by Greg DePaul
Then he went to Hollywood, where he has struggled for over twenty years, typing away at screenplay after screenplay. About fifteen years ago, he had a screenplay optioned by a well-known producer, but it never got made. Then he briefly worked as a “baby writer” on a TV show. But he was on staff for only one season, and none of his scripts ever aired.
After that he failed to get hired onto another show and his career fell into disrepair. Since then he’s been tirelessly writing new scripts, always showing a new feature spec to agents.
But he’s never broken through. He has nothing to show for those many years except the bruises. All that time spent writing and re-writing screenplays hasn’t left him with anything close to the satisfaction of that novel he wrote decades ago.
This is the long haul of the feature screenwriter. Unless you break in, everything you write goes nowhere. Slowly. And that’s not healthy. Writers need to know they are being read and something is resulting from their work.
This is why screenwriters who write only feature scripts need to do something to feel a connection to somebody on the receiving end. This goes double for comedy writers, who need to feel the laughter resulting from their work. If you’re writing your life away every night in some stucco apartment in West L.A. while holding down a day job and doing little else, I recommend you consider one of the following steps to keep your sanity so you don’t end up like my friend the young-adult-novel-author-turned-frustrated-screenwriter:
Join a writers group. This will allow you to show your work and receive criticism on a regular basis. This could involve writers reading scripts and getting together to give criticism, or actors reading work out loud. Either way is better than writing exclusively for a handful of studio readers and agents’ assistants.
Write other material than just screenplays: short stories, freelance news articles, sketches, whatever. Do this to reassure yourself that you are, in fact, a real writer—whether Hollywood loves you or not. Because Hollywood often ignores great writers. Just ask F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ray Bradbury.
Well, OK, you can’t ask them now, but anyway …
Season to Taste
Screenwriters love to crow about all the soul-wrenching compromises they must make to succeed. Go to any coffee shop in West L.A. and you’ll hear their whines rising over the screech of the cappuccino machine.
But it’s bunk. Nobody becomes a screenwriter to change the world. You do it for money or recognition. Or to write your way into the biz so you can move on to directing or starring in your own films, or … you see what I mean.
I’m not telling you that screenwriting must be hell or that you must abandon all hope of doing meaningful work. Not at all. I want you to enjoy it and write scripts that deeply affect people.
But to succeed, you must not work in such a way that you are enigmatic or self-indulgent. Your work must fit the medium, not the other way around. Your talent serves a purpose, and that purpose is film.
So, as you go through the many stages of concepting, writing, re-writing, and the like that make up the hours, weeks, months, and years of your life, you must always season to taste.
I know that some of you will turn up your noses and say, No way. I’m writing this script to change the world and I’m sure as hell going to speak in my unfettered voice to do it!
Bully for you. I hope you intend to shoot, edit, produce, and distribute what you write. If not, tie on an apron and get used to seasoning to taste.
You may also be under the mistaken assumption that certain A-list writers don’t need to worry about satisfying the reader or the buyer. Or that writers of independent movies need not do so. Or that Oscar-winning writers don’t need to fuss about pleasing folks. You’d be wrong on all counts.
Years ago, I attended an event hosted by the Writers Guild in which Michael Arndt was interviewed about his screenplay for Little Miss Sunshine, for which he earned an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. I found him after the event, standing in the lobby, surrounded by a bevy of admiring, aspiring writers.
I waited as all those writers asked all the wrong questions, such as “What was it like to work with such-and-such a star?” and “Did you get to watch them shoot the movie?”
None of that interested me. Nope. I was—and remain—primarily concerned with one thing when it comes to other screenwriters. So when I got my chance, I launched into my question and took notes as he answered.
My question: “What is your writing process?”
Arndt took a deep breath and began to answer, particularizing the answer to Little Miss Sunshine. He told me about the many, many drafts he wrote and how hard it was for him to cut the scenes that he loved most but had determined were unnecessary to tell the story. And then he told me something that I never forgot because it partly explained the success of the film:
He talked about how he used readers during his re-writing process. At a certain point, when he decided he needed to get a response from a colleague, he would send the latest draft to a trusted fellow writer along with a questionnaire. The questionnaire asked what characters the reader liked best, worst, and why.
Now it should be stated that a lot of screenwriters I know would have trouble doing this. For a writer who has spent months, if not years, on a script, it’s a little like asking someone to stab you in the face, over and over, with a fork.
If a reader said she or he disliked something about a character, that quality—and any scenes or parts of scenes in which that quality was shown—was cut or changed.
