We’re going to do something a little different in today’s article. We’re going to talk about the actual PRESENTATION of a screenplay. The way it’s written, the way it looks to a reader on the page. While not as important as story, the choices in how one presents his work can have a big influence on how the reader interprets it. The theme you’ll find here is that while some approaches are preferable to others, every writing choice you make should be made for one reason: it’s the best way to tell the story at that particular moment. With that said, here are some common issues I run into when I read scripts.

CLIPPED WRITING

Clipped writing is something I see a fair amount of.  The idea behind this is that traditional writing is too long-winded for screenplays, which require a more “to the point” approach.   The problem is, some people have taken this so far that it’s unclear what’s being said.  After awhile, the reader starts to feel like they’re reading an illiterate robot.  For that reason, this style probably shouldn’t be used outside of special situations.  Maybe, for example, a character wakes up at the beginning of the script and is confused. So the confused stutter-pattern of clipped writing helps convey the character’s confusion.  There are also times when it works in action sequences.  But for the most part, try to write full sentences.

BOLDED SLUGS (or BOLDED UNDERLINED SLUGS)

Bolded slugs (or bolded underline slugs) have become in fashion lately.  And to a certain extent, they make sense, as they visually signify a new location or scene, which can be helpful to the reader.  Where bolded slugs get annoying is when there are a lot of short scenes or the writer is a slug-lover, so that four times a page, we’re stuck staring at big chunky ugly disruptive lines of text.  My suggestion would be this.  If you write a lot of long scenes, like, say, Tarantino, you can use bolded slugs.  But if you’re constantly jumping from one place to the next, step away from the bold.  It’ll shift the reader’s attention away from what really matters, which is the action and the dialogue.

THE ‘GET INSIDE THE CHARACTER’S HEAD’ ACTION LINE

Using your description to tell us what a character is thinking is considered shoddy writing.  However, I do see it quite a bit (there was a decent amount of it in “The Fault In Our Stars.”).  Where it becomes problematic is when a writer gets carried away with it and starts using it for things we already know.  As you can see above, we can tell from the dialogue that Miss Scriptshadow doesn’t want to see X-Men, so using description to tell the reader afterwards feels like overkill.  If you want to make sure the reader gets the point, there are other options, like using an action.  So you might cut to Miss Scriptshadow’s computer, see that she’s looking at a trailer for “The Other Woman,” longingly, then click it closed with a sigh.  I’m telling you: Only use this device sparingly.  It can get annoying quickly.

LOVE OF ADVERBS

Forget the dialogue here.  Look at the action text.  Carson “walks aggressively.”  He “angrily opens it.”  Adverbs make your writing look weak and indecisive.  Instead, try to find a verb that says the same thing.  You’ll notice that your sentence all of a sudden looks manly and strong!  “Carson barges towards the fridge.”  “He whips it open.”  Just make sure that you have the right verb for the action.  Don’t put in a verb that doesn’t fit just to avoid the adverb. In other words, don’t say Carson “dances over to the fridge” just because I said you had to verb it.

SIMPLIFY YOUR WRITING WHENEVER POSSIBLE

Readers don’t want to have to work for basic information.  Screenwriting should be simple and to the point (most novelists will actually tell you the same thing).  The above is a really clunky sentence, the kind a man could get lost in and never come back.  If I had to read a whole script of that, I’d swallow a box of brads and die by internal bleeding first.  To simplify this, focus on two things.  First, figure out how to turn useless segments into actions, then figure out what’s redundant or isn’t needed.  For example, there’s no need to say “wound up,” since we already know he’s wound up and it interrupts the flow of the sentence anyway.  So we’ll drop that.  “Clicking and clacking” does add some sound to the scene, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.  “Disastrously fighting this war-like mess with an ever-deepening desperation” is redundant.  If we really want to convey Carson’s anger, we can add an action, like him shouting in frustration at the end.  So the new simpler text would look like this:

I’m not saying you should NEVER offer detail in your writing.  You just only do it when it’s important.  Like if a detective walks into a crime scene where very specific things will be important to know later on – then go for it – describe away.  But a guy looking for munchables?  We don’t need to get into any detail with that, unless you’ve got some amazing jokes you can weave into his search (even then, it’s probably not worth it – simplicity should usually win out).

SUBSEQUENT ACTION LINES (NO SPACES IN BETWEEN)

While I can’t speak for everybody, this practice drives me CRAAAA-ZY.  I don’t know who came up with it, but the sooner it goes away, the better.  First of all, you want to be weary of any writing device that goes against what readers are used to unless you’re positive it makes the script better.  The above looks so odd to a reader, they’ll probably stop for a second and wonder if it’s a formatting error before moving on.  I’m not even sure of this device’s intention.  I just know that it looks and feels odd.

