Film Courage: Why do 99% of writers fail Corey?
Corey Mandell, Screenwriter and Screenwriting Instructor: So many writers have a dream to
succeed and they work really hard to learn the skills to grow their talent and they're really
dedicated and they they don't succeed and they feel like well I've learned all these tools and
I work all the time and I guess they don't have what it takes I want if you ever find yourself in
that place I want you to remember something that there's three things that are required there's
a missing piece so yes skill talent talent is repeatable skills you have to be able to write
in Conflict you have to be able to write great characters and dialogue and heightened Concepts
yes all of that yes and you're going to probably have to work hard to develop that but once you do
and you have that Talent you obviously need dedication right you have all the talent in
the world if you don't work hard not going to happen okay you have all the talent have
all the dedication and you can fail which then tells people I guess I don't have what it takes
I want you to think about Bruce Springsteen he's pretty good right he's not a rock and roll star
he's a rock and roll God and I think he would agree incredibly talented I think you degree
incredibly dedicated he didn't go to college he didn't get married he was just playing music all
the time for like 10 years for no money just he was all in on his dream and work so hard on
his ability he got a record deal at Colombia he had a year to make his album they supported him
with money and background music and they promoted the heck out of it and went out and it bombed the
great Bruce Springsteen bombed I gave him a second chance because they saw his potential so he spent
another year and just p i mean everything into the second album and they spent so much money on
promotion it's Bruce Springsteen so what happened that second album bombed it's very easy at this
point to say PA's pretty good at music made two albums the biggest record company in the world is
promoting it nobody wants to listen to it I guess I don't have what it takes but God smiled on Bruce
Springsteen and he got a third chance and his third album was Born to Run and his third album
is one of the most successful records of all time it sold tens of millions of copies it made him
a rock and roll God in the 1970s if you want to be famous there's two things you could do get on
the cover of Newsweek or get on the cover of Time magazine in the same week Bruce Springsteen was on
the cover of Newsweek and time no other musician has ever done that so I have a question for you
what was different from the third album from the first two albums he had all the talent he had
all the dedication but there was something missing it's not luck there now luck involved luck is what
the losers point to Born to Run is a transcendent magical album it would have been so successful if
it came out 10 years earlier 10 years heck if it came out today as a brand new album it would be
amazing what is different if you are serious about writing or acting or directing or whatever your
creative pursuit is you need to know this answer what was different and what was different was Jon
Landau. Jon Landau was a writer for the Rolling Stone discovered Bruce knew that Bruce was just a
generational talent and after the second album he went to Bruce and said can I be your producer can
I produce your third album and they met and they talked and Bruce trusted him and respected him
and Bruce said yes now Jon Landau did not produced the first album did not produce the second album
he produced Born to Run and what I'm about about to say is something that Bruce Springsteen and
Jon Landau have said publicly many times so I'm just sharing what they said Jon Landau said that
what he needed to do was adjust not very much but he had adjust Bruce's process we live in a
world where people ignore process they they focus on results success or failure process is how you
create product I can always track the best scripts back to the best process and I work with writers
I can always track their scripts that fail back to failed process process process process if you
were a golfer and you weren't getting the results you wanted you would see someone who would break
down your swing and re engineer your swing because your swing is your process as a writer if you're
writing and not getting the results you want what Writers Do Is they either quit or they just double
down and keep writing scripts thinking well you got to be in the right place at the right time
time and they keep writing and they create a pile of similarly flawed scripts process
process process you have to improve your process the great Bruce Springsteen needed an adjustment
in process so who can do that for you managers can do that for you mentors writers it's something I
do in my workshops and also one-on-one but not taking one on one clients or if you don't have
the money or you don't have the time you're fortunate to live in a time when there's so
much free digital content so you can go back and watch if you haven't already a lot of Film Courage
videos you can also go to podcasts and there are a lot of writers who talk about their process now
it's really important that you don't just find a writer that you love and say oh I'm going to do
her process no no no there is a process that allows Tina Fey to write to the best of her
ability there's a process that allows Greta Gerwig to write to the best of her ability that's not the
process is going to allow you to write you got to find your process so when I work with writers I do
process coaching and what I always tell a writer and I specifically want to tell this to any of you
