Movie Talk
The Michael Hauge interview has definitely amped up my interest in secrets of successful screenwriters. One thing Kath and I have been chatting a little about is the logline or “one-line” as it’s sometimes called in Hollywood. This line is important whether you’re a screenwriter or a novelist, because when an agent or editor – or potential reader at a booksigning – asks you that inevitable question, “What’s your book about?” you want to have a snappy comeback that intrigues. During WU’s interview with Michael Hauge, I asked a lot about the one-line and how to be certain it conveys what the story is about. I was personally concerned about this because while I had a hooky one-line for my own manuscript—one that implied action and had a certain spooky promise to it—I knew that it didn’t really capture the emotional flavor of the women’s fiction story I’m writing. So I’ve been stumped.
Until last night.
Last night, I read one of the opening tips from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. I bought this book after reading an article by Snyder on the importance of creating likable characters from the get-go. It’s essential, he said, because this will compel viewers (or readers) to ally with your character and root for them mentally throughout their journey. Let them save a cat, help a child, whatever; just get some kind of emotional hook into the first few beats of your story. I added this to my own story and loved what it did to my opening scene, so I figured if the book could bring me even one more tip as good as that one, it would’ve paid for itself.
I didn’t have to wait for long; right there on page 6 sat a new golden nugget, and it had to do with my dreaded one-line problem.
Read MoreIf you missed part 1 of the Michael Hauge interview, do yourself a favor and click here right now, then come on back.
Not only is Michael Hauge a script consultant for some of the major film houses in Hollywood and a respected and well-traveled lecturer, he consults with attorneys, psychologists, corporations and individuals on employing story principles in their projects, their presentations, and their work with clients and patients. His new book, Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read, has just been published by Michael Wiese Productions.
Part 2, interview with Michael Hauge
Q: Do you have any pitch tips that might surprise people?
MH: Let me mention some things that people shouldn’t do – even though some consultants will disagree with me about these suggestions. First of all, don’t lead with your title. When you give your pitch, don’t start by saying, “JAWS is a story about a shark …,” because no matter how clever or interesting or relevant that title is, the buyer isn’t going to know what that connection is. As soon as you say it, they’re going to try to picture what your title means and not be listening to you after that, or they’re just going to be confused.
Imagine opening a pitch by saying, “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is…” I don’t know anyone who can get a picture out of the phrase “Brokeback Mountain”—well, now you can because everyone saw the movie—but you know what I’m saying. The title doesn’t create any emotion; it just creates confusion.
Next, don’t begin with your logline, that one sentence that summarizes your story, because when you first begin, a pitch is like any other conversation, and it’s going to take a while for the person to focus in on what you’re saying. If you just dump the logline on them right away, it’s just too much, too fast.
One of my favorite ways to open a pitch is to say, “I think the best way for me to begin is to tell you how I came up with this idea.” And then you tell them.
Here’s why I like that approach. Number one: it’s a segue, an empty sentence that they don’t have to pay much attention two. Number two: one of the most important things to convey in a pitch is your passion for your own story. And whatever it was that gave you your idea in the first place is probably what peaked your interest and got you passionate about it. So if you start talking about how you came up with your idea, you’re going to go right to that passion. Plus you won’t have to worry about memorizing your pitch, because you’re just talking about something that really happened. This will reduce your nervousness, because once you begin focusing on the story, instead of thinking, “How am I doing?” your fear is going to dissipate. And finally, whatever it was that gave you your idea will also be the hook that pulls them into the rest of your pitch.
Here’s an example. You say, “I’ve always been a huge fan of fantasy adventure stories, especially those with women as heroes.” And you pick a few antecedents, and then you […]
Read MoreWhat can I tell you about Michael Hauge?
First you should know the man is worth his weight in Hollywood gold. He is a script consultant, author and lecturer who works with filmmakers and executives on their screenplays, film projects and development skills. He has coached writers or consulted on projects for Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney, Columbia, New Line, Joel Silver Prods., CBS, Lifetime, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Lopez, Val Kilmer, Kirsten Dunst, Robert Downey, Jr. and Julia Roberts. He has presented seminars and lectures to more than 30,000 participants throughout the US, Canada and Europe. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Screenwriters Association and the Advisory Board for Scriptwriter Magazine in London.
I first heard Michael Hauge speak at a conference, where I noted he had everyone – including me – scribbling furiously to catch his every word. When I learned he had a new book coming out about pitching, I thought, maybe, maybe…
Kathleen and I are thrilled that he agreed to an interview with Writer Unboxed, and we know you will appreciate his wisdom as so many others have. Enjoy!
