The tension and immediacy in Crimson Tide is heavily supported by the level of realistic detail. The audience needs to buy what you are telling them.

Especially in science-fiction this is a critical factor. In SF it is not so much the level of realism, but the level of believability you create. If you are able to create believability that looks like reality, you’ve managed a homerun. Have a look at Alien (imdb) if you don’t agree - it’s the perfect marriage between believability and (mock-up) realism.

Again: First, you need to establish yourself as a credible storyteller (by presenting logic details, for example). This is the basis for a believable story, a believable environment. Once it seems reasonable that your story could happen (credibility) and your audience came to believe it did happen (through realism and believability) you pulled it off to totally immerse your audience by creating authenticity.

Of course, authenticity is easier if your story is based on a real event, like Apollo 13 (imdb). A fake documentary style (in parts) and a meticulous level of detail on set design and procedures easily creates the illusion of “being there” (believability). And nobody would think that Ron Howard isn’t telling the truth (credibility).

It’s a bit more difficult if you try to breathe life into a completely imaginary world. I think it is best to do extensive research, trying to base the made-up parts as good as possible on common sense or what we know from our daily life experience and logics. One good start if you plan on writing a spaceship-laden sci-fi epic, is this interesting page. “So You Wanna Build A Rocket?” will guide you through any aspect of how to realisticly flesh out the tech gadgets in your piece - and fill your geeky heart with delight. It’s an interesting read and gathers a wide array of sources to make its point. Helpful for SF authors!

But presenting things nicely is also a form of politeness, I think, and a form of respect when it means playing by the rules of a trade or group. In terms of screenwriting you can easily go insane when you try to track down the right format for your script. And the industry is known for being picky in terms of formatting. Anyway, here are some links I recently found that help you get started:

Screenplay Format article @ Wikipedia Movie Making Manual

A few notes on formatting @ AMPAS

 A lesson in screenplay formatting @ Wikiversity

Text editor templates as guide @ Wikibook Movie Making Manual

Screenwriting.info

Info @ scriptfrenzy.org

also a good starting point is Wikipedia’s Screenplay page,  or just use celtx or any other screenwriting software that does the formatting for you.

In order to further network with the online screenwriting community, I’d also like to hint at Paul’s “Process Diary” podcast/blog, who’s latest post on using the rules is a good motivation to further meditate about structure and common plot schemes. I also like the blog’s mission: finding out “how it’s done by going out and doing it”. Paul is active in 3d digital filmmaking as animator and editor (see his showreel).

In computer programming, this problem is a daily task. That’s why a look into this domain is very enlightening. Over decades, numerous people have developed, tuned and conceptualized how a single person or a group can safely write and modify complex texts (in essence, that’s what programs are). One result of that research work is the concept of a central host, that stores the text material, and a client application that connects to this host, checks out versions, edits them and hands them back to the host. This approach can becompared to a library shelf, where “where authors keep successive revisions of one or more documents. The version control systems acts as the librarian between the author and the repository.” Although many (any?) version control systems have their problems, we will jump in bravely and try to apply these tools to fictional writing in general and screenwriting in particular.

Subversion (SVN)

The most popular version control systems are CVS, and its successor Subversion (SVN). We will use the more advanced SVN here to control versions of our text. Interesting is that “Project Orange” the group of people that produced the open-source movie Elephants Dream (imdb) has also extensively used SVN on their project. As can be read here, they used SVN to coordinate their collaborative work on the script and initial layout, animatics and the following 3D blender files. Okay, as the overall concept of using SVN for a script is a bit geeky, I assume that if you are still reading, you might as well be able to follow my descriptions below:

SVN Installation

1. Get a snapshot of subversion here.
2. Download TortoiseSVN and install it. This will add a new set of commands to your right-click “context menus” on Explorer.
3. Open Explorer and navigate to a path where you would like to have your project folder reside.
4. Create two directories there: the actual project folder and a “repository folder” where SVN will store its data (locally! as we do not intend to use a fully-fledged SVN server here -from HED comes the hint to use ProSVN, an online service, as another solution. Haven’t tried it myself, but it looks promising).
5. Right-click on your future /repository folder (not the folder where you will keep your texts) and select “TotoiseSVN” > “Create repository here…”. Select “Native Filesystem(FSFS)” from the pop-up.
6. After the pop-up “Repository was successfully created” right-click again on /repository and select “TotoiseSVN” > “SVN Checkout…”. A windows opens with two fields, the upper showing the location of your /repository folder (be sure the path is correct). The lower field, the “Checkout directory” should point to your /project folder, something like “file://<Drive>/path/to/your/<folder>”. Press OK.
7. Your /project folder has a changed icon beneath it now. A green check mark, indicating that this folder is now versioned and up-to-date. Go and edit your files in there. Each new file you create ther has to be added into SVN tracking by right-clicking > “TotoiseSVN” > “Add…”.
8. Edit the file.
9. After each cycle the folder icon will carry a red mark, indicating that you need to commit your changes into the repository. Do so by Right-clicking onto the folder “SVN Commit…”, enter a comment and press “OK”. SVN will then tell you that it raised revision from for example 0 to Revision: 1.

