Wanna See A First Draft?
Let's write our stupid feature together
I recently saw Y2K, and it was without a doubt the worst movie I’ve ever seen in theaters. I think Kyle Mooney is very funny and I’m glad we have people out there (writers, actors, studios) who want to make weird original shit, and I believe that the next project from any of those involved will be an easy level up, but as a standalone story for entertainment, I was dumbfounded. The best thing about the movie was after seeing it, I turned to my partner and said “that should be all the encouragement you need to write a feature.” Well I’m taking my own advice.
I have a very stupid idea for a feature. It’s so stupid that any excuse not to write it will keep it from being written. But I do think it will be very fun to write so I’m going to do it here on Substack to hold my feet to the fire. If you’re interested, I’m inviting you to write your stupid feature with me.
I teach feature writing and use a nine week method which I’m going to use here. Every week I’ll post the worksheet I use, along with an example and then the following week, I’ll post my work. The first lesson is available to everyone. The rest will be available to paid subscribers if you want to join. I won’t be able to provide feedback or one-on-one consults, but we can get the chat up and going. For $5 a month, this is a pretty stupid steal if I may be so bold. Here is your sign to write. Here is your accountability. On the cheap and without any stakes or fear. These are strange and stupid and scary times. So when if not now, do we say fuck it, and tell our strand, stupid and scary stories?
Lesson 1 - Story Telling as Meal Prep - Ingredients
I don’t like cooking. I’m bad at it. It makes me insecure and there’s too much pressure to cook for someone else. So my friend Gilli suggested I try Hello Fresh. Or maybe it was Blue Apron. It was some food prep subscription. She sold me on it by saying it provided all the ingredients and steps. They were very simple meals and if I could chop and measure, I could make a meal. I just needed to follow the directions with the ingredients provided. It was the perfect way to softly approach cooking. After I got the hang of it, I could play around with ingredients or tinker with recipes. I use the same philosophy for feature writing. Tell a very simple story using simple ingredients and simple steps. Then once you’ve developed a pallette, go nuts. So for week 1, we will
Choose a cuisine
Select our Ingredients
Identify the beginning, middle and end of the recipe.
Choosing a Cuisine - Types of Narrative
If your feature is a meal, then the type of narrative is the cuisine to satisfy your appetite. The external plot is the meal, and the internal plot is what you have an appetite for. For example, Bridesmaids’ external plot or meal is being the maid of honor for your best friend. The internal plot or appetite is belief in yourself. So let’s select our cuisine based on your appetite.
All stories follow a similar story structure, so don’t stress about this too much, but identifying the type of narrative will help with tone and perspective. Below are my types, with examples where the type of narrative is the appetite that determines your meal. It’s ok if your meal feels like more than one cuisine, or if you’re not entirely sure. Plenty of great movies have multiple cuisines, often as part of their sub-plots (i.e. Past Lives, Banshees of Inisherin) As George Saunders says, aim in a general direction, then adjust for precision.
Cuisine: Types of Narrative
Coming of Age: A person or people losing their rose-colored lens or freeing themselves from an innocence. The Devil Wears Prada, Jojo Rabbit, The Wild Robot
Love: Your protagonist pursues a relationship, either to someone or something. Thelma and Louise, San Junipero, Love Sick, Wall-E
Throne: Your protagonist seeks to claim the throne. Wolf of Wall-Street, Moana, Boogie Nights, The Heat, Moneyball, Avengers: Endgame, Ishtar
Dethrone: Your protagonist seeks to prevent someone else from claiming the throne. Die Hard, Silence of the Lambs, Avengers: Infinity War
Terror: Anything that interrupts your protagonist's life through terrorizing them. Get Out, Scream, The Shining
Redemption: Your protagonist starts low, often but not always self-imposed or self-destructive, and makes a change towards the positive. Royal Tenenbaums, Up, Home Alone, Looper
Belief: Your protagonist finds a belief in someone, something, or themselves. Bridesmaids, Remember the Titans, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Thelma
Unlearning: Your protagonist has a struggle that requires them to unlearn the old way. Pretty much any Tom Cruise movie. A Few Good Men, Thor: Ragnarok, Groundhog Day, Tár
Selecting your Ingredients
Once you have your cuisine, you’ll fill in the following worksheet with your ingredients. Every meal needs a base (progtagonist), sides (ensemble), flavor profiles (character profiles), etc…
Protagonist(s)
If you’re doing a buddy story where each character is getting equal time, list both. If you’re writing The Hangover, don’t. Just kidding. Focus on one character for the spine. Your supporting characters will get their own arcs and you can choose to do this with them if you like, but for now, just the one or pair.
Name
Skill:
Misbehavior:
Achilles heel/flaw:
Internal Goal A (type of cuisine):
External Goal B (meal):
Main Dramatic Conflict/Antagonist:
Theme:
Central Dramatic Question:
The Ending:
Arc: (character) goes from (description, position) to (new description, position).
Here’s what it looks like for the movies Bridesmaids and Always Be My Maybe:
Ingredients
Title: Bridesmaids
Type of Narrative: Belief
Protagonist(s): Annie
Skill: Supportive
Misbehavior: defiant
Achilles heel/flaw: insecure
Appetite/Internal Goal: Believe in herself
Meal/External Goal: Be the maid of honor to her BFF, Lilian
Main Dramatic Conflict/Antagonist: Being the right choice for maid of honor over Helen
Theme: You can’t love others until you love yourself
Central Dramatic Question: Can Annie get out of her rut and be a great maid of honor?
