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While the Storyboard staff reads all your wonderful scripts during the month of May, we heartily suggest you:

1. RE-WRITE: Before we pass the semi-finalist scripts onto the industry panel in June, we will give each of our semi-finalists the opportunity to supply us with a new draft. We strongly suggest that everyone go through their script this month and punch it up. Fix your typos, change scenes around, incorporate feedback you’ve gotten on the site, etc.

and

2. READ OTHER SCRIPTS: We hope you’ll take the time to read scripts on the site and offer comments to your fellow writers. Not only is it a good deed, but your comment on someone else’s work is more likely to garner some feedback for your own. And, as an added incentive: if you make more than five comments during this competition, your vote will count more in the final round. (See official rules for details).

For some reason, our server decided to end the competition an hour before the official submission deadline last night. We’re sorry for any panic this might have caused, and please accept our sincerest apologies with this offer of a one day grace period to post your scripts. Deadline is now TONIGHT at midnight.

Collaboration is a slippery slope. There are horror stories: fighting, ownership, stress, and envy. However, if you find the right person to write with, you might never want to return to writing by yourself. Here are three tools that might assist you in finding and working with the perfect collaborator.

Tool 1: TRUST

What makes a successful collaboration? In 2002 I wrote down a simple concept: there exists a company, somewhere outside the realm of our world, which is responsible for writing our dreams. I had an idea for a couple of characters, a love story at the center, and no earthly idea how to write it. 6 years later I met a fellow film geek and shared the concept with him. He proposed writing it together, at which point I admitted that my attempts at screenwriting were hackneyed at best. His response: “Dialogue is my specialty.” He wanted to add water to the seeds and thus I placed my trust in him and handed over the keys to the kingdom.

You cannot work with someone on a project if you do not trust them. It sounds simple, but it might be harder than you think. Most petty squabbles arise out of issues of trust and second guessing. The important thing is to trust that your partner has the same goal as you: to create a series that is interesting enough to compel viewers to return to their televisions each week to watch. If one of you is constantly worried that the other person will compromise this goal, your lack of trust will kill the idea.

Tool 2: STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

In setting out to write our pilot, we both instinctively played to our strengths. One of us was in charge of characters and concept, the other bringing those characters to life. Of course, there was some cross-over, but it was more in the form of suggestions. This may not be all collaborators’ chosen method, but it worked well for us. I wrote character profiles as the backdrop. The history of the character (where they were before we meet them in the pilot), the present (what happens to them in the pilot), and future (where they will wind up in subsequent episodes, seasons, etc.). Essentially a road map. Each page also contained an actor choice, and the etymology of the character’s name. Finally, a suggestion of scenes and scene goals was created.

Then, Ben took all of that information and wrote the dialogue. He’d bring pages to me, I’d make notes, we’d discuss notes, and he’d go back to writing. If we felt a scene was missing, we discussed what we needed to accomplish. I rarely made dialogue suggestions, and if I did, they were in the vein of, “The character should say something more like this.” If he agreed, a change would be made, if not, I’d rarely ask twice. The dialogue was his area of expertise, not mine. Checking your ego at the door is crucial to having a successful collaboration.

Tool 3: BRAINSTORMING

One of our main goals with the pilot was having a strong outline of where we wanted our series to go. As a viewer, there’s nothing more frustrating than to get to the end of a series only to find out the writers really didn’t know where the show was going from the pilot. We set out to have all of our questions answered, so that if someone were to watch the entire series, beginning to end, they would see elements introduced in the first episode that didn’t pay off until the end. This meant an exhaustive bible for the show, as well as many meetings where all we did was brainstorm.

At the outset, we created a list of questions that we knew needed to eventually be answered. We tackled the easy ones first and held off on ones that we couldn’t immediately figure out. Our best ideas often came out of brainstorming. Any time we came to a major roadblock, we decided to buckle down, and start spitballing ideas. I usually had the clichéd answer, and Ben usually had the more interesting spin on the cliché to make it gel. The most important thing was not to feel silly throwing an idea out. Sometimes, the cheesiest ideas wound up turning into a lynch pin of the series.