THE BEAT SHOULD NOT GO ON

There was a time and place for “beat” when the screenplay was a technical blueprint.  But these days, it’s more about making the screenplay readable.  Anything that breaks the suspension of disbelief is our enemy.  So when you say “beat,” what does that mean?  It means fake-ish artificial term that has no organic reason to be in your story.  Whenever you can, replace “beat” with something more natural so as not to draw attention to its technical-ness.  For example, I’d probably write this instead…

THE DREADED ‘WALL OF TEXT’

Okay, this above scene is kind of funny, but that’s not what we’re looking at.  When a reader turns the page, they immediately see a general snapshot of said page.  The last thing they want to see during this moment is a “WALL OF TEXT.” At least three paragraphs with five lines or more.  At least one character who talks forever (or two characters who exchange 6-7 line chunks of dialogue each time they speak).  There’s no doubt that there will be times in your script where you’ll need to write a lot.  Characters do occasionally have monologues (even those should be rare though).

But if there are a lot of pages that look like this?  With big huge paragraphs and character exchanges where both characters are taking forever to say shit?  The reader has given up on you.  The correct way to write is to rarely go over 3 lines per paragraph, and your characters shouldn’t exchange more than 2-3 lines at a time (this will differ depending on character and scene, but it’s an average to keep in mind).  Also, it should be noted that the WORST place this can happen is on your first page.  I see a LOT of amateur writers open with that wall of text and I just know the script is going to be bad. :(

IN SUMMARY
A good reader – and I’m talking about the reader who you’ll eventually have to get past to sell your script – takes his reading job just as seriously as you take your writing job.  So he’s going to have his set of reading quirks, things he can’t stand.  The last thing you want is to trigger any of those annoyances, because then the reader is judging you on something other than what they should be – the story.  Like that wall of text.  Again, when I see that, I know it’s over.  I know it’s over right away.  Sure, there are like 2 exceptions in the last 10 years of scripts overcoming this, but for the most part, readers know it’s a disaster.  Just remember that your job is to make things as easy as humanly possible for the reader.  You want their read to be effortless.  So don’t do anything weird or annoying unless you’re absolutely sure it makes the reading experience and your story better.

What about you guys?  What are some things that drive you nuts when you read?

 

Genre: Romance/Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) A cancer-stricken teenager falls in love with a young man who inspires her to seek answers about a mystery she’s been dying to figure out.
About: You gotta give it to Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. These guys have found their niche, and they’re pretty darn good at it. That’s really all you can ask for as a professional screenwriter, to be the ‘go-to’ guys in a particular genre. Starting with 500 Days of Summer, about the realities of relationships, they moved to The Spectacular Now, which was about alcoholism, then this, which is about cancer, and next will be a another high school movie, about suicide. Young demo fare that has a little extra kick to it. And “Stars” looks like it’s going to be their biggest hit to date. As I noted in my newsletter, the book the script is based on has over 15,000 reviews on Amazon. The Holy Bible has 11,000 reviews. Hallelujah, John Green.
Writers: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by John Green)
Details: 115 pages (second draft – June 11, 2012)

How this freaking screenplay got me, I have no idea. I went into this fully expecting to hate it. Cancer never works in movie form. It just doesn’t. It’s too depressing. I think that’s why it took people so long to jump on the Breaking Bad bandwagon. They had to hear from at least 5 people that it was an awesome show before they finally, begrudgingly said, “Okay! I’ll watch your freaking cancer show!”

The number of cancer scripts that are written despite this is staggeringly high. People like to write about cancer! There were like 8 Black List scripts covering the C word last year. I think it’s because writers assume their script is “deep” if it’s about cancer. Their script is going to be taken seriously because it’s, like, tackling serious stuff ‘n shit.

This always backfires though. That’s because cancer is, almost by definition, melodramatic. And nearly every one of these movies hits a tired formula: A guy hates his life, meets a cancer chick. She shows him how to live every day to its fullest. Then the cancer hits her hard. Man Cry. Then she dies. But it’s okay because he’s learned something from her. Ahhh! Kill me now (no pun intended). That’s what I thought I was up for here.

But damn you, novelist John Green. You got me. You got me good.

16 year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster has had cancer since she was 13. Luckily, one of the 1 in a million experimental drugs worked on her and is currently keeping her cancer at bay. The problem is, the cancer has decimated her lungs and she requires oxygen tanks wherever she goes or else she faints.

Hazel has a pretty good attitude about the whole thing, but it isn’t until she meets Augustus that she realizes how much better it can be. Augustus comes to a cancer support group to support his buddy Isaac, and that’s where he sees Hazel and instantly falls in love with her.

Augustus is no stranger to this ugly disease though. He once had cancer himself and they ended up having to chop his leg off in the process. Now if you’re anything like me, you’re looking at this and going, “Who the f*ck doesn’t have cancer in this story? Does the dog have cancer?  Does the goldfish have cancer?” Guys, I don’t know how they did it. But despite all the coincidences, they somehow make all of this feel natural. And while it was never specifically stated that the goldfish didn’t have cancer, I’m pretty sure he’s cancer-free.

After getting to know each other, Hazel and Gus get onto the topic of their favorite books. Whereas Augustus, being a 17 year old guy, loves the adapted novella of his favorite video game, Hazel likes some obscure book about a girl dying with cancer. Augustus rolls his eyes at this. Really?? But she insists it’s good. And when he reads it, he agrees, except for the ending, which ends in mid-sentence! Since it’s from the point of view of the girl, it ends when her life ends.

