You Asked ... Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci, "Star Trek"

Screenwriting superstars Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have come a long way since getting their start as writers on Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. Star Trek and the Transformers sequel — Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — are destined to dominate this summer box office. (They also produced the upcoming Sandra Bullock film: The Proposal.)

Kurtzman and Orci know what writing a Blockbuster is all about. With the popular sci-fi series Fringe, which Kurtzman and Orci co-created with J.J. Abrams, just renewed for season two, perhaps the team hasn’t strayed too far from their TV roots, after all.

Kurtzman and Orci answer questions from the StoryLink Community on their writing partnership and writing for TV and Film, as well as reinventing established franchises for the big screen. Those whose question is chosen will receive a The Dialogue: Learning from the Masters DVD (Winner's Choice) from The Writers Store.

My writing partner and I are working on a new drama series and feel comfortable with our main characters' arcs. But we're trying to map out individual episodes that fit in the larger story and some of them feel a bit forced. Do you have any tips for making logical chapters out of a bigger series arc that can stand on their own? - Mike Diamond

Orci: Try and come up with a historical precedent of what kind of period you are trying to mimic, even if it’s recent history. It gives you a sense of what the world is. For example if the metaphor is “preparing for a natural disaster,” you look at the run-up to what happened before Hurricane Katrina. You try to put some historical context in the world that you’re in and it gives it a flavor for how to invent continuing chapters.

Kurtzman: The most important thing is to figure out the big emotional idea of the show. That needs to your compass in terms of figuring out what the episodes are moment-to-moment. If somehow the episodes are feeling forced, it means they may not be servicing the big idea of the show. If so, don’t be afraid to hit the eject button on that and really sit and think about why it doesn’t fit! Also, look at the pieces that you are putting together and see why they do seem to fit. And analyze those.

If you see there is a common denominator among the things you like versus the things you don’t like, it may tell you a little bit more about where your instincts are going.

One of the things we often hold as a mantra is to be married to the spirit of your words, but not necessarily the words themselves. That frees you up to always find the truth of whatever you’re trying to say.

I'm a huge fan of Fringe. …Do you know today how the series will eventually come to an end and how many seasons it will take to get there or are you just playing it by ear? - Raffi

Orci: We don’t know how many seasons it will take. We do have an end in terms of a direction we’re going in. But in the spirit of what Alex just said, we like to see how things evolve and recognize that things can change. So you always make a plan and then you adjust the plan.

We are always open to playing it by ear if we need to, but we are always marching according to a plan.

Kurtzman: We planned [the Peter reveal from the first-season finale] for season two, and then ended up feeling like the events of the show were leading towards it very organically.

Sometimes things just start to come out, and you realize there’s no reason to withhold this information. By putting it at the end of the season, we force ourselves to come up with new ideas for the next one. So in a weird way it’s a challenge to us to keep it fresh.

As everyone knows, both Star Trek and Transformers have seen lives on the big and small screen. Being a writing team that has written for television and motion pictures, is there a conscious process to making a concept or script idea somehow "larger" for the big screen? - David

Kurtzman: We always tend to focus on the small emotional story, no matter how big the palate is, because ultimately that’s what the audience will connect to.

Certainly when you are working on a movie that has a larger budget, it does challenge you think of bigger ways to put your characters in jeopardy. But you always have to stay focused on what that small little character story is. We like to tell ourselves that we need to be able to take that character story and turn it into a 2 million dollar independent film. If we can do that and add whatever the big effects are to it, then hopefully we’ll feel unique.

In writing science fiction and fantasy such as Fringe and the recent Star Trek movie, what are some of the drawbacks in describing a scene such as a space battle in the case of Star Trek or some of the 'head trip' scenes from the Fringe pilot? - James

Kurtzman: We never look at it as drawbacks. In fact writing those kinds of things is very exciting.

Our goal is to have the reader read the script and feel that they’re actually watching the movie. That requires a weird balance of very detailed description but not so much that you start to skim over the words. Frequently people tend to jump right to the dialogue, but there’s a certain way of writing action that I think we learned from William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and even Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) that has to do with writing an extremely entertaining prose that you feel like you’re being told the story.

This also extends to Billy Wilder movies, the way he used to write with I.A.L. Diamond. All of the prose — the description of the scene — is so entertaining and witty that you want to keep reading. It’s a matter of keeping the reader entertained on every level.

Orci: By being true to that, you end up finding out whether or not the action is fitting the rest of the movie. .. It keeps you honest about what’s happening.

