When you start out as a screenwriter, it’s a bit like being dropped into the middle of the Atlantic on a life boat. You have a vague sense of how to survive for the time being, but you have no idea how you’re going to get to shore.
When I started screenwriting, I remember spending an endless amount of time on things that I would find out, many years later, weren’t nearly as important as I thought they were. If only I could go back and communicate with that young man, I could’ve opened up 15 hours a week for him. 15 hours that could’ve been used for, you know, having a life.
Luckily, I’m going to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did. Here are 10 things that you need to stop obsessing over.
1) Agents – While agents will be important later on in your journey, they’re not important now. An agent won’t be able to do anything with a beginner’s script. They won’t even be able to do anything with an intermediate script. Agents are mainly built to manage the career of writers who have one. You don’t have one yet. Focus on getting better. Enter contests. Try to get your script reviewed here. Get a consultant who can tell you where you need to get better. Self-publish a book. Write and direct your own short. When you’re ready, the agent will come. I promise you that.
2) Description – I used to spend hours – fucking HOURS – trying to get one descriptive paragraph just right. I got news for you. Readers don’t care about poetic description. They just want a clear sense of what’s going on in the scene. I have yet to see a script sell “because it had great description.” All that matters is that you have a compelling story unfolding. So focus on that.
3) Flashy writing – Damn you Shane Black. Anybody who got into the game in the 90s knows how Black’s flashy writing inspired countless screenwriters to try and break in with a coked up self-referential writing style. Who cares about story when you’re writing lines like, “Joe shoots his gun like he’s fucking your wife, a one man wrecking crew who’s so cool he’s probably reading this script right now while taking a shit.” No. Just no. Flashy writing is the essence of screenwriting insecurity. You’re scared your story and characters aren’t enough, so you try to distract everyone with a bunch of pixellated fireworks. Every once in awhile a writer comes along who makes this style work for his script, but usually it’s just a prelude to screenwriting embarrassment.
4) Action, action, and more action – I used to think that whenever your script was getting slow, you could add an action scene and immediately you’d have the reader’s rapt attention. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. What keeps readers interested are compelling characters that we care about and want to root for. If you do that, you don’t need a single action scene to keep the reader invested.
5) If you have a great concept, you can phone the execution in – Pay attention because this one runs a little deeper than you think. I don’t believe any writer purposefully phones a script in. However, when you have a great idea, you don’t hold yourself to the same standards as you do when you have an average idea. I used to write these high concept scripts that ended up being so bad because I didn’t put enough into the execution. I always went back to, “Well, I don’t have to be perfect because they’re going to love this idea so much.” A good concept is only a starting point. It gets you in the party. But it’s still going to take some work to get that beautiful girl’s number. The name of this game is, and will always be, keep the reader’s interest from page 1 to page 110. They may jump into your script excited as shit. But if you’re half-assing it, they could be bored out of their mind as early as page 10.
6) Outlining is for idiots – I’d say 90% of new screenwriters believe this. I’d also say 90% of working screenwriters outline. You tell me which segment has it figured out. The number one reason you run out of screenplay by page 50, 60, or 70, is that you don’t outline. Like it or not, screenwriting is the most mathematical of all the long-form writing mediums. A script is 110 pages long and 3 acts, which means you have to space things out proportionately to hit the requisite plot points at the right time. Outlining is the most effective way of doing this.
7) Dialogue is the most important thing about screenwriting – Dialogue is just the easiest thing to discuss, laud, or criticize. So it gets the most mainstream attention of all the screenwriting elements. That’s not to say dialogue isn’t important. But the underlining levers and pullys that are moving your story or your scene along are way more essential to writing something good. Take the Big Kahuna Burger scene in Pulp Fiction. Wonderful dialogue. But the dialogue wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t have the suspense of whether they were going to kill this guy or not. If similar dialogue would’ve been used while they all sat around and enjoyed playing a video game, nobody would be talking about how great the dialogue was because they’d be bored by the scene.
8) Your main character has to have a flaw – I thought this for so long. Why shouldn’t I have? It was taught in all the screenwriting books. The truth is, a flaw is just one thing you can add to a character to give them dimension. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing. As long as your hero has some kind of unresolved inner conflict – like not being able to get over the death of someone (Manchester by the Sea), or they’re consumed by a vice (Flight) – that may be enough to create a compelling hero. I will say that SOMETHING should be going on underneath the surface of your hero if you want to make them compelling. But a fatal flaw is not the only option.
9) Sadness is the best way to extract emotion from the reader – I always thought if a character was sad or depressed, that the audience would feel the same way. It doesn’t work like that though. With enough sadness and depression, the reader gets impatient, eventually cracking: “For the love of God! We get it! They’re sad!!!” The best way to produce emotion is to take the reader on a ride. Bring them up (character experiences a high) then bring them down (characters experiences a low). Make them laugh. Then make them cry. Pixar is wonderful at this, which is why their screenplays are so well liked. A screenplay should work as an emotional rollercoaster.
10) Break lots of rules cause Hollywood’s movies suck – Everyone who’s at least 5 scripts deep in their journey knows what I’m talking about. Everyone’s written that 150 page behemoth, INSISTING that every page is necessary. Everyone has ignored the 3 act structure or defied every convention they could locate. If Hollywood makes movies like 9 Lives and Paul Blart, they argue, then there’s obviously a way to do it better. And you (the screenwriter who’s never written a script before) knows the secret sauce. Unfortunately, because you don’t even understand why these rules are in place, all you’re breaking is the reader’s trust. They see that you have no plan, no concept of how to write properly, and they immediately know (I’m talking within 5 pages) that your script will be terrible. Do not break any rule until you understand why it’s there in the first place. Otherwise you’re just flying a big flag over your head that reads: “BEGINNER SCREENWRITER HERE!”
