Writing and Selling Drama Screenplays

by Lucy V Hay

  • Hope/joy. Often called ‘dramedy’, produced dramas that want to elicit the emotion ‘joy’ are frequently referred to as ‘feel-good’ and often frame this as a competition, holiday or quest. These drama screenplays may include comedic characters or plot devices and/or thriller elements such as deadlines, with characters often having to do or find ‘something’ before it is ‘too late’. Contests are often involved, as in A League of Their Own (1992), Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Fast Girls (2012). This notion of it being ‘too late’ is rarely via ‘life-or-death’ stakes, however; it happens more on a metaphorical level, such as Shania’s bad behaviour meaning she gets dumped from the team in Fast Girls, despite the fact the GBR athletics relay team gets through. Shania must appeal to Lisa, the only one in the team with the power to potentially reverse the head of the team’s decision, being his daughter. In doing so, BOTH girls must put their petty rivalries aside and work together, and Lisa must also realise she is running for herself, not to please her father, hence her ultimatum at the end. What’s particularly refreshing about Fast Girls is obviously the number of female characters, as well as the unusually (sadly) large number of women of colour in primary role functions. However, in addition, for every ‘usual’ character (the privileged white girl; the posh, unrelenting, unreasonable dad), there is another to counteract them, such as the also posh, yet wise, physio love interest for Shania, who offers some sage words of advice that make all the difference; or the father-figure-style coach, who is nothing but encouraging, but takes no shit. The theme of Fast Girls is very much about second chances, so it’s fitting, too, that Team GBR gets through only on a disqualification, and that Shania herself dumps the relay team at one point to concentrate on her solo running until Trix, out with an injury, insists Shania takes her place.

  Perhaps most controversially for this book, however, I would argue such ‘feel-good’ drama screenplays ALSO include many stories couched squarely as ‘family’ and/or ‘animation’, which some believe are genres in themselves. I do not. Regarding the notion of ‘family’, I think films targeted at parents and their children (of any age!) fit squarely in ‘hope/joy’, especially given that so many carry themes and messages about growing up, getting on or family. Whilst it’s true many such family movies may cross over into action-adventure territory in particular, I think it’s advantageous to look at the internal conflicts of their main characters: do they have them? Pixar is a master at this, with its reliance on buddy movies such as the Toy Story franchise and Monsters, Inc. (2001), as well as its sports-orientated sequel Monsters University (2013). Stories designed to bring forth joy or a ‘feel-good’ state may also include ‘coming of age’ stories, which are typically live action and target older audiences, especially teens and young people, as in the case of Juno or Wish You Were Here (1987). Coming of age tales may also include the subtly different ‘coming out’ story, which may be positive or negative, but nearly always confusing, though characters will often be at ease with themselves and their sexuality by the resolution: examples include My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and My Summer of Love (2004).

  TIPS: It’s often said by writing gurus (and screenwriting books like this one!) that ‘drama is conflict’, but this is often misunderstood by scribes who think automatically that conflict = TERRIBLE EVENTS in characters’ lives, especially when they want to write a spec drama screenplay. This, I believe, is in part to blame for the overabundance of depressing (note: not ‘devastating’) drama screenplays in the spec pile, as writers attempt to pile on the misery, believing it will be ‘dramatic’. It’s not. It’s perfectly possible to write something joyful, creating obstacles for your characters without going down the route of ‘everything’s ruined’. Competitive sport is by its very definition a positive arena with plenty of obstacles in the way of your characters’ victories; growing up, too, though often fraught, is also a good thing, as is falling in love, yet it’s also rife with emotional difficulties. So instead of automatically thinking about the negative when approaching your drama screenplay idea, consider instead a positive situation that nevertheless has many obstacles for your characters in getting what they want and need.

  • Gratitude. Produced drama designed to elicit gratitude in its audience is frequently referred to as ‘life affirming’ and is most often used to relate a moral message by combining with other emotions on this list. Life-affirming stories ask us to be thankful for what we have, such as health, family, youth or happiness. Personal struggles play centre stage in this subtype of drama screenplay, especially the ubiquitous ‘cancer story’, but they also feature other types of illness and disability, including mental health issues and disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, autism and strokes. Stories featuring illness and disability may be inspired by real people or true events, as in Rain Man (1988), a road trip drama in which a selfish yuppie must get to know his savant brother, to whom their father has left his vast fortune, or courtroom drama Philadelphia (1993), in which a man with AIDS files a wrongful dismissal suit when he is fired for his illness. Alternatively, they may be less loosely based on both famous and lesser-known people, though the protagonists will nearly always be ‘remarkable’ in some way, exceptional creatives and scientists, for example. Christy Brown was a writer and artist who had cerebral palsy and was only able to control one limb and was immortalised in My Left Foot (1989); A Beautiful Mind is the story of mathematician John Forbes Nash, Nobel Laureate in Economics, who had schizophrenia. Again, all the dramas mentioned here were nominated for, and in many cases won, multiple awards, including Oscars for such elements as writing, directing, and their stars’ portrayals of the central characters.

