did get this scripted and Jodie said, “Why is everybody talking about what I should be seeing?”

I went to the playwright and I was like, “Okay, listen, you don't have to do this. But as a writing exercise, what if you did it as a silent movie?” Just to train that part of her brain over. So that is a good exercise you can do if you're getting this note over and over about too much dialogue or show don't tell or blah, blah, blah.

That would be a good exercise to try.

Lorien: Part of this too is a way to look at your scripts, and if you love dialogue, I love dialogue, I talk about this all the time, but I will look at the first third and the last third of my scene and just delete them, just cut them out, and I'm left with this middle section, and is that what I was really trying to say, or maybe it's the last third, or yeah, because when I write an email, I write it all down and then I'm like, I get to the point finally at the end, not unlike how I talk on the show.

And then I moved that up to be my topic sentence, right? So sometimes we write it all and then you find like the six lines that actually say what you want to say. But I love dialogue. I'm not going to start, stop being a dialogue writer. No, of course not. That is not the trap. That's not the trap.

Dialogue in TV, depending on where you are, like in a multi cam, it's all jokes and dialogue and fast fast, fast.

Meg: But it's working on so many levels. Yes. Yes. It's working on so many levels. It's shifting relationships and. And even in. Again, it's the coding, right? How that character codes up so that show, that narrative has somewhere to go, it has somewhere to shift and transform and, I would think even in television there, it's a story, right?

Like it's not a pile of situations. So that's, it has to be doing all of that. And listen, I've read really good bantery dialogue and it's so fun to read. But the other trap of that is you just don't care. Yeah. Because they have gotten lost in how good they are at banter and it's tricky because the good banter is a lovely delicacy.

I love it. It's like chocolate. But if I don't care and the story isn't moving, it doesn't matter really. You might be brought in for a punch up, but it's it's, that's the tricky part there.

Lorien: So often talk of too much dialogue, but just as an exercise, if you're one of these people who gets notes, like all your characters sound the same, or I can't tell who's talking dialogue is a craft.

We hear all the time, dialogue is just something people have or they don't. It's craft, and some people are better at certain parts of craft than others, and some people have to work at some things. One way that I think is really good to work on it is to write a spec script of a show you love. You know those characters so well, you know how they talk.

You have them in your head, they live there with you. Write a spec script of that episode, or of an episode of that show and it will help you understand how to write. Succinct, in character, good dialogue in whatever the play TV show that you want to write in.

Meg: And definitely reading for features a lot of scripts is going to help you.

It's almost like music, that, that rhythm of how to construct a scene and what great dialogue is and how things are working in multiple levels. If you're not reading a ton of scripts, it just it's so helpful to just go into your brain that way. Back in the day before this is going to, back in The Pony Days, before lots of internet.

Lorien: Pony Days? What do you mean? Like the Pony Express? Like the, like Telegram? What is that?

Meg: The buggy, the pony, the buggy and Pony Days.

Lorien: When we faxed things to each other back then.

Meg: Yes, exactly.

In the fax days, you would literally have to sit and watch the movie and write it down.

Because there weren't, you could just go get a script, right? Once you started working in an agency, you could, because they were all piled everywhere. Which is part of the reason I went and worked at an agency, so I could have access to all these scripts. But, um, that's also a fun thing to do.

Lorien: That was part of my job on Up at Pixar, was to conform the script. I'd watch a scene and story, and then I'd have to write it into the script, and make changes as changes were made across all departments. Part of learning how to write simple scenes, with a clear, coherent script. Like I was literally rewriting the same sequences over and over.

I wasn't writing them. I was documenting them over and over again. But it's like you're saying, like I had to sit down, watch the movie, and then I had to type it into a script.

Meg: Yeah. It's like a rhythmic music that goes into your brain.

Okay. Number nine, not knowing the genre that you're working in.

