Seth Barton Interviews me for MCV

Seth Barton and I had a lovely chat for MCV.

We all remember things in ways that suit us. In Arthur's playthrough, he is the hero, or the victim, of events; it's not his fault. Sally comes across as a bit of a flake, a bit of a mantrap, even though he's mad about her. But maybe he was not listening carefully, because Sally's explanations sound a whole lot more convincing in her playthrough. Sally even remembers saying some things that Arthur flat out doesn't remember."

I've been in the news!

With WE HAPPY FEW coming out in three weeks, I've had some lovely chats with journalists about the game. Here are some of them:

• WCCFTECH's Nathan Birch, We Happy Few Interview: Alternate History, Early Access, Retail Discs as Coasters, More

  I do think our world is grounded in some sort of honesty and reality. I think the best science fiction takes the real and pushes it further, until it can make its point. But if there’s no reality to begin with, it’s not grounded and there’s no emotional meaning. If it is grounded, it becomes clearer what you’re trying to talk about.

• VARIETY's Giancarlo Valdes, The Evolution of ‘We Happy Few’ From Survival Sim to Story-Driven Adventure

  “What the community told us is that they liked these goofy encounters with these crazy people more than they liked the systemic situations. We said, ‘OK, we’ll write more goofy encounters then,’” said Epstein.

• Xbox Achievements's Richard Walker, How Compulsion Pulled Back on Survival Gameplay and Put Narrative (and Puke) Up-Front

  I think we have an organic process, so I can't speak for Guillaume (Provost), who's the studio head and the Creative Director, [but] we're a studio that has kind of a flat structure, so Guillaume hires immensely talented people like Whitney Clayton (Art Director), David Sears who did SOCOM, who is our Design Director on this game, and then, y'know, lets them rip. And it's an iterative process, so you don't want to draw up a design document and then just make that design document, you know?

• READY:SET, We Happy Few built a dystopia with Mod culture, psychedelia, and Facebook

  “There’s a proverb that you shouldn't copy the masters — you go after what they went after,” says Alex Epstein, the Narrative Director for We Happy Few.

• PC Games Insider's Alex Calvin How Compulsion developed We Happy Few on Early Access

  "On our forums, people were asking over and over whether there was going to be a story. We were like: "Yes, there's going to be a story. We're making the story; we're making three stories". But there's been so much vapourware in this business that people are like: 'Pull the other one'."

In which Alex is interviewed at E3

So at E3 I had a super fun interview with the brilliant Julia Alexander of Polygon about We Happy Few. Did I mention it's coming out August 10th?

Can't wait to see what she thinks of Sally.

Pitch, Beat Sheet, Step Outline, Treatment

Q. Do you have examples of great treatments you could send me?

I don’t. I will read a great script, but I don't read other people’s treatments. Most pro writers will tell you that a treatment isn’t really a thing they like to write. It’s a step in the WGC contract, but it’s not really useful.

There are two things that look like treatments:

a. pitches
b. beat sheets

A pitch is for selling. It tells the story of the movie in 3-8 pages. Shorter is better. The idea is to get someone to pay you to write the movie. Or, if someone is saying they only want to read an outline, this is what you give them. There’s a fair amount of handwaving in a pitch. You don’t have to work out every last detail. You should put lots of sizzle in a pitch. Make sure the reader knows how cool everything is. Don’t put in dialog.

A beat sheet is for the writer to write the script. Mine are usually 10-12 pages single spaced. There’s usually about 40 beats in a movie. A scene can have two beats, or a beat can comprise several scenes, in the case of an action sequence. A beat sheet can include the emotional heart of a scene, if you think you might otherwise forget. If you have much more than 45 beats, you probably have too much going on in your movie.

Once you add sluglines (EXT. IAN’S FLAT - DAY) it’s a step outline, which is just a more detailed beat sheet.

