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Everything was in my favor. I had pages of solid notes on my script for Dig Down. I’d spent time preparing myself for my first ever script consultation. I’d been told to expect a positive call. Hell, even the start of it couldn’t have been better, as the judge of the competition I had entered had started off saying he hoped I enjoyed writing it as much as he enjoyed reading it.

And in the time it took me to respond, I felt I almost completely sabotaged the future prospects for my Dig Down script. What could I have said that could have such a devastating impact on my work?

I told him I must have enjoyed it, because this was the second time I had written it, as an adaptation to the first book I’d published.

Now, this appears very innocuous on the surface. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the response. Except it invited a follow-up question: “Do you have sales?”

I knew what the judge was getting at with this question, and the implications that went with it. In Hollywood, studios are taking fewer chances on unproven stories. Its why you see so many adaptations from other medias, sequels, reboots and remakes. They’re hoping to reduce the risks that come with making movies.

When the judge asked this question, I knew he was hoping to hear that I already had a large, loyal fanbase. In truth, so did I. If I had a following that was willing to buy tickets to see a story they loved on the big screen, or on a streaming service, combined with the quality of the story, this would have increased my chances of getting Dig Down into production.

But…I was adapting my books into screenplays as an approach to get my stories out to a wider audience. This is one of the challenges of writing, and something I might get into in more depth later. Essentially, the judge was asking if I already had the think that I was after, which was a wider audience.

I had inadvertently put myself into a jam. I couldn’t tell him I didn’t have sales, because I knew that would dampen the mood of the phone call. It might risk losing the enthusiasm that he had going into the meeting. Saying no would also mean one of my fears I mentioned in a previous post would be realized – that I wasn’t savvy enough for these meetings. I also couldn’t lie and say I did. It wouldn’t have taken too long searching the internet to find I wasn’t appearing on any of the top pages or sales figures. All I’d be doing there is proving I was a liar, and signaling I was someone you didn’t want to work with.

While this was a predicament, quick thinking saved me from the dilemma I’d put myself in. I didn’t have major sales, but I did have sales. So, instead of saying I had no sales, or lying, I decided to frame my response a certain way. After all, I’d had a lot of practice of this as a writer, guiding the reader to think and feel the way I wanted them to as they read my story.

I answered that I had some sales, but not as much as I liked. I also explained that this was a deliberate strategy, which was true. When I had been doing research for indie publishing leading up to the book launch of Dig Down, some advice I kept seeing was that indie writers should write series, as it was a way to hook a new audience, as it would give them multiple books to read, and thereby get multiple sales.

I do think this is a sound strategy, but felt it wasn’t for me. Dig Down is short enough, I couldn’t imagine splitting it into thirds. But I felt it was worthwhile to apply a part of the strategy that went with writing series. It was advised to wait until two installments of the series were ready to be published before actually doing so. This would generate some momentum as writers could control the release schedule, and have two books scheduled to their liking for new fans to find and enjoy, hooking them long enough for the next installment to be made available.

While I didn’t have a continuous story to keep readers engaged, I liked the idea of holding off on a marketing push until I had a couple of published books under my belt. If I marketed heavily going into the release of Dig Down, I felt that fans might have a hard time waiting for my next book. I always try to write something every year, but that’s not exactly the best pace for the internet. And not everything I write meets my expectations to go forward with publishing.

So, my thoughts were to wait to truly start marketing myself, until I had multiple books already out there. This would give writers new stories they craved right away, instead of waiting on my release schedule. This would also give them a better sense of what to expect from me, not only my writing style and what types of stories I liked to tell, but also that I’ll hop from genre to genre to tell the stories I want.

I gave this in-depth explanation to the competition judge, and while he replied that the better strategy is to build up that audience so that instead of entering screenplay competitions trying to get noticed, studios are coming to me looking to adapt my story, it was delivered not as a reprimand for a poor decision, but as advice to help me succeed.

It was a good thing this was a phone call instead of a WebEx or Zoom call. I didn’t have to risk him seeing me breathe a sigh of relief. In an instant, I’d given a near catastrophic response, but just as quickly, I’d averted disaster, and had done something I was seeking to do going into this meeting – that I could display some savviness that showed I understood the process and what professionals were looking for in this industry.

Luckily for me, this turned out to be the only real scare in the meeting. The rest of the consultation went very well from here.

Looking up contests to enter, weighing the different ways of entering, waiting on the feedback these contests offered, and reviewing and applying the notes I’d received, had led me to this moment: my first ever script consultation. My excitement had been kept under wraps as the prep work for this meeting kept me busy, and now, in the final moments while waiting for the call, this nervous excitement was all I was left with.

