Way
back when I was studying at McGill University, somewhere between my Bachelor
of Arts degree and my Masters in English literature, I tended bar at one
of the campus’s “quieter” watering-holes. 
Among the assortment of oddball regulars that frequented the place was
a fellow nicknamed Chef. Now in spite of the fact that everyone called
him “Chef”, Chef rarely, if ever, talked about food. What Chef preferred
to talk about was the Great American novel he was going to write.
Time and again he’d saddle up to the bar and tell me all about the literary
masterpiece he would someday complete. But even though he seemed
quite sincere and very determined, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the
guy because I knew, deep down, that his beloved novel would never get written.
And it wasn’t because it was a bad idea or because I’d seen a movie with
the exact same plot several months earlier. Chef was destined to
failure for the simple reason that he didn’t have a plan.
Never
underestimate the importance of careful planning. Because he had
a plan in 3rd century B.C., Hannibal was able to score a decisive military
victory over the Romans. Because they had a plan for Superbowl III,
the New York Jets were able to defeat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts.
And because the owners of the bar I was working at didn’t have a plan when
they opened the place, the university administration revoked their liquor
license, leading me to spend many an endless evening eating bacon and onion
pizza, serving orange juice and sausage sandwiches, listening to Chef talk
about his damn novel.
An outline
is to writing what that map of the Alps was to Hannibal. It is a
blueprint of the script you are going to write, an overview designed to
ensure that there are no surprises in store for you later on. For
instance, if you dispense with an outline, you could be halfway through
your script when you suddenly realize that Lamont the cab driver couldn’t
possibly be Maureen’s long lost brother because you’ve already established
his childhood as a Parisian street urchin. If you’d done an outline,
you could have foreseen the problem. Similarly, it really helps to
have fellow writers and producers express misgivings with plot developments
early, when they’re easier to address. As a rule, your fellow writers
and producers will let you know about these key story concerns at the outline
stage, thereby saving you the trouble of a major rewrite at the script
stage. Actually, this isn’t a rule per se but a common courtesy usually
extended the writer. Usually.
Outlines
are specific to the type of script you are writing. In the case of
Stargate SG-1, the show (and thus the outline) is made up of six parts:
a tease and five acts. The tease, or teaser, is essentially a taste
of what’s to come, an appetizer of the episode you are going to watch.
Hammond announces his retirement effective immediately. The SGC receives
word there is a Goa’uld mother ship headed for Earth. The team makes
a startling off-world discovery. The first four acts are the body
of the story. Maybe SG-1 heads off on a mission. Complications
ensue. The action builds throughout each of these four acts, culminating
in various cliffhanger “Act outs”. The team is captured. They
hit a dead end. Osiris makes an impromptu appearance. Finally,
it’s time for the denouement. In the fifth act, we wrap up
our story. The enemy is defeated. Our allies are rescued.
SG-1 saves the day.
A tease
and five acts. It’s as simple as that.
The
Time: Januaryish, 2003.
The
Place: Conference room, the Bridge Studios.
The
Mission: Write back-to-back outlines for two scripts, “Bubble World”
and “Felger Gate Screw-Up”.
"M&M"
The writing team of Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
In order
to write an outline, you must first “break” the story. Breaking a
story is pretty much what it sounds like. You break the story down
into a tease and five acts, breaking those six sections down into individual
scenes (an average of 4-5 per act) covering all of the major dramatic beats.
When Paul
and I break a story, we usually do so in the conference room. I’ll
sit on one side of the long conference table, snacking on mixed nuts.
Paul will stand on the other, armed with a blue (occasionally black) marker,
prepared to get it all down on the big white board. “Bubble World”
is up first because it has been slotted fifth in the production schedule.
Paul points out that we need a proper title. We toss around some
possibilities, entertain a few notions, shoot down one another’s lame ideas.
Suddenly, it’s two hours later. Lunchtime. Paul, defeated,
scrawls “Bubble World” on the board.
When breaking
a story, it’s always a good idea to know what you are working toward.
For example: What do we want to accomplish in this act? What is the
cliffhanger moment that will end the act? It’s always a good idea
to have a plan for the plan. I remember working on another show where
there was no plan for the plan. Paul and I sat in a room with two
other writers and the show runner who started the ball rolling by asking:
“So, what happens in scene one?” We tossed out ideas, spun them,
decided, and moved on to scene two. Then scene three. Then
scene four. Instead of working toward a goal (What will happen in
this act? How will it end? What is our cliff-hang “Act Out”?),
we were proceeding blindly through the story by trial and error.
Curiously, the other writers seemed perfectly content using this method.
‘If it works for them,’ I remembered thinking, ‘who am I to argue?’
Unfortunately, it worked for them only so long as it took them to realize
it wasn’t working – which was about seven and a half hours later.
We had to scrap everything we had done and start over from scratch.
I recall Paul and I being somewhat…displeased.
The outline
is a cinch to write up compared to coming up with the title. It takes
us only a couple of days to hammer out a tease and five solid acts.
But it takes Robert no time at all to point out that the first act would
make a better second act break. So it takes us only one more day
to revise the outline.
Mission
accomplished. With the outlines complete, we can finally get started
on what is perhaps the most fulfilling part of the production process:
writing the script.
More on
that later.
In my
next installment, I’ll focus on how the script is written and revised for
production, a labor of love fully realized through the power of the imagination.
In short, one can look at the script as a finely crafted work of art akin
to a Picasso, or a Rembrandt, or a Monet – or one of those Luciano Pavarotti
paint-by-numbers pictures he tried to fob off on his fans.
