This fact started me thinking about popular filmmakers of today, like Quentin Tarantino (who is greatly influenced by Leone), Paul Thomas Anderson, and Wes Anderson, who, while being incredibly original writer/directors, wear their influences on their sleeves. But we’re starting to see filmmakers emerge who are inspired by Tarantino, the Andersons, among others, and it has started me thinking whether the content of films these days is diluted for being filtered by so many different influences. What’s the saying about making a copy of a copy of a copy, etc.?

Everything has been done before, right?

This is of great interest to me because I am someone who constantly struggles with creating original material. I’m never at a loss for an idea, but I do find that my writing tends to be greatly steeped in my influences.

Years ago when I started acting, I was inspired by the immense comedic talent of Chris Farley. (Tommy Boy still stands as my all-time favorite film.) In auditions and classes I would channel his energy until I could expertly mimic his mannerisms. But as I became more interested in the process of acting, instead of just being “funny on camera,” I had to make a conscious effort to stop watching Farley’s movies because it was hindering the process of finding my own voice and style. I’m not sure I’ve ever succeeded in doing so.

When it comes to writing, my perfectionism is in full swing. I have an uncontrollable urge to see every film that is thematically similar to my story. My thought process is, “if I’m going to write a genre piece, I want to know what has been done before.” However, what happens is that I’ll come across a movie that is so inspiring that I find myself creating characters or plot points far too similar.

Sometimes I will fully embrace this, particularly if it is a short film. For Coffee, Tea, and Cappuccino, I had written it after seeing Planes, Trains & Automobiles. As an actor, I was frustrated in playing the same parts over and over, and decided I wanted to play a character like John Candy’s. So, I structured the story around the same type of characters and incidents. My inspiration is thinly veiled. I knew this, which is why I named the characters John and Steve. Even the title is a reference to the original. (Calling myself out was my way of avoiding accusations of plagiarism. Not so sure I’m deserving of that privilege.)

This doesn’t work for feature films. At best, my film will feel derivative, if not downright stolen.

When I find myself cornered by my influences, I return to the source of the inspiration. What about this story compelled me to pursue it? One hundred percent of the time it isn’t a specific scene or situation, but rather a feeling or underlying message. For me, this the most important part of crafting an original story because it is how to cultivate a personal vision.

Going back to Coffee, Tea, and Cappuccino, I didn’t necessarily want to write the John Candy on a road trip with Steve Martin story. I wanted to create a character that was unfortunately annoying, but unavoidably lovable, as well as a character that had something to lose. I’m not sure I succeeded, but from that underlying inspiration stemmed a relationship between my two characters that more or less carries the film to its conclusion in a way that can stand apart from Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

For the most recent short film that I wrote, I tried to focus on this concept of inspiration over influence, and take it one step further. Compression is a short surveillance thriller that I wrote after watching a double-feature of The Conversation and Blow Out. Before sitting down to the script, I asked myself, “What is it about these two films that are compelling me to write my own variation on this theme?” The answer was two-fold: 1.) to explore a commentary on voyeurism; 2.) to indulge in a genre exercise. These were the two things that I made an effort to latch onto while writing the film so as to prevent a hackneyed end product. I’m no Coppola or De Palma, but I think for what my script is, it has a personal vision that differentiates itself from the films that influenced it.

Currently I am writing a Western, which is a genre that has been all but milked dry. Not only that, but it’s universally thought to be a “dead genre.” I’m at the height of the battle to create something original. Never before has it been more important for me to focus on the reasons why I want to write this story; not what type of story I want to write. The only way to create something original is to understand what I have to say; everything else, cliché or not, will fall into my personal vision and avoid derivation. Hopefully.

The solitude a writer can experience while researching, writing, and rewriting their script often leads to feeling lost. If you’re a neurotic spaz like me, you’ll start to second guess your work, and eventually feel the need for justification from someone on the outside. I’m notorious for seeking input from others. (Bless my parents for reading everything EVER.) Despite the expertise and/or support from those around me, the success or failure of their feedback seem to rely on me.

In the process of outlining story, I find it incredibly helpful to buy someone coffee and try to verbalize my story to them. Speaking aloud has been great to gauge the flow and fullness of my story. Many a-time I’ve felt confident in my brilliant idea only to start telling someone and finding myself saying, “Uh, and then, er, well, I haven’t quite figured that part out yet, but it eventually leads the character to here.” The next day I’ll sit down at my script, and like a Magic Eye, all of the holes suddenly appear.

This can sometimes be discouraging, but it is the most useful result of sharing my projects that I’ve encountered.

