The Journey to a Sellable Script: Tips and Tricks for Aspiring Writers

EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Anthony Gallo interviews Zena Dell Lowe! Tune in as Zena shares valuable insights and insider tips for writers aiming to break into the competitive world of Hollywood. She delves into the strategies that aspiring writers can utilize to make a mark in the industry, offering practical advice on navigating the challenges and seizing opportunities. Zena's firsthand experience and expertise make this episode a must-listen for any writer looking to make it big in Hollywood.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker: One of the problems that keeps happening with a lot of scripts that I've been given to critique or called in to critique for various studios and They don't know what's wrong with it. And part of the problem is so many writers these days Hello, and welcome to the storytellers 

[00:00:18] Speaker 2: mission with Zena Dell Lowe A podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

[00:00:26] Speaker 3: Hi. Hi, . Hello, Lulu. Um, let's start

[00:00:30] why, why are you passionate about storytelling and script writing? 

[00:00:34] Speaker: Why am I, 

[00:00:35] Speaker 3: yeah, 

[00:00:37] Speaker: okay, two answers to that. The first one is that to me, storytelling is actually the most important part of society. Without stories, what are we? I mean, if we don't remember our past, if we don't remember our own past, but also collectively humankind, whatever, if we're not passing down those lessons, how can we get better?

[00:01:01] How can we improve? How can we make sense of anything? Stories have been told since the caveman days, it's just. It's such an important role in society, it's actually the most important role in society because without us, we don't even know who we are, let alone what the meaning of life is.

[00:01:20] So I'm passionate about it because I think that it's super important. And I also think storytellers are the most powerful. 

[00:01:29] Speaker 3: Interesting. So, uh, expand on that a little bit. So, like, what are the uses of stories in society? Or, like, how does a person who's really good at storytelling influence people?

[00:01:40] Speaker: Well, we experience this every day, right? Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. So if there's a false narrative, but people buy it, it doesn't matter if it's not true. I mean, it does, it should matter. We should care about truth, but the truth is that's why propaganda is so powerful because propaganda is a false narrative.

[00:02:01] Whoever is in charge and tells the story ultimately has the power. So I often say that storytellers are the most powerful people in society. They wield a lot of power and therefore we ought to A. Understand ethics, we ought to be understanding, we ought to be studying ethics, or else we might be propagating lies, which would be horrible.

[00:02:27] And B, we ought to wield that sword, that weapon, if you will, appropriately, because man, we could cause a lot of damage and a lot of harm. And that happens a lot. We see that happening a lot. 

[00:02:41] Speaker 3: That makes perfect sense. 

[00:02:42] what are two to three characteristics that make a great storyteller? 

[00:02:47] Speaker: Well, there's a lot more than two to three characteristics that make a great storyteller, but here are what I believe to be the keys, the most important. The first is an ability to tell the truth.

[00:03:00] Now, a lot of people will argue with that. They'll say, you don't have to tell the truth. You're writing fiction. And what I would say is no, we're, we have to tell the truth about human beings as they actually are and about the world as it actually exists, our ability to see it, to truthfully identify what makes the world, what makes human beings tick.

[00:03:22] If we attribute something in a human being to a false cause, now we're propagating lies. If we glorify something that's evil, that's bad and we're causing harm. Or if we're celebrating things that ought not be celebrated, that's bad. So we have to be able to be able to tell the truth. We have to have a discernment to know what is true and what is lies.

[00:03:44] And then we have to. number two, we have to be able to have the skills to capture that in writing. And there are all sorts of different styles, right? Like Hemingway had short, succinct, sentences. Quentin Tarantino, pages and pages of dialogue. People have different styles. So it's not about finding one style.

[00:04:09] It's about finding your style, but in whatever your style is, you must be excellent. And too many writers think that because they have a computer, that they're a writer and they haven't mastered the craft. The third thing I really believe that makes you a great writer is if you can capture a good story in terms of the character and story structure.

[00:04:36] I have to put those together because a great character on their own isn't going to do anything. We have to have a story where they change over the course of the telling. That's ultimately what a story is. It's about a character changing over the course of the telling. But in order to do that well, We have to have story structure.

[00:04:56] So they're both and they're both and, and they go hand in hand. You can't ask what's more important character or story structure because you can't have one without the other. 

