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

A New Project, Part 1

Exactly one year ago to the day – 28 December 2016 - I started writing the first draft of a feature film screenplay. Eight drafts later and I am ready to embark on the next draft and hopefully be another step closer to getting the film made in 2018.

But let’s go back a few steps first.

The middle of 2016 I was becoming increasingly restless. I was halfway through what, for me, would be a record breaking year of going to and writing about theatre. Not to say I didn’t love this but that my screenwriting had withered away to an afterthought. And that was bugging me. A lot.

Salvation came in the form of a director who I was slowly, glacially, frustratingly writing another draft of a fictional thriller for. It’s a project I’ll go back to but at the time I was not writing well when indeed I did sit down to work on it.

That director pitched me an idea for a film based on a real-life person and the book he had written about a controversial period of Australian history – our involvement in the Iraq War. I had known the director had the rights to the book ever since he cold emailed me many years ago and our collaboration began. Now, however, he was motivated to pursue it further after a discussion with a well-known and respected figure in the Australian film industry.

The brief – just make the film; be bold, be creative; get noticed. The figure of $20,000 was quoted which I never took literally other than this was to be a micro-budget project. The selling point for me was the director’s absolute conviction that “this film will get made.”

I said I was interested and the deal was sealed, in all places, at the MCG during one of the worst games of AFL football I had seen in a while, in the presence of US Vice-President Joe Biden no less. The director, Tim Dean, had moved back to Melbourne and I was over there on one of my annual musical theatre jaunts. (For the record, my team beat his team unconvincingly in a woeful effort). That decided I immediately reduced my theatregoing activities though I still had to honour my adjudicating commitments for the Independent Theatre Association until the end of the year.

First task was to get a copy of the book which I ordered once I was back in Perth. Then it was a case of not only reading the book but all the notes and previous work that Tim had done with other writers as well as his own research.

Once that was all in the blender it was a case of how the hell do I do this? Ultra-low budget, be bold, be creative.

From discussions with Tim and from all the material he’d shared, the premise was that the film would take place over one night in a hotel room. The original idea was that the protagonist would make a series of phone calls that would assist with the agonising decision whether to challenge the government of the day on the question of the Iraq invasion. At one point I understand it had been proposed a different writer would pen each conversation. This struck me as very dry and, to be frank, uncinematic. How to make this dramatic and cinematic whilst keeping with the smell of an oily rag mandate?

I started thinking about who the phone calls might be to. From the book there was a clear choice based on the animus that was evident in the text. However, a conversation between those two never took place, could never have taken place, at that time. Which led me to the great screenwriting question – WHAT IF? What if these two did have a conversation, in private, before the Iraq War started? How might that play out? It was a tantalising idea and full of dramatic promise.

I am a big fan of screenwriter Peter Morgan of Frost/Nixon, The Queen, and now The Crown fame. His use of imagined scenes – the stag in The Queen; the drunken phone call in Frost/Nixon – that may never have happened but are thematically on point and truthful to the characters in question was a guiding principle. But how to manufacture such a conceit?

From there everything fell into place. This was a tale about a man who locks himself away in a hotel room to make the most difficult decision of his life. He goes through the pros and cons, the worst-case scenarios, in his head. In other words, I could have real life interactions and imagined ones. I knew exactly what happened after his decision in real life but instead of recreating those moments I could have the protagonist visualise and game play the consequences. This gave me a starting point and a way into the story.

The meeting at the MCG happened mid-July. Commencement on the screenplay, end of December. What happened in those five and a half months other than reading the book, notes, and having discussions with the director to come up with the approach?

Well, the short answer is nine drafts of a Beat Sheet to get the major storytelling points down and work on structure. Then, once we were both happy with that, nine drafts on what turned out to be a ten page Treatment, designed basically for one person only – the true life protagonist of our tale. The final version of that was sent to him via his publisher just before Christmas last year. He responded within two days that he really liked it which is what gave me the confidence and enthusiasm to launch into the first draft…

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of posts about this project. If the above is somewhat vague at the moment the reason might become apparent in later updates. For now, it’s back to the script.

Dealing with the Dreaded Writer's Block

I saw a witty quote on Twitter a couple of days ago that went along the lines of:

“Writer’s block – when your imaginary friends aren’t talking to you.”

It made me laugh because there is some truth to that. Now, I have been writing, just not the thing I should be namely a low budget thriller feature script. This is strange to me as there is a detailed Beat Sheet that was battered back and forth between myself and the director as well as discussed at some length before I even opened a new Final Draft file. I have written the opening and had intended doing a “vomit draft” to get everything down before refining it with the director’s feedback. Ain’t been happening - long stretches of nothing, nada, nix, zilch. Don’t know why. I suspect it’s because the story has been germinating in the dark recesses of my brain somewhere… until I can hear all those imaginary new friends talking to me.

In the meantime I have been reading a lot of local scripts from shorts to a feature and even a television pilot. Giving notes and feedback, written and in person; taking plenty of meetings and generally been creative in terms of brainstorming ideas and discussing storytelling. I also unexpectedly met a young, enthusiastic writer and have taken on a de facto mentor role which I’m really enjoying. Her energy, passion and eagerness to learn is quite infectious.

This brew appears to have kick-started my own urge to start working on the feature again. I’m sure other writers might understand this – there is a nagging sensation at the back of my mind where ill-formed but recognisable glimpses of the film I wish to write are intruding with increasing regularity. It’s hard to explain but I love that sensation. It means I’m ready to write.

Computer optional :-)

But here’s the thing – normally I would be tapping away on my netbook but not this time. This time it wants to come out the old-fashioned way, in longhand with pen and paper. So there are new scenes appearing, scrawled on the back of the printed pages already in Final Draft; in notepads; and basically on whatever is available. What do I care, as long as it’s leaving my imagination and taking shape in words! I actually like writing this way – being very creative as it pours out then more analytical as you type it up and play with it a little.

The moral of the story? For me, it’s to keep being creative even if you’re not writing. Surround yourself with creative people. Let the passion for their stories reignite yours. Keep thinking story and reading scripts and brainstorming ideas. Sooner or later those ‘imaginary friends’ will want to come out to play.