Recommended story consultants / mentors?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Anybody have any recommendations for script story consultants? Especially if you have worked with him/her? I am especially looking for someone to work with to help with the story structure, beats, high concept up front before writing FADE IN. To make sure I have a high concept compelling well structured story. Read a gazillion books, watched a gazillion DVD lectures, I have a mentor I work with now but she is more of the back end type mentor for when a first draft is written.

Anybody work with or heard good or bad things about Michael Hauge as a consultant?
~randall
 
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Thanks Charli, good link/resource. I have always thought I want to work with John Rainey sometime, once I have a 6th rewrite final draft. He wants a script at that stage. Hopefully he could help raise it another notch at that point. I also want to find someone good at making sure my concept and structure is good from the start to prevent massive resculpting during rewrites. Just glad the gurus are out there if and when needed. This padowan needs all the help he can get. ~randall
 
Just go for it w/o a consultant and vomit out 3 or 4 scripts, then it's time for feedback. All the things you're looking for will come as a result of examining your vomit. :)

...don't I have a way of putting it across with class? ;)
 
Hmm

Hmm

Well, I think you have the right idea trying to seek some feedback and advice BEFORE you write it all out.

Filmmaking as a whole is such an immensely fragile process, I liken it to a train going through enemy territory armed minimally yet facing numerous threats and possible derailments. It leaves the station, which is the very beginning of the idea process, then it must arrive at another station and that is the finished film being actually really good. Anything short of that, the train was derailed somewhere along the way, and it can happen anywhere.

If your idea is not original or not compelling, your screenplay structure won't matter because your idea sucks.

If your idea is solid, but your structure is poor, no matter what happens in the production process *will not matter* because you have a poorly structured script.

If your script is well structured with a good idea, but the dialogue is poorly written or the individual scenes don't work very well, it's going to be quite an uphill battle to fix that on the shoot.

Then you have casting, where a bad actor can ruin your entire project no matter how great the script was.

You get the idea. This process goes on and on and on, and you realize there are seriously 100 different links in this chain, every one of which must be good, for you to have a really good film by the time all is said and done. It's daunting. But that's why it's so important to take it one step at a time.

In my mind, you are doing the right thing by being concerned from the very start with whether your idea works, whether it's a good concept, and how you can structure it. I have spent the last month on my idea, with little else going on, some company work here and there but this has mainly been my focus. It has been an internal battle. It started as a short, then it morphed into a feature. At that point I had an entire outline basically done in rough form, it wasn't scene by scene but it was like a story of what happens, divided into acts. After running that by the guy who has been helping me, a creative professional let's leave it at that, I killed almost all of what I had. I removed 80% of Act I entirely, it was too boring and was getting in the way of the true point. The film then started faster, and I rewrote one of the main themes of the film entirely, which took out almost all of Act II's scenes besides a few ideas, basically it was like a complete re-imagining using the original idea and only a few ideas from the first draft of the structure. If I had went ahead and written that screenplay, it would not have turned out well. It may have been ok, but ok is completely and absolutely unacceptable. If I'm going to finance this film myself, that script has to be great. Anything less than greatness is not acceptable. Even it being good is not worth spending that kind of money on. So now, I'm about 85% done with a scene-by-scene outline of the script, and it's way better already, it's something I'm excited to write and that is working really well.

The hardest part for me, and maybe you find this as well, is that it can sometimes be painstaking, like pulling teeth, to get a script outline into really great shape. Every scene has to have a purpose, and more than just a purpose it has to be good. It has to be both dramatic / funny and move the plot forward. Otherwise, it has no place in the script. And if you have about 30 scenes let's say, at minimum anyway, that's a lot of planning to do, and figuring out how your various characters progress through those scenes. How you can hit key plot points or act changes at certain scenes, etc.

I would spend MORE time structuring your script and planning it because when you start writing it, you will have so much more fun and it will all make a lot more sense. You won't get stuck in the middle of the script wondering what you're doing, and why it's not turning out as well as you thought.

For me, I honestly feel that outlining the script is the toughest part, and is disproportionate in time to writing the actual script. I can write the script in only twice as much time as it takes to outline it, in my experience writing shorts and a partial feature script. Of course that's only a first draft, then it's a whole different game taking that draft and elevating it to "filming quality."
 
Right now I'm writing 2 scripts and I've asked helped from 3 people on DoneDealPro to read scenes as I go. A lot of people rather wait until they have the whole script written, others wait until they draft Act I, but none of that helps me.

I write nonlinear. I start at either the end or the middle. I write scenes and then put the whole thing together like a puzzle.

The thing I've always stated is that EVERY scene should stand alone, no matter where it is in the story. Every scene should make you want to turn the page.

So I suggest going to donedealpro script section, maybe post up 5 pages:

http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=7

Like these folks did, put your baby out there, accept the feedback and LEARN to accept criticism, it's part of the process, and then find 2-3 people who will work with you because that's what writers do, we help each other out.

I'm here for the brainstorming, laying out your premise line, help you with your ending, etc.

