Category: The Craft

Here are the eleven steps to cracking any story:

1. IDEA: A stage of over-confidence in which the screenwriter believes the seed of an idea that just popped into his or her head will make a good story and that the idea itself is so compelling that “this script will practically write itself.”

2. BEGINNING THE OUTLINE: The part where the writer realizes he bit off more than he could chew.

3. COMPLETING THE OUTLINE: A rush of energy as the writer realizes the hard work is completed. This will, indeed, be a great script. Based on this outline, “This script will practically write itself.”

4. REVIEWING THE OUTLINE A DAY LATER: The point at which the writer realizes he or she was a bit hasty and the story might be a little routine, lack sufficient development, and need just a tweak or two. The writer revises.

5. BEGINNING PAGES: The point at which the writer realizes he or she is a complete fraud, knows nothing about writing, and should be laughed at and chastised for even trying.

6. REOUTLINING: A laborious chore akin to torture during which everything the writer thought was working is thrown out and painstakingly replaced with much thought, self-doubt, struggle, stress, lost sleep and depression.

7. BEGINNING PAGES AGAIN: The point at which the writer now knows for certain he or she is a complete fraud, but by now has too much invested to turn back. A depressing journey into an awareness of one’s limitations.

8. GETTING TO THE MID-POINT OF THE SCRIPT: The point at which the writer believes “there’s only part of the second act and then the third act to go. The rest of this script will virtually write itself.”

9. COMPLETING THE PAGES: Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, the writer picks up speed, gains greater stamina, writes more pages, and completes the first draft.

10. REVIEWING THE PAGES: The writer tosses out the third act, realizing that “picking up speed” might not be the best way to complete a script.

11. REWRITING THE THIRD ACT: The writer relaxes, starts rewriting the third act and realizes the problem with the third act is that the first two acts don’t work. The writer tosses the entire script in the trash, prepares a noose, and – just before swinging – musters up the energy to start again.

Repeat as necessary….

Dan from UK asks:

Is it appropriate for a blasphemous, foul-mouthed American character living in LA to repeatedly use the word “wanker” and its variations (“wank”, “wanking” etc)?

Might sound silly but I know Americans who use this, but I’m wondering if it’s an allowable swear in American cinema?

Thanks…

There is no profanity that is per se not allowed in a spec script. The caveat is that profanity should never be used to substitute for story nor should it be gratuitous to the story. Both are common mistakes made by less experienced writers. “Yipee-ki-yea…mother-fucker” is an exceptional piece of profanity that worked in Die Hard because it was truly an expression of John McClane and his overall problems – a tough guy in the face of a complex world that sometimes required something different. After that, a million specs tried using heavy profanity and most ended up where most specs end up, in the trash bin. Careless use of profanity is no different than any other careless work. On the other hand, in the right story, carefully used profanity can be an important part of storytelling.

As for the expression “wanker”, it is mostly a British expression. I’m not sure the average American reader would even understand that it’s profane. It is not really used much here. Your character would probably be seen as having some affectation if he or she relied heavily on it – but that may be the effect you’re going for.

I was wondering if you could tell us the common errors you saw in the “awful” 99% of scripts you read as an analyst and put them down here?

Might be really useful, as right now I’m suffering from chronic self-doubt and this could help alleviate that (er, or confirm it…)

Dan from The Middle of Nowhere

Sure. First, a note on self-doubt. Many writers suffer from substantial insecurities throughout their careers. It’s part of the package. Don’t let it debilitate you. If you get consistent feedback showing real problems with your writing, just dig in and work through it. It’s all part of the process. Although certain writers have natural abilities that are exceptional, anyone with real discipline, drive and humility can learn the craft well and create a successful professional career.

To answer your question, in a previous column, I mentioned that:

In my years as a reader (a/k/a story analyst), and even today when I’m asked to read scripts from inexperienced writers, 99 out of 100 scripts are awful to the point of being unmarketable….

In that column, I attributed much of this to dialogue, but as I hinted then, bad dialogue is a symptom of larger problems. The pervasive problems I saw and still see are the following, in no particular order:

1. Superficiality. Most scripts from inexperienced writers fail to explore genuine emotions that have sufficient weight and universality to have any hope of being engaging to a broad audience. Often, these scripts are based either on what the writer believes is an engaging story premise with little attention to deeper issues or is based upon a personal experience about which the writer feels deeply with little effort to express that emotion on the page. In the latter case, the writer is probably too close to the emotions to know whether they are communicated or not. Both of these types of scripts are, in a word, immature.

