So there I am, watching “A Good Day To Die Hard” this weekend, and asking myself the question that moviegoers across the world ask a dozen times a year at their local cineplexes: “Who writes this shit?”

Terribly written movies with dreadful dialogue are a huge reason why people all over the country move to LA to pursue a career in screenwriting. They’re convinced that, “I can do better than that!” And yet, thousands of these “I can do better than that,” screenwriters show up in Hollywood every year and the same dreadful terribly-written movies still get made.

Is it a conspiracy? Is Hollywood purposefully keeping good writers out of the business for some reason? Are there thousands of amazing screenplays that have been buried under a Los Angeles landfill somewhere, a conspiracy headed up by 20th Century Fox so they can keep making more “A Good Day To Die Hard” movies without having to worry about competition?

I can answer that question easily. No. The truth is, there are only a dozen great screenwriters out there, and maybe less than a hundred truly good ones. Since a few hundred movies are released each year and countless TV shows with multiple writers are produced on the networks and cable, there are more spots to fill than there are good screenwriters.

And it’s not for lack of trying that the average screenwriter isn’t very good. Screenwriting is just REALLY HARD. A lot harder than it looks.  Moviegoers assume all screenwriting is is coming up with a cool hook and some witty dialogue. But screenwriting is way more complicated than that. Outside of learning how to write within its unique bastardized format, there’s a ton of stuff under the hood that audience members never think about.

The most obvious of which is creating a seamless story. That’s something most people outside the business take for granted. They assume seamless stories are a given. However, when those same people come to Hollywood and give screenwriting a shot then send their screenplays to people like me, they learn the hard way that their stories are borderline incoherent and that it actually takes years of hard work to create a seamless story.  Not even a GOOD story.  Just one that makes sense from beginning to end.

But we’ve established that there ARE good screenwriters out there. As many as a hundred of them. That should be enough to take care of most of the movies we see. So why do movies still suck? Why are films like Transformers so badly written? Or Dark Shadows? Or John Carter? Or Battleship? Or Mirror Mirror? Why are these embarrassingly written projects given hundreds of millions of dollars? The answer to that question isn’t simple. In fact, it’s very complicated. But if you want to know, read on.

TIME – Unless you’re writing a spec, you’re usually up against the gun in a project. And since only one out of every ten produced movies is a spec script, most writers are racing to beat a deadline. The faster you’re forced to work, the lower the quality that work tends to be. That’s because creativity takes time. It takes trial and error. It takes seeing what works and what doesn’t. It takes rewriting and rewriting and then more rewriting. Without time, you’re likely to write something lousy, no matter how good of a writer you are.

DIRECTOR AND ACTOR ARE STILL SUPERIOR TO SCREENWRITER – When putting a project together, studios know that the two most important elements are the director and the lead actor. A good director is going to give you the best chance for making a good movie, and a big actor is going to give you a large enough budget to get a wide release. When looking at the director, the actor, and the screenplay, then, it makes sense that a studio would pay the least amount of attention to the script. With that said, most actors and directors won’t sign onto a project without a good script (or good source material). So the screenplay is still important. The problem is…

DIRECTORS COME ON LATE THEN SCREW SHIT UP – While there are directors who will shepherd projects over a long period of time, a lot of times a director will come onto a project as it’s greenlit and given a production date. Since directors are creative people, they’re going to want to play with the script and get it the way they want it. Which means if a writer has been perfecting that script over three years, they now have to rewrite the whole damn thing to the director’s vision – a vision they may not entirely agree with – within a matter of months. More times than not, this results in a worse screenplay.

PASSION – You want to know the truth about Hollywood? Passion may be the most important factor in getting a movie made. That’s because this business is designed to KEEP movies from getting made. It’s much easier and safer for people in all factions of the business to say no to a project than yes. Yes means their ass is on the line if the movie fails. Why put yourself in that position? For that reason, the stuff that gets through is often the result of a producer or group of producers who will stop at nothing to get their movie made. These producers, who may be experienced vets or total newbs, will gladly go to every shop, every studio, every production company, and keep racking up ‘no’s’ until they find that one yes. And guess what, it’ll have nothing to do with how good the script or project is. It will just be because these guys refused to take no for an answer. This means, ironically, a lot of badly written projects get made because of passion.

