I’m still pretty much wiped out from the huge marathon that writing One Nation was. In this process, I made some huge mistakes, and by sharing them with you I can help you avoid making these costly mistakes yourself!
Be sure to read Tuesday’s article to see the eight things I did right.
The crucial thing is, you have to have an after action review. “What did I do right?” “What did I do wrong?” Make sure you ask the last question, so this never happens again.
One Nation was exceptionally complicated to tell. It’s a massive story, lots of characters. When you ahve that, you have sub plots. Lots of them. One thing producer M. T. Postupak and I spent an entire Skype session talking about is – “whose story is this?” I started out with a different opinion. By the time I was done, I’d grasped where Mike saw this going and he was right – it’s essentially the only real way to tell the story.
So, what mistakes did I make writing One Nation?
- Too much research. I walked into One Nation knowing I’d have to do a lot of research. I have a huge grasp of history – having a father who was a Lt. Col. in the Marine Corps made sure I knew a lot about history, politics, and of course war. In the middle of the project, I began to worry I was leaving out WAAAY too much historical information, and I began to pour over and annotate maps. And you know what? The average viewer will grasp little or none of it. I spent a LOT of time researching modern warfare that I probably didn’t need to. You know, guns shoot, some fire rockets, some things you throw and they explode, some things shoot things that explode. Research done. And at one point, I was trying to Scapple all the major events I needed to get to. Finally, I just said, “This is nuts!” and WROTE the script! I probably could have done One Nation MUCH faster if I’d eliminated a lot of the research.
- Fear. As I wrote One Nation, I watched a lot of seminars on writing films. I went past the point where “a punch is a punch” and moved into the “torque of the wrist, hip rotation, breathing, point of pressure on the pivot foot” kind of mindset. During this phase, I went from doing something I’d done for years (writing) to a panicky, stop and re-read what I just wrote, and is this good enough? Towards the end, I just snapped out of it and WROTE. And once I let go of that, everything was a LOT better. Don’t worry if it’s good – write it with passion! Your passion to see it written will MAKE it good! If you feel something writing, the reader/viewer will feel it too. It will be embedded into the very words the characters will say, because the actors will hunt through your script to find the emotion.
- Procrastination. You CANNOT fear how HUGE a project is. This fear of how gigantic and ginormous a project is will cause you to spend time on Youtube looking up “Shark cage fail”. I know I succumbed to it, because One Nation was one of those giant projects that I’m sure some writers would have backed away from. You can’t fear a huge project. This is your first drafts – Take a breath, plunge in and WRITE IT! HOURS of research were required, and the aforementioned planning took up valuable months. I think if I’d eliminated the self doubt and fear, this project would have been done much quicker. The self doubt, fear, and knowledge of what a huge undertaking this series was combined to make me avoid writing. In reality, if I’d just set deadlines and stuck with them, I’d have been past them MUCH quicker.
- Simultaneous editing/writing. Never, never, never do this! Ever! Editing is editing. Writing is writing. I sometimes spent hours staring at a page, fussing over a single word DURING the writing! At my slowest, I was getting half a page of script a day. Compare this to the first episode of One Nation that I wrote in just 10 days! And August 17th, I literally wrote 27 pages of script from 10 AM until 4 pm. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not on your first draft – that’s what the re-write is for. Get it written and done, and then you can start getting picky about it and kicking it into shape.
- No deadlines. I wrote much better in the first two episodes, because I set deadlines. Mike asked me if I could take his pitch script of One Nation and rewrite it in 27 days. I ended up taking little bits here and there, and essentially writing a new script in ten days. That’s the power of deadlines. The second script took me I think three weeks? If I’d kept that kind of deadlines going, I probably could have finished One Nation by August of last year instead of this year. Set a reasonable deadline – say, four or five pages of script a day. Figure out your total (usually 110 pages or so), divide by the page count, and set it on your calendar! Five pages of script a day is a finished script in 22 days.
- Failure to beat board. I knew the last episode so well that I never put my index cards on the wall. Unfortunately, this had a side effect of slowing me down. I sit in my office every day, and looking at my beat board reminds me of my progress. While it’s good I knew where the episodes were going, not having it where I saw it every day encouraged procrastination.
- Trying to include too much. Look at Band Of Brothers. To fit that entire story into ten episodes required omitting so many details and facts – and even combining two similar characters into one person (Halls and Hall). I made the mistake of trying to include too much information into the series. I should have re-watched Patton, and followed what Coppola did when writing it. He chose the major events that would give the flavor of the story, to leave you with the important essence of who Patton was. Major events in Patton’s life were completely left out to tell the story. Learn from that! I mean, how many people know that Easy Company in WWII made it to the Sonne bridge, only to have it blown up seconds before they crossed it? How many people know that one of Easy Company finished the assault on Brecourt Manor, and was met by an officer with the news he was out of the war and going home? “Why?” “You’re the only surviving son.” “But I have five brothers…” “No..” That’s so good a scene I would have included it, but it would have changed the overall FEEL of the movies. Once I realized I couldn’t even get a fraction of the major events in, my panic developed – and I began to ask, “What do I need to put in to tell this story and convey its essence?”
Conclusion
I learned major lessons writing the first drafts of One Nation, and those lessons I pass on to you, to keep you from making all of these mistakes. You must ALWAYS have an after action review, to see “What did I do right?” and “What did I do wrong?” If you don’t, you’ll keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
Every time you write you will get better – if you stop and examine these two major points – what did I do right? What did I do wrong?
Oh, and be on the lookout for One Nation when it airs eventually! I’ll let you know when it moves from development into production!
