Construction of a Screenplay, Part 4 - Script Development, Phase One

By the middle of January 2017 we had a first draft of the Truth to Power screenplay. A good beginning six months into the process. What happens now? The answer is the first phase of an intensive period of rewrites before what would be the seventh draft was sent to Andrew Wilkie at the end of October.

The director Tim Dean and I would bat notes back and forth and have regular video conferencing sessions to discuss the state of the script. Tim is very good at giving notes (apart from the occasional ‘can we just make this better?’ which is always a fun note to get!) and they would become more specific the deeper we went into rewrites. These covered the whole gamut of elements from character, tone, structure, transitions, theme, dissection of scenes, and, eventually, decisions to kill some of my ‘babies’. Those being scenes that I would hang onto from draft to draft but ultimately didn’t fit for whatever reason. Vale a couple of favourites.

As the structure had been developed over the previous six months it was fairly robust which allowed me to try new things without too much ensuing chaos. We focussed on character work, notably for Wilkie, his wife Simone, and his colleague Kate; as well as getting the main structural beats as strong as possible – inciting incident, first act turning point, midpoint, and the ‘death point’-helping hand-turning point at the end of the second act. The opening sequence and climax were already locked in though they were tweaked as well.

The most difficult elements were getting the character of Kate Burton to a place we thought was accurate and servicing the story; and the beats at the end of the second act. This is the sequence I have easily rewritten more times than any other section of the script.

As Tim and I were on other sides of the country we used Wire which is a fully encrypted video application. Indeed, all our communications were encrypted – Signal for messaging, Proton Mail for sending drafts and notes. There was some sensitivity around the project given the subject matter and a history of interference with the real-life subjects in the past. I am breaking cover with these blog posts! Gulp.

The other strategy we employed was kicking material out to readers for feedback. This started with the Treatment and continues to this very day with drafts. My preferred option in receiving feedback from readers is in a face-to-face meeting. I find the interaction stimulates a wide-ranging discussion that allows me to question the reader; them to do the same with me; and basically explore the state of the script in greater detail. To that end I would offer to shout for food & drinks at a meeting place of the reader’s choice. I’m sure I can claim this as expenses against our ultra-low budget production… can’t I Tim? Damn.

A big thank you, therefore, to the following people I met with to discuss the Treatment and/or a Draft:

Scott McArdle, Phil Jeng Kane, Levon Polinelli, Nick Maclaine, Anna Bennetts, and Tyler Jacob Jones. Plus the people Tim sent the script to on his side of the country.

But there was one reader above all that we were keen to get feedback from. So after seven drafts Tim and I finally felt ready to send Andrew Wilkie the script. This was around the end of October 2017.

Then we waited… and waited… and waited some more…

Next in Part 5 – Script Development, Phase Two

Construction of a Screenplay, Part 3 - The First Draft

I won’t lie. I was a little nervous. The treatment for the film adaptation of Andrew Wilkie’s book Axis of Deceit had been sent to the man himself. How would he react? Would he hate it? Dismiss us as nobodies? Would the project sink before it even reached script stage? Injunctions and lawsuits at twelve paces? Okay, I’m a screenwriter so I’m prone to exaggeration for dramatic effect. But I was keen to glean Wilkie’s reaction. Were we in the ballpark? If not, how far off the mark was our approach?

Storm clouds gathered when a writer the director (Tim Dean) collaborates with offered his feedback. It was reasonably early in the morning Perth time. I was at work. Tim rang from Melbourne. The news was not good. That writer did not like the treatment. At all. Gulp.

Unexpectedly, a crisis of confidence loomed as Tim pitched a different way of tackling the material in response. I could feel my heart sinking through the floor into the basement, a fair feat from my fourth-floor seat. To me, this was a completely different story. One I wasn’t in the headspace to comprehend let alone consider.

All I heard was “disaster!”

A few hours later and the crisis was averted. Tim received a message via the publisher that Wilkie liked the treatment and wanted to make a deal. Only two days after it was sent to him.

Now my brain was ringing with relief and joy!

The validation was a real boost. Not only did Wilkie embrace the treatment but I considered it a huge plus that it took him only two days to read it and respond. I thought it might take weeks. After all he is a busy parliamentarian. It was early December 2016 so he was likely heading home to Tasmania for the Christmas break.

From that moment all thought of differing approaches to the adaptation vanished and has never been discussed since. It was an interesting experience though. If anything, it steeled me to the fact that not everybody was going to respond positively to what we were attempting. That other writer’s reaction wasn’t invalid – he simply had a different viewpoint and, as I discovered, a likely ambivalence to political stories.

With the festive season approaching I booked four weeks holidays from work (the non-creative office variety that pays the bills) with the express purpose of writing the first draft. Consulting my diary, I commenced typing on 28 December after the Christmas-Boxing Day food and cider coma. The draft was finished 17 days later on 14 January 2017. Two and a half weeks for a draft. Very fast for me. I also thought it was a decent first up effort, not a ‘vomit’ draft like some writers call their initial iteration.