[00:05:08] Speaker 3: With a story structure. What's the biggest mistake you see with new writers and the story and the way they structure their stories?

[00:05:16] Speaker: Well, the biggest mistake that most writers have whether they're screenwriters or novelists when it comes to story structure is a tendency to want to dismiss the importance of it. And what I mean by that is a lot of writers, screenwriters, for example, they really poo poo story structure. Oh, that makes you formulaic.

[00:05:38] you don't have any originality. That's not how it is. You can just feel your way through it. Okay. But actually there are specific rules, even more specific for screenwriters. It doesn't mean you're painting by numbers. You should still be able to come up with a unique story.

[00:05:54] But if you understand that story structure is really about tapping into the universal laws, if you will, of storytelling. Every single story in the world follows these specific rules. And if you can tap into that, you can keep all your creativity. In novel writing

[00:06:11] a lot of people poo poo story structure, but I think it's for slightly different reasons. in the novel writing world. I think it's more fear based or impatience because it's so overwhelming to think about story structure, especially if you're writing a long form novel that a lot of writers just want to dive into it.

[00:06:34] those writers will call themselves pantsers. Meaning that they write by the seat of their pants. And I really don't like that term because they're not planning ahead. And the truth is you can't be a true pantser. You have to know certain things about your story.

[00:06:51] Knowing that though doesn't mean that you're not being intuitive. Every single time you sit down to write, even if you have a nice story fleshed out for yourself, you still have to be in the muck and the mire of your story. You still have to feel your way through a scene. You can't plan for every contingency.

[00:07:12] So you still have to be intuitive and willing to go and wing it in different directions. But the best writers, The best writers, in my opinion, plan. They know certain things about their story. They know certain markers they have to hit. And then, once they have that plan, if they need to, they'll let it go in the moment.

[00:07:34] But they still have the plan. 

[00:07:36] Speaker 3: So next question is going to be, you mentioned markers in a story that you feel are essential. Can you give a couple, uh, tangible examples Markers that either have a huge impact or or tend to get forgotten and really ruin a story. 

[00:07:52] Speaker: So yes, there are definitely markers for any story.

[00:07:58] And in fact, one of the things that I'm sharing with people are the top seven markers that they need to hit in story. Now that's just one. The beginning, there are a lot more than seven, but these seven will at least ground the story and help a writer get from the beginning through the middle and all the way to the end.

[00:08:18] So I have a cheat sheet, if you will, on the seven deadly plot points that you need to hit in your story. But let me give you an example of one that it's not that writers forget it. They usually include it because every writer knows it has to be there, but they don't actually know how to use it to the maximum, or they make mistakes when they use it.

[00:08:43] And that is the inciting incident. It's arguably the most important story point that you have to hit in your story because without the inciting incident, there is no story. The inciting incident is that moment that launches your character on their journey. And it's also the moment that gives the character their objective.

[00:09:04] Until they have that, they're going along in their world, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. They're already pursuing something in their own world. But the inciting incident is the thing that comes in, grabs hold of them. and gives them a goal. And a lot of writers don't have it do that. They don't make it a strong enough inciting incident that gives a character an objective to pursue.

[00:09:29] And therefore then their story is doomed before they start because they have a passive character who's not pursuing anything relentlessly for the entire rest of the story. 

[00:09:42] Speaker 3: Modern cinema, what's one of your favorite inciting incidents that you can give as an example?

[00:09:46] Speaker: Ooh, modern cinema, my favorite inciting incident. Well, there's this wonderful inciting incident in a film called about Schmidt. Are you familiar with about Schmidt? I'm 

[00:09:56] Speaker 3: not. 

[00:09:57] Speaker: Oh, it's with Jack Nicholson. It's absolutely wonderful. But the inciting incident is when his character is watching one of those Angela Lansbury like world vision type stories on TV and And all he does is reach for the phone.

[00:10:14] It's actually kind of a dramedy, this thing, but turns out the inciting incident is what launches his journey because he adopts a child. And he starts writing letters to Ndugu. And it's hilarious. But it's also really tragic and sad at the same time. And I love it because it's actually really subtle. In fact, the moment that he Signs up.

[00:10:38] That actually happens off screen. It's him reaching for the phone that becomes the inciting incident. Him signing up to have Ndugu as a sponsored child is what launches him on his journey. 