That’s what I call seasoning to taste. Arndt wanted to succeed, and he accepted that, at a certain point, he would not be able to recognize the pimples on his baby. So he invited criticism and reacted accordingly. There’s no point in trying to sell a script with pimples if you can be rid of them, and that’s exactly what he set out to do—cleanse his script of anything that might keep the reader from absolutely loving the characters. Which is one reason his movie is so memorable—because the audience comes to love every one of those characters: the grandfather, the mom and dad, the uncle, and the two kids. All of them shine because Michael Arndt put them all through extensive dermabrasion and wiped them clean of anything that might make us dislike them. He got rid of all those reasons to put the script down and stop reading—and all those reasons for the audience to stop watching. He didn’t do it by being strident and self-indulgent; no, it was an act of professional humility.
Because, after all, somebody has to enjoy eating this goulash you’re cooking. So you might as well ask your dinner guests to sample it as you cook.
And when they tell you what it needs … listen.
Pop Quiz!
1. If you want to improve your screenwriting and succeed in Hollywood, you should spend approximately this much time per day in the chair writing: A) Four hours.
B) Six hours.
C) Eight hours.
D) All of the above. That is, all of the above amounts added together. You should spend eighteen hours a day writing. Do that, schmooze aggressively, be very, very lucky, and you just might break in.
2. What in tarnation IS a screenplay? A) It’s art, dammit, and everybody who reads my latest three-hundred-page script had better understand that.
B) It’s an opportunity for me, the writer, to tell the actors exactly how to say their lines.
C) It’s a proposal for a movie.
D) It’s a proposal for a movie. (I put this answer in twice to make sure you’d get it.)
3. Which hat do I wear when going out in a rainstorm? A) My writing hat.
B) My editing hat.
C) My ass hat.
D) None of the above. The “hat” in “writing hat” is metaphorical. You need not actually wear it. But if you do wear it, make sure you don’t edit until you put on your editing hat. And never, ever wear an ass hat. Because that’s just silly.
4. I’ve been writing screenplays and getting nowhere for the last five years. As a result, when I tell
people I’m a writer, even I have trouble believing it. Therefore, I should: A) Quit writing, move back to Paramus and take a job working in my dad’s unregulated asbestos factory.
B) Get out of my little apartment occasionally and maybe even take a short walk.
C) Write some freelance newspaper articles on the side, just so I can remind myself I’m a writer.
D) Join a writers group.
E) Everything except A. Though Paramus is kinda nice this time of year.
5. The most important rule of writing is A.I.C., which means: A) Abe’s in Cleveland.
B) Amy isn’t chaste.
C) Arggggh, I’m Canadian.
D) Ass In Chair. Ass In Chair. Ass In Chair. Say it a hundred times fast while sitting in a chair to remind yourself.
6. As a screenwriter, I know that whatever I write is: A) Sacrosanct. I do not write to please the audience. I write to please myself. Then I shoot, edit, and produce my own movies and watch them in a little room by myself.
B) Going to be twisted, torn, disemboweled, and flushed away by a herd of re-writers before it ever gets close to the screen. And that’s if I’m lucky enough to sell it and see it get made at all.
C) Chiseled into stone, never to be even slightly altered by the directors and the actors.
D) Gold. Absolute box-office gold. Because I read Greg’s book and used everything I learned when writing my latest screenplay. Thanks, Greg! (Disclosure: I wrote this myself.)
Act 2
You vs. The Page
4
Funny Peeps
You can’t write funny characters unless you know funny characters. I’m talking about the funny people you encounter everywhere you go.
What’s that? You don’t think everybody in your life—every parent, lover, bartender, train conductor, and dental hygienist—is funny? Mind-bogglingly funny? Fall-on-the-floor-and-make-you-convulsively-puke-up-your-lunch funny?
You’re wrong.
Great comedy writers are like that kid in The Sixth Sense—they see funny people. They see them wherever they go and no matter what is going on. And if you don’t do the same, you better start. Or stop reading this book right now.
You may be tempted to think that Hollywood’s top comedy screenwriters create funny characters by sprinkling magical fairy dust in the air and—Poof!—funny peeps appear.
But no. By the time characters show up in a script, they’re already well into middle age. That’s because the writer has been carrying them around in his or her head for a long, long time. And that’s because most characters are at least loosely based upon people the screenwriter knows from personal life.
Once you embrace yourself as the source of all your characters, you’ll start to realize that everyone around you is unbelievably, outrageously, ludicrously funny. You just weren’t seeing it before.
You must see the funny to write the funny.
That wallflower you avoided in high school who could never get a date, works at an electronics store, doesn’t drive a car, and has never had sex? You could write a whole script about that guy. Actually, someone already did—The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
That security guard you never make eye contact with when you go to the museum? Who just stands there and does absolutely nothing all day? That’s the guy from Night at the Museum.
That frumpy office assistant whose idea of a life-changing New Year’s resolution is to write in her diary every day? Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones’s Diary.
You just need to see these folks all around you.
I had an uncle, may he rest in peace, who was shot in the head on two, separate, unrelated occasions. One was a robbery; he got shot, was saved on the operating table, and eventually recovered. Then, years later, he was hunting with his brother, who failed to tell the difference between him and a deer. Boom!