Tropes versus traps. Okay, Lorien, tropes versus traps, because if you're doing a genre, there will be trope exp that audience does want some of their tropes. Do they want all of them? No. Do they want them in a new way? Yes. But tell me about this, Lorien.

Lorien: I think the first thing is genre.

When we do our story story workshop, where we have you pitch your ideas on Patreon, we always ask for a tone comp. Not a plot comp, but a tone comp. So we can identify where it lives, genre, tone. If you can't give one, it goes back to genre, I think. So if I'm writing horror comedy, okay, is it like Shaun of the Dead?

Is it like Scream? Like, where's the tone comp in horror comedy? So I think knowing your genre is the first part of this. So that you can then identify what those tropes are. And there's this amazing website. Is it called Story Tropes? I'd love this website. Is that what it's called? You go in there. It just has all the tropes listed of every genre, TV show, everything.

It is really fun. Don't spend too much time on it. Cause you won't get anything else done, but it is this great way to. Identify what tropes are in your genre and ways in which certain films and projects have been successful at it and ways in which they have not been successful, and I think that's the best way to research this and understand it so that you can figure out, oh, what do they do that work and what do they do that didn't work, but you still need those Those tropes in there in order for it to be a recognizable in the genre, right?

Like in the horror movie, you have to have certain things. You just do. The audience expects those things. So how do you do it, but with a fun way?

Meg: And if you're going to subvert the genre, which is what people always say to me I'm not doing, I'm subverting the horror genre. Okay. But you have to know it really well to subvert it.

Because if I'm going to write in that genre, because I don't know it really well, I had to do tons and tons of research. The other thing is I remember. On Inside Out, the first movie. We weren't thinking genre, right? We were just trying to come up with a plot, and a, and what is this about, and the, so many things.

Like, how do you live inside the mind, and what the fuck is in there? There's many things to go figure out. But I do remember, and I don't remember, Loraine, if you were in this meeting, but I think you were, when we were pitching the idea of what we were gonna do, and it had to be up on cards, and it was to a mini brain trust, and Andrew Stant was in there, and he looks at me, and he goes, so you're doing a disaster movie.

And I was like, Oh my God, that is so great. That helps so much because people were doing a disaster movie. It just, I can't, it was such clarity. It was like a beam of light shown into the darkness. Because do we have to do everything in a disaster movie? No, but it. It has certain things that you expect, like it's getting worse and the ultimate disaster is coming and how are they upping those stakes, how are they making it worse in Ruchi's time and how are those characters moving and what is a disaster movie exactly and there's probably different kinds of disasters movies, right?

And how characters react. It just helped. So much. So even within your kind of highfalutin indie or whatever film you might find secretly Oh, I'm doing this is this there's no end of the world. But to this character, this is a disaster, right? So then what if you as a tool just lay the disaster tropes over top of this family weekend wedding?

It might be really fun. It might really start to pop. And that's, you can add genres together and that's super fun. And it will happen when you're a pro that you will be said, Hey, we want you to do this genre and elevate it. And that's a word you get. Let's elevate the genre. Sometimes that works.

And sometimes they note you right back into the un elevated version because that's what they're used to. Lean into it. But subvert it. Lean in and subvert it. We got that note, right? Didn't we, Lorien? Lorien and I were doing a rom com and we literally got the note, lean into the rom com and subvert it.

Lorien: But what that means, right? But that means you got to know the genre. You got to wreck, you got to give me the tropes. You got to give me the candy, right? Give me that stuff I expect, but also find fun ways to mess it up so that it is. Think The Big Sick is a great rom com, which totally subverts it, but you still are getting the tropes,

Meg: I love Queen Charlotte for this reason. I thought she was a genius at giving me all the rom com stuff I want, and yet I've never seen anything like it in my life, and it was so true and honest to her and something she wanted to talk about. It had a depth. I just thought it was, she's a genius.

Yeah.

Lorien: So tropes aren't bad. Yeah. We're not trying to avoid them. We need to recognize them and then...

