Film Courage: 12 questions every screenwriter has to be able to answer about their screenplay?
Mark Heidelberger, Producer: 12 questions?
Why does it have to be 12 questions?
How did you get the 12 questions?
I mentioned earlier that I was a manager, a literary manager.
So I did writers and directors for about 8 years.
So I had…I’m going to give Meg LeFauve who I mentioned earlier (Jodie Foster’s
producing partner) was a great influence on me and she had this series of questions (might
have been eight or ten) to get us thinking about the story we wanted to tell.
When I started managing, I sort of took those questions and expanded on them a little bit
(re-appropriated them a little bit) so I came up with 12.
And so every time I had a writer come to me with a story they were working on….you know,
it could have been in the synopsis phase or the treatment phase or the finished script
but had a lot of problems…okay, let’s rewind and let’s go back to the fundamentals
or even if they just had an idea and they hadn’t written anything yet.
Take a look at these questions, can you answer these questions?
The questions are things like:
What’s the genre?
Is it studio or independent?
Who is your protagonist?
What is their goal?
What is their flaw?
Who is the main relationship?
What is driving the story?
Who is your audience?
Who is the antagonist?
What is their goal?
What is their flaw?
What is the narrative question driving the film?
So you should be able to sum it up into one big question.
Like DIE HARD: Will the New York cop free his wife and hostages from some European terrorists
who are all trapped in a skyscraper?
Like it’s one question.
What is your narrative question driving this story?
What is your theme?
What is your thematic question?
Why are you telling this?
A thematic question is like the question you pose to the audience.
And the moral question, or something else.
But it’s something you want them to think about.
Like ‘Is family really people you are related to or is it something more?’
It could be your thematic question.
It’s not overtly stated in the story, but it’s kind of in the film’s subconscious
(it’s what the film is kind of about).
And then your theme is how you answer that question by the end.
Those are off the top of my head.
And if you can’t answer those questions or if those questions don’t make sense together,
a lot of times there’s the problems with the story.
So for example is you say my protagonist’s goal is…my protagonist’s goal is to grab
the banana.
And what’s your antagonist’s goal?
To grab the orange!
You are in two different movies.
They are never going to intersect, there is no conflict.
Great your protagonist grabs the banana and your antagonist grabs the orange, movie’s
over.
And that’s a very simplistic example but those are the kinds of things on a deeper
level to look at and say there are a few things that aren’t making sense.
You say your main relationship is character A and character B, but your antagonist is
character C. They are not even in your main relationship that is moving the story forward,
so why are they your antagonist?
So the 12 questions…and this is from amateur writers who have never had anything sold called
development cases people who you have a belief in because they are talented and you’re
trying to get them there.
All the way up to experienced screenwriters who have had a half dozen pictures produced,
the 12 questions is a great sort of reset, okay let me square away even if I’ve won
this a hundred times, every story is different and lots of times you miss those key important
details.
And once I think those 12 questions are making sense now, they are tying together…oh now
see how the protagonist’s goal ties into your theme?
Okay…now the puzzle pieces start making sense.
Then I saw okay now let’s work out a synopsis, 3 to 4 paragraphs, first act, second act,
third act whatever just so we can say from a broad story standpoint those questions are
being addressed and there you can expand it to a full treatment and scene outline, then
start writing your script.
Like I said, it’s a lot easier to develop a story in a synopsis form or a treatment
form then it is to keep rewriting a script when there are fundamental problems in it.
You don’t start building the building and “Oh, it’s slanted.
Okay, let’s start taking out some bricks.”
You work all of that out of the design phase and the blueprint phase, so that’s what
I try to get them to do.
And the 12 questions is…that’s the beginning, the organic seed that we need to plant to
make a healthy tree grow.
Film Courage: And when presented with those 10 questions (or whatever it is), do most
screenwriters see the vague areas of their story?
Or are a lot of them very sort of stuck on those ideas and it makes sense to them but
they’re not willing to waiver?
Mark Heidelberger: No, I find that they are usually very open.
I mean, if they are not going to be open to the process (to the creative development process),
I’m not going to be able to do much with them.
I think most of them, they are coming to me because they know there is something wrong,
you know?
If they think it’s great, than hey whatever.
If I read the script and go “Yeah…okay?
This is decent, I’ll go with it.”
And we might have them or bring another writer in to do polishes or something.
But most of the time when they come to me to develop the script they know something
is wrong so that’s why I said let’s go back to those fundamentals and I don’t necessarily
answer the questions for them.
Sometimes I can, I’ll come up with ideas and say well maybe when I was reading your
story I felt like your theme was a little more about this and they’ll go “Yeah!
Yeah!”
Sometimes I can articulate or pull out what they are trying to get to quicker than they
can.
But a lot of times it’s just me pointing out discrepancies like “You say you want
to do sort of this, this and this, which makes me feel that you want it very small and this
and that.
But you also say you want to do a studio picture?
But is that what studios are buying?
Is that what studios are putting out?
Now I might just call out some discrepancies and they are like “Oh, yeah okay.
Maybe this is more indie?”
And we discuss it, we talk about it.
But I think getting on the same page, getting those things so they are making sense makes
all the rest of the stuff much easier.
So I don’t get a lot of push back.
I don’t get a lot of pushback because a lot of it’s coming from them, it’s just
me pointing it out, guiding them.