  TIPS: Illness and disability affect the lives of millions, so it’s unsurprising the spec pile is full to bursting with drama screenplays about cancer and depression in particular. However, in comparison to the life-affirming dramas mentioned here, such spec dramas are often all doom and gloom, asking us to believe those characters afflicted with such conditions have wholly negative experiences. Then those sadistic writers kill the characters off at the end, making the projects seem like abject misery fests. As with what I call ‘devastation drama’ – which often overlaps with life-affirming drama, with good results – life-affirming drama needs to give the reader (and thus its target audience) a REASON to get on board with its lead character’s journey, otherwise it just ends up depressing (and dull!). In the case of Rain Man and Philadelphia, both are stories of redemption: Charlie is presented with the autistic Raymond by his late father and essentially told that, if he wants his share of the inheritance, he has to look after him. Charlie, played to perfection by a young Tom Cruise, is greedy and selfish and takes Raymond on solely for the bucks (just as his father knew he would), but in doing so Charlie finally learns what family and integrity are about. In Philadelphia, a grave injustice has been done to Beckett by his law firm, yet only homophobe lawyer Miller will represent him, even though he doesn’t really want to. Like Charlie, Miller is forced to revise his opinion over the course of the story. In comparison, stories like A Beautiful Mind and My Left Foot, though they will dip into emotion number one, ‘devastation’, are more likely to combine their stories with storytelling emotion number three, ‘wonder’: these are incredible people, with incredible stories ‘behind closed doors’. Sometimes dubbed 'inspiration porn' (especially by disabled audience members and their families), it is important to remember that media imagery isn't received passively and that different stories mean different things to different people. Also, arguably, there is sometimes a trade-off to be had in terms of increasing awareness of a certain condition.

  So, with these six (very) broad subtypes of produced drama that nevertheless have a wide variety of stories and characters driving them and relating to one another within them, what is the problem with many spec drama screenplays and the marketplace?

  CASE STUDY 5: THE PORTMANTEAU STORY

  NIGHT PEOPLE (2005)

  Written by: Adrian Mead, Jac
k Dickson

  Directed by: Adrian Mead

  Produced by: Clare Kerr

  Budget: £300,000

  Q: What’s good about it?

  A: It twists our expectations in terms of both story and character, plus it takes in a whole city at night, but remains manageable in terms of production.

  MY LOGLINE: Over the course of one night, a selection of people must make decisions that change their lives forever.

  Writing and Selling Night People

  The Scottish BAFTA-winning Night People is a low-budget feature with a difference: it is also a portmanteau film. The word ‘portmanteau’ literally means ‘large suitcase’. This word first lent its meaning to the notion of ‘portmanteau words’, for which the writer Lewis Carroll was famous, creating many, such as ‘chortle’ (a combination of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’) and ‘slithy’ (‘slimy’ and ‘lithe’). The English language now boasts a vast array of such spliced words (media-relevant words being ‘blog’, ‘malware’ and ‘camcorder’, to name but a few). However, the word itself also lends itself to filmmaking, for a ‘portmanteau film’ is basically a selection of short films linked together by a common theme to create a feature-length movie. In the case of Night People, the film takes place in Edinburgh, one Halloween night, between dusk and dawn.

  The thematic question that links all the characters’ stories in Night People is, ‘What happens when you’re on the point of change?’ Its director and co-writer Adrian Mead explains further: ‘People defy logic. We all have madness in us. I wanted to explore that.’ From this deceptively simple beginning come five very different characters and world views:

  • Jane’s story. Jane is a driver for a drug dealer, masquerading as a taxi driver but in reality ferrying her boss around and doing his errands. On this particular night, Jane is forced to take her five-year-old daughter, Alison, out with her when the babysitter cancels at the last minute.

  • Father Matthew’s story. Originally from Madagascar, Father Matthew is disillusioned about his abilities and plans on leaving the church to go home. When the HIV-positive Mary, 15, mistakes him for a fellow homeless person, Matthew sees an opportunity to make one last difference to a member of his congregation.

  • Stewart’s story. Desperate for cash, newly single dad Stewart steals an expensive pedigree Chow dog, with the intention of selling it, much to the chagrin of his eldest child, Kelly, aged 12, and delight of his young son, Bradley, 8, who thinks the canine is his birthday present.

  • Josh’s story. Rent boy Josh, 15, frequents Edinburgh’s bus station, turning tricks in the toilets to survive. When he spots young runaway David, 13, waiting for a bus, Josh makes a phone call, keeping the younger boy company until whomever he called gets there to take him.

  • William’s story. A blind man and his guide dog start out at night on an odyssey to Edinburgh’s bridge, aiming to get there by dawn.