[00:10:52] Speaker 3: So that's super cool. Like the, uh, the ten, like very specific, you know, what, we have the markers. Here's a marker. And then like, here's an example of a marker.

[00:11:03] All right, so earlier you talked about characters and how you have characters and story structure and those are two of the primary elements that make a sellable script. What are, what, like, what makes a great character? 

[00:11:15] Speaker: Ooh, one of my favorite topics. What makes a great character? Well, here's what's interesting.

[00:11:23] One of the problems that keeps happening with a lot of scripts that I've been given to critique or called in to critique for various studios and that sort of thing, and they don't know what's wrong with it. And part of the problem is so many writers these days are writing what we would call anti heroes, but they don't even know it.

[00:11:43] Because they're giving their character A flaw, which we need to do. Our characters can't be perfect. They have to be flawed. So that's one of the answers to your question. A great character must be flawed. The problem is most people see the flaw as being a moral flaw, a moral deficiency. And that's where it becomes problematic.

[00:12:08] Great characters aren't always morally deficient. What you have to think of them as is they are obsessed or consumed by a certain thing. In fact, usually it's not a moral deficiency. It's that they can't be compromised. For example, Bosch. Great character. He's a cop who will not compromise his values. He won't play ball with the powers that be.

[00:12:34] He has a mission to bring justice to the little guy. And if the powers that be ask him to look away on something, he can't. He's a man with a bone. He is a cop with a bone. He will, he will search out the truth no matter what it costs him. Well, so his character flaw isn't a moral deficiency, it is actually that he can't let it go.

[00:12:58] It's the thing that trips him up over and over and over again. It's the thing that gets him in trouble, prevents him from advancing in his organization, in his work, in his, you know, what do you call them? Where do cops work? Precincts. It's the thing that keeps him from advancing in his precinct because he cannot play ball, but we don't want him to.

[00:13:22] It's a heroic quality. And that's really the answer to your question. Characters. We have to think of protagonists and we've lost the ability to do that in today's society in a lot of ways. But we have to think about our protagonists as being heroes in the making. Heroes in the making. That means they should possess certain qualities from the outset of the story.

[00:13:47] Now they shouldn't have arrived yet. They might lack courage, but they should have compassion. They should not be selfish. They should be selfless. They should care about the little guy. They should maybe even want to keep to themselves. That can be a. quality that they have, this desire to keep to themselves, to not get involved, but they are compelled to act.

[00:14:13] See great characters take ownership, take responsibility for things that are not theirs by assignment. So if you're being bullied and it has nothing to do to me, I'm a great character if I can't help it, I have to defend you. I have to because it violates a sense of justice in me and nobody else is going to do it.

[00:14:35] So I take it upon myself to defend the little guy. And so the point is a great character. You have to be looking at these qualities of heroism. They should be a hero in the making. And yeah, there's something they're still missing. They have not stepped into the role of hero, but over the course of the telling, that's where they change.

[00:15:00] That's where in their arc, they're getting the thing they're missing that allows them by the end to be the hero they were always meant to be. 

[00:15:10] Speaker 3: That was great. I love how like emotionally charged you get. It makes it like that just makes the whole process so like vivid, you know, um, all right. So we call characters story structure.

[00:15:23] What's another like pillar of your, like education. 

[00:15:26] Speaker 2: Okay. 

[00:15:27] Speaker 3: just so we can pull out some more concepts here. okay. We can also stay on story structure. Like if you feel like you have other specifics that you could mention about it. I just don't want to linger too long. Visual images, visual images.

[00:15:40] So, 

[00:15:42] Speaker: okay, let me expand on that. So one of the things they talk about in all kinds of story, really any kind of story is show don't tell. I'm sure you've heard that concept. Very popular concept. Everybody talks about it. Very few people actually know how to do it well because visual images would be the thing that you do that with.

[00:16:03] But most people think of show don't tell as being just So I describe Anthony's sad. You know, well, that's not showing, that's telling, even though I might be using descriptive words. Or it was a beautiful sunset that made me think about my grandmother's house. And, in the middle of winter, when she would have a fire in the fireplace and the house would smell like cookies.

[00:16:29] Okay. That might be descriptive, but that's actually still telling. And a lot of writers don't get this. So what I try to do is teach, how to have the characters discover things in the moment. That's what makes it show versus tell. Instead of reflecting on it and showing a character sitting on the porch, rocking and thinking, thinking and rocking, because see in novel writing, you could have a character just think about things, but it's a mistake.

