When marketing your screenplay, to specific outlets, describe only those portions of your story and character that fit with the given outlet. Develop a marketing plan for you work for each outlet.
Optional – create literally or in your mind a trailer or poster for your screenplay – what would be your promise to an audience?
The overall goal here is to create something that is visually clear and compelling for a reader or audience member. We want them to not put the script down because each moment or page leads them to the next until the ending. Also, when and wherever you can be visual – the more visual you are, the greater the chance you will have to pull them in. Do tell the story, but don’t forget to paint the picture that shows them how it’s going to be. And remember to do it as quickly as possible – or at least within the first ten pages.
(Audience member: “When you are setting up your book to be a screenplay, how much of the description do you keep?”)
Not a lot. Only bring over what is essential to pull the reader in. Nothing more. You don’t want to bog them down with description because your goal is to pull them into your story and characters. You don’t want a lot of tedious description but you do want to describe your characters in setting in a such a way that you give them just enough and wanting more.
This is going to sound inappropriate but here goes. Now I want to say that I know absolutely nothing about stripping or pole dancing. I wrote a segment one time for, I think it was NYPD Blue and the producer said to me “you obviously have never gone to a strip club.” And that is still true today. But here goes.
(Audience laughter)
If you are watching a stripper and they come up on the stage and take all their clothes off in ten seconds – then they are just dancing up their naked – this gets boring because there is no tension… no sense of mystery. But, if they get up there and dance and take one little piece of clothing at a time and just tease you – they create tension and interest. Why because we all want to see what they will reveal next. Am I right?
(Audience laughter)
Well writing in this case is like stripping. You give them what they need to pull them in, no more… no less. Your goal is to keep them interested and engaged. Once they make the commitment to stay then you have them where you want them. Your tools are description, dialogue and action and you want to use them a tautly as possible. No waste… every word you include counts toward your goal of keeping your reader engaged. Anything more should be cut. You don’t want to cut the heart of your work – somewhere in the middle is the answer. I have an exercise you can try at home. Take ten lines of description from your book and boil it down to two without losing the tension, impact or meaning. Try that on a couple of passages to see how it feels.
Look I want to say that I love language and love using language in my writing. I am a playwright, and that is a medium where language is paramount. However, film and television are visual mediums and focus on what to “show” rather than “tell” and audience.
(Audience member: “Should we write in camera angles?”)
No, do not. The director and director of photography will want to do their own visual rendition of your script. They will not follow your angles anyway. Just tell the story unless a specific camera angle is needed to convey the plot or character. I want to thank you all for being such a great group. I hope you enjoy the remainder of the Writer’s Conference and I am available for any questions. Do I have any questions from anyone?
Stock tips? Recipes?
(Audience laughter)
(Audience member: “What about lighting?”)
Only as it is needed to describe the ambience or setting of your work and if by mentioning it you heighten the dramatic moment. Do you remember our example of a woman walking down a dark alley who is strangled from behind? I think a bit more description of lighting would help that set up. However, with that said, you don’t have to light every scene. I know as writers, we all want to do a good job setting the mood for the work and you could spend a page and half describing the light – how the sunrise cracked over the Tuscan hills. But in a screenplay, you have got to get to it. They will want to know that the setting includes the sun coming over the Tuscan hills but they don’t want you to tell them how to create it.
(Audience female member: “If you want it to be filmed in sepia – can you mention that?”)
Yes, that’s fine.
(Audience male member: “When you talk about the end in the beginning or working to it, you’re not talking about giving away the end… are you?”)
No, I’m talking about that pivotal moment just before. I don’t want you to give away your ending. I want them to read your screenplay to find out how it will all turn out. I want you to take them right up to the edge of the cliff, I want them to feel their toes hanging off the edge, but they will have to read your screenplay to find out why your character is at the edge of a cliff and whether or not they jump. I want you to take them as close to the end as possible – start your story at that pivotal point.
(Audience member: “So you don’t want them to know how it ends when you start?”)
Exactly. Take them right up to it… make it compelling, very exciting, very now… very inevitable.
(Audience member: “What about stories in foreign countries – is there a market for that?”)
Why not? As long as you have a clear idea of the demographic your work reaches and can connect that to an American market.
(Audience member: “One more quick questions about setting. Do you have to define where you are or can you define it as anywhere USA?”)
The generality you speak of can be a good or bad thing. If anywhere USA supports your idea, then fine. If being a bit more specific helps your idea, I would add that detail.
Again, I want to thank you all. You have been a great group!
(Audience applause)
Thank you.