BIG IDEA WRITERS AREN’T OFTEN THE BEST WRITERS – Lots of “big idea” writers who are good at coming up with concepts and trailer-worthy set-pieces will slip past the Hollywood gates and into the system. These writers aren’t necessarily “bad,” but they didn’t make it to the top because they’re experts at character or theme or structure. They made it because they came up with some big futuristic time-travel spec that got some pub all over town. These writers then get big-movie assignments due to their spec and the best of these subpar writers become premiere summer tent-pole movie scribes – scripting such classics as Battleship and Transformers. Sure, you could bring in someone like David Mamet to write Transformers and the script would be better in areas like character and dialogue. But it would probably lack a lot of the fun and “bigness” that you want from these movies. So you’d be gaining something but you’d lose something as well. Since an executive knows that the last thing a 14 year old in Kansas cares about is theme, he’s likely to go with the big idea writer over Mr. Mamet.

MO MONEY MO PROBLEMS – The other day a producer told me that this one well-known indie writer-director who’s had a hard time breaking into Hollywood called him and basically said, “I want 20 million dollars to make my movie and I don’t want you or anyone at your company to bother me.” Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. Money comes from a bunch of different places these days (foreign financing, private investing, production houses, studios, etc.) and the bigger the pot, the more people want to be involved in the decision-making. If you’re making a movie like Transformers, with a budget of 250 million, you will have TONS of people sticking their finger in the pie. And chances are, a lot of these people won’t know jack-shit about writing. In these cases, the screenwriters aren’t even really writing a script. They’re MANAGING a dearth of strange and sometimes terrible ideas and trying to turn them into a story that makes sense. This is one of the main reasons why these giant movies are so terribly written. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

There are, of course, other reasons for badly-written films. Endless development. Foreign financing that puts little emphasis on the screenplay. Producers who hire their friends instead of good writers. And the bar for sequels, like “A Good Day To Die Hard,” just isn’t that high.

So what’s the solution here? Is there a way out of this mess? The thing that studios don’t realize is that it’s in their best interest to write a good screenplay. Not only does a well-written movie encourage positive word of mouth, which means more audiences members and repeat business, but the film has a better life in the post-theatrical market. It also increases the likelihood of building that all-important franchise everyone’s chasing.

In order to get scripts in better shape, Hollywood needs to make some sacrifices, stuff that they probably don’t want to do because it goes against everything they’ve done up to this point. First, they should look closer at the Pixar approach. Pixar screens multiple storyboard previews of their movies in order to get a feel for how the story is playing. The writer, who’s usually on the project for years, is then able to see what isn’t working and fix it. This perk is available because it takes so long to make an animated movie, time live-action films don’t have. Live action films are usually backed into tighter schedules, giving the writer less freedom to figure things out. But you do find the occasional live-action project that takes its time, like the Batman films and anything directed by James Cameron.  And we see the results when those films finally come to screen. I realize studios have corporate commitments and need to meet certain financial forecasts, but with a little more planning, they should be able to take that extra time and get the script right.

Producers and studios also need to keep the same writer on the project if possible. I realize this means less work for writers (since only one writer will be on the job), but if you want to make good movies, you need to keep writers around who understand the project. A huge reason movies feel so unfocused and disjointed is because Writer F had no idea what Writer A was trying to do when he wrote the original screenplay and therefore changed everything that made everyone fall in love with the script in the first place!

If agents and writers hate this idea because it means less jobs, what about doing what the studios did back in the old days where they kept 20-some writers under contract every year? Those writers would then be available to come in to give notes on the studios’ key projects. This is essentially what Pixar does and it’s proven to be an effective model. In addition to this, hire smart producers who actually understand storytelling and screenwriting. A reason a lot of writers get replaced is because the producer who hired them doesn’t know how to get the most out of them. Therefore when the script stops improving, they just hire someone else. A good producer will guide a writer into overcoming any problems a script may encounter.

