So you’re currently preparing to write your next script. And it’s a drama.
I have some advice for you. Don’t do it. Stay away. Avoid the drama spec at all costs.
Why? There are tons of reasons. But let me break down some of the big ones for you. Drama specs don’t sell. Or, at least, they don’t sell nearly as much as comedy, thriller, horror, action, or sci-fi. Most of the dramas being made are on the indie circuit, where they don’t pay you for your script. They politely ask you for your script for free and offer you back-end profits. And those aren’t ever going to come. Because dramas don’t make money unless they’re funded by the studios, who give the films huge budgets, which allow for amazing production value and giant box-office promising stars. Oh sure, a little “Engine that could” drama comes along every few years or so and makes a good showing, but those are the rarest of the rare.
Most of the dramas being written in Hollywood are by the big name A-list screenwriters, the guys with a proven track record, and almost all of these are assignment work. That means the studio owns the rights to a project and interview a bunch of potential writers before hiring one. Rarely will you find a writer who actually wrote a drama on spec (all on his own – without studio money) and that script went on to sell. And under the rare circumstances where that does happen, it’s someone who’s already established himself in Hollywood. For an unknown writer to write a drama and sell it (a legitimate sale, meaning at least six figures), is practically unheard of. The last one I can think of is maybe Brad Inglesby, who sold “The Low Dweller” like 5 years ago? And of course he had to snag Leonardo DiCaprio as an attachment to secure that sale.
To get a better sense of the drama landscape in Hollywood, let’s look at the box office take for the top 5 dramas last year.
1) Lincoln – 182 million
2) Argo – 135 million
3) The Vow – 125 million
4) Life of Pi – 123 million
5) Zero Dark 30 – 95 million
Lincoln came in at the number 13 slot. It was adapted from a book. Argo finished at 22 and was adapted from a book and article (which was based on real life). The Vow was 26 and based on a book. Life of Pi was 27 and based on a book. And Zero Dark 30 was 32 and based on real life events, with the writer already hired to work with the director.
The first true drama spec-script-turned-film of last year (it sold for around a million bucks) was the John Gatins scripted “Flight.” The film did pretty well, considering its downbeat subject matter, grossing 93 million dollars. Unfortunately, scribe Gatins was not an unknown. He had written Hardball, Coach Carter, and Real Steel. He’d even directed the film “Dreamer.” Again, a reminder of how tough it is to sell a spec. You need 3 freaking credits to get people to trust your written word.
Let’s get to the point here. There are a ton of you who love dramas and are going to ignore my advice. You’re going to be that once-every-five-years exception who sells their drama spec for big money. Which is fine. You gotta be a little crazy to make it in this town. But if you’re going to be insane, it’s my duty to at least help you swing the odds in your favor. And Flight is actually a great script to analyze as far as drama spec writing. It does a few key things right, but is actually a horribly written screenplay. Therefore there’s a ton to learn from it.
Gatins makes three key decisions that allowed his script to be saleable and ultimately produceable.
1) Include something you can market your drama around, that you can put in a trailer – This is where most amateur drama writers fail. They write about a group of people droning on about their miserable lives and the terrible circumstances that brought them together and blah blah blah. There’s no hook. Just depression. Instead of that, include a hook or flashy story element that can be placed in a trailer and get people excited. I guarantee Flight sold most of its tickets due to the image of that upside-down airplane flying towards earth about to make a crash landing.
2) Include a tough part an actor will want to play – The one big advantage with drama is that you can create a dynamic interesting hero that big actors will want to play. So that’s what you gotta do. Make the character compelling, rich, complex, unique, filled with conflict, someone you can truly see an A-list actor (an actor who’s given ALL THE BEST MATERIAL IN TOWN remember – so they have a lot to choose from) fighting to play. A hardcore alcoholic was just the part Denzel was looking for to stretch his acting muscles.
3) A larger than life character – This isn’t a requirement like the other two. But it’ll help a lot. Actors may love to show off their acting chops, but they’re still actors. They have big egos. Therefore they want to play larger-than-life characters. If Whip Whitaker (the main character in Flight) is the exact same character but the movie takes place in all the bars of New York as opposed to in a plane that Whip saves with a daring heroic move, Denzel doesn’t sign on to this movie. He wants to play the drunk AND the larger than life character. We see the same thing in another successful drama, Good Will Hunting. Will’s not just some average kid off the street. He’s a genius.
In my opinion, this is why Flight sold and attracted the talent that it did. And Gatins is lucky that he got those three things right, because this was a horribly written screenplay outside of the plane crash sequence. It’s essentially a vehicle for Denzel Washington to try to win an Oscar with and nothing more. Unfortunately, nobody checked to see if this drama was actually DRAMATIC. Because it wasn’t. It was one of the least dramatic movies I saw all year.
