Writing and Selling Drama Screenplays

by Lucy V Hay

  The little girl is enthralled with her mother’s tale and behaves well; what’s more, this never changes and Alison never once blames her mother for anything, even when referring to the time Jane had to go away to the ‘evil wizard’s castle’ (prison). One of the most poignant moments is when Alison asks her mother if she was tortured at the castle. Eyes full of tears, Jane says she was and that being kept away from her ‘wee girl’ was the worst torture imaginable. In short, we can empathise with Jane, even though we may not agree with the life choices that have led her to that night. We can also sense Jane is at a crossroads in her life, so when the catalyst occurs and Alison gets hold of a packet of cocaine, we expect the little girl to ingest it and overdose. But, again, Night People confounds us, because the child puts it in her pocket instead. It’s only later on in the night, as Janey struggles to change a tyre, that Alison gets out of the vehicle and starts laughing, throwing the ‘fairy dust’ into the air. Jane – and we, the audience – appreciate the true horror of not only what we’re seeing, but what could have just happened. Even though Alison is unscathed, it’s this act that tips the balance: Jane will never return to Mal. She and her child take the money and run, literally, never to return.

  Like Jane’s story, Josh the rent boy’s contains both light and shade. This thread was ultimately my favourite of the entire movie (and Adrian’s too, apparently), for three reasons:

  • Again, it plays with our expectations. I’ve read so many drama screenplays (short, feature-length AND portmanteau) that include sex workers over the years that when I saw Night People included one AND that he was cosying up to a ‘younger model’, David, I will admit to rolling my eyes a little bit. I figured I had this story down, in advance: Josh would offer to take the youngster with him, effectively sell him into slavery, then pocket the proceeds, perhaps even using the money to get on a bus himself, leaving Edinburgh to start a new life. I figured I was looking at a story about the unpalatable things we may do to survive, which is a common occurrence in gritty, realistic drama. So even though Josh saves David from that first punter, we figure it’s just so he can ‘groom’ the young boy himself… and, throughout this narrative, as Josh continues to use the phone, urging the person at the other end to hurry up, we figure it is his pimp, who will arrive and spirit David off. Except, of course, it isn’t: it’s a social worker. Josh sends David off with her, effectively saving him from the life he has had to endure. Or, you can look at it another way: ‘The cynical reading is, he’s getting rid of the competition,’ Adrian points out. ‘Josh is getting older. He needs David off his patch.’ Regardless of which version you personally prefer, however, that notion of playing with audience expectation is what is most powerful about Josh’s story.

  • It’s believable… and funny. Josh is streetwise and street smart, watching proceedings like a hawk. Though he never exchanges a word with his punters, just a glance, we know exactly what is going on in the toilets he keeps ducking into with them… we don’t need the gory details and it’s more effective without them. In contrast, runaway David is completely oblivious, unaware he’s being cruised by the various predatory men congregating in the station. Like Josh, David smokes but, unlike the older boy, the cigarettes dangle from his small hands and he can’t light them properly, giving one such punter an ‘excuse’ to approach him. What’s more, though this thread is obviously not funny per se, it still contains light relief, such as when Josh chastises David with, ‘You shouldnae be smokin’ at yer age!’ in a very paternalistic manner, hinting at what comes next in the resolution of his story.

  • It’s ultimately devastating. David’s arc ends happily and he leaves with the social worker, giving Josh his treasured football boots in gratitude. We leave Josh clutching the box, a smile on his face… but Night People does not give us time to bask in this triumph. Almost immediately, another punter approaches, giving Josh ‘The Look’. For a moment, Josh hesitates and we hope he will turn around and walk the other way, leaving his life as a sex worker behind him. But he does not. Josh not only follows the punter into the toilets, he throws the boots into an early morning cleaner’s cart as he passes. This underlines that, unlike David, Josh is lost… and because we know he remembers himself ‘before’ (hence calling the social worker, for David), it’s all the more agonising. ‘I had to fight for that last shot,’ Adrian says. ‘Execs didn’t want it. They said it was too much of a downer. But for me it was important: I wanted something devastating that would stay with you.’ And it certainly does that!

  I read relatively few spec drama screenplays that are portmanteaus and am always surprised at this, especially considering I read so many short films, by the same writers, who frequently mine the same types of themes and messages. It strikes me these scribes could benefit from constructing a portmanteau in the style of Night People, if not to produce themselves, then as an exercise on how to create a feature-length project, or as a sample to send out to agents and producers (or both!). As I am always at pains to point out on my B2W website, there is a veritable dearth of good feature-length projects in the spec pile just in general, plus TV people will read features, whereas film people won’t always read TV pilots, or shorts on their own. Seems like a massive missed opportunity!

  What We Can Learn from Night People

  Write Tips:

  • Writing with a very specific brief in mind like the one Adrian had (even one you set yourself) can ‘focus’ one’s mind to ‘real-world’ constraints in terms of production logistics. Portmanteau movies can also enable spec screenwriters and filmmakers to tell dramatic stories on the ‘minutiae of life’ that it may not be possible to undertake over 90 minutes on their own. Just don’t forget that all the ‘short films’ must be linked somehow by a theme, question, message and/or moral.