Kurtzman: The other thing these brilliant writers have in common is they write the action through the point of view of the characters. You are never losing touch with how a character is feeling when they are in the middle of a gun fight or a horse chase. That’s an important thing too, because while you are exciting the audience with the dazzle of the visual elements you are keeping them emotionally tethered to the core of what your characters are going through. And that’s the challenge of writing good action.

What was the reasoning behind the history change, or alternative timeline? - Trent

Kurtzman: We were skeptical about taking on Star Trek unless we felt that we could put the characters in jeopardy, not knowing if they were going to live or die.

We knew we wanted to tell our Kirk-Spock story. We also knew that, according to the original, Kirk was literally killed ... by Malcolm McDowell. So we knew that that’s how that ended and Spock went in The Next Generation to Romulus to be ambassador. [We wondered,] “Can you ever feel jeopardy for these characters if you know how their lives turned out?”

Coming up with the timeline was hopefully our fan-worthy solution to the problem.

Orci: It was our way of making the movie unpredictable and therefore dramatic.

No one knew Star Trek better than we did. This was not some sort of excuse not to know Star Trek. It was a way to get drama for the audience.

My writing partner and I have collaborated in numerous ways after we get the initial outline down. What have you found to be the most effective ways to write as a team? Do you write separately and then compare what you wrote or do you sit down together and work from one document? - Rob

Orci: We try and do as much together as possible. Sometimes we split up and trade scenes, but we’re very 9 to 5, sitting across the desk from each other. Our conversations go through the dialogue, line for line, and see what lines entertain us the most, as we’re talking about it.

As one of the most successful writing teams in Hollywood today, there must be times when the two of you would like to take a different direction with a storyline. How do the two of you resolve writing conflicts? - Leonard Ramirez Jr.

Kurtzman: If you come to some sort of collision about an idea… you trust your writing partner enough to know there’s a reason why he must be feeling so strongly about it. Because we have been doing this together so long, we hear each other out. … We allow each other to go down that road, and if it doesn’t work, we just say, “Let’s go down a different road.”

You have to be committed to exploring together and trusting each other that way. And if you end up blocking each other, then good work doesn’t come out of it.

Sometimes there’s a third solution that neither of you anticipated in your point of view: being at odds ends up bearing some great idea that you would never have come to without that conflict. So it can be a very good thing.

As a writer, I would describe myself as an enthusiastic amateur with motivation and inspiration "issues". How would you describe the process of coming up with ideas, and maintaining the motivation to develop them into a viable story? - David

Kurtzman: We’re driven mostly by what resonates with us emotionally, something that excites us: Very normal characters in extraordinary situations and having to find their way through them. An interesting story challenge or something with an interesting spin on a character we haven’t seen before. We tend to be motivated by very small kernels that grow into much larger stories. I don’t know that I can tell you there’s a formula for it. It’s sort of a gut thing.

How much time do you spend writing Dialogue, does it just roll onto the page once you know what you want to say, or is it a more calculative process? How do you make it work? - Chad

Kurtzman: It’s a constant process. We always put down our basic idea and then we riff through there. Dialogue is a constantly evolving animal that changes all the way through production and even post production.

Michael Mann once said you write a movie three times: First when you write the script, second time when you shoot it, and third time in the editing room. And that couldn’t be more true. You are constantly changing dialogue for it to be more clear or more honest.

Orci: Here’s one trick we use sometimes with writers block. You can get so critical of yourself, thinking you have to write the scene perfectly the first time, but actually you don’t. You are going to write it many times.

Sometimes it’s a fun mental exercise when you are stuck to actually try and write the worst version of a scene you can think of. That way, it takes the critic off your shoulder and … you get something down on paper. Then you can go back and make it better and better.

A product is judged by its marketability. So, how do you, as writers, deal with the tug-of-war between pure art and pure entertainment? - baqar

Kurtzman: I think the art that you are talking about is the difference between small independent movies versus big studio movies; that’s very much a matter of taste. I think a lot of people might say that big movies can be art too. And we love to do both. You’re kind of pulled between them, but you try and find the best in whatever you’re doing

Orci: The other way to balance the difference is by making sure whatever we’re working on reflects our values. We won’t be part of something that crosses some line between us.

Kurtzman: The sad truth is that now more than ever it’s a business. I think in the mid 1990s, when we were really influenced by independent film, it just so happened that there was a market for those movies. You could make a 2, 3, 4 million dollar indie that made a lot of money, and it wasn’t expected to open at 20 million to be a success. And that’s not the case anymore. The standard for what defines a success is so vastly different. If your movie doesn’t come out and have a great opening weekend, it’s dead. That makes it a very cutthroat business and it’s tragic, but it’s the reality that we live in.