Wednesday, February 26, 2020

One Red Paperclip - pre-Final Draft

The One Red Paperclip script approaching its final form. 131 pages at the moment. Need to cut it down to below 129 at least. 120 would be ideal but I'm not sure how I'm gonna cut another 13 pages with out affecting the pacing and story too much.

But yeah, very happy to almost crossing the finishing line. Will meet the March 1 deadline and hopefully finish the top three for the monthly competition.

EDIT: 

So I got four reviews for One Red Paperclip... and it's the worst score I've ever received. Some criticisms include the length, lack of character arc, unlikable girlfriend, too many characters, too many trades, staying to faithful in the adaption of the book etc. 

I'm going to take a break from the script and return with a new eye some time down the track.

Friday, February 14, 2020

A Company dedicated to Writers and Storytellers

https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity
https://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/inside-the-pixar-braintrust

I have a vision of a big company for writers in the future. It would be open to any writer around the world.

Each project would have a project manager that pick and chooses the written ideas from the many around the world. E.g. Sci fi concept with chipmunks in space. The project manager would then pick the best concept based on the requirement. And then they would move onto the next part e.g. the character design of the protagonist.

Each writer would be repaid by a % of the overall participation on the overall finished product.

The would be many projects open at any one time. The goal is to have the best ideas coming from anywhere and the cheap and vast labour pool would result with astonishingly fast turn around. E.g. current estimation of a completed final draft script would need about 3 months to complete if a writer were to work alone.  The open source project could finish it in a week.

And if script sale is a minimum of say 90k, this could yield a minimum of $4.68 million in sales per annum.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

One Red Paperclip Update

Missed the soft February deadline, but it's okay. Will be on course for the hard March deadline.

-It's at 135 pages at the moment. Will try to cut it down to at least 129 pages for now and 120 pages eventually for the final draft.

-implementing all notes pass.

-the finish line is indeed in sight!

Friday, February 7, 2020

On Mixing Genres and Breaking Writing Conventions

https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/get-published-sell-my-work/the-dos-and-donts-of-combining-genres

https://www.servicescape.com/blog/144-genres-and-subgenres-for-fiction-writing

Mixing genres and breaking writing conventions is the best way to produce something fresh.

The easiest way to write a memorable scene would be to break a genre or writing convention or cliche. Some of the obvious examples are:
- Psycho and recently Cop Cam - killing off the main character early to mid way through the story.
-Quentin Tarantino breaks numerous writing rules in his movies. Writing rule #1: keep your scenes short as possible. In Inglorious Basterds, he famously breaks this with the looooong milk intro scene, and the meeting scene in the basement. Writing rule #2: Show character through their actions. Quentin prefers to show his character through extended dialogue e.g. Reservoir Dogs opening discussion on Madonna's song Like a Virgin and tipping etiquette, Jules in Pulp Fiction with his many famous conversations (Say what again! Royale with Cheese, Ezekiel 25:17). He breaks the heist genre convention in Reservoir dogs by not showing the actual heist. I'm sure there are a lot more...
- Se7en (SPOILERS - lol) - is probably the best and most memorable example of breaking genre conventions. The two detectives does not catch the killer. Instead Andrew Walker has John Doe walking into the police precinct, covered with blood, screaming for the detectives attention, before handing himself over. This also changes the story from a who dunnit to why dunnit and where are the last two bodies (car ride scene). Then in the climax we have one of the good guys killing the villain out of rage, instead of the usual self protection. This completes John Doe's seven deadly sin masterpiece and the bad guy wins :(
-Memento and Irreversible - events shown in reverse.
-Nolan playing with time - scenes from Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk etc.

Good Will Hunting Analysis

Test

Good Will Hunting Analysis:
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Concept -
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Protagonist's Character Arc and Flaw
Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman -

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma


requires deep research and

Emotional Wound

Need underdog scene as well.

Wound: Being abandoned by his birth parents and forced to live in a series of abusive foster homes
Fear: Being rejected and abandoned again
Emotional Shielding: Will is a classic under-achiever, purposely ignoring his potential and sticking with the only people in his life he knows he can trust. He has anger issues, is cocky, and lashes out when threatened. Though he seeks out romantic relationships, he sabotages them before they get too serious.

