All Eyes on Me

I got good feedback from my entry of my TV pilot Hood into this year's BlueCat Screenwriting Competition! It was the best kind, because the good stuff was very complimentary, and the critiques were both minor and actually insightful and useful, worth incorporating into an edit of the piece.

My report from my reader:

"What did you like about this script?

This was an extremely original take on the familiar Robin Hood tale. Updating it and setting it up as a corporate thriller made it different and exciting. There was almost non-stop action, though not only of the explosive kind. I particularly liked the elevator scene.

We saw a lot of backstory and character development in just this one episode. Plus, a lot of things were set in motion. Who is attacking Locksley Materials? Why don’t John and his mother want authorities snooping around? How will Robin get his reputation back and avoid the authorities? The pilot has a lot of momentum.

I also loved the characters and thought it was wise to update them as well… like turning Will Scarlet into female hacker Scarlet or making “Maid” Marian Latina. They were very believable and consistent.

You also did a good job of revealing things in a timely manner, letting the mystery unfold organically. Your dialogue was generally great and you wove your exposition into the story well, like when Marian expresses doubts about Robin by telling a story from their college days together on page 35.

I would love to see more of this show, since there are many tantalizing plot threads left up in the air.

What do you think needs work?

There were a few minor things that could be clarified to make this script even better. For example, I know Robin was desperate but he really thought that going off a bridge would be preferable to getting arrested? Maybe he’s not in the best state of mind, but I was surprised he chose to do that. Now, if someone drove him off the road, I could believe it a bit more.

Also, while Scarlet and Marian were wonderful characters, it might help to emphasize why they want to help Robin find the truth. It’s mentioned a few times that Robin helped Scarlet get to where she is, but it’s still a huge leap for her to risk her livelihood for him. Their banter does show that they’re friends, but are they so close she’d take a chance getting fired or arrested? Likewise, Marian seems to have doubts about Robin but is also suspicious that something else is going on. Her thirst for the truth needs to be so powerful that it overcomes her doubts about Robin and her worries for her job. I know her mom seemed to be affected so maybe playing that up a little would further show the audience why she’s willing to risk the career she worked so hard for."

It would really make me happy if I placed in this. Adonis made it into the top ten percent of BlueCat back in 2015, and it's a reputable contest. It's a nice thing to be able to attach to a project when you're pitching it, so it would be great if Hood could progress.

Here continues my musing on some tropes that frequently recur in my writing! Specifically, analyzing my tendency to use what I refer to as "Soft Masc" protagonists-- "a male character with a presentation that is fairly normatively masculine, but with a preponderance of personal qualities that were traditionally coded as feminine" --and how that manifests.

Continues from part 1.

Skills and Abilities:

The key factor of how I couch the skills of these characters is that they possess a certain charisma— the ability to make people like, respond to, and sympathize with them is extremely important to how they pursue their goals. Of course this is not necessarily a gendered thing, but because it lends them to having the managing of relationships at their forefront, they often take the feminine caretaker, peacemaker, or emotional support roles.

Nathaniel’s skills are primarily interpersonal— talking, convincing, wheedling, distracting, ingratiating, lying, peacemaking. He serves as both the face and the glue of his superhero team, a role which is usually filled by a female character. He is specifically not very good at martial stuff, in defiance of masculine expectation. His charisma is from sparkling wit, friendly bearing, and a puppy-like effort to please.

Aidan’s skills are presented dichotomously. On one hand, he is honed into a seriously dangerous warrior and becomes quite good at it, which is very masculine coded. On the other hand, he serves as the inspirational figurehead of the rebellion due to his ability to court people projecting their dreams onto him, which is more feminine. His charisma lies in his unique dichotomies of strength and fragileness, power and softness, that make people fall in love with him.

Tom Barrows is also a strongly interpersonal operator, using his ability to read others and connect with them in order to make his way. Again there is some personal charisma at play, but it is lower key than Nathaniel’s Life of the Party type or Aidan’s Wounded Beauty. Not to mention the fact that he is an extremely skilled dressmaker.