That’s where you won’t get the same leeway Gatins did. Gatins was trusted because of his credits. You, as a struggling amateur, have nothing, which means that getting the above three things right isn’t enough. You must also write a COMPELLING STORY. And that’s done by creating a series of DRAMATIC situations. Situations that pull your reader in, that make him excited, fearful, curious, angry. Situations that milk tension, that bleed suspense. If your drama isn’t dramatic, you don’t have a shot in hell of selling it.
Let’s use Flight’s execution as an example of how NOT to write drama. The script and movie open up on the morning after a long night of drinking between Whip and a mystery woman in his hotel room. There’s little-to-no interaction between the two, implying that neither really gives a shit about the other. They just needed a warm body on a lonely night.
However, when Whip shows up for his flight in the next scene, we see that, oh my, the woman from the room is actually one of his stewardesses! When Whip makes his miracle landing, saving 90-some passengers, six people from the plane are killed, one of them being that stewardess. This ranks as probably the least dramatic choice you could’ve made with this character. Sex-Friend Girl turning out to be a stewardess has zero impact on the story. It’s a gimmick. It works for .2 seconds as that’s how long it lasts for the audience to go “Oooh” when her stewardess status is revealed. It’s clear the writer didn’t know how to handle this situation because later in the hospital, when Whip wakes up and learns she died, he starts crying. Wait a minute. What??? Whip doesn’t care about this chick. She’s a nobody to him. They fucked then ignored each other all morning.
Let me offer an alternative scenario that adds WAY MORE DRAMA to this situation. Start with the same scene. He sleeps with this chick. But in this version, the two don’t know each other. They met last night at some FAA banquet thing, got drunk, and ended up here. Now Whip doesn’t want her here so he does everything short of saying, “Get the fuck out” until she leaves. Pissed, upset, hurt, she leaves with a grudge. Then later, when the NTSB starts inspecting the crash and Whip is led back to the crash site, the lead investigator emerges out of a group of people and guess who it is? The woman he slept with. NOW you have a dramatic situation. He has to win over the person he fucked over earlier in order to come out of this okay. Not easy since she knows he was drinking that night. Now that may take the story in a direction you didn’t want to go. But Jesus Christ, give me something! Give me anything that creates drama. Not some random chick dying who our main character didn’t even like.
There’s another scene in Flight that I believe epitomizes what bad writers BELIEVE is drama but is actually the OPPOSITE of drama (or what I call “anti-drama”). It’s a freaking 10 minute scene where Whip, a female druggie (who overdosed and is therefore at the same hospital Whip is), and some random cancer patient meet up in the stairway of the hospital to sneak a smoke. Each character starts talking about life, particularly Cancer Guy, who dispenses a bunch of “wisdom” about how God decides our fate. This goes on for TEN MINUTES.
Bad writers think this is drama because characters are being deep and talking about the complexities of life. That’s not drama! Drama is creating DRAMATIC SITUATIONS! Where’s the dramatic situation here??? What aspect of the scene makes us want to keep watching? For almost any scene to have a dramatic situation, at least one of the characters in the scene should have a goal, an objective. You then place obstacles in front of that objective and that’s what creates the drama. Nobody in this scene wants anything! It’s clear Gatins just wanted a scene where Random Cancer Guy could dish out his philosophies on life so he forced his characters into a stairway to do it, even if that didn’t make sense and there was nothing interesting or dramatic about the scene that we would actually enjoy.
What if, instead, Whip finds out that his toxicology report (which hasn’t been tested yet) is somewhere in the hospital? The one that proves he was high and drinking during the flight? He finds an excuse to sneak out of his room and locates the blood lab. He gets there, gets in, but finds a doctor in the room. Maybe it’s the doctor of the druggie, who’s also there (if you still wanted her to be in this scene). Whip pretends he’s lost but the doctor ends up recognizing him as the hero pilot and becomes a bit of a fanboy. We have another three-way conversation, but this one includes a goal. Whip has to find a way to get his lab results without this guy noticing. I guarantee you this scene is going to be more exciting than talking-to-boring-druggie-and-Random-Cancer-Dude-in-the-stairway scene. And it’s not through any bit of magic. We’re just DRAMATIZING the damn scene!
I could literally list dozens of other bad choices this script made, but we’d be here all night. Let’s end this on a positive note and remind ourselves what gives us the best chance of selling a drama spec. First, write something that contains SOME ASPECT that’s marketable. The entire movie doesn’t have to be marketable, just a portion. Next, write a character an A-list actor will want to play. A drama is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to sell without an A-list attachment so this is big. And make that role larger than life in some way. Play to the actor’s ego. Finally, make sure you’ve DRAMATIZED YOUR STORY as much as possible. Dramas aren’t people depressed about their wives dying joining up with other depressed people and talking about how difficult life is. They’re about finding a series of compelling dramatic situations that cover every inch of the screenplay. If you’ve chosen the drama to break in with, you have a long journey ahead of you. Hopefully these words of wisdom will make that journey a little shorter.