He’s furious and desperate to know what happened to all the other characters. She says it’s pointless. She’s written to the author numerous times but he lives in Amsterdam and is a recluse. Augustus is one determined dude though, and somehow gets through to the guy. When the author invites them to his home, Hazel is floating on air. She gets to go to another country with a guy she’s falling in love with AND get the answers to her favorite novel of all time from the author himself!

However, as you might expect, the trip to Amsterdam doesn’t go as planned, and it gets even worse when they come back. Something truly shocking throws Hazel’s life into disarray. And it’s not that her cancer’s back. It’s much worse.

(huge spoilers to follow) When you look at The Fault In Our Stars from the outside, there’s no way it should have worked. It’s a story about two people with cancer falling in love. There are more schlocky melodrama pitfalls in that idea than any other story idea I can come up with. I mean it’s bad enough that ONE person has cancer. But two???

But here’s how John Green and the Neustadter/Weber team got it right. They focus on making these characters “people” first. They strip away the cancer and ask who they are. What they like, what they hate, what they fear, what they dream, their personalities (basically the exact opposite of what Godzilla did with any of its characters).

I think that’s where everybody gets it wrong with cancer stories. They try and define the characters by their cancer, which is not only depressing, but disingenuous. These people had lives before they got diagnosed, and by seeing that, we start to connect with them like we would connect with any character.

Hazel and Augustus are fun. They don’t sit around and discuss how shitty their lives have been. They laugh. They joke around. They enjoy each others’ company.

Also, The Fault In Our Stars did something really clever. They created an actual story here. We have a mystery and a big goal for our characters (get in touch with the author and find out what happened at the end of that book). Sure, we could’ve watched these misfits fall for each other within the confines of a high school that ostracizes them. I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere. But the book goal made this feel bigger. It gave the story a sense of adventure.

I also learned something really powerful while reading this script. When you’re dealing with these really overly-emotional subjects (it doesn’t have to just be cancer – it can be depression, suicide, addiction, whatever), the best way to do it is to make the reader laugh at first. And make them laugh for awhile.

The first half of “Stars” is a lot of fun. And we love that because we go into this expecting the opposite – a lot of “the cancer is back” lines or really depressing trips to the hospital. “Stars” just shows these two characters having fun and falling in love, ingeniously baiting us into a false sense of security.

Then, when we get to the final act, and you DO start bringing out all the heavy-handed stuff, you’ve got us so far wrapped around your finger that it works. These are things (the cancer being back) that would never work if you heavy-handedly dropped them into the first act. They only work once you’ve made us feel good for a really long time.

About the only thing I didn’t love in “The Fault In Our Stars” is when they met Van Houten (the author) in Amsterdam. This is always a tricky screenwriting thing to pull off. You’ve built the whole story up to this meeting. And you can’t just give the characters what they want. You can’t have them walk in there and the author go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened in the novel.” That would be too easy. There’s no conflict in that, no drama.

So I get why Green had the author be a jerk. But for me, it was too much. It wasn’t just the opposite of what we were expecting, it was the EXTREME opposite, and whenever you use extremes in writing, you’re treading on dangerous waters because you risk the reader seeing through the illusion.

With that said, Green redeemed himself with the author’s surprise reappearance at the ending. It’s a testament to how good of a writer he is. Even with the character I hated most, he still arced him, still changed him, allowing me to feel better about how he treated our protagonists earlier.

The Fault In Our Stars is one hell of a miracle. It manages to find the humanity in a story that’s so often oversaturated with drama. The character work here is great. The story is really really good. I did not expect this at all. But this was a really good script.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Undercut dark moments with unexpected humor. This is the best way to write these types of movies. The audience is expecting lots of depressing talk, so you can have fun with that and play with their expectations. At one point, Hazel is in her back yard, on the phone with Augustus, and everything just sort of hits her at once. The doctors won’t let her go to Amsterdam. She’s got another test tomorrow. Her father is depressed. She’s staring out at this swing set that her father made her when she was a little girl, when she didn’t have cancer and there was actual hope in the world. It’s so depressing. So how does Augustus respond to this? Does he go into some deep monologue about the philosophical meaning of life and all that dreck. No. He pauses and then says, “I demand to see this swing set of tears.” He later comes over. The two agree they have to get rid of this depressing ass swing set and sell it on Craigslist. With these movies, you can’t strangle us with insufferable depression. You have to have fun. And this is a great way to do it.

Genre: Action/Adventure
About: The stars aligned for Gareth Edwards, a man who made the micro-budgeted “Monsters” a few years ago to show off his proficiency with special effects. The unscripted film followed a couple into a quarantined jungle where giant monsters lived. Naturally, when Godzilla execs saw what this man could do for 20 grand, they imagined pure movie-going nirvana at 200 million, resulting in the single biggest budget jump for a director in Hollywood history. The writer of Godzilla had his own megawatt rise to fame. Max Borenstein, a Yale alum, wrote and directed his first film back in 2003, called “Swordswallowers and Thin Man.” But it wasn’t until 5 years later that he was heard from again, when he landed on the Black List adapting Kenneth Feinberg’s memoir, “What is Life Worth?” He apparently landed on Legendary’s radar (the producers of Godzilla) writing the 2009 screenplay, Jimi, which chronicled Jimi Hendrix’s life.
Writer: Max Borenstein (story by Dave Callaham)
Details: 123 minutes

Gareth and Bryan

Gareth Edwards is one of the most exciting young directors out there. He’s got a directing street pass for his next five films as far as I’m concerned (I’ll be there opening day no matter what he makes).

