Film Courage: When a writer brings their work to you or even hearing from agents who’ve
had a writer bring work to them, what sort of telltale signs appear when it’s so deeply
personal and you can tell that this writer does not have enough perspective?
Whereas when you can maybe tell that it is loosely based on a multitude of people and
there’s a little more definition to the problem or maybe there is not and I’m projecting
this?
Erik Bork, Author/Screenwriter: I don’t know if there are telltale signs because you
never know when you’re reading something is this the author’s own life story? I mean
you can suspect it but I would say the absence of some of the elements we’re talking about
(the seven elements of what the problem) the absence of those is the main thing that a
reader is noticing. That it isn’t that entertaining to watch or the stakes aren’t life-altering
(it doesn’t seem like). Or the character isn’t relatable, the problem isn’t punishing
enough or what is going on isn’t believable enough. Those kind of things are what we’re
just noticing right away. Once we notice them we may speculate Oh this is because it’s
their own true story and their own life doesn’t have those elements but we don’t really
know for sure.
So I don’t really know if I can say I can tell this is a true-person personal story
unless I really know the writer and it’s pretty obvious that it’s their life. It’s
more the absence of some of those elements not appearing as strongly as we would want
makes us less enthused about the script. And it may or may not be because it was a personal
story like that.
Film Courage: Do you remember the first feedback you received from a third party that these elements
needed to be more pronounced?
Erik: Oh yeah.
Film Courage: How was that for you?
Erik: Devastating, terrible. The worst moment in my life up to that point. So I guess I
had a pretty good life if the worst moment in my life is having someone tear apart a
script. But some of the early script that I wrote I would probably cringe at now and
the stuff I write now I’ll probably cringe at 6 months from now. It’s not an easy field
is what I’m saying. You won’t always have perspective on what you’re writing yourself
and whether others are going to respond well to it.
But I’ve had people say that there is just not enough conflict (it needs more conflict)
and I in my early days thought conflict meant like people arguing, fighting or car chases.
I didn’t really know what that meant exactly and so I didn’t write scripts and I didn’t
write movies that people constantly arguing or fighting or car chasing. So I thought I
was writing something that was the kind of stuff I would like. But a third party reading
it said you know you did some good things hear I just thought it needed more conflict.
I didn’t really know what they meant. Now after doing it for years and reading a lot
of scripts, I know what they meant. To me conflict is synonymous with problem.
So it’s not that your character has to always been in obvious conflict with people and expressing
and fighting. It’s that they have to be in conflict with their situation and they
have to have problems. Whenever your character doesn’t have a problem or isn’t even actively
struggling against or trying to resolve a problem, the audience tends to check out a
bit, right? So that usually leads to conflict with other characters trying to solve a problem
in life generally leads to some interpersonal conflict. Because a lot of problems that are
big enough for a movie that we want to solve, big enough for a TV show are problems that
all involve relations and interactions with other people. So there will be conflict but
it’s not that limited version of what I thought conflict meant when I got that critique.
So the problem not being punishing enough (letter P the first one in P R O B L E M in
my book) was probably the first thing that I grappled with in my own stuff.
People saying it’s just not enough conflict meaning it’s just not a big enough problem,
it’s maybe not a life-altering enough problem which is the L word which is the level of
the stakes of the problem. Why does it matter that they solve this problem? Why does the
audience care that they solve it or not? Is it big enough and is it relatable enough?
Which is the R word where the audience is starting to feel like “It’s our problem,
too.” We are standing in the shoes of this character as they try to solve this problem
and we feel something about it, we want it to be solve because it’s kind of like it’s
us now, that emotional engagement with the characters, that really key thing we’re
trying to achieve as writers is that it’s not easy to achieve and sometimes writers
don’t see the things necessary to kind of achieve that which is a lot of the kind of
relatable stuff.
So my first critique of something not punishable enough was probably also not big enough stakes,
why do people relate to this character? Because you didn’t find that sort of universal hook
that pulled people in. The character didn’t have those elements that make the audience
just start to feel like I’m bonded with them which is such a key part.
For me like the beginning of any screenplay (which Save The Cat calls the setup section,
the first ten pages), it’s all about achieving that bonding with the audience and people
often talk about people put down a script in the first few pages if it’s not grabbing
them and writers tend to think “Oh you grab them by having really exciting spectacle in
the beginning with really high stakes, with action, or entertainment value, which is always
helpful but to me the more important goal in those first ten pages is to introduce your
main character at some length and at some breadth and at some depth so the audience
starts to see what the key things are that would make us care about them. What makes
them a compelling, relatable person? Even before the main story problem has kicked in.
What makes us just kind of want to follow them? In Save The Cat, they save a cat which
makes us like them because they do something self-sacrificing and helpful. That’s sort
of a semi-joke premise that Blake Snyder came up with…just have your character save a
cat. I think what he was really getting at was a really vital thing that writers tend
to sometimes bypass or not understand which is give us a reason to bond with that character
before your story really kicks in.
So I probably failed in all those and other ways in my early scripts and maybe some later
scripts that made people go “Ahhhh…needs more conflict.”