Part 1: Interview with Michael Hauge
Q: Your new book is entitled Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read. What commonalities do you find between novelists and screenwriters?
MH: Writers working in either arena have to get their work read by the people who can represent them, or who can help get whatever they’ve created in front of a mass audience. So screenwriters have to get it read by producers or financiers or studios, and novelists have to get their work read by editors at publishing houses.
One of biggest obstacles that writers in both arenas face is how to get through that seemingly impenetrable screening system that is set up to get it in the hands of people in power, so that those people can actually see the work you’ve done. Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds shows writers how to do exactly that.
Q: What have you found? What is key?
MH: The key is to realize that your chances of being able to do that are based on your ability to describe your story in under one minute in a way that piques interest and makes these people want to take a look. There are pitch meetings, especially in Hollywood in the film industry, but those are primarily for writers who’ve already proven themselves—they’ve already had something produced or sold a script, or a script has been read and someone wants to hear other ideas or talk about it at length. So at those meetings a writer may have 15-20 minutes, sometimes an hour, and you can talk about your story and bat it back and forth and so on.
But you’re not going to get that opportunity until people know you can deliver the goods, and nobody has an hour to spend listening to somebody tell their story, just to decide if they want to read your manuscript. So what you have to be able to do is, on the telephone or at a writers’ conference or at a pitch mart, you’ve got to be able to succinctly describe your story in a way that makes them think to themselves, “Yeah, […]
Read MoreI read an article recently and thought, “Damn, I wish I’d written that for WU,” and then I read the footer at the bottom of the article that said I could snag it with proper crediting and thought, “Damn, that’s even better.” Enjoy!
The One Secret Of An Unforgettable Story
Recognize any of these images?
– Boys walking along a railroad track
– A giant gorilla perched on a skyscraper
– A ferocious shark emerging from the sea
– A man and a woman on a fog-strewn airfield, with a plane about to depart
These movie images are so well-known that they’ve been remembered, imitated and spoofed for decades. But for filmmakers, finding one essential image can make the difference between a plodding, unfocused film and a piece of iconic cinema.
Artist Saul Bass was commissioned to create posters for some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, including Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock. His work on The Man with the Golden Arm was incorporated into the opening credits, but no matter how complex his designs became, he still liked to concentrate on one core image. For that movie, it was a crooked, grasping arm. For Vertigo, he depicted a silhouetted, faceless man caught in a swirling spiral. Two dancers on a fire escape summed up West Side Story.
Bass was appealing to something primal in his audience. He knew the emotional and psychological effect a straightforward illustration could have, and he also took the disparate elements of a movie, stripped away the inessentials and found a focus.
If your story doesn’t have a core image, find one. (Here’s how!)
Read MoreYar! Yesterday Therese and I dished about the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We agreed that the plot was preposterous, but that we didn’t care because we loved the humor and the characters. We continue our discussion below.
KB: Let’s talk about that last scene in DMC, the one where Captain Barbossa shows up crunching into an apple (which I guess means he’s human again), and he goes from being an antagonist into a protagonist in one fell swoop because now he’s the only one who can save Captain Jack Sparrow from the Kraken. It got me thinking about character reversals and how Gore Verbinski and his confederates of mayhem take our characters from the first movie and spin them 180 to make them fresh for the second movie. Elizabeth Swan’s a bit of a hussy now. Shipshape Commodore Norrington is a puking drunk. Will’s become the thing he hated most in the last movie: a pirate. Now there’s a whole new cast of fresh characters familiar enough that they don’t have to spend a lot of time setting them up. These guys are pretty fearless when it comes to mixing up expectations. What did you think?
Read MoreThis summer, Therese and I let our brain cells take a break to go see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Our writers’ minds got to working on how director Gore Verbinski and crew took a classic genre movie, updated it, and made this unlikely story a box-office juggernaut. Therese and I loved the first Pirates movie, and that love had nothing to do with Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom. It was the storytelling that hooked us.
TW: Yeah, right.
KB: What was that?
TW: Oh, nothin’. Carry on, carry on.
KB: Ahem. I saw PotC II when it released mostly because there was nothing else playing that weekend, fully expecting it was going to be a dog. Instead I was delightfully surprised. It’s a wacky story that’s frankly a little garbled, but I didn’t care because I fell in love with all the characters, from the lead protagonists to the most minor pirates. In fact, I was very impressed with the way the secondary characters were handled with such care. What about you, what did it for you?