[00:17:00] Even though you can do it, it's better not to. Or if they do think, they should be coming up with the thoughts at that moment rather than just narrate them for the reader. So, whenever you have the character discover it in the moment when they go, Hey, he's smiling at me. What does that mean? Does he know something I don't know?

[00:17:21] Wait, does he like me? No, he can't like me. He hates me. Well, maybe he does like me. Now I'm engaged and that's still showing even though I might be narrating some of those things I'm showing because the character is discovering these things in the moment along with the audience rather than reflecting on it and just pontificating.

[00:17:43] So that's a really important part of storytelling that a lot of writers just don't know how to master. In screenwriting, what happens is that they often overlook visual images, the use of visual images to convey meaning. The truth is, well, and this happens in novel writing too, it doesn't matter.

[00:18:03] Everybody does this. Visual images convey Far more than your words ever can. So I try to teach my writers to get out of telling and to use visual images. Let me give you an example. Say I have two characters on the playground who, one's the big old bully leader of the school and the other one's this scrawny little pipsqueak, right?

[00:18:30] And so the scrawny little pipsqueak. Goes up to the tether ball. Do you know what that is? Do you know what tether balls are? I had 

[00:18:36] Speaker 3: one in my backyard. Okay, good. 

[00:18:38] Speaker: Goes to the tether ball and reaches for the tether ball. And the bully comes up and yanks it out of his hand and throws him out of the, you know, the circle area.

[00:18:49] Alright, that's a visual image. What do we know about that character relationship? We didn't have to tell anything. We showed it by creating a scene that was visual where it had action. Right? Then let's say later in the story, something's happened. We may, I mean, hopefully we know what it is. But now, the little scrawny kid goes into the tetherball thing and the bully comes into the thing and grabs the tetherball But this time he serves it and now they're playing together.

[00:19:25] What do we know? They're on good terms now. Their relationship has changed. So now I have shown my audience the change of relationship. I never had to say they were friends now. They got along now. I never had to do that. I showed it by using a visual image. So, and I'm making that up off the top of my head, but the point is visual images, visual images.

[00:19:53] If you can use those, you convey a deeper level of meaning to your audience. It slides past the brain and goes straight to the heart. People get it, even if they're not cognizantly getting it, they get it. And we have lost the ability to do that. Well, a lot of us. And so we're, we've got to learn how to do that again.

[00:20:16] Speaker 3: That was good. Very good. uh, a beginner is trying to get their script sold, or, you know, picked up by somebody. What, what are the misconceptions that they have about the industry? like, um, what are the big objections you get?

[00:20:31] Speaker: Screenwriters will say, Oh, in order to break into this business, you have to know someone, it's nepotism. There's no way, and it's all rigged. You know, you have to be famous already, that sort of thing. There's a lot of people in the industry that do have a chip on their shoulder, I think.

[00:20:49] And in many ways, they're not exactly wrong. Who you know is super important in Hollywood, it is. But, what I have found in my experience, Most of the time, the reason they continue to be rejected is simply they don't have a good enough screenplay. So it becomes a very nice excuse. And I will tell you, in screenwriting, I had a course

[00:21:16] on formatting. And I created that course because I knew screenwriters needed it. But guess what? They didn't want it. Every screenwriter thought they already knew it all. They are really arrogant in a lot of ways. And it's very frustrating because I'm the one reading their scripts. And so they don't seem to realize that formatting is a bad thing.

[00:21:38] Such a big deal and a problem for them. They all think they know what they're doing, but the other thing that they're not doing well is they're not using the formatting as an art form. They haven't mastered the ability to use the medium in a beautiful way. They're still thinking of it in many ways, like it's a bullet point thing, or it's just a dry read.

[00:21:59] It's not beautiful. And a good screenplay is every bit as riveting and interesting to read as a novel. They're fascinating, really, if you can find a good one. So that would be one of the main problems, I think, for screenwriters. They think that they're being deliberately shunned and that it's all rigged and the world's against them when really, they're just not up to snuff.

[00:22:23] Now that's not always the case, but in my experience, most of the time, the good work really does rise to the top. 

[00:22:29] Speaker 3: how would you suggest new scriptwriters build their network? If they're starting from scratch, you know, obviously who you know, uh, it's not everything, but it's important. How can they kind of like speed up their journey to growing their network?