Robin somewhat relies on interpersonal skills to maneuver, but more because HE IS A CHARISMA MACHINE LIKE A ROCK STAR. He is presented as fit and dexterous, with martial hobbies, and an aptitude for physicality. He is almost as physical a character as Aidan is, though not as great a warrior. Simultaneously, his privilege has insulated him from having to learn many hard skills, and attention is drawn to just how useless he is in many ways.

Justin is somewhere between Nathaniel and Robin. He has his brother’s Life of the Party presence with Robin’s showier, more arrogant edge. His skill set is similar to Nathaniel’s—and though he is not quite as empathetic, he still has something of his brother’s ability to pick up on the state of those around him.

Values:

Nathaniel’s value shift is a major part of his journey as a character. He begins with very expected masculine values for a Victorian man— being the head of a family, martial strength, responsibility for the lives of others, admiring soldiers and the empire, the established social order. But while he maintains some of those, much of his story is about coming to deconstruct the problems of patriarchy and shift his values so that he stops being complicit.

Aidan is quiet and wounded, with a longing for a peace he’s never known. He is in something of a Maslow’s crisis for most of the story, where the needs to survive, heal, and protect others consume him to the point where there is no time for him to really discover who he is in the absence of struggle and trauma. He dislikes the attention and spotlight his position as figurehead of a rebellion has brought him, not to mention the necessity to make himself into a warrior and inflict violence. But likely he would prefer some quiet, creative pursuit, like baking or poetry, far out of the public eye, had the circumstances of his life been kinder.

The chief fascination and calling of Tom’s life is the making of beautiful clothes, dresses in particular. His experience with and connection to feminine circles where there are not often a lot of other men have given him a particular appreciation for the wisdom of women. Otherwise his values are fairly normatively masculine, particularly courage, hard work, and cleverness.

Robin is afflicted with some level of toxic masculinity. He cares about showing off, asserting his dominance and superiority over other guys, getting laid, and indulging in his entitlements. Getting over it is his major character journey.

Justin’s a bit of a wildcard. I actually conceive of him as having a slightly more enlightened attitude toward Victorian social mores than some men of his time. For all that he’s a ladies’ man, he never deceives, manipulates, coerces, or uses, nor does he really look down on any women who are interested in a fling. But he does have a pretty hefty dose of Victorian patriarchy, and assumes he knows better than most other people, partially because of his status in the world.

Sexuality:

Nathaniel, Aidan, and Tom are all straight. Robin and Justin aren’t quite.

Aidan’s sexuality is complicated by years of rape and abuse by women. He experiences the trepidation around sex and intimacy which we most often see in women who are survivors. He is sexually drawn to women, but has to first disentangle the trauma from his sense of his own sexuality. Because of the matriarchal culture of his world, his socially expected role is that of the receptive rather than the aggressive partner, which in the real world is often assigned to women.

Nathaniel’s romantic and sexual history is fairly standard for a man of his time, place, and station. He is straight, fell in love with a woman he was attracted to, has been happily married to her for several years, and has two children with her. He might very well have been a virgin when he got married due to his particular value set, and he is to this day a little bit of a prude for similar reasons. Other than having perhaps an unusually equal partnership for their setting, his romantic life and history are totally normal and socially sanctioned for a man like him.

Tom Barrows is also pretty standard and straightforward. He is not terribly romantically experienced but it is attributed to his workaholic tendencies leaving no time for relationships. The way he falls for Alice is a bit naïve and boyish due to this inexperience.

Robin I picture as a Kinsey 1 or 2— mostly attracted to women, but drawn to the occasional man as well, with sexual experience of both in his background. Again this is something he shares with my conception of Justin Hawking. These are the two of my characters for whom “playboy” is the most intrinsic part of their identities, so I find it interesting that I found myself disinclined to make either of them as straight as might be expected. I think of hypersexuality as a highly masculine-coded trait, so this mitigates it a bit. And I think it adds an unexpected kind of sexiness on top of the other qualities that make them attractive. This may simply be my own taste.

