Dispatch From The Quest: Troy Klith

Over the course of the 24 weeks I am working with the writers in The Quest, each will write a weekly dispatch to share with the GITS community. There are several reasons for doing this, the main one educational: Hopefully you will learn something of value for your own understanding of the craft from the experiences of the Questers. I should also add they are a great group of people, so I expect you will enjoy getting to know them.

Today: Troy discusses learning about some projects similar to his:

What do I know?

I suspect many amateur writers often wonder this. We can easily be saddled with doubt, especially in screen writing with all its format-driven, market-driven, genre-driven rules. You gotta do this. You can’t do that. It can make your head spin.

But the one thing we all have — professionals and amateurs alike — is our own, unique sensibility. That intuitive sense of what’s good and what sucks (to us), along with our personal understanding of the story we’re trying to tell. Probably the biggest rule of all: Don’t write against your unique sensibility.

One of the things I find most appealing about Scott’s approach is summed up in his comment: “There is no right way to write. No single approach, paradigm, theory or magic formula. No easy path. There is only the writer. Their creativity. Their stories. And lots of hard work.”

Related to all this, I learned this week that two scripts similar to the genre piece I’m writing recently sold. Needless to say I wasn’t thrilled with this news. But after I read both scripts, I actually perked up. Strangely, I gained more confidence in my own story.

Even though those professional scripts were similar to mine conceptually, I found both to be lacking. It’s not that I necessarily think I can do better than these professional screenwriters. The scripts were well written, tightly structured and had some thrilling moments. There’s a reason they sold. And, yes, I realize it’s easy to judge from the sidelines. But in my mind, the scripts didn’t offer anything new. They were loaded with the baggage of so many stories that came before them, lifting a cliché from here, a predictable moment from there, offering very little that felt unique or compelling (to me).

Now, admittedly, there were a few moments in both scripts that I’d envisioned for my own story. At first, I thought “shoot, well, so much for those ideas.” But then, a short time later, it hit me that these were some of the first ideas that had come to my mind so many months ago, meaning they were probably the obvious choices. I also wonder if they were the choices I thought I was supposed to make (given the genre).

So now, I’m grateful these two scripts came out. I feel very lucky that I had a chance to read them before I type “Fade In”. The experience has forced me to remember that I must work hard to make every scene fresh and compelling. If something comes too easily, that should be a red flag. I must ask if this is the best I can do? Or is this simply the easiest or most obvious choice. I better have that tingly “This is great!” feeling. Of course, it may not be great — most of the time it probably won’t be — but I’d better at least honestly think that it is before I attempt to capture it on paper.

So, what do I know?

Not much, granted, but I do know what moves me. I realize the difficult part is capturing that stuff in a way so that it moves others. But, before I write a single word, the idea (character, dialog, scene) had better make me lean forward in my seat, otherwise how can I ever expect anyone else to do the same?

If you get a great idea for a movie, chances are someone else is going to come up with it. That danger goes with the territory. The only way to avoid this possibility is to think like Charlie Kaufman and generate such off-the-wall ideas, chances are nobody else will come up with them.

However there’s only one Charlie Kaufman. And even he struggles to get movies made.

So if the line of least resistance to Hollywood success is to conjure up and write strong story concepts, you just have to steel yourself for the eventuality that someone will beat you to the punch… as I described here from my own personal experience.

What do you do? Well, you research the other projects. Find out how similar they are, hopefully more different than alike. Then you do like Troy has done. You say to yourself, “How can I make mine better? How can I craft a more distinctive story?”

Writing a spec script is a challenging adventure rife with twists and turns… much like a Protagonist’s journey. Troy has faced one of them. He’s come out of it in the right place: Make his script special and unique enough to trump any other project.

Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.

About Troy: Born Midwesterner with heart in San Francisco, but nothing beats NYC. Entrepreneur. Writer. Lover of the underdog. Grateful father of 3. @troyklith.