Read MoreScreenwriter Michael Hauge is a genius. I realized this as I sat listening to him speak in a group of wide-eyed, slack-jawed and furiously scribbling writers this past Saturday. He used fresh terminology and concepts, and my God, everything he said made spine-tingling sense. Hauge’s session was, hands down, the most enlightening and informative two hours I’ve spent pondering craft. Ever. I actually think I’d choose listening to this man speak over eating a box of Godiva. (Yes, I hear your collective gasp.) And guess what? He’s just this morning agreed to interview with Writer Unboxed! Hmm, now can Therese find a way to conduct the interview while eating a box of Godiva? Stay tuned.
While what follows is just a peek at what went on in Hauge’s session, I think his two-simple-words method for character evolution was some of the best stuff. So hang tight, and get ready for a crash course in Identity and Essence.
Read MoreSatine works at the Moulin Rouge. Known as the Sparkling Diamond, she is the most beautiful, the most talented and the most sought after courtesan there.
The Terminator was sent back in time on a mission. He is the most tenacious, the most single-minded and the most destructive killing machine on Earth.
Vito Corleone is the most persuasive mafia man out there, and if he makes you an offer you can’t refuse, you most certainly shouldn’t.
Anakin Skywalker wants to become a Jedi Knight. He is the most vulnerable, the most intuitive and the most conflicted man ever to become an apprentice.
A storm is brewing. It is the most perfect storm the Atlantic has ever seen.
A ship crashes far out at sea, and its survivors discover the most secret, self-contained island in the world, along with its most fearsome–and most sympathetic–beast.
A most ordinary house lands on a wicked witch. However she is not the most cruel, ugly and cunning witch in Oz; that witch is still alive and biding her time before stealing the most beautiful ruby slippers from the most far-flung girl in this most fantastical Technicolor world.
Kathy Bates gave Oscar-winning life to Annie Wilkes, the most deranged fan of all time, while Glenn Close played the most messed up, obsessive ex-lover on the big screen (and scared the most number of men into being faithful in real life).
So what’s the deal with The Most? How important is it in telling a great story?
Read MoreScenario 1: Bugs Bunny is hanging around in the forest and runs into Elmer Fudd. It’s the first day of Rabbit Season.
Scenario 2: Harry Potter dons his invisibility cloak, takes about ten steps in any given direction, then hears someone whispering about whatever it is he needs to know.
Scenario 3: Luke, I am your father.
Scenario 4: Sharon and Susan meet and instantly dislike each other at summer camp. Though they look exactly alike, save the style of their hair, they don’t realize until much later that they’re IDENTICAL TWINS SEPARATED AT BIRTH!
Scenario 5: The Home Alone kid was mistakenly separated from his family and left to fend for himself a second time.
Scenario 6: A young child who convinced you he was your reincarnated husband was kidding all along, having stumbled upon a box of old letters that enabled him to effectively mimic your former spouse’s memories and mannerisms.
I don’t know about you, but I can swallow scenarios 1 and 2, because we’re talking about Bugs and Harry, c’mon. I can buy scenario 3 because that particular coincidence also marked a killer-good shocker in the epic trilogy (it will always be a trilogy to me). I can even buy scenario 4, because The Parent Trap is an old classic Disney film, and an irritational part of me says, “they didn’t know better back then.” Some people might be able to buy scenario 5, but I couldn’t bring myself to see Home Alone 2. And Scenario 6 (Birth, in case anyone is wondering where that plot came from) was completely rejected by the world-at-large.
What makes coincidence okay in some cases and not in others?
Read MoreIt’s been a while since I’ve posted on movies, but I was relaxing in front of the tube-o-brain-death the other night and stumbled across the great classic flick, Gone with the Wind. It’s difficult to bypass such a film, so I didn’t try. Instead, I noticed something I’d never noticed before about the movie’s structure–particularly about the structure near the center of the film–and I think there’s a tip or two there for any writer struggling with a sagging middle (and I’m not talking about the end result of eating too much buttered popcorn, either).
Back in the old days, when people used to walk back and forth to school in ten feet of snow (uphill, both ways), the middle of a long film brought along with it an intermission. People would get up, stretch their legs, head for the aforementioned popcorn, some soda and other sweet treats, and then they’d stroll back to the theatre (or their car) to watch the rest of the flick. Unless, of course, the movie stunk, and then they’d just leave.
Hmm. So what did the screenwriter do to ensure their audience didn’t vanish?
Read MoreAll good things come to an end. As it was with Peter Jackson’s gripping interpretation of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, so too with the lessons we pulled out for writers of genre fiction. Jackson and crew are the ultimate unboxed thinkers, and we are but his humble admirers.
