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Scribosphere Carnival #4 – Advice

Scribosphere Carnival #4 – Advice

The Scribosphere Carnival is a weekly discussion from a variety of screenwriting blogs around a rotating theme.

Emily over at Bamboo Killers chose today’s topic:

ADVICE — A recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct.

Okay, I admit. There wasn’t any description given for the provided topic, so I just took Merriam Webster’s generic definition of the word advice.
The true topic is apparently about giving advice, and more specifically what is my best writing advice.

A lot of great tips about screenwriting have been given, specifically in the few other Scribosphere posts of my fellow bloggers.
Writing ad nauseam (AKA you should write because you’re a writer) has been covered.
What to do with screenplays has been covered.
Readjusting your expectations has been covered.
So what is left to say?

Well, here’s my personal bit of advice:

Done is better than perfect.

Thoughtful, eh?

Let’s dig a little deeper.
In my mind, there are two parts to this maxim:
1. Done is better…: Combating procrastination (working on the script)
2. …than perfect: Combating perfection (finishing the script)

1. Be done

The process of writing a script is kind of like a mini-feature production in of itself:
– Pre-production (research/development)
– Production (outline/treatment/draft)
– Post-production (editing/rewrites/corrections/notes)

While you’ll probably be spending 90% of your time on the last 10% of your work with most (other) creative projects, my personal experience has taught me that, when you’re working on a fresh script, the biggest evil is procrastination (which usually occurs way before the finishing touches).

We’ve already covered a bit on the subject, but one way to combat the negative effects of procrastination is to increase productivity.
Having a fixed writing schedule definitely helps. In fact, I’ve started working on one for myself.

There are also other alternative productivity techniques.
A fairly well-known example would be the Pomodoro technique. The idea is to entirely focus on the one task for a limited amount of time, and then move on or come back to it after a break.
Forget the fancy trademark gimmick of the original company, all you need to do it is a timer. It can be a free app, or a physical kitchen timer in the form of a tomato (pomodoro in Italian).
The basic concept is as follows:

  • – Decide on the task to be done.
  • – Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally 25).
  • – Work on the task until the timer rings.
  • – Take a short break (3-5 minutes).
  • – Every four “pomodori” take a longer break (15–30 minutes).

Rinse and repeat.

Regardless of which technique you end up using for your own productivity, you should hopefully find something that works for you, and that leads to you actually working on your script.
Note that I said “working on” rather than “writing a draft of”, since brainstorming and outlining are extremely vital part of the process. Even an occasional mental evasiveness and/or reverie is more than welcomed during any creative process.

Ultimately, you want to push through into getting a first draft done.
Spoiler alert: your first draft will probably suck (that’s why they call it a vomit draft). Best case scenario, it is merely mediocre.
But being done with it is the first step to salvation.

2. Don’t be perfect

Battling perfection is the other half of the equation.
You’ve probably heard the aphorism “perfect is the enemy of good”, which is an adjusted translation of Voltaire’s “Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” (In his writings, a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good).

Whether you’re about to e-mail to everyone your first draft, or the one after getting your first notes, it’s time to realize that those endless tweaks you pull right before sending it “out there” are, well, mostly vanity tweaks. Or at the very least self-deceptive.
It’s like that moment when you’d rather organize your desk than write an e-mail. You are fooled into thinking a usually productive effort will be more rewarding/useful than what you should actually be doing. In this case just hitting send and moving on.
Your script will probably never be the greatest script ever written, especially to your eyes (We are our own worse critic, right?). So don’t waste a lot of time trying to “perfect it”.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work your hardest, but there’s a difference between fixing a broken (unfunny) line, and fretting over what kind of hat your protagonist should wear.

The same can be said about addressing notes. Fact: the more people you get them from, the more contradictory they will be.
It’s your job to sift through the mess, and once you’ve fixed the relevant problems, you shouldn’t waste your time trying to perfect the script to everyone’s taste.
Because that’s impossible.
At some point, you’ll have to send your baby into the world, or pull out the band-aid. Whichever metaphor helps you cope with the reality that your imperfect script will be viewed by someone other than you.

Done is better than perfect, because perfect is an unattainable goal.

Write on.

Scribosphere blogs also on the topic:

Red Right Hand | Jonathan Hardesty | Bamboo Killers

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Over the past few months, I have received a few e-mails asking me where I’ve been, where I’ve gone, what happened to me.
One message even pondered (rhetorically?) if I was dead. Spoiler alert: not yet — unless this is all part of some weird meta/viral campaign for a new Syfy show about hunting ghosts online.