Almost no one except writers and a few directors can read a beat sheet. Producers think they know how, but they don't, and giving a beat sheet to a producer usually results in tears. It is often unavoidable though. Producers will complain that a comedy beat sheet isn’t funny, or that a horror beat sheet isn’t scary, because beat sheets don’t express style or tone or pacing or emotional well. Beat sheets are the skeleton you hang scenes on. Never give anyone a beat sheet if you can avoid it, without first telling them the story in person over lunch.

Some producers and funders (e.g. Telefilm) are now requiring a 20-page “just add water” treatment, with indicative dialog. This creature is an abomination before the Lord. To get to this thing, you have to basically do all the work of writing a script without getting paid for a script, and without any of the fun. No writer I know considers a just add water treatment to be a useful step in writing a script. I have literally written the script first and then boiled it down afterwards, because writing a script is easier and much more fun.

The best way to write a pitch is to tell the story off the top of your head, without looking at the script. Just tell it the way you’d tell a friend the story of the movie. Then punch it up. Feel free to move events around if they sound better that way.

The best way to write a beat sheet is to tell the story to anyone who’ll listen, for three months, until you’ve worked out all the kinks in your story. Then write it down.

The second best way to write a beat sheet is with index cards, on the kitchen table. That way you can move things around easily.

I’m not sure looking at other people’s treatments is useful, except to see how different they are. The key point is to remember whether you’re writing a pitch or a beat sheet. If you’re writing a beat sheet, it doesn’t matter how you write it, because it’s just a long aide-mémoire for yourself (and your writing partner if you have one). If you’re writing a pitch, it’s a sales document, so just make your movie sound as awesome as you know how.

It's really simple. I didn't say it was easy, I just said it's simple.

I watched the first ten minutes of the NBC's live Jesus Christ Superstar this morning, the Overture and Judas's opening number, "Heaven on Their Minds." One thing struck me hard about Brandon Victor Dixon's performance of the song: he's lost Judas's intention.

Intention is the core of any acting performance. What is the character trying to do? Drama is all about people who want things from other people.

The song is a warning: Judas is scared, and he wants Jesus to cool it before the crowds get out of hand and everyone gets killed. And in the movie, that's how Carl Anderson performs it. He's warning Jesus, in song. He barely takes his eyes off Jesus.

Brandon Victor Dixon barely looks at Jesus until two thirds of the way through the song. He's got an amazing voice and he's doing all sorts of American Idol gymnastics with it. But what he is not doing is warning Jesus. He is singing about warning Jesus. He is, as my old acting teacher Joanne Baron would put it, disconnected from his imaginary circumstance and the characters around him.

Intention is big. Intention is huge. The single most important thing you can do as a director is make sure that the actor is clear on their intention. What are they trying to do? Adjustments are important ("now try doing it as if..."), but intention is the backbone, and without it, there's no drama.

Video games are all about their "verbs." What does the player get to do. Shoot? Climb? Punch? Break? Loot? Pick locks? Persuade?

Drama writing is also all about intention. As David Mamet puts it: "Who wants what, why can't they get it, why do I give a shit?" My formula is slightly more detailed but it's the same idea. A story is:

a. a character we care about
b. who has an opportunity, problem or goal
c. who faces obstacles, an antagonist, and or their own flaws in resolving (b)
d. who has something to lose (jeopardy) and/or
e. something to gain (stakes).
f. A story is told to an audience.


So: acting is about the actor convincing themselves they want something, and reacting with emotional truth when they discover (surprise! hopefully) that they can't get it.

It is literally that simple. If you can get that, you've done 80% of your job as a director.

(Casting is the other 80%.)

Dramatic writing is about characters wanting things. It is literally that simple.

If your character wants things and can't get them, you have drama. If your character is not trying to get things from the other people in the scene, then there is no drama.

Now, I said it's simple. I didn't say it's easy. Intention is really easy to forget. There is probably no pro writer who hasn't struggled with a beautifully written scene that doesn't work, up until the point where their trusted reader pointed out, "there's no dramatic conflict." There is probably no pro actor who hasn't lost their intention in a scene because they were focused on their adjustment ("as if") or their accent or their divorce or whatever.