For once, Robin is the least normatively masculine. I would say Nathaniel here is probably the most.

I notice that I tend to use sexuality as almost a “balancing” factor. If my hero has many non-traditionally masculine qualities, I use straightness as a way to bring some presence of traditional masculinity in the character. If the character is more normatively masculine overall, I often push them towards the other end of the Kinsey scale in order to keep them from being too traditional.

Also, if I’m honest, “hot butch guy who’s like 85% straight” is a type of mine.

To be concluded in part 3!

So earlier this week, I got a very encouraging email from my producer contact! Bernie and I sent her our Hood pilot at the beginning of the month, and she read it right away and gave a very positive response! She not only really likes it, she thinks it has potential in the current market. I am ridiculously pleased, as our effort was to create something solid that was specifically commercial, and it looks like she thinks we succeeded. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that she told us she's sharing it around with colleagues; the more eyes on it, the more people can get behind it.

She asked us to write a show bible for it as our next step. That's our next important project, with the intention of getting it to her in the next two weeks. That means I'll be prioritizing that over scene generation until it's finished, so I may not have time to focus on new scenes. Of course I'll still be writing, so I'll just post Hood scenes that were an equivalent amount of work in its place.

Like today, I have focused myself on getting a good start into the bible. So I'm posting this scene of Robin and John from around the midpoint of the story. It takes place after all the Hood scenes posted up to this point except for Day #3 - Rich Boy Out of Water, which it comes a little bit before.

( Day #21 - Run )

I think I have completed the Hood pilot! I'm really glad. I've been working away on relatively minor edits that need to convey a lot with a little, so I've been tweaking them over and over again, but I think I'm at a place where I'm satisfied. Good thing, too, as today is the day I said I'd be sending it along. That's a pretty big accomplishment and I am happy and proud!

So I'm posting another scene from it, one that had to be tweaked based on feedback from the reading dinner. This scene takes place after John and Marian receive the news that a manufacturing facility blew up in Day #2 - Bullseye, but reveals that John may know more about what caused it than he's saying. It also shows how most of the figures are directly from Robin Hood legend, but we're also incorporating adjacent figures from English history or historical literature-- in this case, Eleanor of Acquitaine from The Lion in Winter.

( Day #8 - Get the House in Order )

So here's where attempting to apply the 31P31D system to support my current work plan breaks down. If I'm in the process of drafting a new project that I've already got a plan for, it provides really helpful structure to make me actually get words on the page. But if I'm in a different stage of the writing process, like outlining or editing, it's neither all that helpful nor reflective of the work that I'm actually doing toward creating good pieces.

Like right now, the Hood pilot is drafted and was read by wonderful, insightful people who gave me some great feedback. So now I've got to edit it, and in fairly short order too. But that means while I'm doing meaningful work, I don't have anything new.

Whatever. I need to be less hung up on the technicalities and just do the writing I need to do. If I post a piece that's already written to keep things consistent, who cares? And hey, I honestly wrote a new scene every day for the month of JULY in drafting Hood, so it's not like I didn't hit the productivity goal, and a month early at that.

So this piece comes directly after Day #2 - Bullseye. It's slightly cut down due to editing, but it's not one of the ones that will require real surgery. Those are going to be my next priority.

( Day #6 - More Than Flash )

Today I worked on an important scene for Hood, my Robin Hood-themed heist show pilot. But scene I wrote was probably the emotional climax for the whole piece, so it's not something I want to post in isolation. Those belong in context, at least when I'm close to finishing the whole piece. (Honestly, I don't know how many people actually read these scenes when I post them, but just in case anyone does, I'm controlling the release for a better reader experience of my work.) So, as I did last year when I was working on Base Instruments, I'm posting a different scene of more or less equivalent work just to have something to put up and keep to the spirit of the challenge. I get a real boost out of having completed scenes to share, which I why I like this format. Plus it keeps me accountable to write.

