Time to mold the clay

I'm just about done with the first draft of Fear of Clowns and it's horrible. But that's okay because I expected it to be horrible. It's also going to be somewhere in the range of 70 pages.

I feel like this script, more than most, is a big pile of clay. I plopped it down and rolled it into a ball and shoved it on the wheel thingee and pulled it up into a tall blob. Now comes the part where I have to make it into a vase. Then comes the part where I bake it, and then the part where I paint it. And when I'm done it will be all pretty and violent.

Today I rewrote my final confrontation scene. See, the last script I wrote, as you know, was about fighting zombies. So the fight scenes I'd grown accustomed to writing involve lots of cool martial arts moves and bludgeoning and one-on-thirty battles with a broom handle as the only weapon.

So yesterday, when I sat down to write the final gunfight, I went a little overboard. The scene is this: a boy who has barely any experience shooting a gun walks into a room with three other boys, each of whom has a gun and each of whom is a better shot. And somehow this boy has to kill the other three without dying.

My first attempt at this was ridiculous. I had all kinds of complicated moves and lots of melodramatic shit. Then I went to sleep and I woke up realizing that it should be simple. Protag kills Kid 1. Kid 2 shoots, hits in a non-deadly place. Protag shoots and kills Kid 2. Kid 3 comes out of the bedroom where he'd been hiding. Both boys stand holding their guns on each other. Then a distraction, and Protag kills Kid 3.

The thing is, Kid 3 and Protag are best friends so I've got one of those, Oh no, what have I done moments where my Protag cradles his dying best friend in his arms after he shot him. And right now it's so cliche it's making me ill.

I don't want people to feel like I'm being melodramatic. I want them to naturally feel for these characters. I want them to really cry when my Protag has to kill his best friend. Right now they'll groan.

And that, I think, is what's in those thirty odd pages I'm missing.

Syntax

Today over at The Rouge Wave Julie talks about repetition of words in your script. You know, when you use the same language over and over again. I can relate to this problem, especially the part where your characters use the same words.

In Not Dead Yet I had a tendency to have every single character say "Jesus!" or "Christ!" to express frustrated alarm. I had no idea I'd done it this much until Ex-Boyfriend pointed it out to me.

In my current script my two leads are a white woman and a Latino boy, so it's been easy to make them sound the same, but I've had to really focus on giving the kids different personalities. I don't speak Spanish, but the kids speak Spanglish, so to make sure the dialogue sounds authentic but still makes sense to English speakers, I've been using a lot of slang nicknames int he dialogue.

For example, I call everybody "huey" (pronounced "way" and meaning something like dumbass or asshole) at least once. My kids call each other that all the time. I used to have this one kid who mumbled so much he barely ever said anything that made sense, except he used to yell "Hey, huey!" all the time. So his nickname became Hey Huey.

But that doesn't mean every kid uses it all the time. Still, in my script, everybody throws that word around almost as much as they say "fuck."

It's difficult to keep track of that when you're rolling through dialogue scenes, so I started doing something on the last script that I found enormously helpful in fixing this problem. As I read through the script for the third or fourth time, I try to read it as one character only. I read most characters as if I'm listening to them, then when I get to his lines I say them in character. That way I develop his voice with a little more clarity, and I notice when another character sounds too much like him. Sometimes I even switch the lines around when I realize the dialogue sounds more natural coming from another character's mouth.

I'm a big believer in going back and fixing stuff anyway. While some people agonize over that first draft and stop and start and go back and fiddle with scenes over and over before they're finished - I plop down a lot of crap and leave myself little "This sucks ass" notes. I find it a lot easier to go back and fix stuff once you know the whole story. So it should be easy for me to go through the script and make sure one Latino kid doesn't sound exactly like another Latino kid, because no matter what people say, they are not all alike.

B Story to the rescue

Yesterday I wrote five more pages and then I realized that I was almost finished with my script. Except I was on page 44.

I figure I've got about 15 or so more pages to write, which puts me finishing at around page 60.

