As someone who reads a lot of scripts – scripts of every level – I’m lucky enough to be one of the few people who will read a top level professional screenplay and then, just a few hours later, a script from a brand-new writer.
This allows me to study screenwriting from a unique perspective, as it allows me to see, almost in real time, the differences between pro level work and beginner level work.
I was doing a lot of that this week. Reading beginner scripts then professional scripts then beginner scripts again. And I kept encountering the same mistake over and over by the beginners. Which is that they don’t exhibit any quality control over their ideas.
They instead have something I call “I Can Do It Too” Syndrome.
“I Can Do It Too” Syndrome is an evil infectious virus that most beginners don’t realize they’re sick with. It’s the act of liking something from other movies so much that they want to show that they can do it too.
As I’ve stated before, almost every screenwriter’s motivation, whether they’re aware of it or not, is to rewrite the movies they fell in love with as kids and young adults. If they liked Star Wars, they want to write their big space opera epic. If they liked Die Hard, they want to write that big action thriller with a fun one-liner spitting protagonist. If they liked Step-Brothers, they’re determined to write a fun goofy two-hander comedy.
While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I can assure you that this syndrome is KILLING YOUR SCREENWRITING GAINS.
Because whether you realize it or not, every person who reads your script is comparing it to the movie you’re inspired by. And guess what? Your script is losing. You’re never going to write a similar movie to a classic movie and beat it. You’re never going to write a space epic better than Star Wars. You’re never going to write a movie about a guy trapped in a military base taken over by bad guys where he has to save his wife that’s better than Die Hard.
You are only going to fall short in the eyes of the readers. They’re going to read your script and whether they say it to your face or not, they’re thinking, “This is just a not-as-good ripoff of [whatever your favorite movie is].”
But for some strange reason – and I put myself in this category when I was starting out too – beginner writers are unable to see the similarities between their script and the movie they’re copying. To them, that movie was an *inspiration* for their script. It doesn’t matter that the main character is basically the same. It doesn’t matter that 75% of the set pieces are similar. It doesn’t matter that a lot of similar dialogue lines are used or that a lot of supporting characters seem eerily similar to that favorite movie of theirs. In their minds, it’s different *BECAUSE THEY WROTE IT*.
And that’s the big mistake. Assuming that because the story is coming from their fingertips as opposed to someone else’s, it can’t be mistaken for any other movie. The mere fact that they wrote it is what makes it unique.
But that’s not reality.
Readers have a very broad filter for what they consider “familiar.” They think way more scripts are familiar than different. That’s because there have been a lot of great movies over the years. So they’re always thinking, “This feels too much like The Exorcist.” “This feels too much like The 40 Year Old Virgin.” “This feels too much like The Hunger Games.”
I can assure you, one of the most common feelings a reader has is, “This script is just like [so and so].” And beginners are the most susceptible to this because they don’t yet know it’s a common problem and therefore don’t know to look out for it. Again, they think that the mere fact that they’re writing the movie means it will automatically be unique no matter what.
So, if you want to gradate into the intermediate level of screenwriting, one of the easiest ways to do so is to squash this mistake and never make it again. Cause if you’re writing original ideas with original execution, you’re ahead of 90% of the people out there.
How do you achieve this?
With an Idea Bouncer.
Your screenwriting brain is a club. Just like any other club, you need to be careful about who you let inside. That’s the bouncer’s job. He’s there to only let original ideas into your club. He has to screen every single idea that arrives and ask, “Is this original enough to come inside?”
You’re going to do this on two fronts. The first is the more important front – the concept itself. The good news is, if this is a strong highly original movie idea, it wards off a ton of potential problems down the line. An original movie idea can withstand a solid chunk of cliched choices. On the downside, if you let a bad movie idea into your club, there’s virtually no way to save the night.
The other front is all the individual creative choices within your script that need to populate the club (aka, your screenplay). This includes the main character. The supplemental characters. The plot developments. The setting. The tone. The scene choices. The set pieces. Every one of these choices must line up in front of the club and your bouncer needs to determine if they’re original enough to come inside.
The more unoriginal (or “familiar) ideas that get past your bouncer, the lower the probability that your script will feel unique, even if you have a unique concept. Because if you’re writing a bunch of scenes that I read all the time, that will neutralize your strong concept.
I can’t emphasize enough how big of a problem this is in screenwriting. I suppose I understand why new screenwriters make this mistake. You can’t prevent a mistake that you haven’t yet learned is a mistake. However, I cannot, under any circumstances, accept non-beginner screenwriters making this mistake. If you’ve written more than five scripts and you haven’t even hired an idea bouncer for your club yet, that’s unacceptable.
I’m bringing this up because I read tons of screenplays and most of them are boring due to the fact that the writer isn’t even trying to be original. They’re just repurposing their favorite movies and their favorite scenes under a new title and a slightly different story and thinking that’s going to do it. But these scripts are the easiest ones to dismiss because they’re uninspiring and forgettable.
Now, I realize this is an imperfect argument. Cause you can bring up The Equalizer and John Wick and say, “Those movies sure seemed familiar, Carson.” Yes, it’s true. They do.
But those movies are outliers. First off, The Equalizer doesn’t count cause that movie was being made in-house and hired a writer to do what they wanted. It wasn’t a spec. And John Wick was destined to be a straight-to-VOD-cemetery crap-fest until the directors repurposed it into a slick action flick with game-changing fight choreography.
Let’s not forget that everyone in town not only passed on the John Wick script, they laughed at it. And while that may sound like they were the ones who made the mistake, it’s pretty hard to look at that script before the film and think, “Yup, this is going to be a billion dollar franchise.”
Point being, you can’t use the most successful outliers in history as an excuse for why your script gets to be cliched. You’re operating as a one-man or one-woman business and that business is your screenplay. It’s got to speak for itself. Which means your idea bouncer has to be the most discerning in the business. He’s got to be the bouncer who’s looking at that 9 out of 10 but not letting her in because her outfit looks like it was cobbled together at the Salvation Army.
I want you guys to take this seriously. I want your bouncer to have an extremely high bar. I want you to give him a name. I want you to share that name in the comments. I want you to give him a backstory. You can share that too if you want. Heck, I want you to give him an accent and tell me which actor is going to play him in his biopic. I want him to feel as real as yourself. Because he’s got one of the most important jobs in the world – he’s quality control over your ideas. He needs to be hard on those ideas because I can guarantee you, we, the reader, are going to be a thousand times harder on them than him.
Now go write something original and great.
