Happy endings

I am sick as a dog today. Actually I was sick yesterday, but didn't realize how bad it was until I was already out the door. So today I'm staying in bed while some stranger gives my students a state-mandated test. That'll make 'em appreciate me.

I got a note on my script the other day that I thought was worthy of its own post: the need for a Happy Ending.

Personally, I'm a fan of the bittersweet ending. Some character we all love sacrifices himself so the others can get away, two people get what they want in life but can't have each other, the good guys win but at a huge cost.

Pitch Black, Once, The Magnificent Seven, Last of the Mohicans, basically any story where you achieve your goal, but at an almost unbearable price.

Although Beefcake says by this definition Predator is bittersweet. I suppose that could be debated.

One of my very favorite genres of film is the artsy Chinese martial arts film. Your Crouching Tiger, your House of Flying Daggers, your Hero. I started thinking one day about these films and what they have in common and how a person could create an American version of these stories. I deconstructed them and recreated all their key elements into a story I could write.

One of the common threads of these films is the death of the lover. Each film is at its core a love story, and in each film one of the lovers dies, usually in some great sacrificial or symbolic gesture. If I'm going to adapt that genre, I need to keep that consistent trait. So I killed one of my lovers.

The friend of mine who read my script gave great notes and I definitely appreciate his reading my script because it's helping me spot some problems, but his final comment was that he thought I should give the story a happy ending. American audiences want a happy ending, and it feels like a cheat to take that away.

I get that the ending needs work for sure. I don't want anybody to feel cheated - I want them to feel like this is what had to happen. When I watch House of Flying Daggers I desperately want everybody to live, but when they don't I don't feel cheated, I feel moved to tears at the tragedy of it all. That's the reaction I want to elicit. So clearly I need to develop my ending to give that feeling.

However, a happy ending? Do you think that's true? Pitch Black is one of my favorite examples of a bittersweet ending, but it was an independent film. In fact, when I think about movies that had these kind of endings, they're almost always indies. And the Chinese martial arts films I'm inspired by - well, they're Chinese.

But I just can't see my characters with a happy ending. I even give them a dialogue exchange where they talk about ridiculous scenarios where they'll live happily ever after while they're both pretending not to know how ridiculous that is.

After all, we would never have heard of Romeo and Juliet if they didn't die in the end. But we Americans, we do love our happy endings. Can I sell a story where my protagonist dies?

What do you think about the American need for a happy ending?

What I learned from my notes

I sent my script to a friend the other day and last night he gave me great notes. I hope he doesn't mind, but I'd like to deconstruct his notes because they taught me some things I thought were interesting.

We did the notes in real time, which I've never done before but liked very much. As he read the screenplay he emailed me questions and comments, and I responded, so every time he had an observation he sent it to me so I could see how his thoughts flowed. I really liked doing it this way because it allowed me to ask clarifying questions and see exactly what his instant reactions were without a filter of editing. That's how I like to write notes myself. If you give me a screenplay to read, I tend to just write my notes in order and not edit much before I send them so you can see my journey through your work.

I learned that when you're working with historical fiction, you have to have an exposition dump at some point, or your reader, who is most likely not an expert in your period of choice, will be terribly confused.

I learned that I write better on the fly. All the stuff I sat down and carefully planned with the index cards was not nearly as good as the stuff I just cranked out while I was in front of the screen. All the things my friend said he liked were things I was inspired to write by the characters themselves. So I should definitely trust my instincts.

I learned that it's funnier than I thought it was. I thought when I was writing this thing that it was so goddamn serious I needed to intentionally insert funny moments for comic relief. I went back through the script and looked specifically for moments when I could lighten shit up because I'm not actually trying to be the world's most depressing action screenwriter. Apparently it worked. There were laughs to be had.

I learned that "Eyeball fucking" means different things to different people.

I learned that yes, just as I suspected, I suck at writing death scenes.

I learned that when you call a character NAME and change it to Simon, you might want to go back through your script and make sure you didn't use the word "name" anywhere else or you'll end up with several references to "What's his Simon".

Tomorrow I'll talk about the most interesting comment to come out of last night's notes, whether or not you must have a happy ending. This one's going to need its own post.

I ran, and then I fought, and then I had sex... on paper

Today I wrote a page-long chase scene followed by a page-long fight scene followed by a page-long sex scene.