I cannot stretch 40 pages.

So I took a look at my script. Should I add some more scenes? Should I pump up the dialogue? Is this maybe not enough story to carry a script?

Then I realized where my problem was - I forgot my B story. Then I realized that explains everything. I have two major characters in this script - a boy and a girl - and I've spent all my time on the boy's story. I've had no trouble writing him and his scenes, but for some reason when the two of them are together I've had a hell of a time with the dialogue. I've got bright yellow notes at the end of each of those scenes that say "Fix this. It fucking sucks."

So when I realized I had completely neglected the girl's story, I also realized that's probably why I'm having difficulty with the dialogue they have in common. I know him well, but even though I wrote up her backstory I still haven't spent a lot of time actually writing her character.

I'm going to go ahead and finish what I've got and get to the end of the story, then I'm going to go back and add in the B story, which will of course make some adjustments to the A story, but it should fix both the story and the page count.

In the meantime, I'm stoked to tell you that I'll be having a few interviews coming up. I'll be interviewing the Emmy nominated creator of the Cartoon Network show Chowder and hopefully the CEO of PitchQ, and then I'll see what friend relationships I can exploit after that. So watch for those interviews.

I've got to go write some pages.

In loco parentis

This week my life has imitated my art.

A few months - oh, geeze, MONTHS? I need to get to work - ago I was working on Fear of Clowns (formerly Jacking) and I needed a reason for a kid from South Central to walk around a white neighborhood talking to white people in a benign way. So I thought, class project. But what class project would get you to go to a different neighborhood and talk to people? So I thought, petition.

What if the kid's history teacher assigned them a first amendment project where they split into groups and each group practiced one of the five freedoms in the first amendment and his group got petition. Then he would have to go around Los Angeles getting signatures to support his cause to stop the education budget cuts.

Well it just so happens I have persuasive writing as the curriculum this semester in my tenth grade class, so I kept thinking about this petition thing. And last week we started the project.

I assigned one group to petition, one to making a flyer to pass out to the students (freedom of the press) and one to bring our argument to the principal (speech and assembly). Religion was too hard so we'll just have a class discussion on that one.

Anyway, the kids were allowed to choose any topic they wanted that related to school, so they decided they want to get rid of the drab school uniforms they're supposed to wear.

And most of them threw themselves into it. The teachers and administrators were assholes about it - one guy shouted at my kids that the school system pays for them to wear uniforms and they should shut up and do as they're told, one administrator decided the issue was too "devisive" and my students shouldn't be allowed to get anymore signatures. We'd already collected 500 at that point and caused no trouble.

So in the end in one hour my kids collected 637 signatures. That's a lot for one hour. Then yesterday we took our cause to the principal. The kids read their speech, then the Q&A began. They didn't win their case but they did a good job defending it and even though they were sad I was terribly proud of them all.

And now there's talk of what to do next. I told them they did the project and I'm out of it, but now they know how to speak up and demand what they want, so if they want to take the argument to the parents - which was the principal's suggestion - they can. And several of them plan to.

So that was pretty cool. My screenplay gave me an awesome two weeks of lesson plans.

A little speculation on Crossing Over

Just now I was scanning the list of films releasing this month and I came across a new Harrison Ford picture called Crossing Over.

This film has nothing to do with psychic dudes who tell you stuff you already know about your childhood.

It's a film by Wayne Kramer, a South African immigrant who wrote and directed The Cooler (yay) and Running Scared (boo). It appears to be based on a short film he once wrote and directed in 1996. The film is about the experience of immigrants in America, both legal and illegal, and how difficult it is to become a part of the melting pot. It's designed the way Crash is, with several intersecting stories about people on different sides of the issue.

So it's right up my alley. I don't get political about much, but I will fight to the death to defend my kids from the anti-immigration sentiment in this country. A lot of the people who rail against illegal immigrants have never actually spent time with any of them and the issues are never as cut and dry as those Minute Men would have you think.