What I’ve found in discussing my story with others is that I become even more neurotic and second guessy. “They didn’t think it was as brilliant as I did.” “I am completely on the wrong track.” “They don’t get it. Maybe I don’t get it either.” Granted, part of this is a defeatist attitude, and something that I have to constantly battle against, but whether those thoughts are warranted or not, it does bring up an interesting predicament: if my story isn’t working, and I’m looking to others for the answer, what is the real problem with my story?

I often have to ask myself, “why am I seeking feedback from someone else?” My experience has told me there are two possible answers to this: 1.) I want someone to acknowledge the work I’m doing so I can feel a sense of validation; 2.) my story isn’t working and I hope that others will have the magic suggestion to fix all of my problems.

Helpful Hint: that magical suggestion doesn’t exist.

I am the only person in the world who is spending hours every day with my characters, the world in which they live, and the research to make their world real. Why would someone who has no experience with my script have the answer to my problems? It is extremely difficult (and thus frustrating) to explain to someone the process one goes through while writing. Ninety-percent of the time I don’t even understand it, yet there is that compulsion – that “maybe if” – that an outsider will see something that I’ve overlooked. Not so.

It is very important to have specific reasons for asking for feedback. The reader will often be overwhelmed with the proposition of reading a work, and being posed with the writer’s vague question of, “so…?” It has taken me awhile to realize this, but it’s rather unfair to have [read: force] someone to read a work-in-progress. First of all, he is taking time out of his life to read my script! Secondly, I’m inviting him into my world, and hopefully I’ve posed a question within my story that I hope to answer by the end, so if I provide him with an unfinished work it’s a bit of a slap in the face. It’s a promise unfulfilled.

It’s like this: I invite a friend to get in the car with me, and I know that we’re going to the Grand Canyon, but I don’t tell him that. All he sees is that I’ve got a full tank of gas and some road snacks. Then, ten minutes into the journey, I turn and ask, “how do you feel about this trip so far?” More than likely his response will be, “well, it seems enjoyable – I’m particularly liking this beef jerky – but I have no idea where we’re going so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel.” … Well, that metaphor may be a bit oversimplified, but it seems to encapsulate most every variation of feedback I’ve received on an unfinished script.

The approach that seems to make the most sense to me is to refrain from showing anyone a piece of work until I am ready to tear it apart and break down the semantics. Exercise consideration for my reader – invite them into my story, not my frustration. Be specific with the type of notes I’d like. Ask myself before I approach someone, “do I want to be coddled, or does this specific person have perspective that I think would lend itself to what I’m writing?” Nine times out of ten, albeit subconsciously, I just want someone to acknowledge my efforts. Unless the person I share my project with will be a direct collaborator, I usually walk away just as frustrated as when I started.

Note: I LOVE ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE READ MY WRITING. HUGS AND KISSES 4EVER.

After I began reading these books, I immediately began to realize problems that plagued every script I had written up to that point. Passive characters, ill-defined dramatic needs, sloppy and/or rushed plots riddled my stories. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and frustrated, but these books provided me with a ray of hope.

TIME CUT TO: Months later…

I’ve read Mr. McKee’s book “Story,” and multiple volumes by Syd Field and Blake Snyder, and I, like so many other screenwriters, still found myself frustrated with my script. It wasn’t fitting the damn formula! How is this story ever going to work if I can’t get the “catalyst” to occur on page 20?

There is something to be said for these “guru” books, so long as the reader doesn’t take their preachings as gospel. I had a very difficult experience with Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat!” books, which ended up immersing me so deeply into my head in trying to construct a story so point-by-point that I could have done a connect-the-dots with my index cards. But a connect-the-dots portrait of a woman looks nothing like a Picasso woman, or a Da Vinci, or a Vermeer. It’s going to be a drawing of a thin-line connecting obvious points made to look like a woman. It’ll hang on your parent’s fridge, not in the Louvre.

Do you like that metaphor? Syd Field uses them quite often.

But there is a lot of use for screenwriting books. What I have found, perhaps, the most helpful is that they present ideas that you should keep in mind while writing your script and developing your characters. The redundancy and use of multiple metaphors tends to bludgeon readers with the importance of these things, but for someone like me who has to read something two or three times before it sinks in, it is actually helpful. But the danger comes from believing these “guidelines” to be “rules.”

Personally, I’ve found a lot of use in Syd Field’s “Screenplay”, and particularly in his “Workbook,” but this has little to do with his mantra and more to do with the fact that it is a process I can follow to force me to write every day and think about the different aspects of story. For instance, I found less help in applying his “Circle of Being” theory than in simply taking the time to write and understand character backstories.

Robert McKee’s “Story” is another book that I initially took a lot from, but have since let most of it slip away. Being a writer who really had no clue what I was doing, it wasn’t necessarily McKee’s teachings that were eye-opening as much as it was someone [read: anyone] talking about story in a way that I hadn’t yet thought of it.