Really, it all comes down to interaction. The focus is turning conflict into compromise, compromise into a solution, and the solution becoming a final product both parties are happy with. For me, I can no longer imagine writing without a partner. It certainly makes the editing far easier with two sets of eyes always on the prize. And, in true fashion, this post was written in our usual manner. Only this time, I wrote, and Ben provided notes. He is indeed the better writer, but hopefully we offered some insights to help you decide if collaboration is right for you, and if so, some tips on getting it done without incident.

We’re psyched to present this guest blog from member Kris Thom White. Make sure you check the Character Q&A at the end!

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My Writing Process

Writing is one of those strange careers because it’s simultaneously one of the easiest to start (just you and a pencil) while at the same time is one of the hardest jobs ever. It’s also fascinating to think about this entire entertainment industry that exists for no other reason than to take something you’ve dreamed up in your head and turn it into a product for anyone in the world to see. Someone could end up spending millions of dollars to create something you thought of one morning in the shower. That’s pretty damn cool. Of course, between your shower and prime time exists this void called “the process”.

The two most recent TV pilots I wrote came about in two different ways. The first pilot (the real estate pilot “Equity” on StoryBoardTV), came from a “day job” I had working in the real estate industry. (I never get upset about having to work “real jobs” while I write because that’s where I see inspiration.) Having spent three years dealing with agents, I figured it would be good material to develop a series around. The characters largely came first since they were loosely based on people I knew, or composites of multiple people, with some dramatic license thrown in. My other recent pilot is a witchcraft dramedy that resolves around a young teen boy who finds himself in a small town where witches are hunted down, then discovers he might be one himself. That pilot came from a desire to do a Bewitched-style sitcom that slowly got changed over time into a darker-yet-tween dramedy show. Unlike the real estate show, I was creating characters to fit the plot I already had in mind. These two approaches will eventually converge because in order to write a successful show or movie, you have to consistently perform the same key steps.

The next thing I always do is compare my idea to something that’s already been done. There are no new ideas, anything you write will be “kinda like” something else, just with your spin or new twist. For my realtor pilot, I knew that its closest relatives were LA Law from the 80s, and more recently Nip/Tuck. Both those shows were personality driven, involving industries with lots of money at stake and a lot of ego. You also had, as in my story, a good mix of honest idealists and playboys. I did a breakdown of both those pilots: how they introduced characters (LA Law was an ensemble like my story, but you only introduce a few characters in the pilot), the story, the scene length, and where the commercial breaks were. For the witchcraft pilot, I did a breakdown of Bewitched and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

The most critical development step for me is Character Q&A. I have developed a long questionnaire that I use to write out character histories and personality to make story plotting easier. When beginning writers write characters, we sometimes simply split our own personality and write each character as a piece of us. The good guy does and says all the thing we know we should do, and the bad guy does and says everything we really want to and can’t. Without even realizing it, our characters are one-dimensional (of course, they’re each one dimension of us), but that’s not proper character development.

The Q&A really helps you to know the characters, and very frequently story ideas will come out of the process. (The last 10 things your character spent money on is a deceivingly-hard question, because you REALLY have to know your character to answer this.) Because conflict is drama, the biography allows you to write out the personalities in a way that you naturally see how Character A will conflict with Character B. The character Q&A also helps prevent your characters from all acting or sounding the same, a frequent beginner issue. Much of the information will never be known to the audience, but you will understand why your characters made the choices they did and how they react to your story’s circumstances.

As you develop your script, it’s very likely to change substantially. My witchcraft pilot that was supposed to be a sit-com set in suburbia with a family of witches wound up being a half-hour rural show in a tiny dusty town, because I kept changing it trying to find something that worked. I will use inspiration from things that happened to me or someone I know, but only as a starting point — not an ending. (Another beginner mistake, unwillingness to change something because “in real life it happened this way”.)

The hardest part of the process, and the one I struggle with most, is schedule. It’s very easy for me to think about writing for weeks on end, jotting down ideas on my smartphone. There is no substitute for sitting down and pounding the keys. All writers procrastinate, and we get uncomfortable when the ideas don’t flow. One of the best pieces advice I heard was from a Judd Apatow interview and what he called the “vomit pass”. It’s an apt-yet-disgusting term that simply means you just write that first draft to get it out of you, no matter how bad or ugly it is. Get something out on your screen so at least it’s tangible in front of you and not still in your head where you can’t deal with it. It’s the reason my witchcraft pilot kept changing form, because I kept writing no matter how bad it was so I could get to the good stuff finally.

