21 Jump Street - a lesson in economical story set-up

I've talked before about how important the first ten pages of a script are.  One of the biggest issues I seen in amateur writing is writers taking too long to get their story in motion.  A bad writer thinks he needs 30 pages to set up his premise; a good writer can explain a lot in a third of that time.

I saw 21 Jump Street this weekend, and was impressed at how much the writers packed into the first ten minutes or so.  These are the plot-points that the script blows through:

- Jonah Hill was an awkward dork in high school.  Girls didn't like him (we see one hot girl rather cruely reject him) and Channing Tatum's popular jock character often teased him.
- Tatum's character couldn't go to prom because of bad grades, leaving him as humiliated as he made Hill feel.
- After graduation, the two re-encounter each other at the police academy.  It turns out, Hill is an ace at the academic stuff while Tatum is equally gifted at the physical challenges.  The two become friends and help each other through it.
- The two are assigned to bike patrol in the park.
- After botching a drug bust, the two are reassigned to an undercover unit at 21 Jump Street.

All of that only takes about a minute of time to set up in the trailer, and to be honest, in the movie, it feels like there's not much else added into those scenes.  I could easily imagine the hack writer version of this idea dragging its feet and not arriving at the church on Jump Street until p. 25.




Hack Writer would have insisted on a full 10-minute prologue in the school, driving home the point again and again that Jonah's a nerdy outcast and that Channing's big man on campus.  Here the point is made quickly - Jonah tries to ask out a girl way out his league, she crushes him, and Channing taunts him.  We don't need three scenes of bullying, we don't need to see Channing treated as the star athlete who has girls practically throwing their panties at him.  Their characters are such understandable archetypes that the script need only suggest these aspects of their characters and let us fill in the blanks.

Ditto for the police academy scenes.  The dynamic there really is established as fast as it is in the trailer.  We don't need a whole classroom scene to show off Jonah's smarts - just have him get back an A+ grade.  Similarly, two shots of Jonah being taken down by Channing in a wrestling match easily establishes the dichotomy.  From there, all it takes is a montage of them helping each other and we're off an running.

Why is it okay to do this ADD version?  Because as important as the set-up is, it's not the point of the story.  The story is about two guys who go back to high school while undercover and find that all the rules have changed.  It's about how it affects their friendship.  It would mess with the pacing to establish them as enemies, spend a whole act making them friends, then spend most of the movie with them breaking up only to make up at the end.  We just need a hint of how they became friends so we can take it as a given, and then enjoy how the rest of the story challenges that.

So when setting up your story, trust the audience to fill in the blanks.  Brevity reigns when getting to the main hook of your story.

My question: Do I dare submit a "wacky" spec for the Warner Bros Writers' Workshop

I've been informed that the WB Writers' Workshop has announced that they will be accepting submissions from May 1 - June 1.  This is one of the more sought-after TV writing programs and it includes lectures and simulated writing rooms.  At the end of the program, studio executives help the participants get staffed on Warner Bros. shows.  When I interviewed Margaux Froley, she talked about some of this.

So I'm thinking of entering, but I've got some hesitation because the spec I'm working on is what you'd call a "gimmick spec."  I could define what that is, or I could let TV writer/fellow blogger Irwin Handleman do it for me:


That's where someone will write an original episode of "Family Ties", or an episode of "Two and a Half Men" where Charlie Sheen's character stabs Alan or gets addicted to crack. In other words, it's something that would never be on TV, but it's funny and a little more creative.

I think of this kind of spec as cheating. Anyone can do this nonsense. The hard thing to do is write a real episode of "Two and a Half Men" and make that funny and original. That takes talent! It's easy to step outside CBS and make a crazy episode that doesn't have to conform to the restrictions of TV.

But as time went on, assholes kept getting work off this bullshit. So I decided, if you can't beat them, join them. And I wrote a gimmick spec.

Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" had just started up. Thus, I wrote a spec called "Studio 69 on her Landing Strip", which was the porn version of that show.

I sent it to a friend to read. Unbeknownst to me, he gave it to a manager at Brillstein Entertainment. The manager loved it, and called me in.