Nerves were definitely present, but I reminded myself that the email I had gotten scheduling this appointment was to expect a good call. The notes, while filled with areas to improve, were still positive and supported this expectation. But still, anytime you go into something for the first time, there’s bound to be a little nervous energy about the unknown.

“This is going to be a good call,” I reminded myself. “They told me so.”

I think that may have actually added a little bit of pressure to the moment–that the expectation was that this was supposed to go well. The email gave the impression that they were impressed with my script for Dig Down. Yes, they had noted areas to work on, but from research I’d done on writing screenplays, and webinars I’d sat in on hosted by industry professionals, I knew that most scripts were bogged down by lots of technical issues, many of them not formatted properly, or lacking the story structure of a movie.

Having adapted my script from my first published book, which had been vetted by my editor, and had gotten positive feedback from readers, I knew that I didn’t have any story structure issues. And I had made sure to format my screenplay properly.

“They told me to expect a positive phone call.”

My main concern was the high bar I might have set for myself. Because I didn’t have glaring technical deficiencies, I felt that when I had the consultation, I’d fall short of their expectations when it came to answering the questions they posed in their notes, maybe only giving surface level responses and then finding out they were hoping for responses that were more in depth. Imposter syndrome definitely crossed my mind heading into the meeting, that it wouldn’t take too long into the conversation for the facade to lift.

Two o’clock came. I had everything set up. My laptop was open to their notes, with the screenplay minimized but ready to be called up. I had a notebook with my responses to their questions, and a book mark to flip to a blank page to take more notes on the conversation. My phone was fully charged, but still plugged in, as this was blocked out for three hours, and I didn’t want to run into any technical issues during the call.

The phone rang. This was it.

“This is going to be a good call.”

When I answered, I was greeted warmly by Joe, the lead judge in the Page Turner Screenplay Competition. I really helped put me at ease, reinforcing what they had told me, to expect a good call. He then followed up his greeting with something else that really help settled my nerves, saying:

“I hope you had as great a time writing this as I did reading it.”

The conversation couldn’t have gotten off to a better start.

And then, what I said next nearly blew the whole consultation before it even started.

On the morning of my first ever consultation to discuss my script, I felt there was still so much I needed to get done to prepare. Although I had been taking notes and outlining my responses to the pages of feedback I’d gotten, I was still organizing my thoughts so that they would be as cohesive and thoughtful (or at least sound that way) as they could.

While I still wanted to fine tune my thoughts, the biggest thing left on my to do list was to watch a link that the judge had provided with the expectation that I do so prior to the meeting. With a phone call that was expected to go hours, it wasn’t likely that I could skip it and that we just wouldn’t have gotten to it during our call. I also wanted to make sure I was getting the most out of this consultation, and not watching this would only sabotage my efforts.

As usual with things I try to do, there were complications. This was a 90 minute video, essentially a movie in and of itself, so I needed to set aside the time to watch it. Also, I felt it would be beneficial to organize my thoughts on the video afterward so that I could actually offer something to the conversation when we discussed it, so another half hour to an hour needed to be set aside just for this video.

The time for this wasn’t main problem – I had the whole morning, and this call wasn’t until 2 in the afternoon. The main obstacle was that my internet at the time was spotty at best. It’s still very unreliable, even in the stretches where its working great, there’s this thought in the back of my mind that’s just wanting for the issues to come up again…and they tend to. I’m still experiencing them even as I’m trying to upload this post.

Trusting my internet to hold for a 90 minute video was asking a lot. So not only did I need to set aside the time to watch and analyze the video, I also needed to set aside time, in case I needed it, to troubleshoot any connection issues that arose, to handle them in what I hoped would be short order.

I followed the link to the video, and was surprised that it started up immediately. But, as expected, within the first two minutes, it paused and started to buffer. I closed out of it quickly, and began brainstorming plan Bs to be able to watch the video. I made up my mind that I would give it one more chance, and if it experienced the same issue, I would head to the library and watch it there. Their internet wasn’t great, but anything was better than mine.

The link opened again…and this time, actually played through the entire video without any problems. There was a sense of dread even while it was playing that it would pause again, but the further I went into the video, the more at ease I felt that I was getting what I needed from it, and that I’d be able to share my thoughts during the phone consultation.

The video was excellent: it discussed how the best movies have climaxes where the main character is forced to face their external, internal and philosophical conflicts all at the same time, and that doing so creates the powerful endings movies are remembered for. The video gave examples of this in classics, such as Star Wars and The Graduate. It really gave me a lot to contemplate about improving the ending to Dig Down, and was in line with the character analysis that they had given me as part of the feedback on the notes. What was interesting was how the video said that most scripts don’t have this, which is why so many movies feel lacking at the end of the movie. The message was received – while I felt my script was good, this could be what elevated it to the next level.