who never work with me I always tell a writer I am not smart enough to look at your writing
and talk to you and know what process is going to work best for you you're not smart enough to
know you have to experiment I will tell you this most writers default process holds them back most
writers default process plays to their strengths and hides their weaknesses and if you keep doing
that your weaknesses get weaker and your strengths get stronger so when I do this work with writers I
will give them a range of processes to use to see what the results are and then we'll start to f-
tune and start to find your proc process and you do not have to work with me it's cool that you can
again if you have some time and energy listen to the Film Courage videos listen to podcasts listen
to very successful writers they'll talk about their process so you could start to collect lots
of different writers processes and you could start playing with some of those and experimenting with
some of those if you're not going to work with me let me give you a piece of advice find seven
writers that you really respect that that talk about their process not all writers do but a lot
of writers do because there's so much interviews out there so find at least seven writers that you
respect who share their process and write down what their process is and then what I want you
to do is look at those processes those seven processes and say which one do I think is going
to work best for me and then which one would I be most excited to try it might be the same
one might be a different one and then okay which one do I know isn't going to work for me there's
no way start with that one start with that one because writers I always tell writers this either
you control your process or your process controls you I'll just give you an example I worked with a
writer really smart had a manager but couldn't get a career and in working with their process
and getting to know them it became clear that when they had a problem with their script they had to
make a really big decision solve a big problem they'd get anxious and stressed most people do
and they think about it until they could find a really good solution then they'd use it that's a
flaw in your process so what I said is okay so you have this script and you have this problem
and you have this solution which makes a lot of sense great I want you to pretend that your agent
said I cannot go out to the market place with a script that has this solution I need you to
come up with a different solution and you got to pitch it to me in 3 days come back in 3 days and
Pitch me that solution and then I said okay I want to pretend that your man your agent said nope you
have three days you get me a different solution or I drop you and come back in three days and then I
do it I'm going to have them do four or five and here's what they're going to realize some of the
time their first one the first good one they came up with is the best sometimes the fourth
one is the best and I asked them do you want to write the fastest script the easiest script or
the best script do you want a chance of a career or you want the best chance of the best possible
career So This Is What It Takes when you're stuck on a problem don't use the first good solution you
come up with that goes on the option list come up with five seven other great options and then I'll
say I want you to think of the worst option the the the way would be a disaster and just go write
that real quick try all this out that's that's what creativity is creativity is an exploration
and we often learn more from our mistakes than our successes so that's just one example of a
process glitch where smart people will have a problem they'll think about it they'll come up
with their first good answer and use it without exploring other options and sometimes if they're
pushed to do that the sixth option they come up with is going to be the reason they have
a career I'll give you one more example of a process glitch I worked with another writer
super talented always Clos to her career never had a career and in working with her it became
really clear that she really connects with their characters she really feels and sees them as real
people and she has like a a maternal instinct to protect her characters and so I started to
give her process training where she had to take the character she loved the most and just do the
brutally worst things to these characters she had to kill her characters in the worst possible way
it was so painful but then when she was done she's like that was kind of fun I mean the character's
still there I'm still there and because if you're protecting your characters if you're protecting
them from pain or yourself from the pain you can only go so far as a writer the reason Breaking Bad
and flea bag and the bear are so great is those writers are so courageous they just go into their
pain and they write from there and they do not protect the characters because we want to have
an emotional experience we want to be emotionally changed and this is it's really important and I'd
like to sort of talk about it if you permit me in a much bigger way um everything in life seems
to divide us and everyone's on teams and one team has all the answers and the other team are idiots
and the other team has all the answers and they're an idiot and corporations and governments often do
things to keep us aroused and angry and suspicious because that is how they can keep our attention
and they can get us to watch and they can get us to buy or to donate and this is not a a prom for
one side or the other it's a prom for everyone let me share a quote a really great quote from
James Baldwin and he says I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly
is because they Sense Once hate is gone they'll be forced to deal with their pain and I think
that's really powerful I can resonate and connect with that I think that there's a lot of pain that
people don't want to experience and we live in a society that says don't deal with your pain cope
with your pain and one way of coping with your pain is as medication or alcohol or work a lot
or sex or just get really angry at the other side and just live in this Perpetual self-righteous
anger and I think as a society we've sort of lost our ability to deal with pain and we used to have
rituals when people died or terrible things that we came together and there were rituals but but
a lot of those rituals have fallen away in the modern world and there's just a lot of hatred and
anger and fear because there's a lot of pain that people don't want to face and so it's so important
that you can as a writer write from that pain don't protect your characters because that is
one of the ways you can help make the role the better place is that you can tell stories like
flea bag um where characters choose or forced to confront their deepest pain and come out the other
side a better person a more whole person a more healthy person we need to Vally like you can't
just lecture people you can't just people can't tell people to do that they'll just tune you out
but you create a character that they they spend their lives with that they're viscerally connected
to they get to experience that or you could do the opposite like succession or the bear where you can
have characters who refuse refuse to deal with their inner pain and they just live in this just
this aroused hatred suspicion and you just see the destruction these important I mean writing
can help make the world a better place because writing is how we get shared values it it's how we
get empathy it's it can bring people together it's one of the few things that red America and blue
America we we can viscerally be excited by similar stories I mean God help us if that goes away so I
know I got on my soap box and I apologize but I was talking about process and how important
process is so if you can get someone to help you with process do it it's going to expedite your
learning curve it is going to dramatic increase your chances of success if Bruce Springsteen
could use it we all could use it but if you can't find someone a mentor is willing to do it for free
and you can't pay someone like myself or someone else it it'll be longer and harder but you could
still do this you're fortunate to live again in this era where you can listen to different
writers process just remember everyone's focused on outcome and product process is how you create
outcome improve your process improve your outcome you don't improve your process you keep making
the same mistakes simple as that so when Jon Landau took Bruce Springsteen under his wing or
however it worked was that Bruce's blind spot his process oh about that earlier yeah so for
me there strengths weaknesses and blind spots blind spots are weaknesses you don't know you
have weaknesses are weaknesses you have I don't know they neither of them identified that I can't
speak for Bruce but I'll tell you what Jon Landau did for him and it's something I went into great
detail in a a previous Film Courage or an upcoming Film Courage video I don't know the order of these
are going to be where I talked about there's one question you have to answer for your script to
succeed or one answer or your script will fail and if you haven't yet watched that watch that
Film Courage video because that that singular what's it about that is the tweak in the process
that Jon Landau used so in that album Bruce had all of these lyrics he had all of this experience
and this is what's important what's it about it's not intellectual it's not theme it's about what do
people experience even if you don't consciously know you're experiencing it you're experiencing
it because that's what we want we want impactful experiences and so they looked at that and they
realized there was lot of different experiences at that time Bruce had all these different songs
and in fact Born To Run he shared I think he had like 40 pages of lyrics and I would imagine they
were all just amazing but it was the question of and this is the most important decision what's
it about and they worked on it for a long time and finally this is what they came up with this
is the unifying experience of board and run and you listen to any of the songs and you're going
to feel this it's about friendship look at the cover art for the album listen to the songs it's
all makes you feel friendship I mean it's a lot of it is like what friendship felt like when you
were 20 or 22 years old in the summer and like you had infinite freedom and all these possibilities
it was a it was a romantic friendly feeling but everything in that so he took those 50 pages of
lyrics and he talks about this and he reduced it down to half a page that focused on that piece
of land that that what's it about so in in that video that you can see or will soon see when it
drops which is the one question you have to answer about your script I go into great detail about the
what's it about it's cool I learned it from Ridley Scott and it was many years later that I watched a
documentary that Bruce made about Born to Run and he talked about it and I'm like oh yeah yeah yeah
that's what that and then of course of course like this is just it's the one question all
artists I have heard Steve Martin talk about how he creates or used to create his routine and other
it's the same Richard Pryor the same thing so this is like the secret to the creative universe.