Conquering the index cards

This is my bulletin board. The first thing I see when I wake up is my calendar so I can remember the tasks I had to do that day. The second thing I see is this bulletin board, with index cards from my current project and the logline for Not Dead Yet so I have easy access in the event of a phone call from a producer or an agent or in case my mom finally wants to hear it. And below that, my Nicholl rejection letter from last year just so my head doesn't get too big.

I post this because after about a month of simmering in my story concept, yesterday I finally sat down and outlined my next script. I've been thinking and thinking and I had Act 1 and Act 3, and of course I was having trouble with the elusive Act 2.

Oh, Act 2. You are such an asshole.

I've thought about it in the shower. I've thought about it at night in bed. I've thought about it in the morning. I've thought about it in the car. And I knew Act 2 is where I need my lovers to actually fall in love and have sex and have their big discussion about the fact that they can never be together. You know, pretty much the most important stuff in the script and I have no idea how to do it.

So today I said fuck it. I started writing out my index cards like I always do when I remembered that Movie Magic has an index card feature that I've never used. Although I am a very nontraditional person in most situations, but I love my index cards. I don't even shift them around, which is the point of index cards I think. I just like putting my story in neat little pretty colored squares I can look at for inspiration.

So I opened up Movie Magic and I did my index cards. I wrote up Act 1, no problem.

Then I sat there and stared at the next empty index card slot.

And I stared.

And I watched The Real Housewives of New York City. I think of all the Real Housewives anywhere, Betheny is the only one who's not an atrocious person.

Anyway, After I became sufficiently disgusted by the overload of bitchiness, I said to myself, okay self, you need to solve this problem. My protagonist has just come back to her house from a fight scene with some dudes and I need her to go back out and do another fight scene with my male lead that will turn into a sex scene, but if she just up and leaves it seems too contrived, like she sat down and hopped back up again.

So I thought, what would make her want to leave. Well, she has some real differences of opinion with her family members that drive he need to fight, so I had the idea that her family would try to talk her into doing something she doesn't want to do. Then she runs out of the house, not because it's time for her to have another fight scene, but because she needs to prove to herself that she's still in control of her life. She runs into my male lead while doing something that directly opposes his mission, and the rest of the scene falls into place.

And there it was. The bridge that connected Act 1 to Act 3. And this time, I remembered the B story which is usually what I forget on the first pass. And I have some terrific ideas about subtext - I mean good shit about feminism and racism and cultural expectations and shit.

This is why I love screenwriting. The fun part, when it's all ideas and figuring things out and nobody has had a chance to tell you how horrible your idea is. Today I start on page one and see how far I can get.

For now I will refer to the script as Burn Side because that's what I keep saving it as, but that will probably change as I write.

Thanks Bobby Wang, or how I learned to love the martial arts film

As step one in researching my new martial arts script, I have to watch a shitload of martial arts films. I mean it's really tough work, you guys. It takes concentration and shit because I have to read subtitles.

I started with Hard Boiled. I've seen Hard Boiled before, but it was a lifetime ago during high school when Bobby Wang made us all sit in his house when his parents were out of town and watch Hard Boiled and Half a Loaf of Kung Fu. At the time I had no idea why either film was so special, and then I got distracted when Jason Peterson passed out in the bathtub next to a pool of his own vomit. That was probably around the time when Bobby kept rewinding the scene where that dude rides in on his motorcycle and unleashes hell in the warehouse. I remember that scene really well, mostly because we watched it like eight times that night.

So now I'm watching Hard Boiled again with a greater appreciation for not only martial arts films, but films in general. At my house we didn't watch movies that much, and when we did they tended to be musicals or popular Hollywood pics. I didn't know Hong Kong action existed until I met Bobby Wang, and even then I didn't really get the hype.

I also didn't appreciate how hot Chow Yun Fat was in this movie. Hell he's still hot and I'd still nail him. But you know until a few years ago, I only knew him from Crouching Tiger and The Replacement Killers. I had no idea he had this career before he came to America.

I had the same experience with Jet Li. I thought he was awesome in Lethal Weapon 4, but when Ex Fiance showed me that first Once Upon a Time in China film, I was in love. It took me a while, but eventually Bobby Wang's effort to spread his love for the modern martial arts film caught up to me.

Next up in my queue I have The Curse of the Golden Flower, A Touch of Zen, Infernal Affairs, Wasabi, The Chinese Connection and The Emperor and the Assassin. I think later on I have some Kurosawa films coming up too.

I can't wait until I'm a full time screenwriter and I can take this shit off on my taxes.