Unmet Need: In part, Will is missing Love and Belonging; he has friends, but his pursuit of Skylar shows that friendship isn't enough to satisfy him. However, his biggest unmet need - the one at the root of his inability to obtain the belonging he desires - is that of Esteem and Recognition. Like many abuse survivors. he blames himself in part for the violence he suffered growing up. He also likely fears that because his parents rejected him, there's something in him that will make others reject him too. Once he faces the possibility that he wasn't responsible for the traumatic events from his past, he's able to accept himself for who he is: someone with value and potential who is worthy of being loved.
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Villain's Back Story and Master Plan

bread crumb with subplots and villains and

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3 Act Structure - a loose outline of major plot points.
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/good-will-hunting-script-pdf/
https://www.whatascript.com/good-will-hunting.html

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Subplot Character and Structure Design

https://medium.com/@the_wise_sloth/plot-break-down-of-good-will-hunting-b7cc8d8e9260

  • Will and Sean
  • Will and Skylar (The Romantic Line)
  • Will and Lambeau
  • Will and Chuckie
  • Sean and Lambeau
The interesting thing with Will and Sean's subplot, the most important one mind you, does not appear at all until act 2.

subplot theme should support main theme.

Types of helpers and minions

the problem with sequence types of is that relies too much on plot, just like relying on

Using the Subplot train

The act 2 problem

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Story Design

+ and - for each major act, major sequences and scenes
character goal obstacle for each scene.

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Writing

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Dialogue

- Overall
https://scriptbeat.home.blog/2019/06/08/good-will-hunting-beat-sheet/

Research
Genre
==
  • We see Will hanging out in his apartment and reading in the movie's opening credits. A short while later, we see him mopping the hallways at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Will heads to a bar with his buddy Chuckie, but he ducks out early to go home and work on a math problem that some prof at MIT left on a hallway chalkboard. He never tells anyone at the school that he solved the problem, though.
  • Will and some buddies hang out one night at a Harvard bar. While there, Will embarrasses a pompous Harvard guy and gets the phone number of a pretty Harvard girl named Skylar. They agree to hang out sometime.
  • Later on, Will solves an even more difficult problem on the MIT chalkboard. But he gets caught by Professor Lambeau and runs off before Lambeau can question him. Whether he knows it or not, he just solved a problem that only a handful of people in the world can solve.
  • While hanging with his buddies one day, Will gets into a fight and ends up hitting a cop when the police arrive to break it up. This gets him sent to jail for assaulting a police officer.
  • By this time, though, Professor Lambeau has tracked him down. He makes a deal with Will's judge to let Will out of prison on two conditions. The first is that Will has to work with Lambeau on math problems and the second is that Will has to go to therapy.

  • Will mentally destroys his first couple of therapists. But he meets his match when he runs into Sean Maguire, an old friend of Professor Lambeau's.
  • Will gets under Maguire's skin by talking about his dead wife, but Maguire pushes on and continues to meet Will. Over time, they develop some trust with each other.
  • The harder Maguire pushes Will to grow up, the harder Will pushes back. Eventually, Will totally snaps and walks away from Maguire's therapy.
  • Then he also pushes Skylar away when she says she loves him and wants him to move to California with her. Will has spent his life pushing people away before they can hurt him, and it looks like he's going to do it all over again.
  • Meanwhile, Will blows off all the meetings that Professor Lambeau has set for him with businesses and organizations that want to hire Will.
  • In an epic scene, Will tells Lambeau to get lost and that all of his dumb math problems are really easy. Lambeau closes the scene by saying he wishes he'd never met Will.
  • Back in therapy, Sean Maguire tells Will about how he (Maguire) would never trade away one second of the time he spent with his wife before she died.
  • He also reminds Will that he'll never be able to move forward with his life by avoiding things that might hurt him.
  • In the end, Will breaks down and cries when Sean tells him that he's not responsible for the abuse he faced as a child.
  • After his breakthrough with Maguire, Will agrees to take one of the jobs that Professor Lambeau set up for him.
  • At the last second, though, he hops in his new car and takes off for California to be with Skylar. And that's where his story ends.

The 3 act structure  and sequence structure is WRONG!

A story should be designed around the structure of the main plot and subplots.

There is no way sequence model would even think about character arcs, the subplot arcs complementing the main theme, the role of allies and antagonists and minions.

the arcing of each main plot and subplot needs to be carefully fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, while ensuring some subplot arcs climax around the Act 2B and 3A mark.

The SEQUENCE structure will always produce useless surface level scenes with consideration of growth.

There is no way Matt Damon and Ben Affleck could have written Good Will Hunting without the help of a mentor like William Goldman. There is just too much perfection, the subplots are perfectly crafted, every scene gives us fresh exposition. Way too much wisdom and structurally sound structure to be composed by early twenty somethings.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4720603/Good-Will-Hunting-the-truth.html