The Rough Draft

Hurry up and wait, otherwise known as the falacy of the overnight success.

there’s one thing that maddening about this industry, it’s how long it takes for things to get moving. Though much like the juggernaught once things are moving, look out! A big part of the problem is simply getting everybody you need to talk to together in one location. This can take weeks, sometimes even months. Throw in the need for serious coin and you start talking about years. Which is why I don’t want to direct.

Sure the director gets all of the acclaim while the writer tends to get all of the crap but just remember, that director is dedicating up to two years or more of their life to get your story on film. You’ll be four or more scripts down before you’ll even see a rough cut (if you’re lucky).

Hell, I’ve got to go back and reread my scripts if I get called back to a rewrite, I purge them from my brain that fast. But the poor director, he’s stuck with it right to the bitter end, while we’re free to go off and explore new stories, and new themes.

Of course trying to get to those points is where you go crazy. You realize that you haven’t produced anything anybody’s seen in a year or two and then you start to worry about if they’ve forgotten you or not. That your agent hasn’t called to see if you’re alive in more than a few weeks and his last few emails seemed strangely cryptic even terse. At this point I usually whack myself on the head with my keyboard and snap back to reality. The fact being the agent is in LA talking up the coming script, and I’m moving through the final budget stages of producing a music video. It only feels like nothing is happening, when the absolute opposite is true. I’m just waiting for it all to come together, waiting to hurry up.

Steve Abbott

Well this’ll be one of my first articles in quite a while. I’m assuming that anybody who is reading this has managed to pull themselves away from CNN for five minutes.

The one thing that seperates a professional writer from somebody who wants to be a professional writer is the outline. Knowing what your story is going to be about before you put word one to page is critical in keeping you sane and giving you the sign posts needed to get through the long hard journey we call a screenplay.

Many people say they don’t like to be tied down to the rigidity of an outline, that they like to explore their story matter in an organic way. Like Moses, they’d like to wander for forty years in the desert.

These people don’t seem to understand that while an outline is a map, the path you take through it does not have to follow the posted signs. It’s there to keep you near the path, not always on it. It’s where you can always come back to, and if needs be, you can form a new path all the way to the end if you like.

The secret of the outline is understanding structure. Structure of story, structure of act, and structure of character. It doesn’t hurt if you’ve got a good sense of genre conventions either. Quentin Tarantino may not be everybody’s cup of tea but he’s a true master of three act structure. Pulp Fiction may seem disjointed at first but when it’s broken down, all of the structure is there, it’s just not where we expect it to be. For the most part though, your audience is going to expect everything to be in it’s right place.

Act Structure is the simple knowledge that the 1st act is the first 25% of your story, the 2nd is 50% and final the 3rd is the remaining 25%. This tells us right away that the majority of the story happens in the second act.

Story structure covers the Inciting Incident (occurs page 5-10), the First Plot Point (occurs page 22-25), the Mid Point (occurs page 50-55), the Second Plot Point (occurs page 75-80) and finally the denoument or epilogue (the rest of the pages after the second plot point). This is a simplistic view but if you’d like a more detailed approach, I suggest you read, “The Writer’s Journey,” by Chris Vogler. He’s a really smart guy who used to work for Disney and he really knows his stuff.

Which brings us to character structure, the most subjective of all three. Subjective because it’s too easy to slip into stereotypes here. The hooker with a heart of gold, the remorseful killer, the gambler or criminal looking for the one last big score that will set them up for life etc. Now I’m not saying that these characters can work well when done correctly but for most starting writers or ones who haven’t established themselves yet, they can turn your story into a bad joke very quickly. When done well, as in Unforgiven, they can be amazingly powerful. So I guess my advise here is to really know your characters and their goals before you begin to write them.

Good writing.

Steve Abbott

Well, we’re still under construction here so this will post as an anonymous user but I’ve finally bit the bullet and registered my Production company’s domain.

You guys will remember this site as a sort of catch all forum and we’re going to keep that aspect of it becaue it gives me a nice soapbox to stand on in regards to film, the entertainment industry and the like.

Lots has happened in my absense. I’m now fully into the second draft of my new script, “The Kids Are All Right.” The product of my time with the Feature Film Group run through my agent Glen Cockburn at The Characters. We expect the script to be ready for the LA market by June.

The option on Darkness has lapsed and Wishbone and I have parted ways at least in the business sense. We’re still all friends but ultimately they couldn’t get Darkness made so it made sense that it was time to cut our losses and split.

And finally, I’m producing my first Country and Western music video with brand new country (soon to be star) Leslie Ann Cambell. Look for her new CD and video sometime this Fall.

Toronto is still the best place to be for me right now. I’ve met so many great people in the last year and a bit, all of them consumate professionals, and really nice to boot.

I’ll give you all a fruther update once the site is ticking along .

Steve Abbott
Sabot Productions

“Who Dares Wins”