I put this down to all the work honing the short form documents – the beat sheet and the treatment. Tim and I spent five months from that fateful MCG meeting breaking the story and the structure. I knew where I was going. I knew my third act climax and how I wanted to start. I knew the shape of key scenes and sequences. I had a fair idea how to do the transitions in and out of the imagined scenes that represented Wilkie’s thought process. I gained confidence and belief from Wilkie’s reaction to the treatment.

I also had images in my head of scenes right from the get-go as I mulled over the research, the book, and the proposed structure. This included the opening sequence which has remained constant throughout albeit with some tweaks; and a wordless scene around the midpoint that was visually striking if not more than a little disturbing (couldn’t shake that one out of the old grey matter). There were scenes that I relished writing such as the “what if” of Wilkie and John Howard alone in a room together before the Iraq war commenced.

Sure, there were some warts as you would expect. Scenes were overwritten. Secondary characters weren’t well-formed to where we needed them to be. The thematic strand was somewhat ham fisted in execution; and there were some overly ambitious flourishes for what was to be an ultra-low budget movie. Some scenes would eventually disappear. Characters would change in emphasis and significance.

But it was a good start.

And as any writer will tell you writing is all about rewriting. Without a foundation to build on you have nothing.

Then there’s this – for the first time there was a tangible blueprint for a movie. For me that was only six months into the process. For Tim it was after a few years of tackling the material. It was a significant step.

Next up in Part 4, digging in and developing the screenplay.

Construction of a Screenplay, Part 2 - Beat Sheet & Treatment

What do you do when you have an idea for a screenplay? Or in this instance, adapting a book? First off, there is no correct answer. Different writers will have different strategies. What I’ve learnt after endless rewrites of a third act of a script is that getting the structure in place before you go to draft stage is invaluable. There’s nothing worse than doing rewrites where you are chasing structure.

With the ‘Wilkie project’, as it was initially known, I also had to figure out how I was going to tackle the material. The original idea (pre my involvement) was a series of telephone conversations over one night in a hotel room. I understand there was even the thought that five different writers could contribute, in effect, a monologue for each of those calls. That left me cold as making a film based on a series of phone calls seemed pretty uncinematic. Ultra-low budget, sure. Dramatically interesting? I’m not so sure.

When I look back at my saved documents for the project, I found what was the pitch to my co-creative, the director Tim Dean, called ‘Wilkie Movie – Initial Thoughts’ dated 28 August 2016. This was a page and a half of how I would approach telling the story. I read that now, some two years on, and it lays out everything that has subsequently transpired. Basically, how to dramatise the decision-making process that was going on in Andrew Wilkie’s head as he locked himself away to make the most difficult decision of his life. This allowed us to foreshadow future events without recreating them and to introduce imaginary characters and/or imagined conversations with real people such as John Howard. The emotional through line is there as well as a thematic C story strand.

The only real person who isn’t mentioned would come later in a storytelling video conference with Tim. I’m being a little obtuse but there are some secrets best revealed on watching the completed film.

So the approach was agreed and I started working out how to structure it all. There’s a document called ‘Wilkie Structure’ dated 19 September 2016 and the first version of a Beat Sheet is dated a week later. Now, the Beat Sheet is an invaluable tool in the screenwriter’s arsenal. In effect it is a point by point description of the major story and character beats. It was even more important in this project as I was going to be moving from real to imagined scenes and back again. Getting the balance right and the correct transitions was going to be critical so as not to confuse the audience (and the writer when it came to draft stage!).

Reading this early draft now, so much has been retained in the screenplay even though things have moved around a little and some elements have been dropped then resurrected. The structure is largely identical in the broad phases of the storytelling. We did seven versions of the beat sheet, batting it back and forth, until we were both happy with it.

Then came the tricky part. The Treatment, written with an audience of one in mind – Andrew Wilkie himself. Not that we were asking permission per se, however, it is his story and I feel a responsibility about being truthful to that story and to him as a person. There were also some elements, no matter how much research you do, that aren’t in the book or public sphere. The Treatment itself is a prose version of the entire story. I was fleshing out the beat sheet to incorporate more detail in terms of both character and story elements.

I set to work once more; each draft going to Tim for his notes, being discussed at length, then revisions made. There’s a second draft dated 19 November 2016 with the final version, after seven drafts, stamped as complete on 5 December 2016. Four and a half months after we met at the MCG we had a Treatment we were happy to send to Wilkie via his publisher.

Tim emailed the treatment to the publisher and I tried to put it out of mind even though I was somewhat nervous about what the reaction might be. I was confident we’d done our research and were being truthful to the story but I had no idea how the man himself would respond.

We didn’t have to wait long…

Next in Part 3 – First Draft and Script Development