Dispatch from The Quest: Jordan Earls
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of character. That seemed to have put them in an especially reflective mood as most of them used their journal entries to ponder where they were in the process of learning the craft of screenwriting. We continue this week’s series of dispatches with some thoughts from Jordan Earls about the importance of the “development stage” of writing:
As a writer, I’ve always found that I go from concept to writing pages within a few weeks. It would take a month to write the script, then I would spend about four months getting some rewrites done. Even after the rewrites, though, I felt like the story was never quite where I wanted it to be.
The Quest showed me why.
The first week, we talked about Plot = Structure. The conversation turned into a sprawling discussion of film and we discussed our loglines a bit. Over the course of the second week, I brainstormed one hundred ideas for plot points, events and gimmicks for my story. This week, I took a couple days to realize I was looking at the story from the wrong perspective.
If I were writing this script how I usually do, going from concept to writing within a few weeks, I may have used the wrong protagonist.
That’s the lesson I took from The Quest this week: The development stage is everything.
I’ll give you an example:
I wrote a character study piece on a cop investigating a serial killer. After finishing the first draft, I read it and I was bored to tears. I asked myself, “How am I bored? I wrote this!” I was furious, because I realized it was my fault.
I spent so little time in the development stage that I didn’t even realize my protagonist was boring. I went with all of my first instincts on who he was. “He has a troubled past, that makes him sympathetic.” I didn’t consider hiding the troubled past under his present behavior. My lack of thought in the development process set the first draft up for failure.
My main focus was rewriting the protagonist, and the second draft ended up being immensely better. He turned out to be an anti-hero and those who read it weren’t sure if they really liked him or not, but at least nobody wanted to take a hammer to their skull because their skull was the only thing keeping them from being, literally, bored out of their minds.
This is a huge piece of wisdom I’ve taken from The Quest: Where you start is everything. Rewrites are inevitable. You can either:
A. Start off with your first instincts and develop a bad first draft (unless you’re Sorkin and shit out Oscar winning scripts after breakfast) and then crank out twenty rewrites to make it better.
OR
B. Spend more time in the beginning stages, developing your characters and brainstorming every possible direction you can go in, picking the best one and having a really great place to start.
In this last week as we’ve been studying character, I’ve written about four totally different themelines for the protagonist alone. Each one takes me in a better direction that I’m confident is closer to being the story I want to tell. The Quest is helping me slow down to make sure that I’m setting myself up for success.
It’s better to double knot (or triple or quadruple depending on how obsessive you are) your laces before a race than have to retie them every five minutes. Now, let’s see if I can brainstorm a better metaphor…
Obviously one goal in The Quest is to write a kick-ass spec script to get attention of Hollywood reps and buyers. But a major point of focus is on developing practices and skill sets to enable the writer to have the best chance of succeeding as a professional screenwriter. Like I say: It’s not just about writing a screenplay, it’s learning how to think like a screenwriter.
How about you? How much time do you spend developing your characters and your story before typing FADE IN? What areas do enjoy working on in the story development stage? What aspects of it do you find difficult? Do you have any tips you would like to share about story development? If you have any thoughts you’d like to convey or feedback for Jordan, please head into comments and post away.
Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.
About Jordan: Portland based writer. Connoisseur of film with an affinity for Nolan, Boyle and Jackson. Twitter: @jordanpaige00
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