2. Lack of unity. Most scripts from inexperienced writers fail to develop the story ideas into a unity of character, theme and story. In a competitive professional script, characters are expressed through actions that do all of the following at the same time: reveal deeper aspects of the character; advance the story in a necessary manner (e.g. without this action, the story would have unfolded very differently), and force the character and/or the audience to explore the theme.

3. Lack of compression. This is closely related to unity. Movies heavily compress experiences so each moment is rich and carries great meaning for the audience. In a marketable script, each moment must carry a great deal of weight – emotionally, thematically and from the standpoint of advancing the story. Inexperienced writers often settle for one or none of these – including moments that do little other than logically move the story forward. Scenes function at a mechanical level only.

4. Technical deficiencies. Inexperienced writers often have yet to master the technical aspects of a screenplay, including illogical scenes that fail to drive one another, confusing or boring action descriptions, incomprehensible story points and errors in spelling, usage, and grammar.

5. Poor Structure. I am not one to believe that there is a perfect story structure. To me, each story suggests its own structure, whether it be in acts, sequences or otherwise. However, a story must have a real and compelling structure. The story line must progress and build in intensity; the pressures on the main character or characters must increase in a meaningful way (not just from a plot standpoint, but thematically as well), there must be a few surprises along the way and the story must resolve in an authentic and engaging manner. Most scripts from inexperienced writers fail on this basic level.

6. Clichés. See this.

And, of course…

7. Dialogue. (As per above.)

That’s my top seven (at least, as I think about it now). None of them is an insurmountable problem for an emerging writer and most writers have to work through most of them in the beginning (and always). Don’t get discouraged. Just do the work….

Maybe I should just shut down this blog and make it a permanent pointer to The Artful Writer. Here’s another post from the guys that is a must read. And read the entire thread. (Hint: Not only real story talk from Craig Mazin, but Ted Elliott checks in with his brand of amazing insight.)

Artful Writer has a raging debate about whether screenwriting can be taught. Answer: It can be.

I’m writing a movie musical and am using sort of a jury-rigged version of the standard stage musical format: songs stand on their own as one uninterrupted stream of lyrics. Is there a better way to do this, to include action? A standard way for films? I can’t find online versions of scripts for films with musical numbers in them (except Moulin Rouge, which seemed like a bad scenario, very cutty).
Any advice?
thanks!
Erik from Seattle

I have no experience writing musicals. However, after making a number of inquiries, I have concluded that there is probably no longer a standard format for musicals. I received two important suggestions which may help:

1. Since the thirties, songs in movie musicals have not been uninterrupted events. Rather, the songs themselves advance the action of the story. As such, it is unlikely that the songs will be represented in the script by an uninterrupted block of lyrics. You will likely have action interwoven with the songs.

2. Some of the animated musicals (e.g. Lion King or The Little Mermaid) might be written in an acceptable format. I could not find any of them downloadable on line, but you might check with script companies like Script City to see if you can order a hard copy.

If someone reading this has more experience in this area, help….

This is a picky technical script question I just can’t seem to resolve on my own.

When writing with the reader in mind, suppose you have the early appearance of a character who must remain a mystery to the viewing audience, until later. Do you use the actual character name of the character at that point in the script, thereby spoiling it for the reader?

For instance, in Dickens Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley shows up in Act I, but suppose his identity was to remain unclear to the audience until he made a return in Act III, Would the character in Act I be something like GHOST, to be cleared up later? And once it is known by all who he is, would we continue with GHOST or transition to MARLEY or GHOST/MARLEY or handle it some other way ?

Bryan from USA

This is a common question to which there is no good answer. There is no hard and fast rule other than this: DO NOT CONFUSE YOUR READER. Anything you do which confuses the reader is a bad thing and readers are easily confused. They are usually under a great deal of pressure to push through your script. If they have to stop and go back to understand something, you have already lost the battle.

Given that one golden rule, you are already damned by the mere existence of this character. Nevertheless, if it is important to your story, you need to pick one of the less-than-perfect solutions and use it. You are probably better to transition to GHOST/MARLEY, but even then, you may lose the readers later when they see only MARLEY. If MARLEY is the only ghost, you might even continue to call him GHOST even once his name is revealed. After all, he is still a ghost.

Very experienced screenwriter John August answered a similar question on his blog not too long ago. It may be helpful.