What’s not exciting is the script he had to work with for Godzilla. Now, look – I don’t claim to know what it’s like to work on something with 30 chefs in the kitchen. There may be 3 or 4 people in that group tops who’ve actually read a screenplay before. So I get it. Script-by-committee, and an ignorant committee at that. But you’d figure someone with some knowledge of this stuff would’ve stepped in and said, “Hold up a second. This is spinning out of control here.”

Godzilla tries to show us that it’s more than just a monster flick right out of the gate, saturating the opening act with tons of “emotional” scenes. Even with Bryan Cranston acting in them, these scenes fall disastrously short of any emotion whatsoever. They actually exemplify one of the most misunderstood notions in screenwriting: that if you write people crying, then audiences will cry too.

Uhh, no. Except for rare occasions, that’s not how it works at all. Do you laugh when characters onscreen laugh? Of course not. You laugh when the characters find themselves in awkward or difficult situations, and struggle to get out of them. Watch the “answering machine” scene in Swingers, where you laugh uncomfortably for five straight minutes. Is Mikey laughing in that scene? I don’t think so.

So when we see Bryan Cranston’s character crying as his wife gets stuck inside a contaminated bay, do we cry? No. I mean, why would we? WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THESE PEOPLE! We met them three minutes ago. Why would I cry for someone I met three minutes ago?

This is only part of the problem though. The bigger issue is, why are Bryan Cranston and his wife in this movie in the first place??? (spoiler) They add zero value to the story, have less than 2% of an effect on the plot, and don’t even make it through the first act! Why are we spending so much time with people who aren’t even important enough to make it to Act 2????

Okay, breathe Carson. Breeeeathe. I’m sorry but the clumsiness of this script got to me. I mean, the trailers for this movie were awesome. I thought I was going to see a great Godzilla movie. Instead, we endure mistake after mistake that would’ve been spotted in a Screenwriting 101 class.

But I have to remember it wasn’t one writer sitting in a room with total control. It was the director, the producers, the actors, the testers, the actors’ agents, the executives, the toy people. All of these people had an effect on the script in some way. So my real beef is with that committee. But it doesn’t make what I saw any easier.

To give you a little background, here’s Godzilla’s plot: “Bryan Cranston’s Character” is a crazy scientist who works in Japan and is convinced that recent earthquakes aren’t actually earthquakes, but rather a sign that some monsters are living underground. But because he’s a kooky scientist, no one believes him.

He works at a nuclear facility, and one day there’s a meltdown which kills his wife (in a scene so melodramatic Tommy Wiseau, from “The Room,” would’ve chuckled). Cut to 15 years later and Bryan’s son is trying to distance himself from his increasingly erratic father, who’s still convinced that there are monsters under the earth.

Spoiler alert. There ARE monsters under the earth. And Bryan ends up dying when one of these monsters – a giant insect-like thing – emerges. Bryan’s son, a soldier with the U.S. army who now has his own wife and kid, tries to come to peace with never believing his father. But it doesn’t last long since a SECOND monster escapes the underground and the two start wandering about the planet, inadvertently creating destruction in their wake.

So you’re probably saying, why can’t we just blow these things up? Because they actually feed on nuclear energy. They also have an EMP bubble surrounding them wherever they go, shutting down all military equipment that comes close enough. Bryan’s son, essentially, then hitchhikes from one state to another (by boat, plane, car, train) following these beasts, as the writers desperately try and figure out a way to keep him involved in the story.

Eventually, the army realizes that the two giant insect things are trying to mate and they have no way to stop them. Enter Godzilla, whose desire to stop them is explained away in a single line: “He is trying to bring balance.” Trying to bring balance? Why? What does he care if these insects bang or not?  Government needs to stay out of the bedroom.

After that, there’s something about setting up an analog nuclear bomb (that’s different from normal nuclear bombs) to lure all three monsters into the ocean and blow them all up. But before that can happen, Godzilla will try and “bring balance,” lizard style, to these pesky oversized mosquitos. Will he be overmatched, or become the mega-monster we all know him to be?

All dressed up and nothing to do.  

Seriously though, what was the point of the first 20 pages of this story??? (Spoiler) A wife we don’t know is killed, leaving us with a husband who jaunts around for another 15 pages before he’s killed too???? I’ve never seen that before. Giving an emotional “death of a loved one” scene to a character who won’t even be around past page 30? You do that for your hero, not a one-and-done character! It’d be like giving a day player a major love interest.

As far as I can tell, the only necessary piece of information in the first 20 pages was the discovery of strange signals underneath the earth, which is something that literally could’ve been told in 30 seconds. Why not start the film with Bryan Cranston’s kid at his father’s funeral? Afterwards, he goes through his father’s old work, and finds the old recorded signal. This reduces twenty minutes down to five and gets rid of gobs of clunky insignificant nonsense in the process.