The Ending: Annie loves herself and then is able to be there for Lilian
Arc: Annie goes from insecure, loveless out of work pastry chef to self-confident best friend and maid of honor, with a boyfriend.
Title: Always Be My Maybe
Type of Narrative: Love
Protagonist(s): Sasha, Marcus
Skill: Sasha - driven, Marcus - loyal
Misbehavior: Sasha - elevated, Marcus - complacent
Achilles heel/flaw: Sasha - self-isolating, Marsha - scared
Appetite/Internal Goal/Plot: Sasha - unlearns her elevated way for family, Marcus- believes in himself
Meal/External Goal/Story: Marcus & Sasha’s love story
Main Dramatic Conflict/Antagonist: Stepping outside their comfort zone for each other
Theme: Leave your comfort zone and take a chance on your “maybe.”
Central Dramatic Question: Can two old friends step outside their comfort zone to be with each other?
The Ending:
Arc: Sasha and Marcus, childhood friends go from friends who slept together once to adults who end up together supporting each other in their goals.
Logline
From there, you’ll create a Logline. A description of your meal for a menu.
The logline should be a one-sentence description of your story. It should include a character description, the world, the conflict and the hook. Some people believe you should lead with the character if it’s character driven, and the conflict if it’s event driven. I think unless you’re writing Battleship, then lead with a character description. You might find leading with conflict easier to write if your type of narrative is Terror.
Logline (character description + world + conflict +hook):
Bridesmaids: An out of work pastry chef must find her self-confidence in order to be the maid of honor for her best friend or lose the role to a competitive bridesmaid.
Always Be My Maybe: When two childhood friends who had a fling before falling out, reconnect, they discover they might still have feelings for each other if they can just put aside their insecurities and go for it.
Sides - MFS
MFS (Mentor/Friend/Significant Other)
For your supporting characters, they should be there to push and pull your lead closer to and further away from their goal. In order to do that, they must “know” more about something and “less” about something than your lead. Sometimes “knowing” means knowledge/wisdom and sometimes it means caring/investment. Give them a want so they can have their own arc. You will always have at least one. Keep it simple to start.
Mentor/Friend/Significant Other 1 (relationship will change over course of movie) :
Knows more about________ than our hero
Knows less about________ than our hero
Wants:
M.F.S. 2 (optional):
Knows more about______ than our hero
Knows less about_______ than our hero
Wants:
M.F.S. 3 (optional):
Knows more about______ than our hero
Knows less about than______ our hero
Wants:
Allies/Enemies (similar to MFS, but less utilized, often a character game):
Bridesmaids
Mentor/Friend/Significant Other 1 (relationship will change over course of movie): Lilian
Knows more about love than our hero
Knows less about Helen than our hero
Wants: Her best friend to be her maid of honor
M.F.S. 2 (optional): Rhodes
Knows more about responsibility than our hero
Knows less about wedding stakes than our hero
Wants: to date Annie
M.F.S. 3 (optional): Megan
Knows more about self-confidence than our hero
Knows less about reading a room than our hero
Wants: to be liked
Allies/Enemies (similar to MFS, but less utilized, often a character game): Other Bridesmaids, roommates
Always Be My Maybe
Mentor/Friend/Significant Other 1 (relationship will change over course of movie): Harry
Knows more about soulmates than our hero
Knows less about dating than our hero
Wants: his son to find love with Sasha
M.F.S. 2 (optional): Veronica
Knows more about sacrificing to make a family than our hero
Knows less about business than our hero
Wants: Sasha to find love and not regret getting with Marcus
Allies/Enemies (similar to MFS, but less utilized, often a character game): Sasha’s parents looking for a deal, Marcus’ bandmates being bad at business
Recipe - Story Map
Time to give the basic steps for your meal. An act break is a change in the story direction. Every story should have multiple changes in direction. Good storytelling has set-ups and pay-offs and reversals, which are all versions of changes in directions. Two act breaks are necessary to hold the audience’s attention. One that ends the character’s journey in their old direction and pivots them into their journey (usually external - their meal) and one that ends their journey at it’s lowest point, and pivots them in a new direction (usually the internal - addressing their appetite). After that, the structuring is for you to keep the audience engaged. I use a modified three-act (which is really just a four act). Ultimately, don’t let it stress you out. On the macro, your script should change direction twice. On the micro, it should change direction every time the audience gets comfortable/bored. Fill this out with 1-3 sentences per act.
Act I -
Act IIa -
midpoint (not an act break, but the point of no return) -
Act IIb -
Act III -
Bridesmaids
Act I - Annie doesn’t have much in her life except her bff Lilian
Act IIa - Annie accepts the role of maid of honor for Lilian
midpoint - Bachelorette Plane to Vegas
Act IIb - Annie fails as maid of honor and ruins the bridal shower
Act III - Annie is there for Lilian
Always Be My Maybe
Act I - Marcus and Sasha have grown apart
Act IIa - Marcus and Sasha reconnect
midpoint - Marcus and Sasha hook up
Act IIb - Marcus and Sash fight over career
Act III - Marcus and Sasha end up together
Ok that’s it. Lesson One - Prepping your Meal. You can create this for your own story or you can find the full worksheet here to COPY. PLEASE MAKE A COPY or else everyone will see your work and it might get deleted. Complete and see you back here on February 27th for Lesson Two: The Hero’s Journey.
Oh my gosh you really jumped right into it!!! hahahahaha