The layout of your repository/workfolder hierarchy might be different, see this for an alternate approach. And this for basic handling.
The way you use SVN strongly depends on what word processor you use for writing. As I am using the basic Microsoft Windows Editor for my current work and do only final formatting in Word or specialised software. SVN is quite easy to implement, but when using only Word it will be a bit less useful, as Word outputs binary files and SVN was designed for textual files.

If you happen to use the free word processor LaTeX, which uses a non-binary form of storing files, you can quite heavily integrate versioning using SVN into your workflow. Although the WikiBook “Collaborative Writing of LaTeX Documents” focuses on groups working together, I would recommend it as it explains quite well the basic concepts of SVN and further, how to integrate it with LaTeX. Also check out this blog post about how to set this up, with a more command-line orientated view of things.

Mercurial

Is SVN the best match? What about these new distributed revision control systems? Yes, it’s true. The beasic concept behind CVS and thus also SVN is dated back twenty years. Especially larger projects suffer from a server-centric view of things. This led to the development of techniques for peer-to-peerversioning, the third generation of version control tools: distributed revision control systems. We look at free tools only, so the main candidates for this type of tools are: Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs. (see this or this for a comparison)
I like Mercurial and Bazaar, they seem to be simple and mature. Have a look at Mercurial’s introductory docs to further understand what it is all about. One main aspect that is importan for our use as an aid in screenwriting is the fact that a distributed RCS stores a copy of the repository locally, so we can hack away everywehere without a need for an interrnet connection- these systems do not mandatorily rely on a central server, they “allow people to distribute their revision control data to where it’s actually needed”.

Mercurial Installation

Ok, let’s get our hands dirty (we’ll use Windows here):

Prerequisite: I assume you have a directory where you store your files, for example your screenplay.txt file or screenplay.doc. This project folder is named “C:\project” in our example. Then…

1. Download the mercurial.exe installer
2. Double-click the .exe and install the software (be sure to confirm “add hg to search path”)
3. Navigate to your working directory: cd C:\project
4. Init version control for all files currently in this directory: hg init - See how all mercurial commands start with hg, the chemical symbol for Mercury? So, all files in this directory are now under version control. Mercurial added a subdirectory to our dir called “.hg” where it stores its version data. Apart from messing with this dir, you can freely modify and edit files within this dir. If you add a new file, use hg add <filename> to add this new file to version control
5. Edit your screenplay
6. Commit your changes via: hg commit
7. Text editor fires up with title “hg-editor-<random-ID>”. This is where you can add some comments about your latest change. Mercurial explains this to you in some lines that are already in thetexteditor but they will be regarded as comments as these lines begin with “HG:” So be sure to enter something, otherwise Mercurial will deny the commit with “transaction abort! rollback completed. Abort: empty commit message” - a little kick, so you document your edits. Select “File > Save”.
8. That’s it. The concept is that the C:\project folder is always your working directory, representing the current state of your work. You can commit (store) your working directory into the Mercurial .hg folder via hg commit or you can recreate an earlier version of your work in that project’s working directory for example with hg revert –rev 0 –all –no-backup, which reverts the dir’s state to the initial version (”no-backup” states that your latest non-commited changes might get lost, so commit first!).

An interesting function is that Mercurial can act as a local webserver. That can make life a lot easier if you hate the command line. Enter hg server -n “My Repo” -p 80 will enable you to browse your repository with your webserver on http://localhost.

If you would like even more eyecandy or a TortoiseSVN-like GUI, try TortoiseHG.

Consult the online documentation, wiki and especially the tutorials for further help with Mercurial. Here is a tutorial for a setup on the Mac.
Coda

It might be helpful to read Agile Authoring about problems in and solutions for collaborative environments. If you are working alone, think about it: is the added weight of version control worth it? Many authors surely feel that this kind of tech tools is more in their way than helpful. But if you are the type of writer I am, who likes the warm and fuzzy (yet mostly useless) feeling of having that ‘good draft No.23′ still around, then version control can be a great win. So ask yourself: am I the “screenplay.doc”, “screenplay_version2.doc”, “screenplay_version3.doc” -type of guy or not. Answer the question, have a look at your project folder and see if you are fit for version control.

I am tempted to finally give Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces

a chance. As it seems, Tobias has written a helpful guide, complete with checklists (!), about the major themes of literature. An enlightening read. It’s like putting on the X-Ray glasses. Like “The Method” for writers.