Hm. In retrospect that seems short to go from chase to fight to sex in three minutes. I'll have to draw that out some more. What do you think, more chase, more fight or more sex?

Anyway, it was one of those situations where your male and female protagonist kick the crap out of each other until finally they can't take the sexual tension anymore and hitting turns to tonguing and ripping each other's clothes off. Yes, I confess I borrowed heavily from the Buffy/Spike episode "Smashed" where they fucked a house to the ground. Except there was more love and less hate and it was on a boat so there were no chandeliers.

Luckily I have a whole plan for that kind of thing. For the chase scene I put on "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance. And then for the fight scene I put on Lo Fidelity Allstars' "Battleflag" and then for the sex scene it was "If It Kills Me" by Jason Mraz followed by Gavin Rossdale's "Love Remains the Same." Because getting in the right mood is important.

This does make for a strange transition. You don't often follow "Battleflag" with anything by Jason Mraz.

After this whole thing I was spent. It's weird how sitting on your couch can be so emotionally exhausting you feel like you did in fact just run through some trees and jump over boats and then have crazy sex with your sworn enemy on a fishing vessel.

That was fun.

Historical accuracy

Yesterday I came to a stopping point where I had to consult the historian, my mother. My protagonist must rescue her brother from prison. I didn't know she needed to rescue her brother until just a couple of days ago, so this is a completely unexpected turn of events for us all.

This morning I sat down with my water and my music and with pants on, I began to stare at my computer. And that's when I realized that I have no idea what a prison in this era would look like.

So I call my mom, who is a history teacher with a specialization in this particular historical era. She also does not watch movies very often. So here is an excerpt from our conversation:

ME: How would you break someone out of that kind of prison?
MOM: It's not very well guarded. He could just attack some guards. Or dig a tunnel.
ME: No, I need someone else to break him out.
MOM: But he could easily just dig a tunnel. Or attack some of the guards.
ME: But he doesn't. He gets rescued.
MOM: I suppose someone could pretend to be bringing him food and then sneak him out. It would be pretty easy.
ME: No I need my protagonist to kick ass breaking him out.
MOM: He wouldn't really need to. The guards would be old. He'd really just be able to dig a tunnel or attack some of the guards.

She's adorable.

Anyhow, she gave me some great information too. It turns out that my male protagonist that I made up in my head is exactly like a real person who lived in this place at this time, and the real person did cooler stuff than what I was going to make him do. So I just used that handy name change feature on Movie Magic and bam! Historical accuracy here we come.

When it comes to historical fiction I prefer my stories realistic. I don't like it when a story just doesn't fit the facts, so as long as a story is plausible I'm okay, but I hate it when a story is impossible. I want to get as much right here as I can and still have a story about an ass-kicking lady ninja. Kind of like those old stories where the author opened with OMG this is so fucking true you'll be like no way! but way!

The story is completely not true, but for a second you think it is because the author was so adamant about it.

So I spent yesterday going back through my pages so far changing things to fit my new information, which unfortunately ended me with the exact same page count even though I did lots of work. I still have a few more pages to adjust before I can move forward, too, so it will be another day maybe before I can get to page 60.

That means I'll probably have to wait until Thursday to see 9, since that was my reward for getting to page 60. But I've been able to flesh out my story with many more historical details. That had been bothering me for a while, that it felt like only eight people lived in this town. After talking to my mom, I was able to add in a whole cast of extras.

Thanks, Mom.

Moving forward

Yesterday househunting got in the way of writing. Disappointing house hunting, at that. Apparently "Well maintained" means a crumbling awning and holes in windows that have been repaired by boarding them over with plywood. And "Great neighborhood" means the homeless guy sleeps at least 100 yards from the house and the gunshots can only be heard on Saturdays.

Anyway, it was good that I didn't have time to write yesterday because I needed some time to think. Every step of this script has been a challenge. I've had to think seriously over every step, but I refuse to abandon it because I believe in the story and I think it could really add to my resume. Not Dead Yet is an expensive action story and zombies are everywhere right now that my work doesn't stand out enough, but Burn Side is a much lower budget story and if anyone else comes up with something similar I'll eat my hat. It's also exactly the kind of film I love to watch.

But it's been harder to write. Much harder. I'm dealing with racial issues and gender issues and historical facts, and all of these things are making me worry that when this thing is done people will point and laugh at me.