  • Portmanteau films can work as excellent sample screenplays for selling yourself to industry contacts, as they typically incorporate complex themes, ideas and characters. You also potentially have five or six short films to submit on their own to schemes and opportunities, two avenues for the price of one!

  • If you want to make your portmanteau yourself, use your real-world knowledge to inspire your story, not the other way around. Adrian and Clare set Night People in a small part of Edinburgh because it was a location they were very familiar with. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. You can do a lot with a little.

  • When selling your portmanteau film ‘off the page’ as a sample or as a finished movie to audiences, learn a lesson from Night People and be aware you need some comic relief. If ALL your stories are a complete downer, you will simply turn potential readers and viewers off your screenplay and/or film.

  Selling Points:

  • Realise what you can achieve with what money. Do not simply guess and hope for the best. (What’s more, don’t forget you need to know this BEFORE you write even a single word of the screenplay.)

  • If you are a spec screenwriter or filmmaker with a day job, a portmanteau film can offer a very real opportunity to both write and make a movie in the limited time you have available. If self-financing and shooting a portmanteau movie yourself, it’s possible to create each ‘short film’ of your portmanteau at different times, with different crews, actors and post-production teams, over the course of several months or even years, when money and opportunity allow. Just beware of losing sight of that all-important link between them!

  • There are lots of ways of attempting portmanteau movies, and thinking beyond the ‘traditional’ methods of filmmaking can be inspiring, groundbreaking and career advancing. Adrian and his team may have made Night People themselves, but what if they had decided to make just ONE of the short films, set in Edinburgh… and then thrown down the gauntlet to other teams in other cities, all around the world, so that Night People had stories from London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, New York, Rome, Sydney and so on? It’s possible to collaborate now with people you’ve never even met, thanks to Skype and the internet, as demonstrated by the record-brea
king 50 Kisses (2014). This movie was crowdsourced from around the globe by Chris Jones and the team behind the London Screenwriters’ Festival and included drama short films, as well as genre. Though 50 Kisses was a massive project and undertaking, there’s absolutely no reason why screenwriters and filmmakers can’t do this on a smaller scale, collaborating via the internet before linking their short films into one portmanteau movie.

  • Clever editing can turn your portmanteau’s stories into ‘themed threads’ within your feature-length movie, rather than a selection of shorts that have simply been cut and showcased together. Recognise, too, that there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of approaching a portmanteau… and that there are ways of doing it no one has ever seen before, if you put your mind to it.

  BEATING THE ODDS

  SAME-OLD, SAME-OLD

  The odds are always against any spec screenwriter, but we’ve established they are especially hard on the spec drama screenplay writer. People in the industry simply don’t believe us when we say we’re great writers with a great drama screenplay concept (although they might when we say we have a great comedy, horror or thriller to pitch). It’s not that they don’t want to take a punt on a great drama screenplay either; it’s that they have been disappointed, not just tens, nor hundreds, but literally THOUSANDS of times by spec drama screenplays in the following two ways:

  • Samey stories. It may be hard to believe, but every script reader or editor, producer or filmmaker has read the same spec drama screenplay, with the same story, by multiple writers in the course of their career. That samey story goes like this: ‘A miserable character leads a miserable life then DIES (or life gets better for some reason).’ Now, of course, this story CAN work (American Beauty, anyone??) but the familiarity with which this story turns up in the spec pile is matched only by the familiarity of its arena (or story world), which typically will be the same as well! In the case of UK spec drama screenplays, we’re talking a working-class environment of sinkhole estates, tower blocks, poverty, teenage mums, drug dealer boyfriends, bad parents, bent coppers and dodgy pub landlords. US spec drama screenplays will be set in trailer parks or ‘the projects’ and 7-Eleven supermarkets; gangs of youths – especially people of colour – will frequent car parks (‘parking lots’), buying and selling bodies and drugs out of seedy bars for the small-time Mafiosi who ‘run this town’. Instances of domestic violence, addiction and rape are common in these scripts and, though the protagonist may attempt to get more from his or her life, nine times out of ten s/he will FAIL dismally, suggesting perhaps that the average spec drama writer believes it’s not possible to change who or what you are.

  • Samey characters. Somewhat inevitably, then, if the same stories happen, the same characters turn up again and again as well. What’s more, they’ll have the same sorts of motivations and even do the same sorts of actions! As a result, readers end up in ‘tick-the-box’ screenwriting HELL.

  So, is it any wonder industry pros DON’T want to read our specs and go into automatic shutdown when we say, ‘It’s a drama’??

  TYPES OF CHARACTERS IN SPEC DRAMAS

  Whilst we may be confident OUR drama spec is the exception to the rest, that producer, agent or script editor you want to read it simply thinks you’re yet another deluded writer with a patchwork mess of movies that already exist, with characters they see so much of that their brains may explode if they encounter yet another one. Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s look at the characters I see most often in drama screenplays in the spec pile.