That’s the real secret to this job: volume. As with anything artistic, quality comes directly from quantity. Imagine a person who does pottery opening a store and all she stocks is just a single vase. Imagine a painter opening a gallery with just one painting. Artists don’t work like that, we have to be little factories. Photographers take thousands of photos to find the best hundred, and writers must write hundreds of pages that will never been seen. A beginning writer thinks the first script they ever finish will be golden. A career writer knows it takes 6 or 7 scripts just to get something worth reading. Know that writers might only sell 10% of everything they ever write, but you have to write the 90% to find it. My personal schedule is to have a script done every 3 months (since I still work a full time job, this slower pace doesn’t kill me). Whatever your schedule is, you have to work on it every day or it’s never going to get done. So keep writing.

Kris

My Character Quiz to fill out for each character (feel free to copy/use/modify)

Where was this character born?

What are this person’s parents like? Together/divorced? Happy/miserable? Doting, high pressure, hippie, attentive or not attentive? What did their parents do for a living? Were they successful? Is this character more or less successful than their parents?

What brothers and sisters does this person have, if any. Are they close? Do they depend on each other or compete with each other (or ignore each other)

Does this person have any children? How old? How do they treat their children: dotingly, high pressure, absentee parents, suburban mom, urban mom? Do they care how well their children do in school? What kinds of things do they fix their kids to eat? Homemade, restaurant, healthy, fast food.

Where does this person live? Have they lived there there entire life? How long have they been at their current location? Have they moved up or down (to better or worse conditions since their last place)?

What was this person like in high school? Popular or not? Jock/prep/goth/nerd/wallflower? How big was this person’s circle of friends? Were they rebellious? Do well in school? Did they like the teachers or not? Obedient or discipline problem?

What did this person want to be in high school? Are they close to doing that now? Did they go to college? Did their aspirations change? Were they encouraged (or expected) to go to college, did anyone care?

What does this person look like? Tall/short, hair color, body type? Have they gained weight or lost weight since high school? How do they dress, stylishly, cost-conscious? What kinds of stores do they go to to buy clothes?

What is this person’s routine when they leave work? Hit the bars? Go home to a wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend? Does their work make them happy or can they not wait to get home? When they go home, is it inviting and comfortable or just a room to sleep in until the next day? Do they ever invite people over? Are they proud of their homespace, or embarrassed, or indifferent? If a person’s homespace is a reflection of their personality, is it cluttered, clean, sparse or packed? Cheap decorations and trash or high quality items?

What does this person do when they’re not working? Do they read? Have a social life? What’s the last 2 or 3 books this person has read? What’s the last 2 or 3 magazines they’ve read, or TV shows that they watch? What would be a typical “favorite movie” for them?

Do they keep up on the news, world events? Have opinions about what’s happening? Are they political, follow politics or have opinions about world leaders? Do they know anything about government or who represents them (or do they even care)? Do they get riled up about wrongs or is it all beyond them?

How does this person like to communicate? Cell phones, text messages, email, face to face, phone calls? Does this person have friends they visit or just “Facebook friends” that they really never communicate with in real life? Who would they call in a crisis, and would they gush and let it all pour out or talk about it like it was a business transaction?

What are the last 10 transactions on their credit or debit card?

We’re very excited to have these lovely people on board to read the ten semifinalist scripts and narrow the field to three:

Mark Armstrong, Literary Agent, Paradigm Agency
Graham Currin, Storyboard TV’s Second Competition Winner
Rachel Dengiz, Development, Olive Productions
Scott Gregory, VP of Programming, TV Land
Rachel Rusch, Development, Fox Television Studios

There’s just three weeks left to enter this year’s competition. (And as a reminder: this will be the only competition we hold in 2011). The sooner you post, the sooner you’ll get comments from your fellow writers and the more likely you’ll be to get featured on our homepage. So polish up those scripts and upload them!

