TODD HOLDEN
Where do you live?
Portland, Oregon. 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? Generally speaking, I like surprising stories. Stories that force the audience out of their comfort zone. I have a script where a cold-blooded monster is the protagonist. Another where a broken man planning a mass shooting is a hero. A Lovecraftian horror script in which a retired soldier reluctantly saves the Universe. A Western with a strong female lead. If it isn’t pushing the envelope then I won’t enjoy writing it. As far as the script vs. novel thing goes, my current business model is to write the script first, then write the novel. That way if the novel blows up and I receive a phone call about turning it into a movie, I have the script already done. 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? I came to writing in an unconventional way. During Covid, I was forced to lay off most of my staff and work six, twelve-hour days a week. It was a trying time, full of money stress and long, painfully boring days. When I went home, I binged a lot of Netflix to dull the pain. One night I had an unbelievably vivid dream about a group of retired CIA hackers secretly making the world a better place. I thought it was as good as anything else on TV, so the next day I bought a copy of Final Draft and started pounding the keyboard at work. Fifteen weeks later I had sixteen episodes written. Eight hundred pages. And you know what? It sucked. But I was hooked. I read everything I could find about screenwriting. Kept pounding keys. Decided that TV wasn’t for me and went to feature scripts. They sucked too. But I was growing. I come from a business background. I was conditioned to believe that writing was something you do when your boss wants a report. It isn’t fun to do. I never had a rewarding writing experience. I was like an addict with a new drug. When I first started writing, vomiting words onto a page after I came up with the concept was cathartic. Now that I’ve written literally dozens of scripts, I find that mapping out the beats is so much more rewarding, rewrites are much less painful, and I have a final draft much more quickly. For example, I started outlining this latest script and about the third day I had an epiphany which forced me to change the plot completely. But I was just writing beats at that time so I didn’t sacrifice much time or energy. I still had the outline done by the end of the week and it was much better than the original concept. My next step is to stick it in a drawer for a week and ruminate on it. Once I can’t stand it any longer, I pull it out and start fleshing out the beats. This gives me a jump start on my timeframe. I usually have a draft in about two weeks. Then I ignore it for another week. After significant percolating, I reread it, adjust as I see fit, and have a relatively polished draft after another week or so. All told, I spend about six weeks on a script before I feel it is ready to send out for coverage. What is your ultimate ambition as a writer? I just want to see something I did on the screen. Big or small. Of course, getting paid would be cool… Was your entry at The Wiki Screenplay Contest a full script or “the first ten pages”? Why did you make that choice? I’ve done the First Ten and full script and had good experiences with both. The most recent script was full script because I wanted to force myself to finish it before the deadline. A little self-imposed pressure has never hurt anyone! What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show...and why? Oof! Big question. I’m a very visual person so my two most favorite movies of all time are Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai. You could cut any random cell out of each one of those movies and hang it in an art museum. What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have? Plan, plan, plan. It doesn’t sound fun, but having your first draft look like a fourth draft is quite satisfying. Much more so than wasting time writing two dozen scripts and only having one that is accidentally passable. What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? So much! I usually have one script in the idea stage, one in outline stage, one in the writing stage and one in the rewrite stage. That’s why sticking them in a drawer for a week or so at each stage is so important to me. Keeping the creative juices flowing is key to my process. Not everyone does it this way. I saw an interview with Aaron Sorkin where he said, “Most of the time, me writing looks—to the untrained eye—like someone watching ESPN. The truth is if you did a pie chart of the writing process, most of the time is spent thinking.” The key to my motivation is momentum. I need to be constantly reinforced with positive results. I have a script now that I have been avoiding because the concept is great, but I’m stuck and it’s demotivating, so I’m working on three other things. Sorry…rambling. The thing I want to tell the world about right now is a ground-up rewrite of a previous script. I made the mistake of asking my writer friends what they thought of it and they all told me different things, then I sent it out for coverage several times and they each told me different things, so I incorporated them all in a Frankenstinian mess and I need to go back to the drawing board. The premise is that a small business owner is having cash flow problems because one of his clients owes him a lot of money. The twist? The small business is a secret spy car rental agency. I think the moral of that story is: Write the story you want to tell. Happy creating! |
