A Screenwriter's Journey #9: Smart House

/

Okay, big time jump forward. The first eight entries in this series were originally sent out by e-mail as I wrote “Beware the Dortches.” They weren’t published here until after I finished that screenplay. But while they were publishing, I kept writing. First I finished an adaptation of the “Alpha Flight” comics and an experimental, almost no-dialog sci fi script called “Shark Road.” I’m about two thirds of the way through “Planet B,” my next feature, but I took a break from that over the last week or so to write my second short film. It’s called “Smart House.”

But what the hell is a short film?

I’m only just now coming to the point where I have an idea what short films are. They really don’t follow the same rules as features. They don’t share most of the structures and many of the tools of writing a feature don’t work here, or lose impact because they aren’t given time to develop.

It’s super hard for a short film to be about characters. You can do a lot of things with ONE character or one relationship, but beyond that, you just don’t have time.

And plot is really hard to pull off in a short, too. You just don’t have time. Especially when the only good plot is one that is based on characters and you have to establish those characters before a plot becomes interesting. You just don’t have the time.

So what are short films about? They certainly have to have some characters and you could do a film that focuses really specifically on a character’s daily life or one really quick moment that serves as an important point in their life. You could certainly do a slice-of-life kinda thing that points to some bigger truth.

You could also go more intellectual and use it as a way to comment on society or on film or on some other specific subject. A quick impression that makes you think about bigger things. A doorway to learn more or examine things more thoughtfully.

Or you could could lean more towards a quick-but-clever plot device. This is what I did with my first short film, “Wish I’d Never Met You,” which is currently in post-production. I had a producer who likes my writing request a short script she could shoot quickly and inexpensively. I had an idea that I had been toying with about the victim of a hitman who was caught in a time loop and had starting developing it originally as a text-based game. But the idea hadn’t really worked out as a game, so it had been lying around waiting for another avenue. I wrote it as a short in a day or two and the time-loop plot device fully created the plot and structure, so I didn’t really have to consider what to write.

I’d been looking for a good idea to develop into a short, but I hadn’t thought out what that meant like I just did in this post. I was still loose on the very idea of what a short could be. I knew I wanted it to be one of the types of short films that comments on society and such, but didn’t have an idea at first.

And then I thought back to my most prolific fiction writing period before 2019 and it turned out to be a two-year period in the early 2000s where I wrote more than 30 short stories. And the short stories that I liked the most and wrote about were largely horror and sci fi that was influenced by the likes of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, EC Comics (Tales From the Crypt, etc.), various horror anthology movies/shows (Masters of Horror, TFtC, Tales From the Hood, etc.) and the DC horror titles of the 60s-80s (House of Mystery, Weird War Tales, Unexpected, etc.). So many of these stories were based on the ironic twist or a horrific take on karma. People who did bad things got their just desserts in horrific ways.

I’ve always loved those kinda stories. And they’re making a comeback with shows like Black Mirror and the Creepshow revival. So that’s where I landed for short films, that I want to write them in that vein. They don’t all have to be horror or sci fi, but they would have that kind of structure. You give a brief setup of the character(s) that are important, you put them in a singular situation that involves conflict and you get them out of it or you don’t. Short films don’t have as strong a need to have happy endings, so this form does lend itself more towards sci fi/horror, which is fine, since that’s what I tend to write.

I always have a ton of ideas right before I go to bed. If they’re good enough, I’ll write them down, and sometimes they develop into something really good. That’s what happened this time. I had a near-dreamlike thought, just an image, of a smart house that somehow became aware and killed its owners. That’s where “Smart House” started.

It’s a short, so it basically came down to developing that premise and writing it. I won’t spoil too many of the details, since I already gave away the ending, but here are a few thoughts that influenced the story.

-If the house is a “smart house” that has the potential to kill people, how would it do that? What form would its killing ability take?

-Who are the family? Do they deserve to be killed? Will anyone care if they are killed? Is anyone else killed?