I admit, there has been a lack of posting on my part, both on the site, as well as through the Twitterverse (At least I used to be a little more chatty).

The truth is that I haven’t been feeling that great for a while (understatement).
Shawna over at Shouting into the Wind calls it “the dark cloud.”
In fact, she wrote an amazing piece almost two years ago about her own struggle with clinical depression.
Although I don’t have an MDD, I had my own bout with depression last year.

But no Debbie Downers here!
This post isn’t about the past, it isn’t about filling a creative fetish of “artists must suffer to be good”, and it’s certainly not about having a pity party.

Reality is that most of us writers have been at some point in a dark place and/or through dark times.
And when you get there, the drive to be creative dissipates. And then you don’t want to talk or reply to anyone.
You end up settling into a rut. Alone. A vicious downward spiral.

During the holidays, I took a 3-week break to go back to Europe. It was the first time I had been back there since moving to Los Angeles (for those not keeping track, that’s almost four years ago). London, Paris, Metz, Strasbourg, Anglars. Lots of cities in a few days.
Even with Skype or Facebook, there’s nothing that rivals seeing family and old friends in person again. Needless to say, it was quite a trip.
Earlier this week, I returned to LA.
After all these months, I feel like I’m finally starting to get back on my feet.

This entry may be getting a little intimate, but A TV Calling started out as a personal blog. A log of my journey into this unique industry.
Over the years, there’s a bond that forms between a writer and a reader. On some level, you can call it trust.
I wanted to acknowledge the reason behind my absence. Firstly, out of respect for my readership.
But I also wanted needed to show that there’s a life outside these posts. This isn’t usually the stuff people shout from rooftops, yet words on a page don’t always explain what’s going on “in real life”.

Despite my lack of response and presence in the past few months, I am truly touched by the feedback and letters I’ve been getting, on and off the blog.
A writer never wants to write in a vacuum, and having people read and comment on/about one’s content is galvanizing, to say the least.
I love you guys.

There’s a saying from Galaxy Quest that I’ve always appreciated: “Never give up. Never surrender.”
It may sound a bit trite, but it’s still very pertinent.
We are who we are, not because of the result of our victories, but because of the way we handle our defeats.
This is an idea that can easily get lost in the abyss of this industry.
I was glad to get out of here for a few weeks mainly because it is hard to get any perspective when you’re in the middle of it.
And then you return. You get up. You try to face your problems as best you can. The hopeless road may not be as hopeless as it previously seemed.

And the last step could be to write this rambling post.
Maybe none of it made sense. Maybe this is just another meaningless comeback in the life of this site.
But you know what? Fuck it.

I’m back.

P.S.: To all those wondering, the 2014 Spec Script list will be posted somewhere around March(-ish).

Treading Lightly: The Breaking Bad Legacy

Treading Lightly: The Breaking Bad Legacy

With its five seasons, Breaking Bad redefined in many ways what a serialized show could accomplish. The little drama that could surpassed everybody’s expectations and left behind an amazing example of what television should strive to be.

Serialized binge-viewing

In the span of five years, Breaking Bad literally decupled its audience, going from under a million viewers for the series premiere to over ten million for the series finale. And it’s all thanks to a lot of binge-watch. “Marathoning” a TV show is nothing new. We all love to either catch up on, or watch for the first time a great show back-to-back. I’ve actually talked about this previously in regards to the impact on serialized shows. But this is something different.

Breaking Bad Saul
With the advent of Netflix and other great streaming services, Breaking Bad was able to capitalize on its serialization where other shows had previously failed. Word-of-mouth coupled with amazing cliffhangers (i.e. the need to watch the next episode) cemented its online boom.
It started out as a niche show that caught on with the popular success only coming the last couple of seasons. It is without a doubt thanks to the unprecedented access to Breaking Bad‘s previous seasons that viewers were able to not only catch up on the show but tune in live for the final episodes. Bad was the first drama to fully benefit first-hand from the one-click-away access to its serialized episodes. Everybody caught on just in time for the final season. With only a couple million viewers watching the series “live” during most of its run, it isn’t a stretch to believe that more people actually watched the show on Netflix than on AMC.

