The Vomit Draft: Developing a Great Low-Budget Script
How a hellish, gut-purging night of tropical food poisoning inspired a scrappy screenplay.
Welcome to part 2 of “Free Indie Film,” a boots-on-the-ground chronicle of my effort to finance, produce, and direct an independent feature film.
In the last installment, I thanked the universe for the failures that prepared me to make this film. This time, I offer gratitude to some sketchy seafood nachos for inspiring the script. And, while I hope you don’t need to spend 48 hours shivering on hot tiles during your in-laws’ Christmas vacation in Honduras to come up with a low-budget screenplay idea, you take the Muse where you find her.
Wracked by fever, stomach purged, I shuddered through the waking nightmare that would spark this script around 3 AM— I zoomed out of my body, which was curled helplessly around the toilet, to find that, deep in the shadows of the room, something was watching me. A TV appeared, flickering. Teeth, a door, blood. The sun rose, and nothing remained but the carnage. Slowly, that too began to fade. I woke up. It was still dark in the hotel, and I was still alone. But, with sleep a distant possibility, I rolled to my backpack, pulled out my computer, and began to type. Months later, remarkably, the first page hasn’t changed all that much:
In screenwriting, the term “vomit draft” generally isn’t literal. A vomit draft, traditionally, is closer to a structured free-write. Instead of trying to get every line of dialogue or image down perfectly, you spill as much on the page as you can as quickly as possible, giving yourself plenty of material to shape during re-writes. The first draft is always the hardest, the blank page is a terror — blow chunks and move on.
I’m a big fan of vomit drafts (I usually do them in prose, so I can’t get bogged down in formatting or page counts), but this was my first vomit idea, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s no overstatement to say I’ve been waiting for a strong, low-budget feature idea to strike to me for over a decade, and suddenly, in between dry heaves, I had characters, themes, set pieces, and scenes flooding into my empty body.
But what makes a low-budget screenplay idea “great” in the first place? What kind of idea was I waiting for? Who orders lukewarm shrimp nachos on an island where the ice cubes send you to the ER? Some answers might include:
It uses minimal elements… — no more than 3-4 actors, one shooting location, cheese/chips/protein/salsa, few stunts or major VFX shots, etc.
… for maximum impact — meaty thematic hook with a rich central question, topical story line I’d never seen, beach-side table with strong margaritas and good music, a location interesting enough to sustain 90 minutes of footage
It leverages available resources— wrote a well-received horror script and had some momentum, built an extensive run-and-gun crew and collaborator list in Los Angeles (unlike Pittsburgh, where I’d envisioned my last shoot), ocean = seafood
It turns limitations into strengths— few actors means deeper character relationships, isolated single location supports themes and ratchets up tension, fewer ingredients lead to less risk of contamination, low budget offers riskier creative latitude with less financial pressure
Finally (and I’ve pulled this one out of the bullet points because a) it is very important and b) I can’t figure out how to tie it into the nacho joke), because a gonzo indie horror film is a good business decision.
A lot of ink has been spilled about why low-budget horror films make great first features. The genre naturally lends itself to big creative swings, has a built-in audience, and often benefits (rather than suffers from) a scrappy, low-budget aesthetic. Horror flicks are also, statistically, the independent films most-likely to turn a profit. Most filmmakers aren’t motivated by money, but it sure as hell helps get investors on board. A killer idea is great. But being able to offer credible, data-driven assurances that an investor will be able to turn a profit is pretty damn important, too.
Sexy, huh? The essential-but-obnoxious truth is that independent film making is as much of a business venture as a creative pursuit. If you’re going this alone, without major financial backing or studio support, you have to understand one to accomplish the other. So, when you’re simultaneously the screenwriter, producer, and director of a film, it’s a bad idea to let one persona make life impossible for the other two. It costs nothing to write the words, “The Cadillac flies through the air and smashes into the burning helicopter,” but those four seconds of footage are going to cost more money than I’ve made in my entire lifetime. A great low budget script, to me, has to have the impact of a Caddy-helicopter crash at Hot Wheels prices.
Which brings us back to my emaciated fingers clacking away on the hotel bathroom floor. I won’t pretend that I knew, at the time, that this script would check all the boxes listed above. I wake up and write ideas down all of the time, and few make it past my notes app by morning. But, as my vomit draft poured out in between bouts of actual vomit pouring out (see #3, below), I started to realize “The Food Poisoning Guide to Low Budget Stories” actually had some legs:
Establish constraints, and stick to them, if you don’t want to be punished later. Adding a new character to the script, even if only to deliver 2-3 lines, almost always makes writing easier. It’s also a character you have to painfully expel when you realize it’ll cost $5k to shoot, kinda like when you think you’re ready to eat some rice because “it’ll help you feel better.”
Dig deep. Dig real deep. It doesn’t help anyone to stick to the surface level. If you’re not going to introduce a ton of script elements, you better be sure the ones you have are worth deeply exploring. Get it all out there and then, just when you think you’re empty, try to squeeze out a little bit more.
Get visceral. Telling your future-father-in-law that you’re about to blow chunks gets you away from the dinner table a lot more effectively than “I feel kinda off,” and makes it far more likely he’ll bring you a bottle of Gatorade later. Sadly, slow subtly is a luxury only afforded to established artists, and you can’t be demure and grab attention. Plus, it’s usually easier to re-write a scene with more restraint than it is to shoehorn more excitement.
At the end of the day, for all of this kinda-sorta advice, the real reason I knew this script was the right one to work on was that, long after I was back on my feet and eating solid foods, I was still thinking about it. And, as I dove into writing in earnest, I found the budget constraints not onerous, but freeing. Fasting, when done with purpose and intent, can lead to remarkable clarity. Sure, I still yearn for an unlimited budget, and there are some wildly-expensive ideas I’ve flushed away, but the script is better for it. What was left huddled around the toilet was more than enough.
Of course, one of the hardest parts about writing within your budget constraints is understanding what budget constraints really are. And you can’t do that until you know how much the crazy ideas you’ve concocted actually cost… Figuring that out— and re-writing the script accordingly— is more art than science, but I’ll take a crack at demystifying it next week, with far less toilet talk. At least, I hope so: we’re on our way to visit a potential filming location deep in the desert tomorrow and I hear they have good sushi…