There will be others who will help you all along the way. Look for 'em, don't pay 'em. Don't ever pay until you've written 2-3 scripts from start to finish.
 
Yes I want to definitely work on having each scene stand alone as a mini-story, with a protagonist (which may or may not be the main story protag), antag, goal for each, conflict of some sort. And I was thinking of the non-linear approach too, depending on my mood each day, and what my brain is visualizing.
 
Yes that is a good point, and quite a difficulty. It's one of the hardest things I think is that ultimately you need to love each scene, or at least it needs to have its own purpose and beauty, not just be a stepping stone to something else. Otherwise too much of the script ends up being boring.
 
Ted Spencer said:
The chronic disease of bad stories/scripts/movies!

Emphasis on *story* though, as in: "do you actually have one"?
Click to expand...

That's very true. Well sometimes I think the writer (not so much in Hollywood scripts, but indie type of material) hasn't really asked themselves, "What IS the story here?" For instance I could tell you about this one idea I have in my notes, basically I keep various story ideas for a later time so I can develop them later if I like them, and this one is NOT a story right now, it's a story setup. There's a big difference. Sometimes, just because you have a nice setup for a story does not make you actually have a story! haha. That's a lot more effort to develop.

I also think indie comedies, heck even Hollywood ones, tend to have times where the writer said, "This would be a funny scene," but the scene has no reason to exist -- it doesn't move the story forward. This may work from time to time, but too many scenes like that and I start to feel lost, as the viewer, like I'm not really sure where we're going and I start to lose faith that YOU know where we are going, as the storyteller.

I really think comedies should be written almost exactly like a drama in the early drafts, with every scene there for a reason, the drama progressing, etc. THEN only in subsequent drafts should the comedy value be punched up, so that you're taking a script with a clear structure and dramatic pull, and then finding what's funny about these situations and maximizing that humor through the dialogue, etc. Of course the setup should be somewhat funny in the first place, that's where the heart of your comedy will come from, but the scenes should flow through dramatic necessity rather than, "Wouldn't it be funny if for some reason they went to... (wherever) and started (doing whatever)?" Well, maybe it would be, but why are they doing that?!
 
I have no problem with comedies going almost completely off the rails. Look at pretty much any Will Farrell movie: often the most memorable parts are those that have almost no relevance to the main story. If anything, I've seen too many comedies (ESPECIALLY romantic comedies) become unfunny because they had to "get to the plot". I'd rather have a movie like Step Brothers, which is barely even a coherent film, but is solidly entertaining from beginning to end.

As for putting together scenes, I think writing individual scenes in a bubble can be a dangerous thing to do. I'll often have an idea for a scene out of the blue, and I often write them out, but when it comes time to put together the final script or treatment, those scenes are usually tossed out the window. Why? Because they weren't written with a natural progression, they don't adhere to the actual story that I'm trying to tell. You risk falling in love with these little moments, but you have to be very critical when assembling the script and ask yourself if those moments are actually highly relevant to your themes and messages, or if they're just nice filler. Writing them out is still useful to me because it lets me get character development done, and often I'll cherry pick bits and pieces from these scenes for inclusion in the end product.
 
I tend to agree with Jonathan on the comedy's better with a story idea, but I do think you can get away with less of one than in most other forms if it's really funny. Marx Brothers movies had pretty thin plots as did other good comedies like Steve Martin's "The Jerk". On the other hand, I haven't found much humor in Will Ferrell's movies at all, with the (partial) exception of "Elf", which was pretty cute. May be a generational thing - a lot of people much younger than I think he's hilarious. Unfortunately, my mileage varies...

But the best comedies IMO all have good, clever stories behind them too. Like the classic "Some Like It Hot", or "Animal House", "Something About Mary", "Meet The Parents", or most of Woody Allen's or Mel Brooks's early comedies. Now that I think about it, speaking of Ferrell, I also liked "Talladega Nights", which also had a decent story (as did "Elf"). But I still don't find *him* especially funny...

Hey, whattayagonnado, huh? Fugetaboutit...
 
This time around I decided to go with Michael Hauge. I love his books and DVDs. I have another mentor/consultant who works with me and is already contracted to help me through my current horror-thriller script, but she had almost nothing to say about my beat sheet, characters, theme, arcs, subplots; although she is really good at the rewrite editing phase.

I emailed Michael Hauge, very fast and courteous reply, and he is exactly what I want/need right now; he is going to look over ten pages of beat sheet, premise, summary, arcs, theme, subplots, etc. and then do an hour and a half of interactive phone coaching on it all. Plus as a bonus I will be seeing him in a couple of months at a writers conference.

This will be my third feature screenplay, and what I have been learning is the importance of getting the story and structure right, as much as possible, from the start. Before typing FADE IN. My premise is high concept, an intriguing story world, unique creature, the whole shebang, so I am pretty jazzed to take this serious and get some good help from the start. Lots of rewrites down the road I know, but I am going to put my all into it as best I can.
~randall
 
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