BQE Slacker Film: We’ve got a first draft!

Sirena's Slacker Dispatches #3

This is the third update on the progress of our film to broaden the slacker genre.

Last dispatch: #2

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I haven’t been exactly prolific on BQE over the last year, but behind the scenes your neighborhood antiwork blog has been busy crafting our film. As of a few weeks ago, we finally have a completed first draft of the Sirena: A Drag on America (Working Title) screenplay!

Not even one of the slacker films I studied

What now? When do you get to see the story? Well, while I’m happy with it as a first draft, I’ve already gotten some great constructive feedback on it and have a fairly clear idea of how to vastly improve it. I want you to experience the improved version, but I also don’t want to wait too long to finally share something with you all.

So here’s the plan:

• I’ll do the second rewrite publicly, publishing scenes here as I finish them. Hopefully this rewards your patience if you’ve put up with these updates and all the slacker film analyses over the last two years. Selfishly, it may also get me some real-time feedback so that I can sharpen the story even more.

• I’ll start loading the scenes on here roughly weekly, about 1-2 scenes at a time. I’m hoping this lasts for about two or three months. (Second drafts tend to be a bit quicker for me). I’ll accompany them with notes on my thought process and what still may need improvement.

• Additionally, I’ll take advantage of the weekly format to link other people’s interesting antiwork content that I keep meaning to plug on BQE but never get around to.

• I have made a special mailing list for these dispatches called “Sirena’s Pages.” You are all automatically on it. If you ever want to keep getting Big Quit Energy but skip the screenplay updates, you can easily adjust your settings using the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of this or any of my emails and opting out of Sirena’s Pages specifically. (No hard feelings!)

Notes on the state of the project

In the spirit of becoming less rigid, I’ll ignore the format from previous entries as it seems like overkill at this point. Instead, find scattered notes on some of the biggest changes since we last talked.

The biggest shock: a first draft that was REALLY fun to write

This is the 11th script for which I’ve written at least one complete draft. For all previous ones, the first draft felt like crossing a desert of hot coals while whipping myself in self-loathing. Not only was this one fun to write, but as soon as I finished it I was already dying to do a rewrite (I’ve had to force myself to take a break). For previous scripts, I wanted the story out of my sight and often never got around to picking it up for a rewrite.

What has made this time different?

A less rigid process

The bulk of the credit goes to the new writing approach inspired by Robert Bosswell that I previously discussed.

Not worrying about knowing where I was going with the story before writing it, I didn’t put as much pressure on nailing everything in my outline. This allowed me a hybrid, non-linear process, where I would spice up rounds of outlining the story by vomiting out whatever scenes came to me, in random order (these often inspired new ideas in the outline itself).

Later, when I formally shifted from outlining to writing the script, I was able to alternate between rewriting scenes I already had with “improvising” new scenes further ahead in the story. This not only gave me variety and novelty, avoiding ruts, but it also added up to a first draft that in practice had been “rewritten” two or three times already.

Immediate feedback and ideation with Chat-GPT

And that was all BEFORE I experimented with chatGPT for feedback, which also added to the fun. If you’re an old fan of the blog, you may remember that our first podcast ever was about whether AI destroys or enhances the human creative spirit. Back then, I had never used AI tools to aid in projects, and used this opportunity to try it.

Setting environmental guilt aside for a second, I have been pleasantly surprised at how Chat-GPT helped make the process more creatively stimulating and efficient.

Immediate feedback: for starters, it alleviates what may be the most painful thing about screenwriting–how long it takes to get feedback. Ordinarily, I’d have to wait months while I finish a draft and finding someone qualified and willing to read a long script. With ChatGPT, I can get structural, dialogue, and tonal feedback on every scene, immediately. (it helps to prompt it to think like different screenwriting professors or film directors).

I worked this into the writing process of every scene: after doing my own rewrite, I’d do a round of feedback from ChatGPT and incorporate what I thought was reasonable. You have to retain your critical thinking when doing this, as GPT often gives very literal and conventional advice. But that’s a great perspective to get, while your human advisors can give a more ambitious, gut-driven perspective.

Also, not to be discounted, discussing your script everyday (even if with a machine) makes the process feel less lonely.

Fun brainstorming rewrite attempts: I say “attempts” because, in my opinion, ChatGPT is not a good overall writer, especially when it comes to long pieces like scenes (let alone a whole movie). If you’re hoping AI will take your outline and write a masterpiece (or worse, plot a story from scratch itself) prepare for an underwhelming, forgettable piece that’s basically the unoriginal average of everything ever written.

However! AI knows conventions well (both from specific genres and from Hollywood overall), which made it helpful to me in two ways:

• It helped me gauge ways to make my outline or my scenes truer to the slacker genre. I would have it rewrite a scene as an over-the-top slacker film and, while a lot of what it wrote was cringe, there were always one or two brilliant moments where it would use genre conventions to push the scene.