  MALE

  Due to the samey stories and arenas, male characters in spec drama screenplays have limited role functions, being typically defined by violence, abuse and addiction, though some attention may be given to their jobs, or relationships. Interestingly, crime is an overriding element of many spec drama screenplays, meaning gangsters and cops feature heavily; as does being ‘clever’ and what that means (especially the dichotomy of ‘book smart vs street smart’, and especially when it comes to the chemistry student who can mix and sell drugs!). Check these out:

  • Tortured Hero. Tortured Hero has ISSUES, which is not really surprising, considering his wife and family are usually dead (or have at least left him). Cast into a society that measures men by their jobs and what they can provide for others financially, Tortured Hero typically is bitter and must learn ‘how to live again’. Sometimes spec drama screenwriters attempt to write a Tortured Heroine in the same vein who must realise materialism or the beauty industry will chew her up and spit her out in the same way. Whatever the case, both versions of this very familiar character will have to realise their souls are as hollow as a chocolate Easter egg and they’re slowly melting under the pressure of MODERN LIFE. As drama screenplay premises go, this isn’t a terrible start, but has been done rather a lot, and to make it float your characters need to have ‘left of the middle’ motivations or realisations to make, otherwise they will read as ‘same-old, same-old’, which is precisely what you don’t want in an already crowded marketplace.

  • Good Guy Gangster. This protagonist may be an actual gangster, or forced to act like one: usually meeting violence with violence (most often to protect a woman and her child). The Good Guy Gangster will feel compelled to ‘save’ those who are vulnerable, usually because his own family was murdered or died in an accident that was his fault, either directly or indirectly. Good Guy Gangster is often a former soldier, who has fallen on bad times financially and/or emotionally, to account for his hermit-style life and his killing skills. He will also be fighting suicidal thoughts and, to ‘prove’ he’s not a two-dimensional hard case, will visit the graves of his dead family and cry a lot.

  • Bad Guy Gangster. The antithesis of Good Guy Gangster, he will turn up most frequently as the antagonist in those stories, though he is sometimes the protagonist of his own. In the former, he will obviously pose the threat to the woman (and/or her child), and his position in the community may vary: he may be a Mafioso or drug dealer, or he may be her (dodgy) boss, especially in a seedy pub or club. He will typically be a rapist as well as ruthless. In the latter, Bad Guy Gangster will grow weary of killing and want a new life, as represented by the woman of the storyline, but will be unable to achieve this, as he will be drawn back into bloodshed, typically getting killed in the process.

  • Gangster in Training. Usually a teenager or in his very early twenties, Gangster in Training generally comes from a deprived background and has started off his life of crime as a petty thief or dealer for small-time crooks, in stolen goods or cars, or drugs. From there he will get ‘head hunted’ by Bad Guy Gangster and asked to prove his loyalty and his worth to BGG’s organisation, doing more and more reprehensible things. Gangster in Training may enjoy his descent into depravity, or he may feel he has no choice: often he has a ‘softer side’, looking after an invalid relative or much younger siblings. Frequently he will be forced to inform on BGG by a cop character, who is an Idealist (next).

  • Idealist. Idealist will be young and book smart; he has strong opinions, is probably college or university educated and probably ill-equipped for the realities of life on ‘the street’. Despite this, he will learn over the course of the narrative to trust his instincts and will usually be left standing at the end of the story. He provides an obvious contrast in narratives with an Old Timer character (next).

  • Old Timer. An Old Timer will be a veteran of life and/or a job and, typically, is paired up with the Idealist. Old Timer is street smart and usually grouchy and out of shape. He relies on gut instinct, yet despite this will frequently get killed in the story; and, when he doesn’t, he’s often Behind It All, especially if there is blackmail or loot involved: he needs it, for his retirement/wife with dementia’s care/disabled daughter when he’s gone, etc.

  • Angry Young Man. The Angry Young Man is often entitled and feels life has let him down in some way. He will have a poor-paying job or little direction in life, though he will often have a talent, most co
mmonly sport, music or drawing. Often he will require the services of a Mentor to turn his life around (next).

  • Mentor. A Mentor character will often guide the Angry Young Man, though sometimes the Idealist as well. Mentors are often Old Timers, though they don’t have to be; in the best spec drama screenplays Mentors don’t ‘know everything’ and will have their own arcs as well.

  • Bad Dad. Most commonly from a working-class background, Bad Dad will be an alcoholic, a gambler, violent, ill-educated and/or a sexual abuser of his children. He will most often be out of work and view his family as his possessions. Power is everything to him, but once our protagonist finally stands up to him and realises how pathetic he is, he will be crushed fairly easily, committing suicide or even handing himself in to the police.

  • Dead Dad. Most commonly from a middle-class or privileged background, Dead Dad will appear most often in flashbacks. Unlike Bad Dad, Dead Dad will be a fantastic father but his loss early in the protagonist’s life will create a void s/he can never truly fill (and it usually is a female character, FYI).