But it is that simple. The first question you should ask yourself as a director or an actor, if the performance isn't working, is: are you, or is your actor, trying to get something from the other person? The first question you should ask yourself as a writer, if the scene isn't working is, is the character trying to get something, and is something stopping them?

If not, fix it.

Unfaithful Adaptations Are the Best

Q. Picked up a paperback (interesting blend of action and horror) at the local dollar store and when I finally got round to reading it, liked it enough to inquire about optioning film rights. They are available.

Tha author's LA agency strongly suggests "partnering" with a producer who will let me write the adaptation. They also would be receptive to an offer by me.

I don't have a strong relationship with a film maker to trust not getting cut out of the picture. That leaves the scenario of making an attractive offer, writing the thing, then doing The Shopping (without an agent, of course). Sheeesh!

Here's the thing. A bestseller is valuable to a producer or a studio. It is a bankable element. There is a proven audience for this world and this story. Most books you find at the dollar store are proven to have a small audience. So basing your screenplay on one may not be helpful.

On the other hand, how faithful an adaptation do you plan to make? You can't copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of an idea. E.g. no one can copyright "girl romanced by vampire"; they can only copyright a girl named Bella being romanced by a creepy stalkery sparkly vampire and a hot werewolfey dude on the West Coast, etc. etc.

Novels don't usually adapt well to movies, because the plot of a movie is basically a short story.

(Some novelists write in a very cinematic easy-to-adapt style. There are reasons every John Grisham novel gets an adaptation, and being best sellers is only one of them. They generally have only one or two points of view, and time flows at a regular pace. There's no, "Over the course of the next few years, Johnny came to understand...." Everything that happens in them is a scene involving at least one of a core cast of a few people talking, fighting or going somewhere in a hurry. There are few flashbacks. You always know exactly what is happening and who it's happening to. The characters have very little inner life unless it's also expressed in dialog. Etc.)

So the best adaptation is often an unfaithful one, or rather, one that is faithful to the theme and the spirit of the novel, not the details of the plot. An introverted character may need to become talkative. A long thought process will need to become a verbal argument. You will almost certainly merge characters and cut others.

It may be that your unfaithful adaptation winds up so far from the novel that you really only have to change the names of the characters, and you no longer need to option the novel.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, and no lawyer is likely to tell you exactly where that line is. But consider that Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fanfic. And consider that there are a bazillion books and a bazillion scripts and really not that many plots.

This approach will also free you to write a better screenplay. You can usually tell a movie adapted from a book because there are scenes that are cool that don't really forward the story: that's the screenwriter trying to keep a scene from the book that really doesn't fit in the movie.

So what I would do in your case is read the book and then put it away somewhere. Do not read it again. Write a script based on it. And by "write a script," I mean, as always, tell it as a story, orally, over and over to anyone who will listen, until you can tell the entire story off the top of your head because it flows so naturally. You will wind up adding scenes. You will forget a lot of scenes; oh well, they were forgettable.

After you've finished writing the script, reread the book and see if you have stolen anything copyrightable. My guess is you will not have.

You have now saved a few thousand bucks, and you can't get removed from the project.

Not everyone will agree with this advice, and the line between copyrightable and not copyrightable is not bright and clear. But the times I've optioned material it's generally been a pain in the ass that I optioned it, especially because the script came out so differently than the source material. So there you go.

Note also that this process is not how producers generally approach adaptation. That's because (a) they have money (b) scripts cost more money to them than options (c) they can take a book and an option to someone else to give them money. Hence the above is not how, say, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds gets made. But if you're a screenwriter without a track record, then optioning a book may not be the best way to go.

Sketch Comedy Pitch Questions

Q. I've been writing comedy sketches. The producer of a sketch comedy show said I could follow up with him next month.
When I follow up with him, shall I ask if they’re accepting pitches and include a short pitch for my work or just stick to asking if they’re accepting pitches?