Meg: Do them in a different, your way because of your character and your theme and what's happening. Yes, I would say if you get a note, this is a trope. What are they really saying? They're saying I can see your trope.

It's up on the surface. You're just, or you're hiding in the trope, or you're using the trope to get past a hole, or it's the band aid, or, there's a lot of things, right? So it's not necessarily a fun note to get but at the same time you need to know what genres need to deliver. And I will tell you, all of those producers and all those executives within that genre, they know it.

They've made many of them. That's part of the reason I'm so nervous about this, turning this script in is because again, I'm not an expert in this genre. So it's a little bit nerve wracking because they are, but that's also, I'm hoping that's why it's fun because we'll, it's a transfer of knowledge and passion.

We'll see, I'll let you know.

Lorien: I do think we need to talk about genre, maybe not on this show, but coming of age, for me, is not a genre. No, it's not a genre. It tells me nothing, right? I could argue that every single movie ever made is a coming of age of some kind. Coming of middle age, coming of, coming of something.

Meg: You're transitioning, you're transforming. Yes. That's coming of age.

Lorien: Yes. Drama. So broad, right? I'm like, okay. Not really a genre, not really.

So it's I need to know it's a coming of age disaster movie, disaster, coming of age comedy disaster movie. Okay. A love story disaster movie coming of age,

Meg: I would go see a coming of age comedy disaster movie.

Somebody go write that. That's his genius. Genius combination. I want to see that.

Lorien: You're welcome. Writers. There you go.

Meg: It's a new party game, pick three different genres and put them together.

Lorien: All right. TSL audience. I want you guys to design a game where it's like tropes and genre and you have to Okay.

Pick three.

Meg: There's Some website out there that does that already. That literally you could just spin the wheel and it'll just, there is. So fun. Okay, go on the Facebook and link us to that. We want to go play. All right. Number 10. This is the very last one. Not knowing what your story is about, which we had to end this, but you all knew we were going to end here.

Yeah. Because you talk about it all the time. But we have to talk about it because it is ultimately the ground based level of your whole script. And if you don't, and when we say about, we don't mean socially. I'm not saying you can't have a socialist you in there. That's not what we're talking about. It's not an intellectual thing that we're talking about.

We're talking about what is this emotionally about. As Jodie said when she was a guest, how are you illuminating the human condition? What is it that you have to say about that word? So let's say you say redemption. What do you have to say about redemption? Redemption's a great place to start for those early drafts.

That's great. But eventually you're honing down into how this character experiences that and what, how are you illuminating that? So to me, and it takes drafts and drafts to really I don't understand deeply what you're trying to do, what this is about, because it's probably a blind spot. It's your unconscious trying to push you through the story and through the dream towards your own illumination.

And in writing this script about a marriage with my husband, things got illuminated and it was fun to write the fights because I'd write the fight from her view, and then he'd rewrite it and add in his view. And, there were some other questions, there were other, some other discussions going on in our house, right?

Because we had to get honest about this fight we've had for 30 years. And the fact is there is no solution to this fight because it's just who we are and our combo platter together. So you have to, that kind of deep work in terms of what is this about. If you really aren't even asking that question, I promise you, they're gonna ask.

The studio is going to ask, the producers are going to ask, the director is going to ask, the actor is going to ask, they're all going to ask, What is this about? And hopefully they don't, because it's so clear they don't have to. But this is the baseline of the biggest trap you can fall into.

And it's the hardest to do, and why you have to write many drafts.

Lorien: And it, once you know that, it's a lot easier to avoid all these other nine traps. Knowing what it's about helps you clear out all that stuff you don't need. Okay. Oh, this is this scene's got too much in it. What's it really about?

Oh, I don't need this other thematic conversation going on. Oh, I don't need this thing I have a pilot about grief and I realized a feature I've written is also about grief But the feature has more than just grief in it I got a lot of stuff to say in that feature talk about this when I realized Oh, this is about the grief of being unmothered And how that will get you stuck in a perpetual teenageness, specifically.