• I used it as a brainstorming tool by having it do other exercises with the scene: rewrite it in completely unrelated genres, or as an homage to a random film, or even from the perspective of someone who doesn’t even make films. Borrowing from other domains is great to inject freshness into the genre you’re focusing on, and with chat GPT I could do tons of these thought exercises in a short period without much mental fatigue.

More brevity, sooner: as you can probably tell, I’m not naturally concise as a writer or as a talker. One way in which GPT has me beat is its ability to take long globs of description or dialogue and shorten them without losing their essence. I took advantage of this, and as a result, the first draft (while still having its problems) is a much quicker and easier read than 137-page first drafts usually are. I’m sure my human feedback partners were glad for that.

My GPT conclusion: not good for generating original ideas, excellent to refine and improve your original ideas. I appreciated that if you give it something that’s out there, it doesn’t try to sand it down the way an idiot creative executive would. It rolls with it while helping you bring it home in a technically sound and genre-true way as possible.

The biggest pressing need: brevity

Yes, you heard right: the script is 137 pages long (each page usually equates to one minute of run-time). This is unacceptably long for a comedy–especially a slacker film. Draft two will need to chop off 27 pages, ideally 37, maybe even 47. No sweat, though: everything I write is usually double the length it should be at first.

What’s this movie about again?

While lost in writing the draft, I kind of lost track of its thematic north star.

In the process, its original incarnation (“American culture can’t stand for marginalized people who have been ‘given a chance’ to choose contentment and unproductiveness”) has been joined by a second theme, less focused on the societal antagonist force and more “personal.” Right now I can only clumsily articulate it as: “True freedom lies not in escaping societal expectations but in finding rest and solidarity amidst them.”

This follows Sirena’s character arc which, contrary to many slacker films, involves a change.

Still haven’t quiiite nailed our slacker protagonist

While Sirena’s character arc and personality feels more or less nuanced, I’ve been repeatedly told that her philosophy and relationship with work isn’t clear.

It doesn’t help that there are sequences where she willingly works hard and hustles, even if the reasons she does it aren’t exactly “aspirational” or satisfactory to those around her. I thought that nuance would be enough, but apparently not! I’ll have to work to clarify her motivation, hopefully without killing her mystery.

Even further away with our antagonist

While Sirena is almost there, Zoe presents a bigger problem. Tonally, she jumps around from humanized and empathetic to cartoonish to deeply evil. Given her monumental importance to the story, she’s the character I have to fix up the most.

In hand with her tonal shifts, Zoe doesn’t currently have a strong, explicit justification for being at the border when Sirena and her family try to cross or for and taking them into her home (a large commitment, after all). She has a reason, I swear. But in the story’s current state this reason is internally driven and not very clear.

Starting your story on a seemingly whimsical decision is not always condemning it to fail, but it’s not great. Fortunately, a fellow screenwriter had an amazing suggestion for how to fix this, which you’ll get to see in real-time during the second draft rewrite. Fixing this may also give me a stronger “inciting incident,” another crucial ingredient the story still lacks.

Matilde and Grizzie emerge as nice surprises

On a positive note, I’m very pleased with Sirena’s mom, Matilde. Previously a stock character, she now feels complex and drives a lot of the story. This is the most gratifying and unexpected change from the last time I checked in with you.

Alongside her, Grizzie–originally just a comic relief side-character–has also grown to be complex and central.

These changes are the conscious result of someone telling me that this seems like a story of the four women mentioned so far, each one representing a different reaction to American work expectations. Sirena is the most oppositional (to a fantastical extent) and Zoe the most zealous, while Matilde and Grizzie cope in more nuanced and contradictory ways. Elevating the latter two has enriched the story.

The dilemma of Paco

This leaves us with our final main-ish character. I originally gave Paco a prominent role in the story’s final act, but scaled it down to give Matilde more importance. Yet, I’ve kept depth and detail in his character that now feels outsized for his current screen-time.

I remain attached to the gender expectations dynamic that he brings as Sirena’s unrequited romantic suitor. Problem is, now he feels like one big loose end. I’ve got to figure out how to downplay him (or remove him, like I did Zoe’s husband) and make him a little less emotionally complex as he plays his role.

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You may have noticed that in past dispatches I’ve linked a PDF with the latest outline or draft of the story. Since I’ll be sharing improvements real-time with you soon, I’m gonna skip that step today. Expect dispatches of scenes to begin in 2-3 weeks! I’m excited to share this next phase of the project with you with more regularity.

Thank you all for your continued readership and support of this project, and of Big Quit Energy as a whole. Appreciate you!