We hoped you enjoyed our series of lessons and will find them useful for your own wips! Here are the final two tips.
9. Try a story scramble
Die-hard fans of Tolkien know that the fearsome scene between Frodo and Shelob, an enormous spider, happens in the second book. When appraising the films for pacing, however, it was decided the second film had enough tension without the arachnophobic scene, while the final film needed an extra dollop of Frodo. Easy as a slash mark, Shelob was cut from film two and spun into the movie’s final installment.
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Yesterday we posted Part Three of our article (co-written with author Elena Greene) on lessons writers could draw from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. I’m too lazy to link the trackbacks, but a simple scroll will get you to Parts One, Two, and Three.
Sigh. As I revisit the lessons, I grow nostalgic for the heady days when the movie-goer impatiently waited for the next installment of these Acadamy Award-winning films. Now that’s good storytelling. On to the next two tips!
7. Find the right blend of external and internal conflict
Pacing has been the downfall of many writers. One way to control it is to alternate action and dialogue, which reads “faster,” with a scene showing internal conflict or introspection. But how much to use and why? Though that decision is part and parcel with the alchemy of writing, lessons can be gleaned from the filmmakers, who were masters of pacing.
Wearing viewers out with big chunks of battle sequences was a real risk, but the filmmakers solved it by varying the action with a plethora of internal conflict scenes: Gollum debating with himself over what to do with his hobbit companions; Aragorn interacting with the besotted Eowyn; Frodo struggling to hold on to hope; Faramir weighing winning his father’s respect against sending his men into a hopeless battle.
Flashbacked moments of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen were used broadly and achieved a twofold purpose: slowing the pace while reminding the viewer what was at stake should Aragorn fail. The viewer was also granted a respite of beauty and peace before being thrust back into the carnage of war, sharpening the emotional response to both.
Readers cannot sustain interest in page after page of breakneck action or breathless dialogue. How’s your mix?
Read MoreTherese, Kathleen and their writer buddy Elena Greene had their article, Lessons from The Lord of the Rings published last November, and now they’re freeing it to share with the world (in part because Writer’s Digest doesn’t take reprints – bah).
But don’t start reading the article in the middle, my preciousesss, because we’re already up to tips 5 & 6. Here’s part 1, which contains a cheat list in case you need to know who’s who…and here’s part 2. Enjoy!
5. Find new twists for stale conflicts
To portray Frodo as the victim of his circumstance throughout three epic-length films would’ve become tedious to watch. The filmmakers mixed it up, though, emphasizing a different jagged edge in each movie. In the first, Frodo is a young and naïve hobbit whose conflict is clear: he doesn’t want to be the ring bearer, but there is no one more suited for the task. He also knows if the Ring isn’t destroyed, the Shire—which he loves more than anything—could be.
In the second film, Frodo’s original conflict still simmers on the backburner, but we see him increasingly agitated over the Ring and what it’s already done to one of its previous owners—Gollum. “I have to believe he can come back,” Frodo says as he fights to help the deranged Hobbit-beast, and we understand that he fears the Ring’s power to destroy not only his homeland, but the very fabric of his being.
In the final installment, the Ring’s toll on Frodo becomes marked. Their relationship slides into a drug to junkie dynamic. Frodo moves like an addict, is sleepless, jumpy and paranoid; he snaps at Sam for offering to “share the load” and carry the Ring for a while. (Even here the conflict is multi-faceted, because Frodo wants to protect Sam from the corrupting effects of the Ring, too.)
When you’re writing, think about how your conflicts can evolve, and how your characters can and must change to keep the variance fresh and alive.
Read MoreYesterday we posted Part One of our published article LESSONS FROM LORD OF THE RINGS (co-written with author Elena Greene). Today we post the second part of our article. Warning: though hard-cord nerdiness is helpful when reading the following, it is not essential. Good writing transcendes the genres.
3. Tap into sources of inner conflict to create character arcs
The filmmakers made controversial changes regarding the character of Faramir. Denethor does not appreciate this second son, a less outwardly bold man than his brother. While guarding the eastern border, Faramir waylays and questions Frodo and Sam, who are on their way to Mordor to destroy the Ring. Taking this powerful object seems to offer Faramir not only a chance to save his beleaguered country, but also to win his father’s respect. In Tolkien’s version, Faramir allows the hobbits to continue their mission, saying he is “wise enough to know that there are some perils from which a man must flee.”
The filmmakers made a different choice:
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