BRIAN C BAKER
Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
I live in Virginia. Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel? The Marshal: Resurrection, is a TV pilot that asks what it takes to bring a man back from the brink of self-destruction. Our main character is a farmer that turned Union soldier during the American Civil War to hunt down the Missouri outlaws that butchered his family and left him for dead. Four years later he exits the conflict haunted and penniless, never having found the murderers. He welcomes the noose that squatters on his old farm put around his neck, but when he escapes to the badlands and is mistaken for a dead US Marshal in a mining town, it’s providing law for the innocents in the mining town that gives him a new lease on life even as powerful forces in the town seek to undermine the law, prey on the innocent, and the Missouri outlaws he long sought come tantalizingly close. I wrote this story as a pilot with a bible because this is a serial concept that lends itself to the multi-script arc. In a different format, it would serialize as novels or novellas based on the teleplays. After all, a well-honed teleplay is a 10,000 word corpus of everything essential for a successful 40,000 word novella or 80,000-100,000 word novel. How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN? Process: I’m a plotter. I beat out the full story and “chunk” it in a classic Teaser & five-Act teleplay structure. The Act breaks vary based on page length, but one benefit of the Teaser/five-Act is that it demands attention to the hooks that bring viewers back after commercial breaks. I find that it’s a nice structural reminder to punch up suspense six different times. With a range of 8-12 pages for each act, there’s also a lovely forgiveness in the way scenes fit within the framework. Time: The time cost to author a 60-page teleplay is about 30 days. It’s followed by another 30 days to author the bible, but – and this is important – during the 30 days I’m working on the bible, I have the draft teleplay out for the thoughts of trusted readers. Credit where it’s due – and this is the REALLY important part – the Wiki portfolio of readers have been articulate, engaged, gracious, informed, insightful, and kind readers. Time and again they won my respect by sharing thoughts in a way that allowed me to improve each story I placed in their care. We all have trusted relatives-writers-peers that will read our work, but entry in one or more of the Wiki portfolio of contests is a must for anything that I author now. I’m not telling you what to do, but I am calling out expertise offered with altruism that has benefited me specifically because America is not kind to her artists and where I’ve found a benefit I would be remiss if I didn’t erect a signpost for others traveling the same path. For total time, inclusive of multiple rounds of contests and polish of the bible with supporting tools (e.g., pitch deck, pitch narrative) I generally experience a 6 month timeline from first concept to maturity. How do I know the screenplay is mature? It’s mature when I start seeing “Finalist” and higher contest and festival placements. What is your ultimate ambition as a writer? There’s somebody out there that needs to see these stories. They’re in pain and at the end of a long and brutal fight for everything that matters and amid the chorus of voices and portents and forces arrayed against them, for these few pages, my ambition is to give them the solace that comes from seeing characters that are recognizable for their courage. My ambition is to write stories that mirror their hardships in order to remind them that their courage can prevail, and that despite their scars, they can survive and thrive. |
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Was your entry at The Wiki Screenplay Contest a full script or “the first ten pages”? Why did you make that choice?
Though I know writers that take the tactical approach of submitting just the first ten pages, it’s my preference to have a reader’s thoughts after a holistic read of the entire screenplay. It eliminates the need for the reader to make inferences about the work, and is particularly valuable where the story straddles multiple genres. After all, there’s no way your hard action opening will reveal a story-arc that has subtle, elegant, and engrossing thriller sequences. What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show...and why? “Emissary”, by Michael Piller. I found a copy of the pilot for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and was absolutely enthralled by the elegance of the writing and the freedom of the format. I didn’t take screenwriting as any formal educational path. Instead, I studied Piller’s script until it looked like a prairie bible with pages smoothed at the edges. His writing is so crisp that it allowed me to apprentice at a remove in time as I read and reread and wrote. I respect his work, but it took years for me to move past some of his stylistic choices, and then only after others would sometimes shout: “Why do you have SO MANY ellipses!?” Well, because Piller did. Kid-you-not, the only punctuation on page 2 of Emissary is 13 ellipses and one period. His fetish for three dots became an inherited kink that’s tough to break… What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have? I used to argue that the best growth came from workshopping for others, taking classes, and remembering your reason for writing, but that has changed. The best way to win a contest is to get into the rhythm of contest entry – feedback – revision – and resubmission. It’s the feedback from experienced and articulate readers that allows you to evolve your work to reach “Finalist” levels of performance. I’ve called out the Wiki portfolio of contests as my preferred go-to source of feedback, but there are other outstanding sources and many of them skew toward particular genres. As examples, The International Screenwriters’ Association and Scriptapalooza readers have also won my esteem. I hope that you find your own favored experts and guides. What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? I just finished a pilot for a time travel TV series called “Blue Acres”. When a rift in the current of time deposits visitors from the past and the future on the eve of their deaths, a physician and the colorful townspeople of Carthage Falls must help visitors resolve unfinished business and return to their time, or risk changing history. Next up is a near- future science fiction TV pilot about future class struggles, where billionaires have slipped the Earth’s bonds and terrestrial laws, operating with near-impunity in orbital cities and the only law for these orbiting “territories” is provided by the U.S. Marshals. |