Miraculously dodging the internet connectivity issues, I spent the rest of the morning taking notes on the video, reviewing my responses for the questions posed about my script, and finally, taking some time to just relax and get myself in the right frame of mind for this phone call.

There was still some nervousness as time crawled toward 2. This I just chalked up to nervous excitement. There’s always things you think you still could have done, but I felt I’d gotten myself prepared for this consultation.

I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

After going over the in depth feedback I’d gotten from the Page Turners Screenplay Competition, I needed to get to work. I had gotten the notes only a few days before I was scheduled to have a phone call with the lead reviewer, which the contest runners had said were extensive, so I needed to come prepared.

In the days leading up to my phone consultation, I began working on addressing the notes and questions that the feedback had posed to me. The first was the question about the title, Dig Down, and whether or not it should be changed. I outlined several reasons of what the title meant to me, and more importantly, what it meant to the story. Until this point, I had never really thought too much, and never articulated, the different layers of meaning in the title.

If nothing else, I was grateful for the notes because they really made me explore the story that I had written and been a part of my life for years, to a level I’d never reached before.

I also spent time each day working on the four layers of each character in the story – what their external and internal motivations were, what their philosophical motivations were, and the secret that each of them harbored. Again, this was great because the notes were like a challenge to me to take my story and do even better, to really dig beneath the surface of the story I had told. To me, while Dig Down is only the length of a novella, I felt that there was so much more packed into its size than other novellas, even other stories twice its length.

This exercise was also great because in answering the questions about these characters, it allowed me to delve into aspects of the characters that didn’t make the manuscript. Details that were in the notes but couldn’t naturally be incorporated in the story, or information that had been divulged in the serials I posted on this site, and eventually compiled into a book of short stories in the Dig Down universe that I sent to people who had subscribed to my email list, found their way into these character studies, and in some cases, found their way into the later drafts of this script.

This was what I was primarily focused on leading up to the meeting because it was the most time consuming. With the amount of time it took me, I was glad I had made the decision to take the day off from work for this phone consultation, because it gave me the whole day leading up to the call to prepare.

As much as I was focused on getting prepared for this meeting, on the morning of, there was still one thing I hadn’t done. There was a link to a video that had been embedded into the feedback, which I was waiting to watch once I had a block of time dedicated to do so.

I’ll discuss what the video was about, next time.

So after getting two sets of feedback within about a week of each other, I was just…wow!

This was a lot to process. There were definitely positives that both competitions had noted. As well as areas of improvement. Even though I had gotten feedback from Finish Line first, because the phone call with Page Turners was coming up first, their analysis was what I chose to focus on.

Although both had offered several pages of constructive feedback, I was so excited when I got the feedback from Page Turners. Finish Line was good as well, and pointed me in a direction of what to focus on, but there was something different about the notes Page Turners.

It wasn’t that I agreed with everything in the notes. In fact, I was ready to argue one of the first points they made, about revising the title. It’s always a pet peeve of mine on behalf of the writer when I see in the credits that it’s based on a book or story of a different name. To me, there was obviously something that attracted someone to adapt this into a movie, and aside from extreme examples where the author’s original title wouldn’t have made for a marketable movie title (some Philip K. Dick stories come to mind), or where the story is good, but obscure, possibly because of the title, I always would rather see an adaptation is based on a story with an eponymous name.

Despite that and some other small points where I was ready to stand my ground, I think what stood out to me was the level of feedback I was getting from Page Turners. This wasn’t so much that it was in depth, critiquing every little thing in the script. It was more that the focus wasn’t on surface level things. Finish Line had gone beyond grammar and punctuation in their notes, bringing up points of the story that I should address better.

This analysis was going beyond that. It felt like it was delving into the inner workings of the story, to weed out any deficiencies and mold it into the best version of itself.

The best example of this was the instructions of the different levels that each character was operating off of: taking the external stakes they’re addressing, and then delving deeper to the internal and philosophical stakes that shape them and their actions, as well as the secret they harbor. This note, which spanned several of the pages of feedback, had me critically analyzing my own characters, to make sure I could answer these questions, not just to the judge, but also to myself.

What’s more, I felt that if I tackled this feedback first, this would help me out with the feedback from Finish Line as well, in part because some of the notes echoed each other (this was something I was looking for after all, areas to improve that were common in multiple notes). I also felt that by attaining this higher level and bringing it out in revisions, my submission to Finish Line would be all the more stronger.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to be told I needed to improve my work.

Below is the last section of the notes I received for my script of Dig Down.