-What is the smart house’s motivation to kill? And this one I’ll actually answer, because it’s the basic premise of the story, the family goes on vacation and gets stuck away from home for a long period because of COVID. When they come back, the house doesn’t recognize them and thinks they are a threat.

-But why would the house think they are a threat? Race is the obvious answer. It’s both very much of the moment and tied into COVID, but it’s easily tied in with technology, too. The stories of how facial recognition software designed by white people can’t recognize black people provide a pretty pointed cause that helps fully develop the theme of the film.

I didn’t start with a theme of race, but as I developed it logically and in context of the real world, that’s where the story took me. Once I got going, it just immediately felt like that was the obvious way to take the story forward and tie it in to the two biggest things going on in the news right now.

Once I answered those questions, the film basically wrote itself. I needed to establish the family, so I had them interacting over breakfast as they pack to go on vacation. Then they leave and the rest of the story develops in their absence before they return. I knew the ending, so I had to make sure to include all the details that would make that ending work and write them in a fashion that feels organic, like, “of course that’s the way things happened.” That cause led to that effect, that action led to that reaction.

In all, it worked out to be about 20 pages. I’m not sure how to pitch short films yet, so I’ll have to work on that, because this one is pretty good, I think. Could also work as an episode of a horror anthology series, too, although it may be a little short for an hour-long show.

Anyway, that’s for another day, but you can read “Smart House” now.

Ken-K: So I Finally Watched NBC's Cruel Intentions Pilot

/

Check out the latest video from our friend Ken-K!

Cruel Intentions may have been one of the standout films for the late 90s era of "Young Hollywood", but the property has had the worst luck in terms of being adapted for television. Even a more recent effort featuring the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar couldn't even make it past the pilot stage. After finally checking out the pilot shot for NBC, I have a pretty good idea as to why.

RevEx Social Distancing "Small Table" Show, 50th Anniversary Edition: "Netflix Party Tonight!"

/

What other show could possibly bring together boxed wine, the Towson Tigers, Henry Rollins, Jessica Jones, Minor Threat, rose, Netflix and my first ever Trump impression? It's the 50th anniversary edition of the RevEx Social Distancing "Small Table" Show!

A Screenwriter's Journey #8: Farewell to Beware the Dortches

/

"Beware the Dortches" is done. It clocks in at a lean 84 pages. That's actually the shortest feature script I've written, BUT as it is an action-oriented movie, there's less dialogue and more action than my other scripts, so it being the shortest is fine. I was worried that it would come in under 80 pages, and that would be too short (although Mad Max Fury Road was apparently under 70 pages because it was so action-oriented).

Like I said before, finishing up the rest of the script once I had all the scenes set in place was easy. Just filling in details and dialogue at that point.

Once done, here's my process...

First up is spellcheck. I use the WriterDuet software for my screenplays and it has a pretty bad spellcheck. Everything else is great and it's free, but the spellcheck is really annoying. It wasn't until while writing Dortches that they added in-document spellcheck (the little red squiggly line under misspelled words). I found this out the hard way on one of my early screenplays. I thought it was auto spellchecked and it was not. The reader complained about the typos. She did not buy the script.

So, I run the spellcheck (which is slow and will take like an hour for an average screenplay). After that, I do a full read through and fix any typos that weren't caught, examine sentences for logic and clarity, try to remove as much passive voice as possible, and make sure that the whole story fits together. Most importantly, I follow up on all the setup/payoff combinations. If I set something up, did it pay off? If something happens, how did we get there? Does it all fit together, make sense and is it a coherent whole.

When I finished the first draft, it was like 81 pages. Going through that process got it up to 84. Clarity sometimes adds words. And I found a set-up that didn't pay off (I added the pay off in later). And I found a continuity error, a character that was killed alone was last seen in the company of other people, so I had to circle back and split them up so that scene worked.

And once that was done, one last spellcheck and export PDF.