If only that were the only problem. What really killed this script was the exposition. There are certain stories that require tons of exposition, and either you figure out a way to minimize it ahead of time, or if it’s a script that requires non-stop explanation all the way through, you don’t write it. Because nobody wants to suffer through a story that’s 80% explanation.

That’s what Godzilla was to me. 80% explaining. And what happens when there’s more explanation than story in a movie?  It feels lifeless. Because it’s never allowed to breathe! The majority of Godzilla’s scenes can be broken down into 5 categories. A) Explaining what these giant animals were. B) Explaining what they were doing (where they were going and why). C) Explaining how they operated (able to use EMP and nuclear energy). D) How the army would react to whatever current thing the monsters were doing. And finally E) How to get Bryan Cranston’s son from territory to territory.

Poor Bryan Cranston’s son. This guy had NOTHING to do but wait for the plot to figure out a way to get him to the next location. “Oh, hey, uhhh. He’s our… last nuclear tech engineer… so that’s why we need him to come with us!” Never have I seen a character so clearly a pawn of the plot rather than a real live human being before. He had no life because nobody wrote him any life. Calling home to the wife doesn’t make us care about someone. Or make them feel real. How about giving this character wants, needs, a flaw, secrets, a backstory (not his dad’s backstory – HIS backstory), a PERSONALITY!. He was so generic it was embarrassing to everyone involved. This is your hero! And he’s the most forgettable thing about the film! Even his dad, who died 100 minutes ago and wasn’t even needed for the story was more memorable.

So you might say, “Yeah, but Carson, the humans aren’t the real stars here. The monsters were.” Except that was a problem too! Godzilla was barely in the movie! This should’ve been called “Giant Insect Nuclear Lovebirds” because it was more about them than Godzilla. Granted, the moments where Godzilla did appear were badass (loved the blue fire), but they weren’t enough. This is supposed to be Godzilla’s movie, but there’s nary a Godzilla sighting.

Again, Gareth is an awesome director. The eye this guy has is insane. Every shot feels iconic. But if he’s going to become a great director, he needs to explore humanity more. He needs to care about his characters as much as he cares about his next shot. Or else he’s going to fall into that trap of making empty blockbusters that are all the rage for 1 week, and then forgotten forever.

Godzilla was a real disappointment. I was hoping for more. ☹

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If every other scene in your script is centered on explaining something, you have too much exposition in your script. You need to step back, figure out what the source of all this exposition is, and find a way to simplify it. If you don’t, your script is going to read like a “How to” manual instead of an entertaining movie.

Something tells me this guy isn’t ready yet.  

Knowing when you’re ready to take that step into the professional world of screenwriting is important. Over time, you will accumulate contacts and relationships in the industry (even if it’s just a friend of a friend of a producer). And the last thing you want to do is burn those contacts by giving them a script that sucks. Every writer I know has done this (I’ve done it several times myself) mainly due to impatience. We want to sell a script NOW NOW NOW. The devastating thing about this mistake is that you usually lose that contact for life. No matter what you do, you can’t change someone’s mind who thinks you’re a shitty writer.

Now I don’t like to use that term (shitty writer). I prefer “writers who aren’t ready yet,” which is the theme of this post. How do you know if you’re ready? Well, we’ve talked about this before, but I wanted to get into a little more detail, since understanding where you’re at in the process is nearly impossible to be objective about. Everyone thinks they’re ready TODAY. And I hope you are! But if you find yourself agreeing to a few of these statements, you may need to spend some more time in the minor leagues before you’re called up. Below are ten signs that you’re not ready for a professional screenwriting career just yet.

1) You’ve never showed your script to anyone – I’m surprised by just how many writers haven’t shown their work to anyone (friends, fellow writers, family). One of the biggest keys to writer improvement is feedback. People knock the development system all the time, but the development system lets the writers know what’s working and what isn’t. You need that help as well.  I guess I understand the fear component here. Writers are terribly insecure people. “What if I’m bad?” they wonder. “What if they tell me my script’s unreadable?” But that’s the wrong way to look at it. Screenwriting should be seen as a continual learning experience where you’re always getting better. The sooner you know what you’re doing wrong, the sooner you can correct it. So send your script to a friend, to another screenwriter, to me. But in order to really move forward with your screenwriting, you have to take that first step.

2) You’ve only written one script – People who only write one script don’t really learn screenwriting. They learn how to write one script. Every script you write is unique and expands your skills and knowledge as a storyteller. Many of the things you learn from successive scripts, you’ll be able to apply back to your earlier scripts, creating a “kill two birds with one stone” scenario. Plus, the more screenplays you have, the more marketable you are as a writer. Every once in awhile, you’ll see an exception to this (Craig in last week’s Amateur Friday), but man are those exceptions rare.