Then again, that's always my problem. With zombies you can kind of make up rules, but with real history involved you risk mockery if you get things wrong. Fortunately my mom will look it over when I'm done and she's an expert on this particular era of history, but she doesn't know much about screenplays and she doesn't watch action movies so I'm a little nervous that a lot of her notes will be stuff like "A lady in waiting would never kick the king in the face." That's not really the historical accuracy I'm worried about.

The other problem I've had is the ending. Usually I know exactly how the story ends before I even type the first line of the script, but this time I've been a little unsure. I'm using the whole Crouching Tiger / House of Flying Daggers style to influence me, so one of my lovers has to die. The problem is, I could never figure out which one. It needs to be caused by the events of the story, not thrown in just to fit the mold, so what are my characters going to do that leads one to kill the other?

I had already assumed one of them had to kill the other, but a few weeks ago as I drifted off to sleep I had an epiphany. One of the characters I had thrown into an earlier scene and then meant to forget about would come back, angry at one of my lovers, and kill him in front of the other one. Same tragic consequences, but caused by events I already set in motion without meaning to.

I like that tremendously, since it makes my story more like one of my other favorites, In Bruges, where everything that happens in the beginning comes back around in the end. No loose ends in that film.

The thing is, I'd totally forgotten that I solved the problem until last night when I was thinking of a completely different problem, but as soon as I put both problems together I had a total eureka moment. And now this thing is clear. I can see all the way down the hallway that is this script. I think that progress bar on the left ought to zoom ahead starting today.

I still have a ways to go, but every time I sit and think and really work these problems out, the script gets stronger. One thing is for sure, when all is said and done this will be one very well thought out action script.

Characters with an agenda

I have immersed myself in story since I don't know when. I used to run around my house with a toy gun, pretending to be an FBI agent. I had a real mashup of toys growing up so The Purple Pie Man married my beat-up, The Dog Ate My Feet Barbie and regularly put together schemes to destroy my other Barbie who lived in the My Little Pony stable and raised ponies with her adopted children, Huckleberry Pie and Lime Chiffon, of Strawberry Shortcake fame.

I didn't really ever play house.

The characters never changed. The bad guys stayed bad and the good guys stayed good. Occasionally Dog Ate My Feet Barbie would have a guilty conscience and secretly save her sisters behind The Purple Pie Man's back, then he'd get all pissed and she'd come running back to him, begging forgiveness.

I had this whole convoluted thing, and eventually these characters I made up became somewhat real to me. I think I tried to make the Purple Pie Man a good guy once since I didn't have any Ken dolls, but eventually he went bad again, without my really having to work at it.

I think this is what we mean when when we say that our characters tell us what to do. You can try to control them, but The Purple Pie Man can no more be a hero than Skeletor. It's how he's made. When you're that ugly and your girlfriend has no feet, you just don't have compassion in you. Although you'd think all those pies would make him happy, but maybe he's just sick from the sugar rush.

I love it when you give your characters a back story and set them on a path, and along the way you find yourself writing dialogue you don't really understand, and then suddenly you learn something. A week or so ago I was writing up an action scene and my character ended up killing a man in a far more brutal way than I anticipated. And I had to say, why did she just bash that dude's head in with a tree branch?

And I said, well, this guy represents how helpless she feels most of the time. The only time she feels in control of her own life is when she's fighting, and this guy is a lot of the reason why. Of course she bashed his head in. What else could she have done? I had developed her so much in my head I had to reverse engineer her reasoning to figure out why she behaved that way, just like real people.

It's kind of weird when you think about it. We make these people up, but we don't always control their movements. It's one of the great joys we get as writers.

And now I'm writing like gangbusters

Well, maybe not gangbusters, but I'm averaging two pages a day during the week.

I can always tell how well I'm doing by what I'm thinking about when I go to sleep at night. I do most of my plotting at night while I'm waiting to sleep, but it's not always the script I'm working on unless I feel really good about that script.

When I was working on Not Dead Yet I thought about it before I started, during the writing, and after. For a long time after, which is why I kept making so many damned revisions. It's also why I kept having so many damned nightmares about zombies. Seriously, for a while there I jolted awake at least once a week in fear that a zombie was about to eat me. But I kept thinking about it every night because I felt so good about the story.

For the next year, I thought about anything other than the script I was working on. I wrote it, but my heart wasn't in it. And now I have a first draft of a script I don't love. First draft is all it will ever be.