So today I'm posting the opening scene of the Hood pilot instead. This was actually MURDER to write. It took me a couple weeks of planning and chipping away until I finally pushed to have a complete draft of it this past Sunday. Openings for TV shows, pilots in particular, are VERY IMPORTANT as they can make the difference between somebody deciding whether or not to keep reading or watching further. So I wanted to do something kind of complex and spectacular-- combining a high-action scene setting up a mystery and an introduction to the main character, where the character's words introduce the main themes of the series in an ironic way, thereby showing that, in his lack of understanding them, this is what he's going to have to learn.

Tough stuff! I actually think I got most of the way there. This will need some editing, of course-- if nothing else, it's almost eight pages long, which is too long for a traditional opener --but the ideas are there.

( Day #2 - Bullseye )

Every year since 2012, I have participated in a playwriting challenge called 31 Plays in 31 Days, where you write a play of at least one page in length every day for the month of August. The focus is on encouraging generation, with as much rein to be creative and free of restriction as possible. In the past I've found it extremely useful, whether for simply generating new work, building up my portfolio of ten-minutes, or making progress on larger pieces I wanted to get drafted.

August is right around the corner, so I find myself with the option of putting myself to the test again. But I'm wondering if it's the best use of my time. Right now it's not terribly useful to me to just be writing random new scenes-- I have enough projects already planned on I'd rather be devoting my time and energy to. The obvious move in that case is to use 31P31D to force myself to make progress on one of those projects. That's basically what I did last year, when I mostly focused on getting a complete draft of Base Instruments, and it proved to be very effective.

Last year, however, I'd spent the previous several months plotting Base Instruments out and making an outline of the events. I believe structure is very important and my work tends to involve a lot of plotting, so figuring out the shape of events beforehand is really necessary to my process. Right now I don't have that prepared for anything I want to work on right now. Well, except for my Robin Hood-inspired heist show pilot. But I'm two-thirds of the way done with that right now, and I'm aiming to have it completely finished by the 8th, so it wouldn't provide me with much to work on for the month.

The other thing I'd be thinking of working on this year is the fourth Mrs. Hawking play. But as I said, I haven't been able to do all the extensive plot structuring and outlining I really like to do before I actually draft. I don't know if I'd be ready to actually write many scenes for it by August. Plus that piece is going to involve a lot of historical research beforehand anyway, which I definitely have not had a chance to do. So I don't know if I can manage that.

The other alternative is to change the nature of the challenge. I could decide to hold myself to a different standard, such as doing X amount of writing-involved work for a piece for each day of August. I've been reluctant to do that, as I said when I was pondering this last year around this time, because it's harder to measure and quantify, and it's very difficult to display results of any kind. I kind of like having a little thing I wrote to post every day.

I'm not sure. I really do like doing the challenge, as it's been useful for me every year so far. I'd love to experience that kind of productivity boost again, but the circumstances may just not be right for it this time. Maybe I'll do it anyway because it makes me feel good, or maybe I'll decide it will take too much time and effort away from more productive writing work. Haven't decided yet.

I am at my happiest when I have a goal to work towards and sufficient encouragement to make me feel like I have hope to achieve it. I'm pleased to say I've got that going for me right now.

Bernie and I had a very encouraging meeting with that cool producer that loved the Adonis script and asked to read the Mrs. Hawking TV pilot. She liked the pilot too and indeed saw production potential in it! She had some very good criticisms of it, the kind that made sense, supported realizing the vision, and were definitely conducive to making edits. She thinks she might be able to hook us up with a manager or agent by introducing us to the right people. God knows nothing's sure, but it's definitely encouraging to know that the possibility is there.

So we have a lot of work to do from here. Bernie and I are going to make the requested edits to the Mrs. Hawking pilot. She also thought it was a good idea to write treatments for the other Hawking stories, which would involve adapting the plays into episodes. AND she asked if we had anything else we were working on, to which we gave her our pitch for Hood! That's our Robin Hood heist series updated to a modern setting. So that means we need to put together that pilot, to a high standard in short order. This piece is supposed to be a little more commercial, cheaper to produce, and broader of appeal than some of the other things we've done, with an end to helping it get sold.

It's a tall order, but I'm really excited to get to work. Nose to the grindstone!