it's about a guy who was a thief running from a vindictive inspector. and about a few other things.
Ben or Noel?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
I spent time today going through my list of journals that have survived more than a year, plucking out the dead ones. I'm always amazed at the ones that have stopped, but even more so I'm amazed by the ones that have hung in there for a long time. I feel as though I've heard some of these names for most of my life, though it can't be any more than 3 or 4 years (as long as I've been reading journals).
I also find the journals that have simply stopped interesting. A number of journals looked perfectly fine, until I realized that the last entry had been months ago (which is reason enough for me to pull the listing). No farewells, no "I'm going on hiatus," just a regular ol' entry and then nothing. I find myself wondering, Did they forget? (But they'd been doing it for more than a year.) Or did they get hit by a bus? (Could be, I guess.)
The writing group was supposed to meet last night, but Aaron got a flat tire, so we moved it to tonight.
One of the things I want to discuss tonight is concept for a script. There was an interesting discussion about this on the Wordplay forums recently, but I had an even more severe introduction to why concept is far more important than anything else in a script: more than the plot, more than the characters, way more than the writing. (Which, let's face it, is probably the least important part of a script. Nobody loves a script for the lyrical turns of phrase.)
A few nights ago I read a spec script that recently sold for a lot of money. I don't know if it actually sold for that money--prices announced in the trades are often hopeful, if you know what I mean (that's the price the writer will get, if all conditions--such as single-handedly building all the sets that will be necessary--are met). But the script sold for a lot.
It's not a good script.
I was astounded by how little I liked it on all fronts: story, characters, dialogue, structure, writing. (A friend of mine who's a working screenwriter had also read the script and had much the same judgement of it. In addition, she knew the people involved with buying and selling it, and everyone involved said it needs work. So they probably already have a rewriter picked out, adding to the costs of an already expensive script.)
What the script did have was a very clear concept.
It was very easy to come up with a one-line description of the script such that it could not be mistaken for any other script, along the lines of "A group of miners blast into space to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth," or "A woman falls in love with a man in a coma."
Terry Rossio talks about this some in the columns on Wordplay, starting with "A Foot in the Door." The importance of concept just can't be overstated. It's what makes the movie poster, it's why people go to see this movie and not another one, it's what lets the people who matter get a handle on the script.
I have to be sure to have a really good concept the next time I start writing.
The answer to Monday's question: The peacekeepers have finally shown up in Dili, the capital of East Timor. Evidently people have started coming back into the city, which is causing problems because tensions are breaking out again. I hope Lucy isn't getting too many requests for East Timorese tour packages this year.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com