This is one of the reasons I'm writing Fear of Clowns. I assumed a lot of things about illegal immigrants before I moved to California and I have learned a great deal about my ignorance since I started teaching at a school filled with Mexicans and Salvis. I want to try to write a film that looks at their lives as they actually are, not as some melodramatic tale meant to preach at the audience.

And I liked Crash, but it's a damn preachy movie, and there are some obvious similarities to this film.

I fear this film may turn out to be a similar story and I don't know if I want to watch a film that lectures me for two hours. It's hard to tell though, because there isn't much information out there on this film.

The Weinsteins are involved in this but there's no publicity, no posters, no trailers, no nothing. A movie this political and with this big a cast - Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd - and nothing? I only saw it because I was scrolling through impending releases. I also wonder why the top four actors in a film about immigration are all white Americans - but I'm willing to reserve judgement until I see the film.

I'd love to read the script if I could get ahold of it because I'm terribly curious. I'm not worried it will resemble my own script too much because I'm writing about my kids, but I'd still like to see its potential. I can't even find any reviews anywhere. And that's a bad sign.

Just like a Reese's Cup

I hate the title of my current script. Jacking? Really, Emily? That sounds lame as hell.

So the other day I was driving home and thinking about how much I hate my title and how I wish I could come up with a cooler title. And then I thought about how I had this great title that I liked a lot - Fear of Clowns - and how I wished I could have used it but the story I had to go with it didn't work and got scrapped.

And then it was like that whole thing with the chocolate and peanut butter as my brain ran into itself and went HAY! That could be the title of THIS story!

Because one of the things my kids like to draw is clowns. I sit in class while they draw these terrifying little pictures and pretend I'm not scared shitless. I usually nag them about paying attention as a cover for my fear so they'll put the drawing away, but clowns are one of the most common things they draw. I think it's a gang thing or something. So since my story is about my kids and gangs and white ladies it was really easy to stick in a scene where the white lady talks about how clowns scare her.

And you know why clowns scare me and her and a lot of other people? Because you can't see their true faces. The fake smile covers the true face of the person who wears it, so it fucks up your perception and you can't tell what you're truly looking at. And those of us with coulrophobia get freaked out by that feeling.

The idea of a man whose true face is hidden behind a false smile is a perfect theme to add into a story about a kid who's trying to avoid gang life. The people who try to steer him toward a life of crime pretend to be his friends, hiding their true faces from him until it's too late.

Besides, Fear of Clowns has always sounded like either a scary horror movie or a deep emotional drama. This script just happens to be a deep emotional drama. With guns.

Do not bait and switch your logline

As soon as I began working on my new script people started asking me what it was about.

"It's about a modern day superhero with social anxiety disorder who must overcome his fear to save the world from an evil queen."

To which everyone immediately said, "That sounds funny!"

Yeah that's pretty close to high concept right there. You can start thinking of ideas immediately, doncha think? Hilarious ideas?

Except it's not a comedy. In fact this is possibly the bleakest thing I've ever written. Everybody betrays you in the end. No matter who's in charge, we're all screwed. Nobody is who they say they are. Well, all except that one guy, he's pretty cool.

That doesn't mean there won't be funny moments but all in all it's not a funny story. Except that my logline give you a pretty obviously funny setup.

I can either change the story to fit the logline or change the logline to fit the story. Since I'm not much of a comedy writer I have to say goodbye to my perfect little logline. The story is only slightly altered here to prevent thievery, but the gist is there.

But the tone is all wrong and I can't have some executive going Oooooh this will be funny! then reading it and sinking slowly into depression.

Trying a new method

Now that I'm done with the zombies I need a follow-up script, so I'm going to try to use my time off to whip through a first draft of Fear of Clowns, a modern, real-world female superhero story in the vein of Unbreakable. That title will probably change to give a more accurate connotation, but for now I like it.

I'm approaching this script very differently from how I approached every one before it. Normally I carefully plan out all the major beats and write out a thick stack of index cards before I even start to write. This time I'm going to try jumping in without so much preparation. I still index carded, but I only wrote five of them. And what I have right now is not long enough for a feature. I know the beginning, I know the end, and I know a few beats in between but I'm missing large chunks of story I have to fill out as I go.

