Rule Of Thumb: Summing It Up

When Mutt and I first started out as writers... we were idiots. I don't just mean your regular breed of idiots, I mean the kind of idiots who storyboard an entire script then don't write any of the dialogue or action down. Imagine our surprise when we rediscovered it only months later and had no idea what the heck was going on.

While that appears an obvious oversight now, the real ones we have to watch out for are the errors in judgement you can justify.

A while back Mutt and I would have said that true art has nothing to do with marketability. More than that, we believed they were at odds. Let the soulless money-grabbers worry about over-simplifying our work, let the artists create art, right? Well, if there's one thing an embarrassing meeting with someone taught us it's that we were being idiots all over again.

Eager to convey the sheer quantity of quality concepts we had up our sleeves, one day we decided to wow them by breaking down one of our ideas.

What followed was perhaps the most long-winded, unoriginal-sounding pitch containing a heck of a lot of "but done really well" and "it's better than it sounds". It was excruciating. We knew it was awesome, but we couldn't even sell it to someone who was already on our side.

During a seemingly eternal tram ride back to the train station we went over it again and again and had a horrible epiphany. It doesn't matter how brilliant an idea is if it isn't pitchable.

We always thought summing things up in a mere sentence was about dumbing down perfectly good concepts to maximize marketability, but we missed the point entirely. From what we've gathered, there are two key reasons why it is essential.

1) It helps to focus an idea and makes it stronger.

Slapping the word 'art' on a mess doesn't stop it being a mess. Concepts need structure and purpose, and a log line really forces the writer to find the spine of the story and keep it under control.

Think about the simplicity beneath of surface of movies like A New Hope, Toy Story, even The Seven Samurai. It extremely clear what each is really about and the fact that you could produce a remarkably succinct log line for any of them only calls attention to their genius.

Think about The Great Escape: When the Nazi Military puts all the greatest escape artist P.O.W.s in the same camp, they join forces to enact one of the most daring and ambitious escape plans in history.

Sounds great, right? Well, the movie was great too and it certainly wasn't lacking in any loving detail.

2) The easier a concept is to comprehend, the easier people can get into it.

This one is the real clincher. We love our ideas. We want other people to love our ideas. Why would we make it hard for people to love our ideas??

Let's face it, this is the real world we're talking about. No one is handing us our big chance on a silver platter, so we don't really have the luxury, or the inhumanly eccentric genius to play hard to get.

Now, if you'll excuse me Mutt and I have to run off and continue our idiocy in new and exciting ways.

"For further reading on the topic, this article gives some history."

Rule Of Thumb: Story Needs vs Author Wants

The more I write, the more I believe ideas are alive.

I used to think, in my young naive way, that I was somehow in control of my ideas. That it was I who was Lord and Master of my little worlds; that on a whim I could bring both happiness and destruction to my characters, should I wish it.

But the world was quick to show me my foolishness, as it always is - and I was forced to "cast my own small golden sceptre down." Ideas are alive; they each have personality and know exactly how they want to be told.

When I come up with the first seeds of a story, be it book or film, it usually starts its life deceptively versatile. Like a newborn, it is full of potential and options; and it is completely dependant on your guidance.

Then as you raise it from its infant state, annoyingly it starts to develop its own personality; like a teenager, it will eventually become discontent with its blind obedience to you. It starts rejecting scenes and details you try to add. Suddenly it doesn't want to work in the family business - it has its own plans.

It will start to suggest plots and characters, themes and directions all on its own - and unlike a teenager, it's always right. I'm learning the hard way that a lot of good writing is simply being able to listen to these 'suggestions.'

By way of example, a few years ago we were planning out a series concept, and for the longest time we had decided to kill off a main character's brother. The story needed a dramatic catalyst, and the brother's death was both dramatic and catalyzing, and it was the one we wanted. However the story had it's own thoughts about this, and the the death refused to sit right.

For months we argued and struggled trying to fit in his death, to no avail. It wasn't until we yielded, and listened that we made headway. The story demanded that someone else entirely should be killed, someone we thought couldn't possibly die - but sure enough once we'd done that, everything just clicked and the whole story fell into place.

This lead us to finally realise what I believe to be one of the most important writing rules:

Give the story what it needs, not what you want.

I've found this usually means a lot of heartbreak.
Sometimes it means removing 'Tom Bombadils' from adaptations.
Sometimes it means murdering my darlings.
Sometimes it means giving the audience what they want.
And sometimes, it means not telling the story I first wanted to tell.

Practically speaking, I find this means really exploring the natural limits of ideas. Anything outside of those limits needs to be cut, and anything inside should perhaps be explored. You can't include science-fiction concepts in most realistic dramas, and you usually can't have pop-culture jokes in fantasy setting - no matter how much you want it. A show set in the White House usually needs politics, and kid shows need to be bright and visual - no matter how much you don't want it.

There are many different forms of these limits. I remember watching Man of the Year (2006) which had such a great premise, but it got bogged down in a very science fictiony B-plot about electronic voting 'what ifs'. This is something I would describe as 'out of limits' for a comedy based on real life.

And Sky High (2005) also had a brilliantly simple concept: The son of famous superheroes is sent to superhero school... but he doesn't have any super powers. The movie naturally explores this by having the people with weaker powers being treated unfairly. If that's your foundation, then your theme has to be 'it's not about your powers, it's how you use them' or 'it's not what's outside, but what's inside that counts' or even 'people without are just as valuable as people with' or any of the endless variations. The movie ruins this by giving everyone super powers by the end of it, even the bus driver - the main character gets two! Now the message is 'you're only worth something if you have powers'.

And there are large blanket limitations as well. For example, we've found that you can't have aliens in an idea not completely about aliens. Just look at all the negative feedback Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Knowing (2009), The Forgotten (2004) and even Tintin and Flight 714 (1968) got when the last ten minutes suddenly sprung 'aliens' as the mysteries solution.. Aliens really have to be heavily hinted at before the Inciting Incident - and it's the same with time travel.

Audiences seem surprisingly sensitive to these conditions being broken - even if they often can't articulate them.