Grandeur and subtlety

We’ve already talked a bit about the realism of the series and its other strengths. Not the least of which is, without a doubt, the way it downplays a lot of it stories. Only a few shows have been dramatically successful at keeping their most intense scenes around characters (as opposed to action or mythology). Breaking Bad not only excelled at these moments, but showed that you didn’t need to have big and crazy moments to get a large viewership. Intense drama could come from the smallest of scenes and the littlest moments. It was also one of the most thought-out shows in history, with every details counting for something bigger. Subtle callbacks or clues that you would barely notice.

Breaking Bad Painting
A cross-season example is a painting that appeared twice in the show’s history, in very different circumstances. The first time was in 2×03 (“Bit by a Dead Bee”), with Walt waking up in a hospital bed after his “fugue state”. The second time the painting appeared, in 5×08 (“Gliding Over All”), Walt was ordering multiple murders from neo-nazis. “Where do you suppose these come from? I’ve seen this one before. Are they all in some giant warehouse someplace?”, he nonchalantly wonders. It’s a subtle detail that echoes back to another subtle detail three season prior. It’s also as much a callback as it is a subtle reminder that everything happening in the episode has ramifications beyond it.

Breaking Bad Crawl Space
On the other end of the perception spectrum, Breaking Bad offered another perspective: striking shots. With the advent of high-definition, wider televisions, and better systems, the “small screen” could rival on a visual level to its cinematic counterpart. To quote Michael Slovis, the series’ cinematographer:

It just so happened that during the last seven years, widescreen televisions became affordable. And HD became the norm. Now people could see what we were doing and we didn’t have to tell stories in the old style of closeup [then another] closeup. We would have told the story if everybody was watching it on tube televisions. But we were damn lucky that people started watching wide screen HDTVs.

Every frame told a story about the characters on multiple fronts. Lost brought amazing production value to the table, Breaking Bad led the cinematography to another level. The series showed that you could embrace the medium on a visual degree: size doesn’t matter anymore. The story may seem, on paper, small-scaled, but the truth is that the main characters simply cannot be contained in their environment. Even with a middle-aged guy lying in his basement, the drama proved that there are ways to make mundane shots grandiose.

Ode to transparency

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the state of fandom, especially in relation to larger genre series (most notably Star Trek and Lost). The discussion has mostly revolved around fans’ “sense of entitlement” around what production-related information should be made public. I won’t enter the debate right now, however I wanted to praise the Breaking Bad crew (writers, directors, editors, producers, etc.) for being so open about the process.

Breaking Bad Insider Podcast
My love for the Insider Podcast is well-known by now. Besides it being amazing from a TV writer’s standpoint, it’s also amazing for what it offers as a fan of television. The last podcast was a great case of that, as Vince Gilligan offered unproduced pitches/storylines from the show.
Television is such a collaborative process that it’s difficult to pinpoint specific idea on specific people, even if the showrunner will usually take most of the credit or the blame. What the podcast offers, in addition to information, is perhaps more important: context. Credit is given where credit is due. Everyone is very open about what they bring to the table in each episode.
A lot of people were annoyed (or amused) by the leaked Lost “ABC bible”, however I’d wager most of these people were not aware of where it fit within the history of the show simply because the blogs reporting on it didn’t provide context. It doesn’t help that bitching about the show and its writers is still in vogue.
But opening the door to the “inside” of a show isn’t about filling a sense of entitlement, it’s about showing respect. For the fans, for the creative process, for everyone involved. Breaking Bad, more so than any show before it, showcased every craft that got put into it. Right down to everyone game to come back to shoot an ad-lib the first AD came up with after wrap. The crew cared about the show, and through their transparency and openness, they shared the love.

Beyond Breaking Bad

Every Bad things must come to an end. It is difficult to say goodbye to such an intense show that, unlike other serialized dramas, piqued most of our interests because of its characters, rather than mythology or plot.

Breaking Bad Saul Ad
Unlike Lost three years ago, there is no need to “predict” the future of the series. In fact, until recently, the idea that Breaking Bad was any kind of franchise would have seemed ridiculous. And yet, we now know that a Better Call Saul spin-off is on its merry way. Bob Odenkirk recently revealed that the series would actually be darker than one might have previously imagined. I’m definitely looking forward to Peter Gould heading the project, and the black humor that comes with it.

After 62 episodes, it is impossible to summarize the drama in a few words, let alone identify a single thing to remember. From its compelling writing and mesmerizing montages, to striking acting and captivating music, the reach of the show has expanded like the reach of its main character.
The legacy of Breaking Bad is ultimately that of its premise: a successful experiment.