3) Screenwriting is something you do casually – Recently, I met this producer who had an insane work ethic. He was always reading a new book, flying to a new festival, optioning a new script, setting up a new TV show. I was amazed by this and asked him what his secret was. He said that when he first got here, he hung out with a really successful producer who never sat still. And he asked him the same question. The producer pointed out that it’s so competitive in this industry, that unless you are giving 110% at all times, you will be crushed. That’s when he realized that only the strong survived. It’s the same thing with screenwriting. You’re competing against tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of other writers. You have no choice but to outwork them if you’re going to survive. True, not everyone has an infinite amount of time, but if you’re serious about breaking in, you better be using all of your free time to write, read, or study.

4) You’ve entered at least four contests and haven’t placed in any (and by “place,” I mean top 5%) – If you don’t place in a single screenplay competition, you can chalk it up to you and a reader not seeing eye to eye. Four competitions though? That means your writing isn’t up to snuff yet. To add some context, the biggest screenwriting competition in the world, Nicholl, has 7000 entries. 5 of those win, and rarely do any of them go on to sell. That’s less than .1% of the entries. Which aren’t even good enough to compete in the Hollywood market. So if you’re not in the top 5% of a contest, you still have work to do. But don’t fret. Again, think of screenwriting as a constant learning process. Expand your screenwriting knowledge, read more screenplays, watch more movies, then write more scripts. Don’t fret. You WILL continue to get better.

5) You’re driven only by money – Writers who are driven by money tend to write hollow scripts. The reality is, this isn’t the 90s anymore where writers ruled the roost and got a million bucks for a logline. The market has cooled down considerably. Truth be told, most of the writers who give up are the ones who were driven by money and, after writing three Taken or Hangover clones that didn’t sell, convince themselves that the industry is run by nepotism and hightail it back to Oklahoma. The reality is, the people who tend to make it are people who love movies and love telling stories. They are people who want to say something about the world, but say it within the confines of a marketable premise. What I find is that a lot of people come here wanting to sell a million dollar spec, then somewhere along the way, fall in love with the medium and want to learn everything about it. Usually, when they make this mental transition, is when they start to succeed. Do we hope one day to make a living writing? Sure. Would it be nice if the profession helped us buy a house in the hills? Of course. But that shouldn’t be why you’re writing. You should be writing because you can’t think of any other thing you’d rather be doing with your life.

6) You don’t believe – I just did an entire article about this. If you don’t believe in yourself, you are perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy which will result in you eventually giving up. I promise you. In many ways, the key to success in any field is belief, because without it, why would one press on? Sometimes I’ll encounter a writer who bitches about lesser writers having agents or who complains that the industry is rigged. I have to remind them not to focus on that nonsense. It’s all noise and has nothing to do with you. The industry is no different from life. It is what you make of it. If you believe that it’s rigged, you’ll focus on getting screwed. If you work hard, dedicate yourself, continue to create, and are positive and respectful towards others, opportunities will present themselves. I promise you!

7) You’re a comedy writer who hasn’t studied screenwriting extensively – Comedy scripts signify the epitome of how the outside world views screenwriting. They think screenwriting is easy. And they think being funny is easy. Therefore there is little to no effort from these writers to actually LEARN THE CRAFT. Comedy screenwriting is a lot like stand-up. It LOOKS easy. But that’s only because the people who do it have been working at it so hard. Jonah Hill, who I think is one of the funniest actors around, had to do stand-up for Funny People. He said he was TERRIBLE. He rambled. Nothing he said got a laugh. He realized that there’s a real craft to setting up and executing jokes that takes time to hone and perfect. The same thing is true for screenwriting. To those genuinely funny people out there who want to write comedy scripts – I promise you – If you dedicate your life to learning the craft of screenwriting (structure, character empathy, character flaw, character conflict, escalating tension, sequencing, stakes, purpose, urgency, theme, etc.), you will be unstoppable. There are so few genuinely funny comedy writers out there who know how to write a good story. The ones who do come up with stuff like The Hangover. The ones who don’t come up with stuff like Jack and Jill.

8) You don’t yet understand what “show don’t tell” means – “Show don’t tell” is one of the first things you learn in screenwriting. Instead of characters saying things, you use actions or images to convey those things instead.  If you don’t master this technique, you’ll receive one of the worst critiques a writer can hear on their script: “It all felt so… on-the-nose.”  It starts with dialogue. Instead of a character saying “I think we should break up,” have them standing by the door with their stuff packed up in suitcases holding out their apartment key. “Show don’t tell” also extends to descriptions. I can’t stand reading lines like, “Joe is elated.” This is boring, sloppy, and un-cinematic. Show us this feeling instead! For instance, Joe could pump his fist or high five a random stranger. And did you know you could even use dialogue to “show don’t tell?” For example, instead of Frank, who has a crush on Mary, telling her, “I’m nervous,” you could have him babble on nonsensically about how he adores penguins. The ACTION of babbling implies nervousness, so he doesn’t have to say it directly. Pro writers are way more adept at showing actions, and therefore this is one of the easiest ways to distinguish amateur from professional screenplays.

9) You focus more on the surface of your script than what’s happening underneath – Flashy description, mystery boxes, surprise revelations, clever dialogue, unexpected twists. These things are all great, but they’re all surface level. To provide a truly rich reading experience, you need to focus on what goes on underneath the surface. Show your hero battling something internally (an inability to love due to fear of rejection), your characters conveying their feelings between the lines (subtext), make a statement about people or life via a recurring theme (“Seize the day”– Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Understanding plot is incredibly important. But it’s just the first part of the journey. Your scripts really start to resonate once they say something about your characters and about the world they/we live in.

