Remember, the Short Story Showdown contest deadline is TONIGHT (Thursday) at 10:00pm Pacific Time. Do you have a short story? You definitely want to enter. If it’s great, it’ll be celebrated here and maybe even sold. Here’s how to submit!
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax
Week 15 – The End!
Week 16 – Rewrite Prep 1
Week 17 – Rewrite Prep 2
Week 18 – Rewrite Week 1
One of the things you hear me talk about a lot on this site is FIRST CHOICES. So let’s get into what they are and why they’re relevant.
First choices are any creative choices that come to you as you’re writing your script that you feed directly into your screenplay. You need to add a new character and you immediately know who that character should be. You get to a car chase scene and you immediately know how you’re going to write it. You want a big twist and you know which GOOD GUY you’re going to turn into a BAD GUY.
When you’re in the flow of writing, these choices feel great because you don’t have to think about them. They just come out of you. And because they flow out of you so easily, you interpret them as “correct.” Which makes sense. Anything that’s allowing you to write 15 pages a day, you reason, is good.
But what you have to understand is that these choices you’re making are not your own. They are an accumulation of all the movies and TV shows you’ve seen and the most common thing that happens in that specific moment of those movies and shows.
Back in the day, when romantic comedies were huge, every single romantic comedy ended at the airport. Why? Because that’s what the writers knew. When they watched romantic comedies, they ended at the airport! So they didn’t even question the choice. That’s how conditioned they were to make these choices.
I’ve been reading a lot of horror consult scripts lately and, lo and behold, there are a ton of scary kids in these screenplays. Why? Because scary kids are in a lot of horror movies. Therefore, we need to include them in our script!
That’s the real danger. These choices become so common in movies that they actually feel like they’re the only choices available to you.
I remember writing a thriller once where a guy is being chased by the police and I thought, “Let’s make a set piece where he’s downtown and runs around in between the all the buildings, barely escaping them.” And I wrote the heck out of that scene. I used every little trinket available to me in his escape.
But it was forgettable. And it was forgettable for an obvious reason. It was a first choice. It oozed screenwriter comfort. The writer – me – was not challenging himself. He was giving the reader something he’d seen before and figured: “That’s what people want.”
Which is why first choices happen. We think, “This is right because this is what happens in movies.”
Plot twist: Making first choices in first drafts IS OKAY. It’s expected even. You should push yourself to come up with as much originality as you can in that first draft. But the reality is, you don’t know your world well enough yet to come up with frequent unique creative choices. It’s like going to a restaurant for the first time. You don’t know the menu yet so you can’t order the best food. You can only order what you’re familiar with.
The reason I’m telling you this is because identifying and eliminating first choices is a big part of rewriting your script. When you see that cliched character, when you note that boring scene location, when you roll your eyes at that expected plot development that anyone could’ve guessed from a mile away… Change it. Come up with something better.
The very fact that you’re changing your first choice is going to improve the script. The rest of your rewrites, then, are about pushing deeper, changing your second choices, your third, your fourth, all the way until you can honestly read that choice and be happy with it. Cause once an idea has been battle-tested enough to withstand an honest critique from you, that’s when a script really starts to shine.
By the way, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to come up with a strong creative choice. A lot of the time, it’s about changing some variables around so that the common scenario feels fresh. Take my thriller script I mentioned above. The Fugitive had Richard Kimble running around the city in one sequence as well. But they added the St. Patty’s Day parade to the set piece and, all of a sudden, the chase felt more specific. Which is what you’re looking for. You’re looking to create a specific experience as opposed to a generalized one.
I cannot emphasize that enough so let me say it again.
When you write a screenplay, you’re looking to create a specific experience as opposed to a generalized one.
The more specific you can make each variable, the more original your script will read.
As a reminder, you are rewriting 3 pages a day, 6 days a week. We should be 18 pages into our rewrite today. By next Thursday, I need you to be 36 pages into your rewrite. Keep at it!
The reward?
Entering the first ever Mega Showdown……..
I may come off as a homer here but that sounds like the single greatest reward in earth’s history.