Yes, it's a coming of age, but it's coming of literally being a teenage, but it's so then I have to clear out a lot of stuff. And make her journey about that which is incredibly freeing once I figured that out. And that allows me to solve those Act One problems and dig in emotionally in the bottom of Act Two.

And this is a different project, but it's the same stuff, right? Knowing what it's about and it's there. And really reducing it to something very specific.

Meg: And when you get that specific thing, be sure that you ask yourself the question, how does it live and, how is it about your main character? Not the situation that they're in. Let's just take grief as an example, but we won't use your specific grief how are you going to illuminate grief in terms of grief is something that feels like it happens to you, right? So then what's the next level down? Which is how does this character handle grief versus this one versus that one versus this one and what really?

There's something underneath that because it's a thing that happens to you. To me, it's about, it suddenly becomes about what you do in the face of grief, or how you let it go. Or how you, there's something underneath, right? And that's just, I'm just using that as an example. I'm sure you're doing it.

So it's just, when you can start with any word. And then keep, make sure your end of act two, like we said, when the subtext becomes context, it's going back to what are they learning about themselves? Your theme is about them and their behavior, right? So let's just take yours, Lorien, as an example. If the grief of not being mothered becomes teenage behavior, the end of act two, and I'm sure you're doing this, is you have to take responsibility for that behavior and what, for what it's wrought. In your life and in your family's life and blah blah blah blah because that's a true transformational moment, right? And that's tricky because that can get very self confrontational Like I said, so at the end of act two she's gonna have to your main characters gonna have to confront themselves because we all want to be heard about what's happened to us.

Of course we do. And the script will show that. But ultimately what we care about is that, that human being illuminating themselves and how they've created their life. So we said, so for example if the teenage behavior ultimately it's confronting what that teenage behavior has created, right?

That's the self responsibility. It's just something that as you're, that's why we have to write many drafts, like I said, because I also start my early drafts, everything's happening to my main character, and it feels like a very broad thing. But of course, when my husband and I are having this, writing the scene together of this fight, what I have to confront is not that he's an asshole.

I have to confront what he's saying about living with somebody who has anxiety and worry and how that does impact his life. Does that mean I'm going to change who I am? No, I can't. I am who I am. But I can change behavior. I can start to grow up a little bit myself in terms of taking responsibility. So that's just something else to think about when you're thinking about what things are about.

Make sure at your end of Act Two, you're asking that in terms of who they are and what they've wrought, how they've created Act Two. They've created it with all their choices and now you're going to illuminate those choices for them. Now in television, Lorien, let's just talk about television because in television, you I think we tune in because we love those archetypes banging around against each other.

Yes. And they could change, quote unquote, but they don't,

Lorien: They don't because that's you're just watching for this depends on the, is it a comedy as it is drama, but, and what the rules are around that particular format, but we're watching the characters and how they are either assholes or jerks and the incremental adjustments they make along that journey.

How their behavior is. True to character and shocking and how they're confronted by themselves and then either ignore it or make tiny little changes.

Meg: And because obviously with a limited series, you're going to have those transformations because it's limited. That's why it's limited.

It's a longer thing. But if you have an ongoing TV show, I think we are tuning in for those archetypes. I think they're still about something that I would assume, and we can ask somebody when they come on, who's done these, they seem to be more about broader themes. Friendship, or they, what do you think?

These aren't if you think about friends, we watch it because we love the friends, we love friendship, we love watching the, we love watching people of this age, with this challenge, and this kind of friendship. We're watching all the ins and outs of friendship.

Lorien: But then you watch a show like Fleabag.

And it's, for me, it's about a woman who never forgives herself. She thinks she's responsible for killing her friend. So she is going to destroy herself with her behavior.

Meg: Would you say that's a limited series? Even though when it on, because it does end, right? Yes.