  Adrian Mead tells me Night People was written with a very specific brief and budget in mind, for an initiative set up by the lottery-funded Scottish Screen (now Creative Scotland) and STV. Adrian was a bouncer for 17 years and started on the door of nightclubs at the tender age of 15, but Night People is not an autobiography, nor are any of the story threads ‘his’ story, or anyone else’s on the production. ‘I knew what [Edinburgh] was like at night; I saw a kind of different world and that always intrigued me,’ Adrian says. ‘This is what “write what you know” means… It’s often misunderstood. Perhaps it’s better to say “write from real life”? Start with something you’ve seen or found interesting, that has relevance to you… then expand on that.’ A £300,000 budget may seem like a lot of money to an unproduced spec screenwriter – and certainly it is for a first-time feature-film director – but it doesn’t stretch far for a project as ambitious as this. ‘I could’ve done a one-room thing, like everybody else,’ Adrian says simply, ‘but I didn’t want to. I wanted to do something cinematic. Something adventurous, yet manageable.’

  This notion of ‘manageability’ is key in the success of Night People winning that grant money and getting ‘off the page’ into production. Night People feels as if it takes in the whole of Edinburgh with its panoramic shots of the city and epic landmarks, not to mention wildlife by roadsides and in the night skies, all brought in especially by animal wranglers. But, in reality, it was shot in a very small area. Adrian expounds: ‘I think other people were more scared by the project than we were! We knew what we were doing.’ Both Adrian and his producing partner Clare Kerr have lived in Edinburgh for years and know how to showcase their city with minimum input, for maximum output: ‘Lots of those exterior locations… they were just down the road from one another. Most of the interiors, they were in the same building, or were even the same place, just dressed differently.’

  When pressed for the story that caused the filmmaking team the most difficulty, Adrian insists it’s the actual physical movement of the production as a whole that causes logistical headaches: ‘Just getting around the place, setting up, setting down, feeding the crew and so on,’ he says, though he goes on to describe the bus station scenes as being the most expensive in terms of time and money, because they had to decorate it. ‘It’s actually a car showroom,’ Adrian laughs. ‘It had just closed down a few days before. The day after we finished shooting there, the bulldozers arrived. No chance for pick-ups!’ (For the uninitiated, ‘pick-ups’ are those shots commonly required after shooting, to clarify the story in the edit.) So what else is important in ensuring everything gets done on a low-budget production, if it’s often about getting the shot no matter what? ‘Over prepare,’ Adrian says, without hesitation. ‘And don’t get too precious about the screenplay… you have to remember it’s always about compromise when you start shooting.’

  My Take on Night People

  In a sea of low-budget drama screenplays and movies set in urban areas, Night People is a rare beast in that it reflects none of the ‘usual’ characters and/or scenarios the jaded script reader or moviegoer has come to expect from this type of movie. Though the story world takes in classic drama territory with the seedy side of life, such as drugs, Edinburgh looks fantastic: nowhere to be seen is the Ken Loach-style sinkhole estate, nor a single wannabe gangster, gun or stabbing. Stewart, the father in the story, might be hopeless, but he’s trying and, at the end of the day, is the one who stayed, unlike the children’s errant mother. Josh, the sex worker of the narrative, is male – an unusual thing in itself. Whilst we assume, just as Jane does, that William the blind man wants to reach the bridge before dawn so he might throw himself off it – suicide being a not uncommon occurrence in both drama screenplays and produced content – his real reason, despite being less melodramatic, turns out to be all the more powerful. Matthew, the priest losing his faith, is neither middle-aged, nor white, nor even British; plus his flaw is neither an illicit love for a woman, nor a sinister lust for children, which is what we might have expected. In contrast, the younger, white runaway, Mary, is the one who is HIV-positive, yet neither she nor Matthew talk of the virus’s origins in Africa, or even race in general, but the universal fear that binds probably 90 per cent of all human beings (and certainly runs through all the Night People characters’ world views): letting down the people who love us.

  There were two stories that stuck out for me, ultimately. The first, unsurprisingly, is Jane’s story: I say ‘unsurprisingly’ because Jane probably occupies the most ‘story space’ of all the characters in Night People. In addition, her story collides with that of the blind man, William: when he mistakes her for a real taxi, she ends up ignoring her drug dealer boss, Mal, on the radio and takes William and his dog to the bridge (where she also acts as the voice of the audience, pleading with him not to jump, to William’s bemusement). Put simply, Night People begins and ends with Jane and Alison’s journey, both literal and metaphorical: Jane is a victim of circumstance, both in terms of having to take Alison with her that night, but also of life: she has already had to go to prison
for Mal, who, reading between the lines, may also be Alison’s (unwilling and/or unwitting) father. Mal has moved on to pastures new and his present girlfriend, the beautiful Lizzy, has taken Janey’s place. Demoted to driver, Jane is doing what she has to: nothing more, nothing less. So, in a bid to distract Alison and keep her occupied as she runs errands, Jane pretends their journey is a fairy story, with the various occupants of the taxi performing roles such as the ironic ‘Prince Charming’ – Mal – and the ‘treasure’ being the lockbox full of dirty money. The drugs – ‘pharmaceutical grade cocaine’ no less – is referred to as ‘fairy dust’.