In our last episode, after a few attempts at screenwriting, I found a great writing partner in Lesley Braden.

Lesley’s idea (and the script is already registered with the WGA so just try and steal it, buster) was about a woman in her mid to late 30s who was tired of people either harassing her or taking advantage of her time because she was single.  She creates a fake guy on Facebook and puts herself in a relationship with said guy.  It’s Bridesmaids meets The Social Network.  Both movies just came out.  Both movies were successful.  Kristen Wiig changed Hollywood overnight and showed the women can open a comedy and make a ton of money.  Lesley’s idea was original, fun and hugely marketable.  I was hooked!

Initially we started writing it with the two of us in mind to play the lead character and her slacker roommate.  I have friends who have production companies in Michigan, so it seemed like something we could potentially try to raise money and make.  As it went on, we realized how this script would be a really great calling card for us if we wanted to try to get writing jobs.  So we stopped limiting ourselves with set pieces that we could possibly pull off if we were to raise enough money through a Kickstarter campaign of whatever and we decided to shoot for the stars.

When we cracked the story, we didn’t do a traditional outline.  We knew key comedy moments that we wanted to happen and then from there we figured out how to get there.  Using a basic three act structure, we knew too when certain beats had to happen.    As we fleshed out the secondary characters more, our secondary story lines and conflicts started to become clearer too.  We were both on the same page that we didn’t want this to necessarily be a joke based comedy.  We wanted the humor to come from the characters.  We both do comedy though, so naturally the jokes found their way into it.

The crazy thing was that every idea either of us had, the other either found a way to build on it or tweak it into something different.  We never pitched a story element to have the other one say, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard”.  I think that’s the key to a strong writing partnership.  You can’t shoot down someone else’s idea without anything of your own to add.   I’m sure it helps that from the beginning we were both really on the same page.

Okay, I’m going to jump ahead in time to the present day.  We’re going to start working on a spec script for a television show.  It’s an idea that I had rattling in my brain for awhile.  I bounced it off of Lesley the other night and instead of shooting down my idea, she said, “That’s great, we could do that or maybe make it this slightly different thing too.”  Okay, that’s not technically a quote, but you know what I mean.  While her idea was slightly different than mine, it also opened itself up for a neat spin on the ideas I already had.  I think the most exciting part of writing a story is not knowing what’s going to happen next.  Changing a small detail, or even a large one, can definitely do that!  I’m looking forward to cracking another story with her.