THE FIRST TEN PAGES
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
25th Annual Writers Conference
HOW TO ADAPT YOUR NOVEL INTO A SCREENPLAY
BOOK 4
Frank Catalano
25
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
The First Ten Pages
I’M GOING TO say this. Screenwriting is a lot like real estate… “LOCATION – LOCATION – LOCATION. Location is everything. I live in Los Angeles and I went into the bank one day and while waiting on line I was talking to someone I knew about her screenplay. As we talked I noticed that there was a large amount to people listening to our conversation. Other people on line, the tellers and the management staff… in short everybody was interested in our conversation because it had to do with her selling her screenplay. When I saw this, I said in an elevated tone, how many of you people are in the process of writing or already a screenplay. After everyone laughed a bit a large group of those listening raised their hands. I thought to myself… my goodness… almost everyone has a screenplay!
(Audience laughter)
The reason why I’m telling you this story is to illustrate that almost EVERYONE in Los Angeles is either writing a screenplay, wants to write a screenplay or has a relative or roommate that has a screenplay.
(Audience laughter)
For those of you who do not live in Los Angeles this fervor for writing screenplays and the biz is more than likely not as intense.
Why am I asking where you live? Because I am trying to gage your availability to physically market your script in person. Bottom line is that everyone is either doing it or wants to do it and a lot of the communication between writer and producer is done face to face. So what about those of you who don’t live in Los Angeles? How can you get your ideas heard and read?
(Audience member: “What about if you have an agent?”)
When you say agent, do you mean literary agent for your fiction books?
(Audience member: “Yes.”)
That’s fine… but remember if your representation does not have a relationsh
ip with the person or producer they are trying to get to read your project, they too will be operating from a disadvantage. Also, location is a factor. If your agent is in North Carolina they will not have the same access that a local agency might have. So what you want to think about is how to get your idea or screenplay in front of someone who will give it the attention and consideration that it deserves.
So I thought that an interesting seminar might be about how to do that. Assuming you are not in the room with the reader because you are not in Los Angeles – what can you do to hook the reader and make them want to read the whole script? Now I keep referring to the “reader” as opposed to the term “producer.” Why? In most cases, if you can get your script to be considered by a producer, that person will not be the person who actually reads your material. Submitted material is often “covered” by professional readers or production company staff assigned to that function. This person will read your script and then prepare a professional report about it. The term for this practice is called “coverage.” When coverage is done on your script, it is essentially a report prepared by a reader that includes a 1-2 page synopsis of your story, character breakdown and an evaluation as to whether it merits further consideration. Sometimes the reader will also suggest above the line cast or director. The report, like Yelp, rates your work quantitatively by specific categories that may include: title, main characters, supporting characters, setting, plot, budget and commercial viability.
As a screenwriter you have several challenges.
Getting your script in front of someone to be read.
Getting the reader to like or be interested enough in giving your script their fullest attention rather than rejecting outright.
Getting positive coverage so that your script can move to the next level.
So how can you accomplish that? How can you get your script past the reader?
The answer is that you have to get them up front within the first ten pages. If you have them at that point, you will be more likely to keep them through the end of the work.
You more than likely won’t have the opportunity to pitch your idea in person, so you have to do within the screenplay format. Have you ever had this happen to you? You get a response from a producer or agent that tells you that would like to see ten pages of your work?
They say something like: “Send over ten pages… and if we like it… we will call you.”
(Audience members nod in agreement)
The hardest part for me has always been which ten pages to send? Do I select the rip- roaring climax of the story or a pivotal point in the plot or just send them the first ten? Now earlier this week, I did a seminar entitled START YOUR STORY AT THE END. I think a few of you were attended that seminar and the theory behind that statement START YOUR STORY AT THE END is based upon starting your work at the most pivotal moment in your screenplay. The most exciting moment that pulls in the reader or audience and has the greatest possibility that they will want to go further and read the entire work. So that answer to my question about which ten pages to send them is simple. Send them the first ten pages. But make those first ten pages create the desire for anyone reading them to want to go on to the end to find out what happens.
Now I’m saying this to all of you in this room. Those who live in Arizona… North Carolina… New York… Utah and even San Diego – if you don’t have the opportunity to be there to be on your feet, in the moment pitching your story, then you have got to let your script do the work for you.
We live in an immediate gratification society… television and the Internet have done this to us. Our attention span is short. If we don’t get what we are looking for right away, we do a mental check out. We may be going through the motions but we are not really connected. So we have got to make our connections soon and make them meaningful.
You don’t have a lot of time to do this in. So I have set the arbitrary length of ten pages. That’s your goal, to connect irrevocably in ten pages. Create an air of inevitability -- after that, they will be connected and you will have them for the entire journey.
26
CREATING INEVITABILITY IN THE FIRST TEN PAGES
The First Ten Pages
ONE THING THAT we can all share in common is that we are all at one time or another members of an audience. We all are exposed to media… the movies, television and the Internet. Now I will ask you this. Put your audience hat on. Now, here’s the question.
What about the first ten minutes or a motion picture or a television production? You sit there in a darkened room and experience the film or television show. Now think about how you reacted.