[00:22:41] Speaker: It's a great question. So, There's two answers to this question, how you would speed up your network and how you would help yourself or position yourself to have a better chance of making it in Hollywood. I mean, you do have to know people, right? You have to know people. The problem is and I see this all the time, then it becomes very exploitive.

[00:23:07] I even had this happen at Christmas. I had a big old Christmas party at my house. I try to invite new people every year and it's kind of a fun party. People like to come to my party 

[00:23:17] So this year I had invited some new people. Well, one of the gals came and it was clear to me that she was using my party to network and it felt gross. So genuine networking. really means building friendships, not using people, not exploiting them, not trying to see what you can get out of them, not asking them to read your stuff, unless that opportunity presents itself because the person says, Oh, I like you.

[00:23:50] What are you writing? I want to read it. You know, but really you can tell when those people are being slimy and they're trying to get something from you. It feels gross. It's much different than just building a friendship. So authenticity, not trying to get things from other people, just really trying to be like minded with other people.

[00:24:10] It's a really hard thing for a lot of people to do, to just be genuine and talk to people and care about them. That's really what you have to do is care about other people. And if you can do that, it's amazing the friendships you can build. So you do have to do that. But another way that I would say you could really give yourself a leg up, and I did this myself early on, especially whenever I'd finish a screenplay.

[00:24:34] The worst thing you can do is to submit a screenplay to any producer, to anybody in the business before it's ready. So before I would ever submit it to a professional, I would submit it to a writing contest to a film festival writing contest. And if I couldn't place in the top 10, I knew it wasn't ready, but what I would do is I would submit to the ones that give you feedback.

[00:25:04] They're a little more expensive. So 150 bucks, but they'll give you feedback. And I would always do at least three, usually 10 of those. So, I mean, you're talking over a thousand dollars you know, to submit to 10 film festivals, and then you get all that feedback. the reason that's important though, is because then you look for the things that are the same, like everybody is commenting on this.

[00:25:31] Maybe the solutions they offer aren't right, but they're all commenting on this section, which means there's a problem, and I've got to fix that. Then you fix it. to the best of your ability and you resubmit and see if you place. And you keep doing that before you ever submit it to a professional. one of the screenplays that I did that with I knew there were problems, but I didn't know how to fix it.

[00:25:56] And I didn't want to give it to people cause see, you submit to film festivals anonymously, so they don't know who you are. So you're not damaging yourself. So I didn't want to give it to anybody in the business to fix or to give me feedback because I wasn't, I didn't want it to affect me or my reputation.

[00:26:13] So I submitted it to these film festivals, did the re rewrites, resubmitted it, On the resubmission to these different festivals, I ended up winning two grand prize awards and about six other, like her story award or whatever. They were first place for that category, but the grand prize is the mother load.

[00:26:38] That's the mother load. And I won two of them and that's how, you know, it's ready. But also when you have those awards. Now, you can contact the production companies and say, Hey, I just won two grand prizes and six other film festival awards with this script. Here's the logline. Here's a little synopsis. Is this something you would be interested in reading?

[00:27:04] And I guarantee it. See, here's the secret. Everybody in Hollywood is terrified. The reason we're only seeing remakes and rehashing of old stories, it's because Hollywood is terrified of doing something new, so they're recycling the old things because they know there's an audience out there. which guarantees that they're going to at least make a little bit of money on them and it's not going to be a flop.

[00:27:34] So they're terrified. So if you have a screenplay that wins, Six awards at a festival, say. That means other people have vetted it and said, this is good. Now they can go, oh, this is good because the truth is none of them really know they all are so afraid to be the first one to say, yeah, this is good. So if somebody else says, and somebody else says, and somebody else says, this is good.

[00:28:01] Now they can go, yeah, this is good. And they aren't as afraid. So your job is to mitigate their fears. And that's one way you do it. 

[00:28:12] Speaker 3: The Hollywood is terrified. Why do you think they're always making remakes? That was one of my favorites. Oh, good. That was great. I mean, we're at 30 minutes now.

[00:28:22] That was great. I mean, you probably got a gajillion ideas out of that one. 

[00:28:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, great. Thank you for listening to the Storytellers Mission with Zina Del Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through 

[00:28:36] story.