A good portion of you Scriptshadow readers are intermediates. You’ve been at this for over five years. You’ve gotten a good handle on the craft. You understand many of the screenwriting pitfalls and know how to actively navigate them. And yet, here you are. Still in this frustrating nomenclature of unpaid unknown screenwriters.
And you’re sick of it.
We’re all sick of it.
So what’s keeping you from making that leap from intermediate to pro?
Before we can answer that, let’s talk about what “Intermediate” means. I consider an intermediate screenwriter to be someone who’s written more than five screenplays and who has a solid understanding of the fundamentals.
They understand the 3-act structure. They understand basic page-marks to hit (i.e. the first act should end around page 25). They understand how to build flaws into characters and how to arc them. They understand nuances like how long a scene should be. They no longer make beginner mistakes with dialogue, such as being too-on-the-nose, too over-the-top, or making characters say things that people would never say in real life.
They’ve outgrown that phase where they believe anything that’s happened to them in their life is worthy of being turned into a screenplay and are, therefore, more discerning about the concepts they consider for a script. And they have an overall theme to their story in mind – or at least an idea that they’re trying to get across (i.e. the destructive nature of greed).
The thing about being an intermediate is that you can write a solid script. And that’s commendable. Because the majority of amateur scripts that I read aren’t good. The problem, though, with a solid script, is that it doesn’t leave an impression on the reader. The reader appreciates the knowledge of the craftsman who has written the script. But they never cross that magical threshold whereby they now see the characters as real people encountering real situations. And if a reader never feels an emotional connection to a script, they’re never going to recommend it to anyone. And therefore, nothing’s ever going to come of it.
Which leads us to – HOW DO WE GRADUATE FROM INTERMEDIATE TO PRO?
To be fair, every writer’s situation is different because we’re all better at some things than others. So the path for one screenwriter could be completely different from another screenwriter. However, there are some common themes in the writers who are stuck at that intermediate level. Let’s go over the most common issues.
I’d say that one of the top, if not the top, reason, someone is stuck at the intermediate level, is because of concept choice. They are routinely choosing concepts that don’t get people excited. This works against you in a couple of ways. The first is that less people are going to request your script. Which means less reads. Which means less potential for a “yes.” The second is that even if they do read your script and like it, you’ve given them an easy reason to say no, which is that the concept isn’t powerful enough to make it up that steep Hollywood incline that every project must trek in order to get made. So it’s easy for people to not start that trek in the first place.
A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a script that had just sold called, “Classified,” which was “Die Hard meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It was the ultimate high concept. And now it’s being turned into a big movie. Do I think the writers who wrote Classified are that much better than the intermediates I see on this site? No. They might have a slightly better understanding of structure and character due to being in the game a little longer. But these guys are not obviously better screenwriters than everyone here.
However, they understand the value of a big concept. Actually, I shouldn’t use the phrase “big concept.” Because I’m not saying you need to write a 150 million dollar movie to get noticed. “Splashy” concept is probably better. A concept that feels like a fun interesting idea. Don’t Breathe would fall into this category. Get Out. Knives Out. Yesterday.
A splashy concept gets more read requests. People can envision it as a movie so it’s easier to push up the chain of command in Hollywood. It just makes everything easier and, therefore, more likely to get you out of that intermediate level.
If you don’t like splashy concepts, you have to AT LEAST give us a marketable concept. For example, a true World War 2 story. Hollywood can look at that genre and say, “We’ve made successful movies in this genre for over 70 years,” and therefore take your script seriously. Meanwhile, if you’re pushing your coming-of-age script at the same people, they’re going to look at you cross-eyed. That’s just not going to get anybody’s motor revving.
Next we have INVISIBILITY.
No, I’m not asking you to acquire superpowers. Though, if you do, make sure to write about it. I’m talking about one’s ability to apply all the screenwriting tools to a screenplay INVISIBLY. What often happens in the beginner, and even intermediate phase, is you learn about all these screenwriting tools you’re supposed to apply in a script. For example: start a scene late, leave a scene early. Or, more broadly speaking, how to give a character a flaw.
Because you’re learning this stuff, you apply it in a clunky manner. So while you’re technically doing everything right, the reader can see the gears and pulleys moving to make your story go. The most obvious example of this is exposition. When we first start writing exposition, it’s in big shining lights and way over-the-top. “But Barry, the only way we can defeat the monster is if Jeff wields the Rylok Sword, and that sword is in the Forlorn Dimension.” “Then we have to get to the Forlorn Dimension?” “But how?” “We first must use the Zeezuldorf Mirror to cross over and then…”
Over time, we learn how to distill exposition down to its essence so there isn’t too much to it. We learn tricks to hide it. We learn ways for our characters to talk about it that don’t sound like exposition (using humor to distract them, for example). In the end, our exposition becomes invisible.
In order to move up to professional writing, you need to accomplish this ‘invisibility power’ across the board. You need to introduce your character flaws in a way that doesn’t sound like, “HERE’S MY MAIN CHARACTER’S CHARACTER FLAW EVERYONE!” Same thing with your act breaks and your plot reveals and your dialogue. You keep making adjustments to all of these things until they no longer feel like writing, but rather like we’re reading about something that really happened. You’ve mastered suspension of disbelief.
