Getting started

[pacey1800]

Hi everyone,
First of all, please bare with me, because I have a lot of questions...

My script, which began as a screenplay and has now turned into an episodic miniseries, is about a celebrity murder trial involving a reality TV star, as seen through the eyes of the two attorneys, a TV reporter, and from the perspective of the suspect herself. Right now, I've had a lot of trouble trying to get motivated to write it, and I'm not sure about whether or not my antagonist (the defense attorney) is effective enough. Every one of my characters are flawed (the prosecutor drinks and swears, the reporter is bossy and demanding, and the reality TV star has had a very bad childhood, and witnessed a traumatizing incident involving her mother which has haunted her for years). They do have good qualities, though, that I think could give someone a reason to care for them. I do have some questions, though...

I have written the antagonist, the defense attorney, as a typical celebrity lawyer in the vein of Johnnie Cochran, flamboyant, flashy compared to the subdued prosecutor, but my character's main flaws are his arrogance and his overconfidence. I'm not personally sure if that's enough to make him a compelling antagonist. Should he be someone who tends to be unethical as well?

Also, another reason why I've been stressing out over this story is because I am not sure about courtroom procedure. I've watched shows like Law and Order before, but as silly as this sounds, I don't even know when a lawyer would know to raise an objection during testimony. People have said to me on other boards, "why don't you go watch a trial" but I really have no way of getting to one and I doubt that I would have any time to do so. Should I just let the testimony play itself out like normal?

I've been writing this story since I first thought of it during the late stages of my college screenwriting class, and it has undergone various changes, especially the inciting incident. At first it was a screenplay, but I have been attempting to write screenplays for about 9 years, and for various reasons, sometimes out of frustration, sometimes because I've quit as a result of that frustration only to come back, I have never come close to finishing one, especially one as a full-length feature. In fact, I have only completed two drafts of two different screenplays that never got past page 80.

I've figured now though that this concept would work better as a TV series, preferably a limited run, episodic miniseries, because unless I were to write this as a TV movie, there would not be a whole lot of pages to write (50-60 as opposed to 90-120 for a feature), and also because since I watched this documentary on ESPN last week about the day the OJ Simpson slow speed chase took place, that documentary gave me further inspiration for a key plot point that would lead to the events of the possible second episode. As I was writing this, I was thinking about the events of that era and maybe using that trial as a template for the events of the fictional trial in my script. I don't want to give too much more away, but does anyone have any suggestions on this? Again, very sorry I took so much space, but I've got a lot on my mind about this script, and any feedback would be welcome. Thanks.

 

[ChrisHurn]

I don't think you should make a decision on if you do a miniseries or a feature screenplay based on how many pages you have to write. If you want to make it a feature film -- make it a film. If you make it a mini series, make it a mini series. Two very different approaches in my mind. Don't go for the one with the smallest page count unless that's exactly what you want to do.

Regarding the courtroom procedure, honestly, if you're serious about writing a script that pretty much centers around this, you'd better do a lot of homework. I don't think that watching TV shows really is enough. It depends on how in depth you plan to go, but personally I think you should know a lot more than you need to - so when you write the scenes in court you can focus completely on making your story emotionally compelling, instead of trying to think "Would they say this, would they do this?"

If you don't have time to sit in a court room and watch, or do some serious research into this area then how can you write a script, which takes a lot longer to do than watch a few sessions in court. What about getting in contact with lawyers, reading books, going to a local university and meeting people there. Just get as much as you can, without going too far into things, just so you can write what you need to without the technicalities getting in the way.

You could also try and find somebody with law experience/experience writing court stuff in scripts to check over your material and give you a few pointers.

 

[pacey1800]

I mainly thought about it being a miniseries because there is a lot of story to it, and it wouldn't exactly work as a feature film. The courtroom scenes are only one aspect of it. At this point, as for the script, I am afraid that I am just going to have to go with my gut, and since the odds of most TV series getting sold on spec are almost insurmountable, I am probably going to have to make this into a miniseries, in movie format, at least 90 pages long. What I did not mention, and the one factor that I think prevents this from being made into a feature film, is the amount of story involved. First, there is the arrest of the reality TV star, then she escapes from prison and leads the police and the media on a wild chase, and then the trial itself. It would be virtually impossible to fit all that into a two-hour movie, IMO. As for the courtroom scenes, I did find someone on another message board who can help me with the legal procedure, so that's been taken care of.