This month we’re featuring blog posts from some of the more active members on the site. First up is Alex Sinesi, creator of DIG and prolific commenter (24 comments and counting).

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I used to think writing was a talent, owing to an eccentricity of genetics or a God-given destiny. I thought of it as a compulsion, something subconscious and instinctual, like the desire to become a pole vaulter or an underwater bomb defuser.

I don’t think that anymore.

And no, I didn’t come to this conclusion myself. I had a wonderfully harsh creative writing professor who helped me understand the fallacy of my thinking. Writing is definitely a skill. The reasons a person writes can vary wildly, and the creative impulse is just a small facet of that. Besides, you can be wildly talented and still not get your point across. Writing has to be crafted in a very precise and deliberate fashion to have any hope of surviving in today’s market. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs” my professor would say. ‘’Show don’t tell.” And my personal favorite: “You are all cowards hiding behind cowardly writing.”

That may sound harsh, but it’s exactly what I needed to hear. Stories need active protagonists, making strong, unexpected decisions and shaping their environments. Our generation has become too comfortable with the reactive protagonist, the audience-proxy, and the Mary Sue. Harry Potter fucked us up. We need to break out of this mold or our narratives will continue to suffer.

The most difficult thing for me will always be discipline. I write at all different times of the day, I jot notes on napkins, and come up with my best lines of dialogue in the shower. This – in case you were wondering – is not how a professional writer should work. Writing for a specific length of time (or a specific word count) at a specific time of day is the only way to develop consistency in your work. I accept that, even as I struggle to achieve it.

Now, I didn’t agree with everything my professor had to say, but I understood that he was in a position of authority — he had “made it,” I was just a wannabe — and it helped to break down my inflated sense of self-worth. I used to be immune to criticism; I would tune it out, thinking “they just didn’t get it.” Now, I understand that intentions don’t count for crap in professional writing. All that matters is what your reader finds on the page. If they didn’t see it, it isn’t there, no matter how much you intended it.

Right now, I think long form prose is in a very precarious position, while screenwriting is experiencing a renaissance. I’m excited to be writing television, I think it’s the best place for an artist to be right now. I’m also very grateful to have a forum to share my work. Some of my comments may seem harsh, but I only hope you’ll be just as harsh when reviewing my work. I have never learned from a “Good job!” or a pat on the back. I need to be broken down if I’m going to keep building.

I sincerely wish you all good luck, and hope that someday soon we all get paid for doing what we love.

Thanks to some wonderful member feedback (we LOVE feedback), SBTV has made some changes (two small, one big) to the site and how the competition is run. We hope you enjoy them:

1. In order to make sure that a larger number of scripts on the site get the attention they deserve, SBTV will choose different scripts every week to feature on the home page. (Please note: Featuring a script on the homepage will have no bearing on whether or not that script becomes a semifinalist). However, if you visit the Browse Scripts section, you’ll see that we still have the option to sort scripts by “Most Comments” (if that’s what you prefer).

2. When someone comments on your script, you’ll now receive an email informing you of that fact from Storyboard TV. (If you don’t want to receive these types of emails, just log into your account settings and unclick the box to the left of “Receive an email when someone comments on your script?”)

3. After much internal debate, SBTV has decided to change part of the competition rules: We will no longer require our semifinalists to sign an option agreement with our production company in order to move forward in the competition. (Please note: This does not mean that you can enter a script that is already under option or owned by a third party. This competition is still about getting new work noticed and into the hands of producers. It is NOT about rewarding work that has already gotten substantial attention).

We’re looking forward to reading your scripts!

If you didn’t get a change to see Friday’s reading of excerpts from our three Finalists, you can now watch them on our youtube channel.

A great big thank you to our director Stephen Brackett and our actors Ross Bickell, Louis Changchien, Nell Mooney,Wil Petre, David Smith, and Ian Unterman!

And don’t forget: voting ends at midnight on February 6, 2011.

Please join us to hear selections from the FINALISTS in Storyboard TV’s second pilot script competition.

Directed by Stephen Brackett

Refreshments will be served immediately following the event.

When: Friday, January 21, 2011 at 7 pm
Where: The Wild Project, 195 East 3rd Street, New York City

RSVP: rachel@storyboardtv.com