Again, doctors saved him, and he eventually recovered from his second gunshot wound to the head.
Now you may find that story dark—and it is. But it’s also funny. And from that uncle I’ve created many a character: goofballs who are prone to shooting themselves, absent-minded hunters, unlucky people, etc.
And when you are combing your family for funny characters, pay attention to their peculiar obsessions.
My father-in-law is one of those people who cannot stand disorganization. Everything must always be in its right place. In his garage, every rake and every tool has a demarcated spot. He gets his cars cleaned—inside and out—monthly. He recently emailed my wife because he was about to have minor surgery and he wanted her to be able to immediately cancel his internet and cell phone service if he died while under anesthesia. After all, why pay for a single day of service after death?
He’s funny. Naturally, he doesn’t know it. And that’s a cardinal rule of observational comedy; the funniest people usually don’t know they’re funny. In fact, they take themselves very seriously. It’s up to us to find them and use them in our work.
But remember to change their names. Otherwise you’re liable to get sued.
Now before you start adapting your entire family to the screen, I want you to take a step back and ponder …
What Is Character?
Go to a dictionary for this one. Usually you’ll find a few meanings. Most dictionaries hold it to be the sum or aggregate of the many traits making up someone’s personality. Those same dictionaries will also tell you that traits related to morality and ethics are the primary focus of that aggregation.
That’s why so many Greek tragedies are concerned with presenting how the protagonist of a drama handles terrible dilemmas and painful choices—because the authors of those ancient plays wanted their dramas to peel back the layers of their protagonist’s personality to reveal his inner moral strength. And that could only be done if the character was supremely tested.
As we watch him wrestle with fateful decisions, we get to see inside the character and discover his true nature. If, for instance, he chooses to run from his fate, then we may conclude that his essential nature is cowardly. If he boldly confronts the truth—as does Oedipus—then we may conclude that his essential nature is brave.
There, I bet you never thought I’d mention Oedipus in a book about comedy screenwriting. But to delve further …
For this analysis of drama to work, you have to believe that people—and characters in a story—have natures, and essential natures at that.
Now here’s where I loop it all back to comedy screenwriting:
Comedy depends upon the idea of essential natures. Great comic characters can usually be defined in a single word, and that word is usually an adjective.
Andy, the protagonist in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, is fearful. Sandy and Diana, the dual protagonists of Identity Thief, are careful and reckless, respectively. Ron Burgundy, the protagonist of Anchorman, is vain.
So there you are—I just compared Oedipus to Ron Burgundy. But there is a resemblance. Both can be reduced to a single adjective. And both stayed classy.
Now it’s important to recognize that there is no moment in Oedipus or Anchorman when the protagonist ever verbally articulates his or her essential nature. Ron never says, “I am vain.”
Rather, a series of escalating incidents, tied together by a story, prove the protagonist’s essential nature. We, the audience, intuit this trait as we add up what we’ve seen onscreen. That’s what makes character compelling; it’s ours to figure out.
In a thriller or a melodrama, character may be developed over time. There may even be moments when the audience is made unsure about the true nature of the character it’s watching. Is she good or bad? Is she a craven killer or a misunderstood hero?
In comedy, it is usually the opposite.
The audience needs to know the essential nature of the protagonist as early as possible. This is because the funny is usually found in the stark contrast between the protagonist and his or her situation. A boring family man trapped next door to a raging frat house—as in Neighbors—
can be funny. But we need to know early on that our protagonist is, in fact, a boring family man.
That being the case, there are two basic ways to go about creating characters …
The Inside-Out Method
You know this method. This is when you come up with the protagonist first—brainstorming various details about the character—before tackling the story.
This naturally leads to a character-based story, such as Trainwreck, Anchorman, or Silver Linings Playbook. In these movies, concept takes a back seat, and the story is dictated by the protagonists’ unique traits and flaws.
Consider The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Judd Apatow and Steve Carrell dreamed up a painfully shy, hesitant, middle-aged man and built a story around him. I wasn’t in the room when they wrote it, but I can think of myriad possible ways they could have revealed and developed his character. To their great credit, they came up with some hilarious ones.
Remember the poker scene? That’s a great example of story revealing character. In that scene, Andy’s potty-mouthed co-workers confront him with randy stories of their sexual conquests, making him squirm. Challenged by them, he lies about his sexual past. When he fails, we learn the hilarious truth about him.
The inside-out method makes sense when the protagonist will be played by a great comic actor like Steve Carrell or Will Ferrell, who apparently have stables of developed characters to draw upon. It also works when the lead role will be played by a stand-up comic with a pronounced, well-honed persona, such as Amy Schumer.
But most of us are not those people. We’re screenwriters looking to sell a script or make a movie. And starting with character ain’t easy. In fact, it’s often the wrong way to go.