If you are into structure and universal themes like me, than this book, these books, are a must read. What you, me and everyone, including George Lucas, should keep in mind is that these guides shouldn’t be a recipe. There are rules. And you should know them. But rules are there to be broken, in literature and screenwriting. That’s mastering structure.

• celtx which also includes capabilities for storyboarding, scheduling and such
• The OpenOffice Suite in combination with the Script style template
• Lyx (Linux) with the “Hollywood” template
• SLang braintorming tool and ScriptMaker (see if it is available)
• Cinergy Script Editor
• WikiMedia Screenplay Extension (also here) allows you to use your install of the WikiMedia wiki as a screenwriting tool

and online services

• Plotbot Online Script Editor, an online service
• Zhura, another online service
• Scripped, yet another online scriptwriting service
• (celtx with the Webservice extension Projects Central)

Besides working with software that supports the writer in giving respect to the special process of writing a screen, you should also make yourself familiar with the proper screenplay format. There are some style templates for common word processors that will give you a first impression. But remember: don’t get too esoteric about formatting (what easily might happen). It should be about the content!

• OpenOffice.org screenplay template
• Scriptsmart MS Word templates from the BBC
• Snoozeletter MS Word 2002 + 97 + 2007 templates
• ScriptTeX a free macro package for TeX users
• Screenplay mode for Emacs
• John August’s CSS formatting for Webpage screenwriting

Actually the plot is interesting, but nothing that makes you cling to your armrest. But, the impressive quality of the film is that you actually enjoy watching Michael Clayton go through all this ups and downs, twists and surprises. You enjoy the character - so much that I could have watched easily another 2 hours, just to see what he does next.

This once again is evidence that Lajos Egri is right with his assumption that nothing can carry a plot, a drama, a story as much as a good character can do.

I had my stint with Word, then reverted to pen & paper, where I could quickly draw sketches or insert collages of found material to further flesh out unfinished ideas. But while working oldskool, there was always this “next step”: I knew that some day I would have to go back to the computer and enter all that stuff into the machine, be it for proper printing or emailing. Being the lazy person that I am, this workflow always felt like a pain.

Back to keyboard and screen: I chose to use the built-in Microsoft Editor. It’s so simple that it runs on all machines, on my old notebook and the office desktop. It’s always available. maximizes screen space and you won’t ever again loose formatting - as there is none. Plain text, simple paragraphs. The output ist plain ASCII. That’s it. Beauty lies in simplicity.

One thing you might know from yourself when developing texts on the computer is the urge to easily drag-around big chunks of text without really thinking about the effect on your coherence. While this might be regarded as bad style (as this wasn’t so easy back then, chained to your typewriter), my opinion is that this is actually an achievement of electronic word processing. Rearranging, kneading, editing, outlining - that’s how our brain works. And when writing, one important thing for me is finding the shortest path between imagination and words.

But let’s be honest: sometimes it is hard to edit something. Let’s assume this situation: you finally wrote a good sentence. Then you changed the surrounding text and the good sentence begins to fit less and less. Time for some painful decisions. In most cases you will leave that for later…

This is where versioning comes in. With a proper system for keeping track of past versions you wouldn’t be so hesitant about changing or trying something. Yes, Photoshop has the History, and you can Undo stuff in Word and everything else. But once you save your file everything is engraved in stone. Proper version handling would free yourself, letting you “safely mess with the text any time”, as Martin nails it. Backing up and past versions give that warm feeling of: I can always get back to this piece of ingenuity (although you rarely actually will..). So when you are fed up with files ending in “_old”, “_older”, “_old_2″, its time to rethink your workflow.

A short look around reveals that there are many fresh approaches to reinventing how we write texts. Many focus on collaborative writing, like Writeboard or Google Docs. While others simplify the actual process by reducing distractions

• Pencil & Paper
• real Typewriter
• simple Editor
• WriteRoom

or streamlining the process

• Scrivener
• NewNovelist
• StoryView
• Liquid Story Binder
• Ulysses
• Avenir
• CopyWrite
• Jer’s Novel Writer

- a pitty is that none of these more advanced tools from the second list are free. (Tell me if you know a decent open-source/free one.)

As I am currently hacking away with the help of Editor, my current idea is to use a combination of flat text files and Subversion (SVN). I will write another post about that and my experciences in setting up and working with SVN for fictional writing.

This one goes without detour onto the Blogroll.

So I am pleased to join in on the good news (via AW and AICN) that Ruairi is going to direct the live action version of the manga-then-anime cult hit Akira. As rumours go, the piece will be produced by Appian Way under the banner of Warner Bros.

Go for it Ruairi! …finally another great thing to brag about on your website