So then I came up with the plot for Burn Side and started developing it at night, and at first I felt excitement over my story. A few weeks into writing the first draft, I started to distract myself. I thought of anything but my current script. At night I thought up the plot to a low-budget sci-fi character based story, a prison escape movie, a story about William Randolph Hearst, and a kidnapping story. I spent most of my time on the sci-fi thing, so I guess I already know what my next project will be.

But that wasn't the point. The point was, I was supposed to be working on my Chinese-style martial arts movie but I wasn't. And that's because the movie wasn't working in my head.

I was doing the same thing I'd done in college, something my thesis director warned me about. I was trying to hang on to a story too tightly. Instead of scrapping something that didn't work, I was trying to twist a story element into a place where it wouldn't go. And then one night when I began to think about my sci-fi story I ordered my brain to refocus and fix this problem.

And I did. I realized I needed to scrap my whole plan and think of some other way for my characters to get together. Ever since I did that, I've been plotting like gangbusters. All I want to think about all night is my new script.

In short, I'm having fun again. And that's how I know this will be a good one. I wasn't so sure of that a few weeks ago.

Letting characters dictate action

Sometimes when I get stuck I just pretend I'm my character and imagine what I would do and that tends to solve my problem. For example, my biggest problem in Burn Side has been this huge chunk at the beginning where I have to build up relationships but nothing really happens but people talking.

I kept reworking it and reworking it, but for a while everything I did felt so contrived. Like, I need a fight here, so maybe some soldiers should accidentally discover her in the wrong place at the wrong time!

No, Emily. That's the shit I used to pull back when I started writing. You can't just input a fight scene all willy-nilly because you think your script is boring. The conflict MUST come from the story, not be added to it.

So then I thought and thought and I said, okay. Here's this girl who has these martial arts skills. But I've been neglecting her brother, who has his own set of issues. So far I've made him a grumbly disapproving guy and given him little to do beyond that. So I asked myself, why is the brother so angry? He's on the losing side of a battle, and now he's forced to encounter the winners on a daily basis. That would make you angry, don't you think?

My protagonist has to hide her martial arts skills in public.

The brother gets in a fight with his enemy in public, but his sister has to watch and can't help because she can't reveal what she can do. Conflict! And if I throw my male protag into the mix, a man who also cannot interfere, you have two people watching a fight they are capable of breaking up but can't.

So now instead of a scene of two people walking down the street talking so we can learn that they like each other, I have a scene where two people have to fight their own urges, and when they drag the beaten brother back to his house, we feel their chemistry as they lecture the brother on fighting.

What I'm trying to say is, one of the most useful things I do is just sit and ponder my character for a while sometimes. Why do they do things? What would I do if I were them? And then I know I'm not manufacturing conflict, I'm just letting it happen.

I admit I'm having to think way more about this script than I usually do. Thinking is hard.

Starting almost over

Well now I did it.

I got about 20 pages into my latest script and then I practically started over. I realized that I had an action scene on the first two pages and then nothing for probably 20 more. You can't go 20 minutes in a martial arts film with no martial arts, or at least something with tension. I had 20 minutes of people chatting. I was boring myself with all that talking.

People in screenplays really do need to learn to shut up and do stuff.

After the first night's adventure, Character A is invited to Character B's house to discuss something that will bring Character A and Character C together. Character A is concerned because she's guilty of a crime against Character B, but doesn't know if old B knows it or not.

Character B does not know, and all three characters talk. Then the next day character A and Character C talk some more. And then more talking. And also more talking about talking.

I thought about it and changed it to the following:

Character A learns that a 14-year-old boy she knows has been accused of her crime and is being questioned at Character B's house, so she storms over to save the boy, but has to do it without giving herself up. Once there she runs into Character C in league with Character B. Confrontation. There's less talking because tensions are high so there's no pleasantries or fond remembrances, just shouting and crying and whatnot from various people and I can meet out the exposition buried inside arguments. And Character A goes to the house of her own volition, not because she is requested there. Proactive behavior and all that.

Then I can not only put some interesting conflict inside my talking, but I can get to the action faster. I like this method much, much better.

The problem is, it changes completely most of the pages I already wrote and also makes me question the direction I was taking a subplot. I think I have to totally change the subplot but I don't know how yet. I need to sleep on it.