Another way to make the leap to pro is to focus more on your voice. As I’ve talked about before on the site, an argument can be made that we’re either born with voice or we aren’t. So it’s hard to manufacture voice. Which I agree with.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t lean into what you’re good at. Much of “voice” has to do with your specific sense of humor. So you want to pick concepts that allow you to use your unique sense of humor as much as possible. Look at John Hughes, one of the Mt. Rushmore faces of “unique voices” in screenwriting. Imagine if Hughes was determined to break into the business as an action writer. He was writing movies like John Wick or San Andreas. Do you think he would’ve succeeded?
Probably not.
Because he was too far away from the voice he was most comfortable writing in. Maybe that’s what’s going on with you. You’re choosing these script ideas that aren’t allowing your voice to shine. And if you just picked concepts in subject matters that you were confident in and could have fun with, you’d excel at a much faster rate.
Next up we have dialogue. Dialogue is definitely something that can hold intermediates back from getting to the big leagues. What I’ve found is that it’s not that intermediate dialogue is bad. It’s fine. And that’s the problem. Is it’s fine. It’s never memorable. It never jumps off the page. You never get those characters having that really fun conversation, like you see so often in, say, a Tarantino script.
Basically you need to figure out how to make your dialogue BIGGER. How to give it more impact. Most of the time, your problem is that you’re using your characters to convey information in order to move the plot forward. So your dialogue is technically doing what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more.
One of the easiest ways to improve this is to add DIALOGUE-FRIENDLY CHARACTERS. Because when you do that, you don’t have to TRY to write good dialogue. The characters are going to write it for you. Give me a Jack Sparrow. A Louis Bloom. A Peter Parker. A Tallahassee. A Waymond Wang (Everything Everywhere All At Once). Those characters are going to upgrade your dialogue IMMEDIATELY.
Beyond that, try and improve your “dialogue effort.” Ask yourself, “Is this the most interesting way for my character to say this line?” There’s a clear difference in dialogue effort between, “That didn’t go well,” and “That was about as choreographed as a dog getting f@%$ed on roller skates” (Succession). Not that every line needs to be a show-stopper but, with a little effort, you can always make a line more impactful.
A few more to go. The next thing that holds a lot of intermediates back is not taking chances. Learning the laws of screenwriting is kind of like being forced to type all your scripts in golden handcuffs. You’re always going to write something that’s solid. But you’re never going to write something that’s exciting.
The whole goal of learning the rules of screenwriting is to throw them away. Let me be clear about that cause I know it sounds confusing. If you try to break rules before you understand them, you’re going to write big ugly messy screenplays. It’s funny because these writers always think they’re revolutionizing screenwriting when, in reality, the only thing they’re revolutionizing is the need for stronger over-the-counter headache medication for having to endure the abominations they call screenplays.
You need to learn the rules first because once you do, you can start making conscious choices about which of them to break so that your script stands out. The most famous version of this is Psycho. Our main character is killed off 45 minutes into the story, and we then follow the villain. Another good example of breaking the rules is From Dusk Til Dawn. The genre changes midway through the movie.
There are other ways to take risks as well. I remember when I first read the Gravity script and realized we were following this person stranded in space in real-time as they tried to get back to earth. I just thought, “this setup is brilliant.” I hadn’t seen it before. But it *was* a risk. It didn’t even make sense according to scientists on the internet. But the concept was so fun it didn’t matter.
The idea here is to move away from writing predictable rule-following screenplays where the reader is 30 pages ahead of you. You got to take risks somewhere. In the structure, in the concept, in the characters. You gotta try something that’s a little scary. I remember Michael R. Perry telling me that he was terrified when he wrote The Voices because it was so risky and so different from every other script he’d written up to that point. But it became one of the hottest scripts in town and lead to him getting a ton of jobs.
Second to last, write things that you’re an authority on. What separates a lot of screenplays is specificity. Let’s say that ten writers, all equivalent in skill, write a script about the war in Afghanistan. But only one of those writers was a soldier on the ground in Afghanistan. That writer is going to be able to give detail and context to what happened that none of the other writers can touch. Readers can feel that – when there’s authenticity to a story. So it’s a huge advantage when you can write about something so specifically.
For example, let’s say you were a blackjack dealer in Vegas for five years. You’re going to have insight into the way that blackjack and Vegas casinos operate that separates you from 99.9% of the rest of the world. That’s a huge advantage. So come up with a really cool movie idea about being a dealer. Cause you can tell that story with a level of specificity that is going to make it authentic. And authenticity is VERY hard to find in the screenplays I read.
Now, if you’ve done all of this stuff already, and you’re still struggling to move from intermediate to pro, there may be one final barrier you’re not addressing. Which is HUSTLE. It may simply be that you aren’t hustling hard enough. I know a lot of writers have trouble with this part of the business. But let me remind you that hustling has never been as easy as it is now. When I started out? I actually had to physically go to agencies and ask them to read my scripts.
Between managers and agents and contests and screenwriting sites like this one, it’s easier than ever to get your scripts out there in front of peoples’ eyes. So do it! I know it sucks. But all of this eventually comes down to a numbers game. The more people who read your script, the bigger the chance that you’re going to get that “yes.” So get your hustle on and make something happen. Cause this isn’t a ‘waiting around’ game. Just like the heroes in your screenplays, you need to take the initiative and be active.
So do it!
Happy weekend everyone. Thor Love and Thunder Monday. :)