Irwin ended up having a manager sign him off that script.  So you see why I might some merit in the idea, even though I kind of agree with him that going the gimmick route is cheating somewhat.

I've heard of other infamous examples of gimmick scripts, such as an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy gets an abortion, or an episode of Friends where they all get AIDS, or an episode of Saved By the Bell where Lisa and Screech have sex. 

Bottom line: I'm working on one such spec of a hit show, but I'm concerned it might be too much of a risk to submit it to WB.  While I mull that over during the next month and a half, I figured I'd toss the question out here in the hopes that someone might have some insight.

Tuesday Talkback - Do you deliberately avoid spoilers?

I ran across this video on the web recently.



It got me thinking - there are some shows I absolutely avoid spoilers for whenever possible (30 Rock, Revenge, Awake, Once Upon A Time) and other shows I'm a total spoiler whore for (mostly shows too terrible for me to cop to watching.)  More than that, there are a couple upcoming releases where I'm making it a point to avoid reviews, interviews and possibly even trailers.

We've talked before about avoiding spoilers, but if there are any shows or movies you're strict about remaining unspoiled for.  How far do you go? Do you avoid Twitter if you've got a show on the DVR and you don't want to find out what happened?  Do you tell people they can't talk about week-old shows around you if you haven't caught up?

Or what about shows on premium cable? Let's say you don't get HBO, so you're waiting to see Homeland on DVD.  Do you avoid entertainment news sites to avoid learning about plot points? Skip actor appearances on talk shows?  Hush friends when they try to tell you how great the show is?

I've made it a point in the past to add extra spoiler warnings when talking about a show that just aired or a movie that was just released.  Once or twice I've even delayed putting up some articles just so I wouldn't ruin the surprises of a film that really benefited from them. Do you find that you've adopted your own unoffical spoiler policy akin to the rules laid out in that video?

"Shit Script Readers Say" - I'm doing a web show!

If you checked out ScriptChat last night, you got an early peek about a little video announcement.  See friends, I have a new project that's so near and dear to my heart that I could only announce it to the world in the form of an outdated internet meme.



But what does it mean?  Well, next month I'm lauching a web show off-shoot of The Bitter Script Reader brand.  It'll touch on the same sorts of advice I dispense here, but in a succinct, bite-size way.  Don't worry, the blog's not going anywhere and will still be the go-to place for the longer, in-depth discussions as well as the more timely stuff. I realized a while back that I was going to YouTube with my "How do I..." queries almost as often as I was Googling them.  A weekly series seemed like the most natural way to expand the brand and enhance the blog content at the same time.

The web-show is meat-and-potatoes screenwriting advice.  Early on, we'll have a 12-part series where I take you through the writing of a screenplay step-by-step.  It's my intent to make this fun for you loyal readers who've been here since the beginning, as well as draw in a new audience. 

In addition to the straight-up advice, there'll also be interviews with screenwriters and other industry pros.  And I'm not talking about two or three minute soundbites.  These will be every bit as comprehensive as some of the other interviews you might have seen on this site.  There are a couple other surprises in store, but those may be a ways down the line.

I want you to know that I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have such a supportive and loyal audience.  You guys are great about coming here everyday and interfacing with me via comments and Twitter, so I wanted to do something that you guys would like.  I hope you enjoy the video.  Pass it around, bribe Nikki Finke to put it on Deadline, and show it to your friends.

Now I'm going to do my best to NOT read the usual YouTube comments of "this suxxxx" and "u r a l4m0."

I'm doing Scriptchat Sunday at 5pm PST

Just a general announcement to those who may not have seen my Tweet earlier this week - I'm this Sunday's guest on Scriptchat.  If you're so inclined, please drop in and join the fun.  You can find the instructions for how to join the chat on the page I just linked.

And I don't want to make any promises, but I might be making a special announcement there that followers of this blog should find interesting.

I've actually never participated in Scriptchat before, so I hope I don't make too big an idiot of myself while trying to figure this out.  I'm looking forward to it, though.  The last time I participated in a chat room, I ended up meeting Chris Hanson!

Are Script Readers misunderstood and unfairly maligned?