The lesson I learned from this is that sometimes when your script is boring you, throw a 14-year-old kid under a bus.

Sex scenes

This week, Mystery Man posted a long, interesting article about sex on film, and it made me think about my own relationship with sex scenes.

Simply put, I don't have one.

I am all about gunfire and fist fights and explosions and whatnot, but I very rarely bother with a sex scene, and when I do it's usually just the foreplay.

My mom taught me about the birds and bees when I was 3, 6, 8, 12, and 15. Nudity was not something to be ashamed of in my house and I was always told the truth as far as my mother knew it. For that I am grateful. I'm really glad to be out of an abstinence only school system so I can honestly answer kids' questions too. It's appalling what they don't know.

Mistaken theories I have dispelled over the years:
-You cannot get an STD from oral sex
-Girls do not have orgasms
-You can get AIDS from a toilet seat
-There is no such thing as a morning after pill
-Condoms don't really do anything

And probably a lot more, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head. The point is, I'm not afraid of sex or talking about sex.

But too much sex on film makes me uncomfortable.

When I think of the great sex scenes I've seen over the years, they're almost always on TV - the scene where Buffy and Spike screw the house to the ground, the scene where Sidney and Vaughn finally bump and grind while she's making dinner, the scene where Chrichton and Aeryn Sun couldn't keep their hands off each others' leather-clad bodies when they were drugged by vapors. These are my favorite scenes because I wanted for so long for these people to get together. I feel that electricity when they finally hook up because I've been craving it the same way they have.

In most movies, a sex scene is there.... well, I don't know why. The sex scene in Desperado is ridiculous. It's all candles and sweat and crazy positions and basically a porn movie except they met like three days ago. And in Matrix Reloaded, there is an entire chapter that is nothing but orgy in Zion and sex between Trinity and Neo in their bedroom. An entire chapter. Nothing happens but sex for an entire chapter. It's just not necessary. In fact, it's freaking boring.

So in my own writing I often forget about sex. I wrote Not Dead Yet, which is largely a love story between a married couple in the middle of serious problems, and I didn't have any sex scenes. My awesome friend who gave me such excellent advice pointed this out, suggesting I have two zombies have sex with each other.

Although that is a super nifty idea, that wasn't the way I wanted to go here, but he was right that I should have a sex scene given how much violence I've put into this story.

I thought and thought and realized there are these two other characters who are also having marital problems but I haven't had a lot of scenes with them together until the end when we're supposed to get this big emotional reaction from the end of their relationship.

So I put in a sex scene. Tasteful, emotional, and showing character development. And in the end it actually made the final scene between the couple a ton better. I made sure to show some boobs so the boys would have something to look at, but I tried the make the most out of a tender moment gone wrong in the bedroom, a moment that would payoff later in the story. I felt pretty good about the results.

Now the story I'm writing is like 80% love story and this couple definitely has sex. In fact, the moment they have sex is a freaking huge deal, so I've got to figure out how to write it to take the most advantage of the physicality. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet. I'll probably need some help because although I know how to make people fight each other to the death beautifully, I'm not so sure how to make them love each other.

Pushing on through

Well I'm over the hump.

In every screenplay there comes a time when I stop. I stop because I'm not sure about the realism. My biggest problem with writing is that if I don't know about something, I'm unsure as to how to go about writing it, so I tend to stop and ponder it for weeks before I pick it back up again, and sometimes I never do.

With Not Dead Yet it was a tidal wave in a place I've never seen and I was totally unsure as to how it would work or what would cause it so I sat there and sat there. Then after about a month of sitting I called my Ex and took him to the now tragically closed Doughboys to pick his brain. And I went home and continued my script.

This time the delay happened early. This is a historical piece, and 9 pages in I suddenly realized I did not live in this era and have no idea how someone would have talked besides the stereotypical way people do in movies about the era. So I sort of froze and thought and thought and thought.

And then I started thinking. One new trend in screenwriting is to write period characters using modern language, so I'm just going to follow the trend. I mean, if a Roman can speak with a British accent and people from Deadwood can use "fuck" and "cunt" like they're prepositions, then I can have my characters use more common language as long as I establish it early.

So then once I stopped worrying so much about the realism and started worrying about the story I was able to write the next page. And now I know exactly what I'm doing.

So yay, I'm over the hump. I hope.