Lorien: Yeah. I would say that's more of a, it was only supposed to be one season.

And then they're like, Hey, write another season.

Meg: Because sometimes those shows, what happens to them is they do end and then they like, could do one more season. And it's she learned, but not really, because look how she's going to self sabotage now, thing, right?

Lorien: You're totally right, because between season one and season two, she like, did this whole big turnaround, so they had a totally different arc in season two.

So I just proved your earlier point, that in a limited series

Meg: because situational comedy is called situational comedy, because it can go on for ten seasons, because it's just situations of a broader Yeah. Not to say, by the way, that Friends doesn't have emotion and humanity and digging in and all that lava.

It does. But it's a broader, what's this about? And you do need to have that. If you're going to go pitch a TV show, you need to still know what it's about, right? And why I'm going to tune in to watch that

Lorien: And what's this about to, you got to know the format of the show in terms of what is hap… Is there always a conflict between a husband and a wife?

Is there… So then it's about that marriage. Is it about these friends? Sort of what the construct of the show is. Like Schitt's Creek. You're not gonna have an episode of Schitt's Creek that is on Mars.

Meg: Yes, that tension, no, that tension between this family moving to this place and oh my god what's going to happen is driving the whole show.

It's going back to Javi's idea of engine the contradictions inside the characters and inside the situation that you're putting them in.

Lorien: So basically to sum up, know what it's about, know your genre. Write really amazing dialogue, gorgeous scenes, be careful with your subtext don't repeat beats, beat your character up a lot, have an active main character, make sure you have lots of conflict and stakes, and do some elegant exposition, and then boom, great script, easy, done!

Meg: That's all! So easy.

Lorien: Ta da! So easy. Welcome everybody. You're welcome writers.

Meg: Cut to 15 drafts later. Awesome.

Lorien: Awesome. Yeah, I what I love about these shows like when we just talk. I love when we have guests on but I also because I make notes. I'm learning a lot like being able to articulate what my script is about in that particular way.

I'd never quite articulated it in that way. So I was like, Oh, okay. So just being able to sometimes talk things out is really helpful. This is why you have to find your people.

Okay, so we have a new segment we're going to do, which is the TSL hot tip of the day. So I have a hot tip today. So sometimes we're going to do this. Sometimes we're not like if we have something to say.

So here's what I want to say today, I just got back from the Cinestory TV retreat and I was super lucky to get matched with really lovely writers, really lovely people. And. I told them all this, so I hope I'm not calling anyone out. And I heard this from a lot of the mentors at the retreat, which is your TV pilot has to be the show.

It cannot be a setup episode. So if you're writing a show about competitive ice skaters, at the beginning of the episode I want to see competitive ice skating. I don't want to spend an hour watching someone decide to become a competitive ice skater. What's driven them there? I want to know what the show is.

Because if I watch the pilot or I read the pilot, I'm going to know, Okay, this takes place in this ice rink and at her home. And her conflict with college. And then there's a weird romance conflict. Okay. I know that every episode is going to be around those things in that world. So your pilot is not a setup to the show.

Just keep that in mind. Because when I read a pilot, I'm like, what is the show? Who are the characters that I want to fall in love with? And at the very beginning, show me that world in action. Have someone be Ice skating and fall down and beat themselves up and quit. Okay, great. I know who that character is.

I know she's gonna get in a car and she's gonna pick a fight with somebody. Okay, that's who she is. That's how she reacts to bad things. Or she hits someone in the kneecap with a pipe. I need to know In action, show me an action right away in that ice skating world. And this isn't a rule, don't automatically do what I'm saying, but show me the show in your pilot.

Tell it to me right up front.

Meg: Great tip. Great tip.

Thanks so much for tuning in to The Screenwriting Life.

Lorien: And for more support, check out our Facebook group where all kinds of writers at all kinds of levels are connecting with each other… and remember you are not alone and keep writing.