And that's the end of "Beware the Dortches." For now.

I am not someone who goes back and tinkers endlessly on old scripts. I tend to leave them alone. Unless some good idea comes through that would make it better (this happens from time to time, where entire subplots are added in to make it better). Other people like to tinker, but I figure I'm better off leaving heavy revisions up to when someone is paying for those revisions. If not, I figure I'm better off working on something new and expanding my skillset and practice, practice, practice.

Now I'll try to sell it. I have a producer who has purchased three scripts previously and she said she'll read anything I write. So I've already sent it to her. If she's not interested, I'll start pitching on VirtualPitchFest, but that's a story for another day.

A Screenwriter's Journey #7: Killing Writer's Block

/

Now things are really starting to roll. With the beginning of the structure in place, it was time to further develop things. I have all the existing pieces arranged as best I can. To solidify that, I go through and start giving each chronological idea a scene header. For those that don't know, these tell you whether you are inside or outside, the time of day and where things are taking place.

As I go through and make these scene headings, the locations quickly solidify and once a choice is made about a location in one scene, that informs other locations for other scenes. And if I have notes that don't have a home (like Ahmed is a football player), I find a place in the story to show that and not tell it. Going through each of those things leads to not only more scenes and more locations and more characters, it helps organize the script more. Things shift to more logical places, things that don't make sense anymore are eliminated and new things have to be added.

All the set-up ideas for characters, motives, personalities, kills and any other outcomes have to be created here. Every set-up has to be brainstormed and every payoff has to be thought out. This is easy since I already know who is going to live and die. I have to pick when and where each death takes place and find ways to set-up the deaths, fears and obstacles that the characters can overcome or fail to overcome.

So, at about 35 pages, I had most of the scenes set. The next thing was to figure out the rest of them and over the 5 pages after that, I came up with every scene that I think that I need in the story.

And that's the tipping point. Once all the scenes are in the document, it's a race to the finish. I don't write the screenplay straight through, I go through the scenes and mark the unfinished scenes with an easily searchable ***.

And this gets to my method for killing writer's block. I take two approaches to this. The first is if I get stuck on a scene and can't come up with anything or I don't have the inspiration or interest in writing a scene right away, I search that *** and go on to another scene that I feel good about or am inspired by. This works really, really well. The document currently has 39 *** points. That means I have 39 scenes to finish writing (and an uncounted number of scenes that I've already finished because of inspiration or previous work).

The second strategy is to methodically go through the script and find each one of those *** and force myself to write one sentence for each. The first sentence in the scene that hasn't been written. No matter what it is. It doesn't even have to be good, just get a sentence out. I can fix it later. About half the time, this leads to more than one sentence. Forcing myself to write one sentence creates ideas for what comes after that sentence. I write one, if more comes, I keep going. If nothing else comes, I move on to the next ***.

Notably, during this part of the process, if something gives me a new idea or a connection to something else, I write that note down and save it for later, even if for now it's in the wrong place. On a review, I'll move those notes to where they belong, but not while writing is coming out. I try not to get distracted when the words are flowing.

One last note on this process, and this is super helpful. By not writing things in order and skipping around, it does two important things. First is that it keeps me thinking about the entire script all the time. I'm always seeing every page and every scene and making sure that they tie together. It's very easy to see the connections with all the parts of the story always in front of my face.

The second big benefit is that it really helps with fixing potential errors. Typos, mismatched names or facts. Set-ups that don't pay off. Pay offs that aren't set up. I get to see words over and over during this process so I can find errors easily.

Finally, once I get to this point, it's a quick sprint to the end. I know everything I need to write to finish it. Every existing scene has a time/location/order in the script. The plot is laid out. The characterizations are set up and arcs have been chosen. Who lives and dies and when and how are laid out. Every scene has been started with at least one sentence and a note about what the scene has to accomplish.

With this process, I'm now about a week or so away from finishing this script.

Pages: 40 (looks like it'll be out of 90-100)