10) You’re not confident in your writing – Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, the writing in that script was so confident?” It’s kind of intimidating. “Well wait a minute,” you ask. “Do I write with confidence?” Typically, if you’re asking that question, the answer is no. That’s okay. It just means you haven’t developed your writing method yet. A writer’s method is born out of all the screenwriting books (or sites) he’s studied, out of all the scripts he’s read (what he’s liked, what he’s hated), and out of all the trial and error that’s gone into his own screenplays. He uses this knowledge and experience to develop a method (an approach) that works best for him. Once a writer has a method, their scripts really take on a confidence that was previously absent. This is why the combination of reading, writing, and studying is so powerful.

Wow, that list is kind of intense. So let me be clear. I’m not saying you have to be 10 out of 10 here. But if you’re looking up at this and going, “Oh boy, I’m guilty of most of these,” then you probably want to take a step back and study screenwriting for six months. Dedicate yourself to being a scholar of the medium. There are so many books out there, and a lot of them are so good (including my own!), there’s really no excuse not to educate yourself and put your best foot forward.

Oh, but there’s one last question I wanted to address. What if you’ve already done all this? What if you’ve been writing for 10-15 years and you’re still struggling? What’s the plan then? Well, first, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you still love writing. As long as the answer’s yes, there’s no reason to stop. Writing is one of the most convenient extracurricular activities you can do. So there’s no reason to stop unless you hate it.

The next step is being honest with yourself about a harsh reality: WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING SO FAR ISN’T WORKING. Once you’ve accepted that, my advice would be to knock down the house and start all over again. I was reading Peter Bart’s comments over on Deadline this week and he noted that when TV started to pull away market share from movie theaters in the 60s, the studios were freaking out. They realized they were delivering the same old crap and the audiences weren’t buying it anymore. So they basically tore down the whole industry and said to its creators, “There are no rules anymore. Go do what you want.” And that’s how we ended up with the second Golden era of cinema with all those great innovative 70s films. You need to do the same thing. You’ve studied screenwriting long enough to understand all the tropes. You know the formulas. So you’re probably the most qualified to break away from them and try something different (or, if you’ve been trying something different all these years, maybe it’s time to try a more traditional approach). Good luck to you. And good luck to everyone else pursuing this heart-wrenching but wonderful craft. Every day you write, you’re one step closer to the finish line. ☺

Genre: Drama-Comedy
Premise: In a dimension where turtle people are movie stars and miniaturized people fight to the death, a speed-addicted alcoholic gambling private investigator must find out who kidnapped a miniature pop star.
About: This script was on The Black List all the way back in 2007. Since then, co-writer Tom Kuntz has gone on to be one of the most successful commercial directors in the business (he did that famous Old Spice ad with the guy walking around without a shirt). He also directed 2008’s The Onion Movie. Currently, I can’t find anything on co-writer Griffin Creech. Hope he’s still around!
Writer: Griffin Creech and Tom Kuntz
Details: June 8th, 2007 draft (126 pages)

Devito for Turtle Man?  I think so!

Turtle Man!

Half-turtle. Half man.

That’s all you need to know going into this one.

Actually, that’s not true. FWIW, I read The 37th Dimension 6 years ago. Believe it or not, it was once in my Top 25. Of course, back then I hadn’t read many scripts, but still. It was different. It was weird. It was the kind of script you still thought about after you put it down.

But the kinds of scripts I respond to today are different. I’m less impressed with flashy gadget-y scripts with a bag full of tricks and nothing else. I need some meat. There was this script called Fiasco Heights, for example, that wowed the reader out of me, purely because of its writing style. But that doesn’t happen much anymore. These days I need depth, I need character, I need something to dig my teeth into. Always a challenge in the minimalistic writing arena that is a screenplay.

So, naturally, I was curious what this new Carson would think of The 37th Dimension. Especially because I spend most of my time in this lame-o 7th Dimension. Take a trip with me 30 floors up, will you?

TOP 40 (that’s the name of a character by the way) is a beautiful pop star who just happens to be 10% the size of a regular person. Upon making a private appearance with a Japanese businessman, the businessman starts masturbating, leading to her trying to escape. But all of a sudden the lights go off, and when they come back on again, Top 40 is gone.

Enter Smith Dangerous Smith, a talented private investigator who see-saws between speed and booze to make it through what his more optimistic brethren refer to as “life.” He’s brought into Top 40’s music label to handle the case. See, it appears that whoever kidnapped Top 40, is now demanding a 20 million dollar ransom for her. Since Smith owes 700 grand to a gang of Haitian bookies, he agrees to the case faster than Selena Gomez breaks up and gets back together with Justin Bieber.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Turtle Man, an advanced age half-turtle, half-man, who also happens to be a great actor. Well, WAS a great actor. Now he’s lucky to get a car dealership commercial. So upon backing his car up, ironically, into the van of those Haitian gangsters, he finds himself the recipient of the wrong kind of attention. They follow him home, try to kill him, only to see him duck into his turtle shell. Such is the goings-on of the 37th Dimension.