So right after I plugged Scott Myers's screenwriting roundtable on Go Into the Story, I found my profession was the subject of discussion in yesterday's post:

Scott Myers:  As a writer, did you ever want to kill a reader?” 

F. Scott Frazier: I actually think the readers are unfairly put upon, and just in my complete anecdotal experience, to me it always seems like, if the script is bad, but they’re trying to be nice. They come back with these Save the Cat, Syd Field kind of beats with what’s wrong with the script. This is what’s wrong with the script! Because you didn’t have your end act point on page 30. But if a script is great, I don’t think they care about that sort of thing. 

Chris Borrelli: I’ll tell you, building off of what Scott said. First off, short answer: yes, I have. And there is a bitterness that comes to people who read and read and read, and think that they can do a better script and they get mad when scripts sell, and they think their scripts are better than that. But that said, if you got asked in life why you don’t like something, you kept getting asked this about all these different things, at some point, you run out of things to say. Sometimes you just don’t like things. And these readers are doing at least two scripts a day and they didn’t like your script and they have to give a reason to fill out their three or four page coverage, sometimes they just go to templates or some basic things. So I don’t read too much into reasons why people pass unless I hear it over and over again. Because sometimes — and I’ve been on the other side of the desk — you have to say something, but a lot of times you just don’t connect to it. 

F. Scott Frazier: And I think not connecting to it goes right back to that emotion we were just talking about. 

True, true - ALL true! Here's the thing about readers... everyone who gets a PASS seems to have this perception that all we do is read something and try to find what's wrong with scripts - as if we get a prize for finding material falliable.

It's exactly the opposite - we want the scripts to be good. Every time we open a PDF, we're desperately, achingly, hoping that the next hour of reading and two hours of coverage-writing won't be painful and mind-numbing.

Don't you think every reader wants to be the hero who runs into their bosses office and says "This one! Make THIS one!" It's brilliant, it's exactly what you're looking for and I found it! That's right! That reflected glory belongs to me! ME! ME!"

Okay... maybe that last part is a little bit of overkill. But that's totally the mentality a reader might get when they find material they're excited about. It can work in your favor as the writer because bitter readers like me might feel that your success is their victory as well. We can be your best friend and your biggest champion. We want you to be good because it makes US look good!)

(On the other hand, any reader who boasts at a cocktail party about the great script he "discovered" is probably setting himself up for well-earned snorts of derision. I'm not saying it's always easy to spot the diamonds in the rough, but if a reader gets too cocky, he's likely to be reminded he merely read the script - he didn't WRITE it.)

And John Swetnam is very astute at pointing something else out:

"A lot of these readers, though, they work for somebody, and they’re also filtering their own opinion through the opinion of the person they’re working for. So they know their boss’s sensibility and to me, that’s really their job. To know what their boss likes. A lot of the time, they’re the first bit of the filtering process and you can’t really blame them because their boss told them to look for romantic comedies."

Too true. Having said that, I've never been afraid to slam something that's up my boss's alley if I thought it was a terrible script. (Hell, there are multiple examples of me slamming scripts that ultimately got made at the companies in question... only to tank HARD.) And when the writing is brilliant - even if it's not the most natural fit for my bosses, I certainly will give it a rave.

I have no reason to want you or your script to suck. I have no motivation to pass on a brilliant script and leave it there on the street for someone else to buy. What sense would that make?

If you want to beat the reader, write an awesome script. Greg Russo says as much:

"I’ll throw something out there to the person who asked the question, who I’m assuming is trying to break in as a screenwriter. Don’t worry so much about readers passing on your script. Be careful not to give them any easy ways to pass on your script. If they’re not going to like your concept, they’re not going to like it."

Go into the Story has some killer interviews with screenwriters

Go Into The Story has been kicking ass the last two weeks with interviews.  First, Scott Myers had a fascinating 6-part interview with Pixar's senior development executive Mary Coleman.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

And this week he's featuring a screenwriter's roundtable with Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam and the writing duo Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer. Over the last 2 years, they have sold a total of 12 spec scripts.  There's a lot of great insight in there.  I just spent a few minutes trying to find a single quote to except and came to the conclusion that you should just get your butts over to Scott's blog and read the roundtable in full.

Part I
Part II