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I forgot I started this thread. I suppose I should chime in.
I asked the guy who's making Blackout what he liked about the script. He said it was low budget due to all locations being easy to find and use. Even the luxury apartment building with a lobby attendant and a secure garage with an attendant. He also said they liked it because they had to keep guessing until the end who the killer actually was.
Another interesting thing is that my script Malevolence is being produced by two different people. One is a black guy in Atlanta. The other one is an older black woman in NYC. I just can't figure out what that script had that attracted two separate African Americans. Never had that happen before.
I thought I would share this with you guys today. Earlier this week I spoke to the guy that is producing blackout and finders keepers. I wanted to share something that he told me.
He told me that people send him scripts to read all the time. He said the biggest problems he sees with the screenplays is a recurring one. One of the biggest problems with the scripts is that they totally lose steam in the middle. Another is the old, show don't tell. He said, way too many scripts tell us in dialogue what we need to know instead of showing us.
He told me that the reason they picked blackout was because it started out strong right off the bat. And it didn't bog down after that. The tension kept increasing throughout the script, but also they were kept in the dark until the end, if the main character was actually the killer or not.
Nothing profound about this, I just thought I should share.
He also told me that finders keepers was not as strong as script as blackout. They obviously still liked it, but still. Funny thing about finders keepers is that it has probably been rewritten 20 times while blackout was a 1st draft. Anyway, that is all. Carry on.
Think it's worth posting, even if it's a well known complaint.
The slow middle is a problem even in a lot of Pro productions. It seems more of a mechanical problem than anything else...most structure templates provide easy fixes to this...as loathe as people may sometimes be to use them. Test your alliances, increase the stakes etc etc. There are simple ways of creating tension that can be retrospectively applied to the story if you are looking for them. Most of the time the middle is just about leading up to where the protag is in the worst place possible, having lost all his support.
The show, not tell thing is something I seem to mention a lot. There are always exceptions to the rule, but a lot of scripts suffer from it.
Literally asking..how can I showthis instead of telling it is usually the way to fix it!!!
I've had problems with the middle, and I can relate some ideas on the cause.
The introduction has a huge advantage in that meeting our characters, and discovering the story's world, can be interesting in itself. And usually by the third act things have built up, are moving towards a dramatic conclusion.
In the second act, sometimes there are things that your story needs to accomplish, either to set up the third, or just for the story to make sense. They're not the most exciting part of the story, but they're things that have to be accomplished. Almost like checking off a list, and even the idea of checking off a list sounds boring.
As far as show not tell, for good or for not, that's why the simplest of stories are preferred. The more complicated a story is, the harder it is to show everything.
Think it's worth posting, even if it's a well known complaint.
The slow middle is a problem even in a lot of Pro productions. It seems more of a mechanical problem than anything else...most structure templates provide easy fixes to this...as loathe as people may sometimes be to use them. Most of the time the middle is just about leading up to where the protag is in the worst place possible, having lost all his support.
I've heard it said many times around town...
"Page 73 is a lot harder to write than, the end."
Regards, E.D.
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