It's Not All 50-50

Q. Recently, a friend of mine came to me with a draft of her indie feature screenplay. I told her I was gonna rewrite it and she agreed to it. I basically had to re-type the entire thing into final draft because she only had a pdf copy of the screenplay and it was a picture image. Anyway, I retyped the screenplay, edited action lines, and changed a bit of the dialogue to give the characters a better sense of who they are. I basically rewrote the screenplay.

Originally, I was thinking this would be a co-writing 50/50 endeavor. But she's now thinking more like her 70 and me 30. I know we should've laid out a contract before we started. Grant it, she came up with the story, the characters and the concept. But I came in and rewrote it, edited it and punched up dialogue quite a bit.

Basically I just need help in understanding what is the correct percentage on ownership for this sorta situation.

What you've done isn't considered a "rewrite" under WGA or WGC rules. What you've done would be considered a "polish." "Rewrite" and "polish" are both terms of art under the Guild agreements. To do a "rewrite" would entail introducing new characters and new plot elements. You'd have to write completely new scenes or at least move scenes around a lot. Under WGA rules, I believe you could replace every single bit of dialog and not be entitled to an onscreen credit.

I think 70-30 might be appropriate where you're actually doing a rewrite. 50-50 might apply where you're talking about a page one rewrite -- throwing out virtually everything and starting from scratch. But if you're only doing a polish, I think you ought to be happy with 10%. Maybe, maybe 12.5%.

It takes me about a month to come up with a coherent beat sheet for a script and another month to come up with a first draft from that. I can do it a lot faster if I have to, but that's how long I spend on a typical spec. If you brought me a feature and all you wanted was snappier dialog and action lines, I would probably spend about a week on that. (More and it wouldn't be a polish any more.) Suggesting about 10%.

Basically, there is a strong presumption in favor of the original writer. It's easy to come in and tweak dialog and edit action lines. It's hard to come up with something out of nothing. Just ask God.

But next time, definitely specify who's getting what before anyone does any work.

Her Eyes are Clear and Bright, But She's Not There

A ways down the comments thread on the last DOLLHOUSE post, I think I came up with a fix. Kind of an idea for a mild reboot, really.

As you know, the concept is: Every episode, Echo (née Caroline) is injected with someone else's personality. Then she goes on missions. But then that personality is wiped, and she goes back to being a tabula rasa: a person without a personality.

The problem: it's hard to care about a person without a personality. Abstractly, it's sad, what's been done to her. But as human beings we're hardwired to respond to people not concepts. I don't viscerally care about Echo/Caroline the way I viscerally care about even a bad person like Dexter or Tony Soprano. She's barely alive.

However, we still want a show where the main character's personality gets wiped every episode. 'Cause that's cool.

Proposed fix: instead of wiping her personality and overlaying it with other people's personalities, use a different paradigm. Each episode, they regress Echo back to the personality she had as a six-year-old child.

And then, when they give her a new personality for a mission, the new constructed personality is essentially who she would have become if she'd grown up to be that new person. So safecracker Taffy is who Caroline would have been if she'd become a safecracker. Woodsman Girlfriend is who Caroline would have grown up into if she'd been really into the woods. Sure, they're using bits of other people's personalities to create the new Carolines. But they're always Caroline.

So, when she's Echo, we see a six-year-old girl in the body of an adult. And we would care about her the way we'd care about a six-year-old child. We have an instinct to protect children and childlike people. So our heart goes out to her the way it doesn't go out to Echo the Blank Slate.

And when she's given a Mission Personality, we still see Caroline in there -- she's the same person, but with a different life story. This wouldn't actually change the acting much, because Eliza Dushku (or any actor) is going to bring herself into whatever character she plays. But it's going to change how we feel about the acting, because we still know this is Caroline.

I'm not even sure the pseudoscience of the memory overlay is funkier in this paradigm. Arguably, wouldn't it be easier to make Caroline think she spent years learning to crack safes than it would be to overlay someone's entire existence onto someone else's brain? But that's irrelevant really, because the audience will accept whatever pseudoscience allows you to tell a fun story. I doubt there are many sf fans who reject FRINGE because the pseudoscience isn't sufficiently well thought out.

And, there's no problem about changing the paradigm in midstream. The Dollhouse technology is a work in progress. Have Topher say, "I'm going to start leaving a bit of her personality in there. That'll create a more robust Active." Etc.

Would this fix the problem? Discuss. You know you want to.

TV Writing Consultants

Y'all have been asking me for recommendations for a TV writing consultant, since Victoria Lucas only does features. I just noticed that my friend Sara Dodd is coaching and consulting for TV writers at The Story Spot. Sarah is an accomplished pro TV writer with a deep credit list. Their prices are quite reasonable for professional advice; they give a lot of it for a few hundred bucks. Compared to what Sarah gets paid as a story consultant in the business, that's a ridiculous bargain.

Oh, and they're running a sale right now. So look'em up and tell'em Alex sent ya!

Victoria Lucas: A Script Analyst I Can Recommend

I used to critique scripts for a fee, but ever since I got too busy, I've been sending people to my friend Victoria Lucas. She's a development exec I worked with back in my indie production days.

Now she's hanging out her shingle on the Internet.

Victoria is one of the extremely rare development people who can tell you what's broken in your script. Most readers will give you notes like "I wanna like the main character more" or "the scene on page 60 drags." She will tell you, "your main character needs a more compelling opportunity, problem or goal so that we'll care about him," or "you haven't properly set up the stakes on page 23, so your scene on page 60 drags."

Victoria is currently grossly undercharging for her services ($185 for 3-4 pages of notes and a telephone call, $350 for longer notes and more follow-up), so take advantage of her before she wises up and charges what she's worth.