Research

Starting a new script means research. Unless you're writing an autobiographical number, which nobody should ever do EVER unless your name is Antoine Fisher, you're gonna need to look some stuff up.

I wrote a script once about these brothers who were all thieves and they had to pick locks and crack safes. I tried to find as much info as I could but it's some very technical stuff and I'm not so good at technical stuff. And then I wrote about three brothers but I don't actually have any brothers, so I really didn't know what the hell I was writing about. I tried to write another script about an assassin for the mob but I don't know anything about that and I tried to research but it's pretty hard to find anything accurate about being a hitman. I read this one book that claimed to be accurate but I'm not so sure, so most of what I know comes from other movies. And we all know what happens when you base a movie on other movies.

Not Dead Yet worked because I needed to research only one thing: the Great Lakes. I put most of my events in familiar settings, but the route my characters had to take to get from one place to another was not one I have taken. So I met with Ex Boyfriend at the now defunct Doughboys and we went carefully over how canal locks work and what cities are on the route my characters needed to take and whatnot.

And because I took the time to make certain I knew what I was writing about the story was easy. It was sort of an epiphany of common sense. Hey, there, if you know what the characters know you can probably write them better.

Lucky for me, my new script is on a subject in which my mother is an expert, so when she visited I plopped down on the couch with her and got out my notebook. I explained my story and she immediately jumped into action. A little too immediately. She practically wrote my whole story and now she's probably going to sue me for story credit.

Now I'm just going to read this book I got from Amazon and let the rest of the story jump out at me as I read. And as soon as I feel 100% confident with my level of knowledge on the subject, that's when I know it's time to crank that sucker out.

My new idea

I haven't been truly excited about a story idea in a long time. Several weeks ago I was running through my list of current story ideas, trying to pick which one I wanted to work most once I was completely finished with Not Dead Yet. They were all okay ideas as ideas go, but none of them was dying to be written.

I had decided on one idea, but I was having trouble putting it together. It was a whole daughter searches for her father while being chased by bad guys thing, but I just had too many holes. Every time I solved a story problem I created a cliche problem.

Then I went to a meeting at work where we practiced creative writing. Of course I was a big show-off who earned lots of praise with her story about all the times I have been brave and stupid. It was like Oh no don't make me have to earn $25 an hour writing short stories! Nooooooo!

Most teachers are more literature focused than writing. I was amazed at how many teachers thought good writing = a shitload of adjectives.

Anyway, this one teacher wrote about her love of martial arts. She had taken six years of an obscure martial art that has a really cool origin story. I had forgotten about that story, but had always planned to do something with it some day. It's on a index card on my bulletin board, so you know it's serious.

So I went up to her and asked some questions about it, and then I told her I'd been working on a story about the origin and she got all huffy and said "I'm working about a book with that story," and I said not to worry because I was planning to take so much poetic license they wouldn't be remotely the same. And even if I do steal her story, she's totally fat now so I can just run from her before she Karate chops my ass.

Anyway, I started thinking more and more about this idea, and the main problem is that no matter how I worked it, it always became a Karate Kid movie. So I just kept thinking and thinking and I thought about the movies I love the most, particularly martial arts movies, and I analyzed the elements in them that work. And then it hit me.

I can't really say exactly what hit me because when it did, oh man is it awesome. Not only is it something I will have an absolute blast writing, but it's something nobody has ever done. Ever. It's not a super commercial film, but it ain't no autistic grandma living in the basement movie either.

You know an idea's good when you don't have to work at it. The zombie story was the most fun thing to write ever because I didn't have to think too much. I had a group of people that needed to cross the country to get to another group of people. They're going to need to stop for gas - fight scene. They're going to need to go over some dangerous terrain - fight scene. I didn't have to stop and force a fight scene where it didn't belong.

That's what I used to do when I first started. I'd go along with my story and realized nobody had fought for a while, so I planted a fight scene in the middle of nothing. But a good fight scene, just like a good sex scene, comes out of and serves the story. Even in a martial arts film.

And that's when I knew I loved my new story. As soon as I figured out the basic plot, I immediately saw all the fight scenes because they were necessary. Well of course if my protagonist breaks into this place, the antagonist is going to have to fight her. And that will cause her to do this other thing the next day, which will lead to this next thing he'll have to do, etc. The story writes itself.

So for the first time since I started writing about zombies, I'm excited. Now comes research. First research assignment - watch all the Once Upon a Time in Chinas. Second research assignment - take a martial arts class.

Being a writer is so hard.