So we'll see what happens when I have a really developed backstory but not a clear sense of my events. So far it's been easier than I thought. I wrote 15 pages yesterday without batting an eye.

We'll see how long I can keep that up, and if my brain will keep ahead of my fingers on the keyboard.

Clowns, page one

At one of Bill Martell's seminars at The Expo this year he said something about writing about the interesting things you encounter in your life, the things that separate you from other people. Actually, I think at the time he was talking about how to separate your query letter from all the others, but whatever the point was it gave me an idea.

I started thinking about all the things that are quirky about me. The teacher thing is done to death and the world has plenty of Southern movie stars and we don't need another movie about aspiring writers and I could do a great kickboxing girl story if Girl Fight and Million Dollar Baby and Against the Ropes hadn't already mined what was left of the boxing genre.

"What else have I got?" I thought.

Well, I'm afraid of clowns. A girl who's afraid of clowns. Surely there's something in that.

So I got a title: Fear of Clowns.

And I got a character: a girl.

So as you can see, I was well on my way.

I kept trying to force clown stories into this title, but it soon became clear that I had to let the story come to me. It sounds like a drama, doesn't it? About a girl trying to conquer her fear of fake people? Or something.

Every night as I fall asleep I write my latest story. For a long time it was the zombie story, which I had put on pause while I do a little research, but make no mistake I plan to finish that by Christmas. But I often come up with stories as I teeter on the edge of sleep. I am a fortunate soul in that I almost always remember what I create. I don't even keep a note pad by my bed because I never forget my good ideas.

I know. Don't you just hate me?

Then one morning I had a dream about Batman pissing a bunch of people off. I woke up and realized what an interesting angle I'd just thought up - a way of looking at Batman that I've never seen explored. I realized that if I changed Batman to my own girl it would be freaking awesome. And I could call it Fear of Clowns.

I mulled over the story for a while as I continued work on the zombies, then a couple of nights ago as I was pondering possible events I wrote the opening. And it was different from anything I'd written before. I'm writing about life in a small town in North Carolina - Coats, to be exact, a town I used to drive through on my way to work each morning - so I started to write it in my Southern girl voice.

And if you don't know what that is, read some Clyde Edgerton or T.R. Pearson's A Short History of a Small Place.

Now, without further ado, the current opening scene to Fear of Clowns:

EXT. COATS - DAY

It's a green town in a green state where little kids still run around barefoot in the woods. There is one major two-lane road running through town, and the only stop light anybody pays attention to is the one that intersects the other major two-lane road running through town. Anything directly outside of Coats, North Carolina is asparagus farms and the gourd museum.

In the middle of a sea of little backyards, a blazing inferno envelops a house in trees.

INT. TREEHOUSE - DAY

Fire. Flames engulf the entirety of what used to be a finely crafted treehouse, with slats nailed together with the precision of Bob Villa. Rock posters and pinup girls melt off the wall. Playing cards burn on the floor next to a digital camera, pillows and other assorted odds and ends little boys like to keep around their secret clubs. In one corner, the blackened remains of a space heater.

Outside a boy cries and men yell.

In another corner, a kitten named SAM - terrified, adorable and unable to plan an effective escape.

A hand claps itself around Sam and lifts him to a shoulder. Sam scratches the white face next to his paw and scrambles unsuccessfully to get away.

That face belongs to ERIN COLE, 23, a girl who's been doing her best to hide the fact that she's nice to look at. A thin bloody line appears on her cheek where Sam scratched her.

ERIN
Dammit, cat!

She lifts the cat and looks at it.

ERIN
I'm trying to save your life here!

She looks down the hole in the middle of the treehouse, where the rope ladder has burned away.

Below, the ground.

Sam looks down.

They look at each other.

Erin doesn't realize that her sweater is on fire.

SAM
Mrawr!

ERIN
Okay.

She leaps into the hole.