It’s either you thought, this is interesting I want to experience more or this is boring and I’m thinking about eating a cookie. If it’s television, you might reach over for the remote and just change the channel. One of my pet TV peeves is when the new crop of fall shows premiere. During the first few episodes of each show, the writers spend an inordinate time introducing characters and character relationships at the expense of plot. The net effect is that these early shows are relegated into tedious scenes of character development. This is probably why almost all of the new shows fail to gain an audience and are cancelled. I’d like the networks to spread out the seasons with longer runs of episodes so that each new show can develop their characters in an interesting way and by doing so build and audience.
Every season, there are usually one or two breakaway hits while the rest fade away. Ask yourself this, what about those hits attract us to them? What elements do we identify with? What elements do they have that makes us keep coming back and want to know more. If we can figure that out, we can include these elements in your screenplays. Please remember, if we didn’t like the beginning we wouldn’t be back again to make them a hit.
Same question for the movies… what elements are present in the first ten minutes of a feature film that pull us in? In my other seminars we talked about beginnings that pull you in and make you want to see more. For example, the opening of the motion picture Jaws (1975) with a classic opening that pulls you in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrEvK-tv5OI
It’s nighttime on Amity Beach. Chrissy, a young girl runs along the beach toward the water followed by her inebriated male friend. As she gets closer to the water, she removes her clothing, he stumbles after her, and then falls head over heals into the sand. She jumps into the water and swims outward.
Then we see a close up of her head popping out of the water as she yells out “come in the water!”
The next time we see here is from the point of view of the shark – she swims peacefully in the water as the shark gets closer and closer – as it does the now famous music intensifies. Then we see Chrissy one last time smiling just before her legs get tugged and pulled below the water. Then she let’s out a blood horrific scream as she is dragged across the water. Then there is one brief moment, where it looks like she might make it, she grabs onto a harbor buoy but is snapped away and disappears beneath the water. A moment later, all is quiet and serene on the beach and water. All this happens within the first three minutes of the movie. It pulls the audience in so that they have to see more to find out what it was that pulled Chrissy into the water and how it will all be resolved at the end.
Okay, that’s the final film. Now, what did the screenplay JAWS by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb -- Based on novel by Peter Benchley look like for the same scene?
1 OVER BLACK 1
Sounds of the inner spaces rushing forward. Then a splinter of blue light in the center of the picture. It breaks wide, showing the top and bottom a silhouetted curtain of razor sharp teeth suggesting that we are inside of a tremendous gullet, looking out at the onrushing under- sea world at night. HEAR a symphony of underwater sounds: landslide, metabolic sounds, the rare and secret noises that certain undersea species share with each other.
CUT TO
2 EXT. LIGHTHOUSE - NIGHT 2
Caught in its blinding flash, the light moves on, fingering the f
og. A lone buoy dongs somewhere out at sea.
3 EXT. AMITY MAINSTREET - NIGHT 3
The quaint little resort town is quiet in the middle of the night. A ground fog rounds a corner and begins spreading toward us. It fills over sidewalks and streets like some Biblical plague
4 EXT. THE SOUTH SHORE OF LONG ISLAND - NIGHT 4
It is a pleasant, moonlit, windless night in mid-June. We see a long straight stretch of white beach. Behind the low dunes are the dark shapes of large expensive houses. The fog that has reached Amity proper is seen only as a low-hanging cloud that is pushing in from the sea. HEAR a number of voices sing- ing. It sounds like an Eastern University’s Alma Mater.
5 ANOTHER ANGLE – BEACH 5
A bonfire is blazing. Gathered around it are about a dozen young men and women who are merrily trading fight songs from their respective universities. Two young people break away from the circle, Chrissie almost pulling a drunk and disorderly Tom Cassidy behind her.
6 CLOSEUP - CASSIDY 6
makes a clumsy try at kissing Christina but she laughs and ducks away.
7 ANOTHER PART OF THE BEACH 7
The fire, now one hundred yards in the b.g., silhouettes Chrissie running up a steep dune.
Once there, she pauses to look at the ocean that we can only hear. Cassidy plods up the dune behind her, grossly out of shape.
Chrissie runs down a few steps, leaving Tom Cassidy reeling on the summit. Chrissie’s dress, bra and panties fly toward Tom, who can’t make a fist to catch them. The dress drapes over one half of his head. Soggily aroused, Cassidy struggles to get his shoe off.
But Chrissie is already in full flight toward the shore. In she goes, a delicate splash, surfacing in a cold ocean that is unusually placid. Chrissie pulls with her arms, drawing herself into deeper water.
That’s when we see it. A gentle bulge in the water, a ripple that passes her a dozen feet away. A wave of pressure lifts her up and eases her down again. Her face shows the beginning of fear. Maybe it’s Tom. She smiles and looks around for him, then her eyes go to the beach where Tom -- too drunk to stand -- one pant leg off, is struggling with his other shoe. Chrissie turns and starts for shore.
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