I am now of the perspective that these books are pretty arbitrary, and that the only education you’ll need to survive is to watch and study films and read scripts. (It’s not enough to just put in a movie and surf the internet on your iPhone during its lulls and say you’ve studied it – something I myself am guilty of from time to time.) Watch the first twenty minutes of a film you find interesting. Watch it again. And again. Read the script up until that point. Watch the first twenty minutes while reading along in the script. Read the various versions of the script. Take notes!

This is the recommendation of most working screenwriters. I agree with it wholeheartedly, but I do think it’s a bit simplified advice. After all, I can look at the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright all day long, but without someone to tell me what the hell “organic architecture” and “being in harmony with humanity” mean, I’m just going to see a pretty house. (There’s another Syd Field metaphor for you.) So without someone blatantly laying out what “dramatic structure” is, and how to look for it, I could watch hundreds of movies and read hundreds of scripts without getting as much out of it as I could otherwise be.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is no simple and clear-cut answer to great screenwriting. No single book or method is going to unlock a magic door inside of you that will unleash superhuman screenwriting powers. We all wish [read: think] there is, but there isn’t. So go ahead and read any or all of these books, but know you’re probably going to immediately fail, and that failing is okay; failing is normal; failing is progress. Getting it right the first time exists only in the realm of the screenwriter superhero.

Embrace your journey of learning to write as if it were a script someone else were writing. It wouldn’t be a very interesting story if you achieved your goal in the first act, would it? Stick with your dramatic need to learn to write, expect obstacles, and hopefully you’ll achieve your goal or learn what it is that you really want. Of course, I say this didactic mumbo-jumbo more as a reminder to myself than to anyone else…

Six disillusioned years later, I’ve managed to sustain a living with a daytime job that has nothing to do with writing, directing, or acting.

Like so many naïve Midwesterners, somewhere in the back of my mind I had the audacity to think I was going to be the exception to the rule. “Maybe I’ll get an agent; maybe I’ll book a commercial or film role; maybe I’ll experience overnight stardom; maybe I’ll be interviewed on Conan before the year is through. I’ll thank my parents in my Oscar speech.” This is not the case. This is never the case. The exception to the rule is a myth.

The one benefit that I have had is my stubbornness. It’s the only attribute I can think of that has kept me in Los Angeles for so long without any real success that I’ve set out to achieve. In this sense, stubbornness has bought me the time I’ve needed to understand the harsh truth of success in the film industry: you are not the exception. I am not the exception. We are not unique and beautiful snowflakes.

Okay.

I’m not the exception.

Should I move back to my small Midwestern town and get a “normal” job and spend Thursday nights at T.G.I.Fridays? No. Why? Again, I refer to the benefit of my stubbornness. So where does that leave me?

If I’m not the exception to the rule, and I’m not returning to a “normal” life without this insane dream of making movies – a decision everyone out here regrets at one time or another, trust me – I guess that means that I will have to put in the actual work.

It sounds harsh, but I’m merely alluding to “the wake up call”; the sink-or-swim moment.

For me, it was after I had endured one too many auditions for the “Jonah Hill Type” that I realized I hated the audition process. I loathed it. And because of that, I wasn’t doing everything I needed to be a successful, or even a working actor. Once I realized that, it also dawned on me that my mental attachment to acting had prevented me from fully pursuing writing in the capacity that I wanted, or needed to in order to be successful.

Decision time.

One day about six months ago, I decided to just put all of my effort into one area of filmmaking and buckle down and learn the craft of it inside and out. If I intended to become a successful screenwriter, I had to do the work. That was six months ago. Six months later, I’ve come no closer to making a splash in the industry, but I have an astounding amount of confidence and peace of mind that I’m on the right track. It took six years, but now here I am actually working at becoming a screenwriter; not just ignorantly telling people that I “write scripts” without knowing what that entails.

I’ve decided to start this blog as a way to share my experiences in the craft and business of screenwriting from the perspective of someone outside of the industry.

There are so many how-to books on screenwriting, but far fewer on how to break into the business, and even less on the emotional and intellectual journey one takes to learn the craft. I do not have the answers, but I hope to obtain them. I hope to share them.

Here are my “Declaration of Principles,” as Charles Foster Kane puts it, (with which I’m sure someone will Leland me in years to come).

Declaration of Principles

1. To hold myself accountable for studying the craft of screenwriting, story, and characters by making public my thoughts, views, and learnings;
2. To pass on any information, articles, and events that I may find valuable to other screenwriters;
3. To provide a candid look at personal successes and failures of screenwriting;
4. To shed an intricate and critical eye on produced scripts in order to break down and understand their inner workings;
5. To employ a community friendly environment where readers are invited to comment and share additional information, perspectives, and opinions.

That’s it. I hope that you’ll join me on this journey. It’s going to be a long and bumpy ride, but let’s be stubborn together.