Also occurring in this dimension are 10% super ultimate fighter fights. This is when these 10% mini-people fight each other in a match to the death. J.T. Monahan, a Texas billionaire, carries the best of these fighters, Champ, around in a bowling bag. They’re so close that he even lets Champ watch him have sex (from his bag), which his lady friends naturally find kind of weird.

Smith, in the meantime, vacillates between getting utterly blasted and following up leads, which typically lead nowhere. From the Japanese man Top 40 did a private show for, to the little people collector, J.T. Burnham, to a plastic surgery doctor who’s so good he does his boob jobs in the back of his Bentley (which has built-in anesthesia) – everywhere he looks turns out to be a bust. When the music company bumps up the pressure and the Haitians start threatening death, it’ll be up to Smith Dangerous Smith to work a miracle and save Top 40 before it’s too late.

Depp for Smith Dangerous Smith? Double thinks so!

This is how you do crazy.

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed “The Lobster,” which was a mess from its pincher-shaped beginning to its crustaceous end. The rules were murky. The urgency was non-existent. It wasn’t even clear what our main character was trying to do other than stumble around his hotel and avoid getting in trouble.  That’s not how you do crazy.

The best way to do crazy is to add non-crazy. In other words, you need a “normal” spine to hang crazy on. If you try to hang crazy on top of crazy, the spine won’t hold. There’s too much weirdness and everything buckles.

So yeah, even though we have a turtle man, Top 40, fight-to-the-death little people matches and weird Haitians (delightful bad guys, who are asked by Turtle Man, “What are you doing here?!” when they break into his house. Their answer? A polite, “Clearly we have gained unauthorized access to your dwelling.”), it works because they orbit around a stable narrative: Smith Dangerous Smith is trying to find and rescue Top 40.

Had Smith been, say, an alien, who ran around the city collecting butterflies, none of this would’ve worked. We needed him and his plotline to be normal so that everything else could be batshit insane.

With that said, I think the non-Smith elements of 37th Dimension could’ve been even crazier. Once you have that solid spine, you have to take advantage of the wacky rules governing your universe. There were really only two anomalies here – a turtle man and 10% people. And Turtle Man was, sadly, killed off early (R.I.P. Turtle Man). Two is such an odd number. At minimum you have to have three (everything comes in threes). And I’d probably go even further. Have other animal people. Have people who can perform magic. Do weird shit with the weather. This is the 37th Dimension. Not the 9th Dimension. Let’s get loopy!

Dimension was also way too long (126 pages). Maybe the writers thought for every extra dimension they got to write an extra page, but that’s not how it works.  For these kinds of stories, it’s 110 pages tops. We ain’t watching William Wallace conquer England here.

I’m kinda sad that these guys split up, because I’ll see this a lot when talented writers first start out. They have a ton of weird ideas, which make their scripts memorable, but they haven’t yet learned the basics of structure – how to cut useless characters out, how to get rid of unimportant scenes, how to combine scenes, how to keep scenes focused so they don’t run on 2 pages too long. Cause if you write three scenes in your script that each run 2 pages long, that’s 6 extra pages you’ve added. That’s how you get up to 126 pages.

Over time, you learn how to curb these mistakes and your scripts get tighter, until you’ve segued from a “script that gets people talking” to a “script people want to buy.” Sadly, many writers don’t stick around that long, quitting before they figure out the magic code.

There’s a moment early on here, for example, where the music label brings in Smith to give him the info on what’s happened to Top 40. Afterwards, there’s a nearly identical scene where the police tell him what they know. These two scenes should’ve been combined, or the police scene should’ve been eliminated altogether. You could have easily fed in the info from the second scene into the first and cut out 2 pages.

Also, later in the script, a detective rails on Smith for being so inadequate. He keeps saying the same thing over and over again (that Smith’s inadequate) in several different ways. It takes up an ENTIRE PAGE. He could’ve easily gotten his point across in four lines, which means you’ve saved an entire page of screenplay real estate. True, there are times when you need your character to say more than 4 lines to get their point across, but those moments need to be big and worth it, which this one wasn’t.

Despite those problems, I think this could’ve been a movie. I don’t know if it can now because I don’t think these writers work together anymore and this would need a rewrite. But it’s different enough that I think it would bring in a big indie audience and possibly even break through into something bigger, especially if it got someone like Johnny Depp involved, who seems to have been created by the acting Gods for this kind of film.

We can only hope!

R.I.P. TURTLE MAN!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: John Favreau was doing an interview for Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast, and Favreau was asked about his propensity for letting his indie films “breathe.” Why, Goldsmith wanted to know, didn’t he do the same for his bigger films? “Because audiences don’t like breathing,” Favreau replied, one-quarter joking. He went on to say that in a studio setting, they want the script to be tight. They want you to get to the point. In indie films, you can play around a little bit more. – There’s no right or wrong way to write a movie, of course. But if you want to get studio money, you have to learn to tighten your scripts. If not, the best you can hope for is a writing sample.