A. Wait till you’re asked, I think.

Q. I’ve written lots of one-page queries for novels/short stories and picture books (which, usually, also want you to include the first 10 pages of your book or an entire picture book or short story). I’m assuming, that for screen, these are even shorter pitches? I was thinking I’d pitch about three sketches to start, so maybe just a line each?

Sounds good.

Q. I’ve been reading some on screenwriting format and all my sketches will be formatted to what I have read on very basic style. Do you think they’ll be really sticky on how perfect the format is/isn’t? (i.e. including title pages for each sketch, camera instructions etc.)

I can’t imagine they’re too sticky about how to format sketches, so long as they’re in regular screenplay format. I would never include camera instructions unless they're essential to a joke. Personally I wouldn’t put title pages on sketches; you don’t want anything getting between the funny and the reader. But I’m not a sketch comedy writer.

"The Churn"

Javi Grillo-Marxuach asserts in Forces of Geek that Star Wars: TLJ is neither good nor bad.

The Churn is the process where creators keep going back to the same well to make stories in the same vein. It starts coming out all mac and cheese.

There will always be another rogue Jedi who has been in hiding, another bounty hunter with strange powers that boggle those who rely on The Force, another brilliant officer of the Galactic Empire with a plan so dangerous (usually involving a heretofore unknown planet killing weapon hidden by Emperor Palpatine before his death) that it could mean the fate of the galaxy (in at least one occasion, it was a double of a brilliant officer who was propped up by other brilliant officers in order to use his PR value as a brilliant officer to revive the Galactic Empire).

Of course that's presumably what the mainstream audience wants. They're paying fifteen bucks to see a small bunch of plucky rebels duke it out with the forces of the Empire and the Dark Side; that's the goods they're buying. To make a different sort of movie would be a commercial and artistic risk.

What would a different sort of movie look like?

Spec Ops: The Line is a video game that keeps coming up among game devs. It is the seventh in a series of third-person shooter games in the Spec Ops franchise. However, the developers hired to design it decided to completely hijack the franchise. The game bitterly mocks shooters and their 30-something rough-tough badass white dude heroes. Somewhere along the line, you realize that you are not playing the hero, you are, in fact, the villain.

Any similarity to the US experience in Vietnam and other places Americans have gone to liberate people is, I assume, intentional.

What's interesting to me is that the devs hijacked the franchise. SO:TL does indeed have all the things you'd expect in a third-person military shooter. It just develops an unexpected theme.

What if the next creator called on to make a Star Wars movie decides to make their own movie in the Star Wars universe? In other words, treat Star Wars as a territory, not a template?

Well, they almost certainly get fired, unless they're a 500-pound gorilla in their own right -- e.g. James Cameron. But let's suppose they don't.

They could then make a fluffy Star Wars action comedy à la Guardians of the Galaxy. They could make a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon type action romance. They could make a tense Das Boot-style drama. They could make a Seven-type serial killer movie. They could make an Alien-style horror movie.

All of these probably have a bit of run and jump; things surely blow up. I don't think anyone wants to see the Star Wars universe version of On Golden Pond. Someone almost certainly has Force powers.

But instead of trying to remake Star Wars IV: A New Hope for the nth time, they're opting out of the Churn.

The King Arthur story lives on because people keep appropriating it for their own purposes. I once perpetrated a novel about the childhood of Morgan le Fay, the half-sister of King Arthur. (The Circle Cast, it's called, and it's been translated into German.) I wanted to tell the story of a really angry young woman coming of age and coming into her power. If I'd just tried to rewrite T. H. White's Once and Future King, there would have been no point.

Of course it is very unlikely that you, dear reader, have been asked to write the next Star Wars. But you may one day be faced with the Churn. I think a way out is to ask yourself if you can hijack the franchise. Can you tell a story you want to tell within the franchise? Or can you re-examine the franchise and find things in it that were there all along, underneath the franchise elements that everyone knows?

We are all writing in a culture, which means that everything we create involves some stealing. But make it your own — if necessary, without telling anyone.

Steal, but make it your own.