THEME:
I guess the theme here is what one does to be loved.
Rob wants the love of his father so he tries to be successful in his firm. He figures the more
money he makes the more his father may love him. Rob wants the love of his drug addicted
girlfriend so to escape with her and have enough money for her drug habit he risks his life.
I think that overall this theme plays out even if it is playing as a negative – corruption in the
company and keeping her addicted so he will be loved. It could play out stronger in many
different ways. For example – if that is the argument with his father that causes him to kill him.
It’s almost there already but gets buried in much of the over dialogue. It could play out with the
ex-wife if she is the only one who ever truly loved him and expresses that while he despises her.
It can play stronger with the girlfriend if she just loves anyone that has drugs and he sees it in
front of him – her own father her offers her coke to get her away from him in the final scenes.
Also shows the level of evil of Axel to do that to her.
There are so many ways this can play and this works all through conflict…

CONFLICT:
The character conflict in the story is very strong. Externally the conflict is obvious in that he is in
a fight for his and his girlfriend’s life.
However, on the inner level, there is no emotional conflict for the characters. Usually this is
found in their relationships or overcoming some wound they’ve incurred. However, this doesn’t
happen here. Even after her boyfriend dumps her, she gets on with things but the wound of the
relationship is never addressed. As part of the set up it makes the reader believe that this is the
story and genre. This will be a rom-com where she finds her true love and learns to love or trust
again but that doesn’t happen. A guy who is barely in the story just comes a long and she
marries him. Paul and her never address their internal issues and we don’t know if Paul really
has any.
Having these emotional and internal issues will make the characters far more interesting to
follow and up the conflict of the story.
WRITING CRAFT:
This is a big one. This is where you can take your craft and script to the next level in small easy
ways.
First things I come across are formatting and order of operations. Let’s start by talking about the
Mind Movie. This is the movie playing in your head that you are putting on paper for someone
to read to transfer to their head. The goal is to get that to transfer completely seamlessly and
have the same vision of that movie in your head play in theirs. To do that we need clarity and
for the order of operations to be perfect. We also need a way to direct that mind movie without
seeming like we are directing and taking away the directors job. But if you write it strong
enough, that director will make the movie you envisioned. Not only do you want to break things
up to direct the mind movie but you also want to get the order of operations right. Remember, a
screenplay is the architectural plans for a movie.
Writing in Present Tense – Make everything present tense. Nothing should be in a state of being.
It’s a show, so things just happen as we see them. So, don’t use present progressive where you
can use present. You don’t do this often but once in a while. That means getting rid of any –ing
ending verbs. We are seeing it as it happens not in the process of happening. Remember –
everything in a movie happens as we see it. Run through the script and check line by line that
you are cleaning these up. This also means all your parentheticals. The goal of the script is to
transfer the mind movie in your head to the reader’s head. You want the mind movie to play for
them so you want to write in present tense to smooth the movie playing in their mind. It makes
the story active and creates the image in the mind of watching it rather than reading something
in the past. Also, nothing “begins to” or “starts to” happen. Cut these and use the active voice.

Remember, your descriptions shouldn’t be more than three (3) lines per paragraph but most of
your three line paragraphs could be cut down from what I read. The idea is to make the page
light (meaning lots of white space) so that you have a fast read and the dialogue pops. Look for
anything extra to cut and trim. But definitely look at breaking up the description by each
different shot. Every time you imagine a different movement or shot or angle in the description
break that into a new paragraph. This will also help with the mind movie and help you direct the
film in the producer and director’s mind without them thinking that you are.
Use the Mind Movie to break up description by shots and that will help play it int he reader’s
head. The more you can get the reader to see the movie playing in their head the more likely
you are to sell the script. For the most part you do this well. However, you should run through
the script as an editing exercise to make sure that the mind movie matches what is on the page.
There are times you fall out of doing it and there are elements – flashbacks, slug lines, dialogue
gaps – that you need to clean up to match the vision that would be on screen.
To help with writing description try to think of it as if writing a poem. You want to write
something that is visual and emotional and active in the shortest for possible. This is the goal of
writing description and will help your story flow more smoothly.
Hangers – These are when you have a bunch of single words on a line or just a few words. If you
have a bunch of hangers, it’s a sign you can run through the script and start finding ways to cut
down the description. This will help you bring down your page count and just create a cleaner
read and visual of the page.
Adverbs – Another aspect of showing versus telling is the use of adverbs. Anytime you come
across an adverb as yourself how you are seeing this. How do you picture this in the movie. The
more specific the answer the clear the vision will be for the reader. When you are specific with
verbs and nouns in this way, you really hook people in. You trigger memories and emotions in
them with more specific words. Then you are creating an emotional connection with them that
pulls them into your story.
Your dialogue needs to be cut way back. Look for anything that is duplicate information and cut
it. Search for anything that is telling past events that could be shown and show it. You have the
voices down for most characters but the dialogue is too much. It should be shorter and sharper
and less explaining what happened. Movies SHOW, novels TELL.
So there is a lot here to digest. I look forward to speaking with you as I think that small changes
will really dial in the story you want to tell and how to tell it.