Production companies and studios also need to take more chances on scripts that are ready to go, even if they’re afraid of them because they don’t fit into their proven paradigm. When The Streetlights Go On, After Hailey, Desperate Hours. Everyone loves these scripts but they’re still not being made. If you already have a script that people love, don’t fuck with it. Just make the damn thing. I’m not saying you have to put a hundred million dollars into these projects. You have to make them for the right price. But moviegoers out there want better writing. You have it. All you have to do is greenlight the film and make it.

Let the scripts be critiqued online. It always makes me laugh when studios spend 50 million bucks to fix movies they’ve already shot, usually because of story problems. Why not put your scripts online and let the fans critique them? Let them spot what’s wrong ahead of time so you don’t have to pay the price later. Your everyday moviegoing audience won’t pay attention to this, so you won’t spoil the film for the masses. And your core cinephile fan who participates is going to see the next Spiderman or Guardians Of The Galaxy film anyway. In all likelihood, being a part of the development process, even indirectly, is going to get them even more excited to see the film. This has gone on on a smaller scale on Scriptshadow for years. I’ve been told from numerous producers that they made changes to their scripts based on the comments from people who read them here. So I know it works. The question is, will studios put their egos aside to do that for their bigger projects? That remains to be seen.

As you can see, there are no easy answers here. There are a lot of things working against good writing. In many ways, you can consider it a minor miracle when a well-told story DOES reach the screen. But I think with a few changes, we could make sure good screenplays happen more often. And besides, by treating America (and the world) to better movies, our industry wouldn’t be the butt of so many jokes across the country about how they “could’ve written something better.” And with that, I’m out of here. What do you guys think?

It took Tarantino ten years to finish Inglourious Basterds, mainly because he couldn’t figure out the ending or how to spell his title. The story grew in scope so much during that time that at one point he considered scrapping the movie and turning it into a TV show. After many “almosts,” he finally shot the film in 2008. The casting of Tarantino’s films is always a fun topic of conversation and Basterds was no different. Quentin originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the career-making part of Hans Landa, which eventually went to Christoph Waltz. Of course, Tarantino would later come back to DiCaprio to play his big baddie in Django Unchained. Landa was a huge problem for Tarantino during writing. He feared that the part was “unplayable.” He often mentions Waltz saving his film due to his unique interpretation of the part, a performance that would later win him an Academy Award. Tarantino was always careful with Basterds because he considered it to be his masterpiece. He wanted it to be perfect. I don’t know if I’d call it perfect, but it certainly is a great screenplay/movie worth studying.

1) Defy character type if possible (Make your villain polite) – You shouldn’t ALWAYS do this, but a common amateur mistake is to make your villain a really mean asshole of a guy. What a boring on-the-nose interpretation that is! Tarantino goes the opposite direction and makes his villain, Hans Landa, the most polite person in the story. Since we’re not used to this, it unnerves us, makes us feel uncomfortable, and therefore makes his presence way more interesting.

2) For the love of all that is holy, cut out scenes you don’t need! – If you read Tarantino’s widely circulated almost-shooting draft, you see a lot of scenes that were cut. For example, there’s a scene where Hans Landa explains to an officer why he let Shosanna go. It was unnecessary and therefore cut. There’s a scene where Shosanna is taken in by the owner of the cinema she ends up running. Tarantino realized he could move the story along quicker if they start with Shosanna already owning the cinema. You should always be looking for ways to move your story along and cutting out unnecessary scenes is one of the easiest ways to do this!

3) The more doom you imply, the longer your scene can be (or “The Impending Doom Tool”) – One of the reasons Tarantino gets away with writing such long scenes is because of the impending doom he sets up at the beginning of them. Because we know something terrible is going to happen, we’ll stick around to see it. Look at the opening scene of Basterds. From the very first moment Hans walks in that house, we know this is going to end badly. We see this in Pulp Fiction as well, when Jules and Vincent (after discussing the sexual nature of foot rubs) go to Brett’s apartment to retrieve the briefcase. To demonstrate how powerful this tool is, note what happens when Tarantino doesn’t use it. One of the most boring scenes in the film is when Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is briefed by General Ed Fenech (Michael Meyers) about connecting with one of the Allies’ contacts. The scene is incredibly boring, and a big reason for that is that it’s one of the few scenes in the film where doom isn’t implied. It’s just two guys discussing exposition.

4) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Tarantino LOVES dramatic irony. In fact, the bulk of his storytelling power comes from the impending doom tool and his use of dramatic irony. We see it in the first scene, when Tarantino reveals that there are, indeed, Jews under the floor. We know this but Hans Landa does not. Then later when Shosanna is called to lunch with the Germans, Hans shows up to talk with her. We know she’s the one who escaped the house that day. But Hans does not. We see it in the pub scene, where the Allies are posing as German soldiers. A German lieutenant starts asking probing questions. We know they’re not really Germans, but this German soldier does not. You’ll see some form of dramatic irony in almost all of Tarantino’s scenes.

5) Look for unique ways to stage your characters during dialogue – One of the most interesting scenes in the script occurs after the shootout at the pub. One of the Germans has survived and must negotiate with Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) the life of Bridget von Hammersmark. The entirety of the scene occurs with us never seeing Aldo Raine. He’s upstairs, yelling down to the soldier the whole time. There’s something about Aldo’s disembodied voice that brings the scene to life.

6) The Red Herring – Another really cool thing Tarantino does is introduce red herrings into his scenes – people or things we assume will be relevant, but turn out not to be. You see this in the opening scene with the dairy farmer’s three beautiful daughters. As Hans approaches them, we’re terrified of what’s going to happen to them. Is he going to rape them? Is he going to let his men rape them? Will he use their lives to get the truth of the farmer? In the end, they weren’t relevant, but we feared they were. Tarantino is always looking for ways to build tension into his scenes and this tool is a sly way of doing so.

7) Reverse Save The Cat – Remember that just as a hero should have a “Save The Cat” moment, your bad guy should have a reverse-save-the-cat moment. Who doesn’t hate Hans after that opening scene where he orders half a dozen helpless Jews to be murdered underneath the floor?

8) Always look for different ways to say things – This is one of the easiest ways to spice up your dialogue. Just take a few moments and come up with a more unique way for your characters to say what they’re going to say. When Aldo Raine orders The Bear Jew to kill a German soldier, he doesn’t use the amateurish line: “Kill this asshole.” He says, “German wants to die for his country. Obliiiiige him.”

9) The “Tell Me About Myself” tool – You never want a character to start talking about his own backstory. It never sounds right. (i.e. “I’m a killer. I like to kill Jews.”) So Tarantino’s developed this clever trick where he has the character whose backstory he wants to unveil say to another character, “Tell me what you know about me,” as Hans does in the opening scene to the dairy farmer. This way, the character isn’t talking about himself. Someone is telling him about himself. For whatever reason, this always feels more realistic.

10) Place your scene in an original (but organic) location – The other day I talked about putting your scenes in unique locations to add more pop. However, it’s important to note that those locations must still make sense, must still be organic to the story. There’s a great example of this in Basterds. It’s the scene where Fredrick Zoller hits on Shosanna for the first time. Shosanna works in a movie theater, so an amateur writer may have put her behind the candy display and had Zoller walk in and make his move. To make things more interesting, Tarantino puts Shosanna up on a ladder changing the marquee with Zoller on the ground, semi-shouting up to her. The distance between them adds a charge and uniqueness to the scene that you never would’ve gotten had they had a conventional conversation in the lobby.

BONUS TIP – Find humor in the non-humorous – This is one of the tools that has made Tarantino famous. He always mines humor from situations that aren’t typically humorous. We saw it in Django when all the men put on Klan masks but start freaking out because they can’t see out of them. And we see it here too, with scenes like Hitler going bonkers when he hears about the Basterds. The reason it works is because it’s unexpected. We’re not USED to laughing at the Klan or at Hitler.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Inglourious Basterds.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Disclaimer: I did NOT see all of A Good Day To Die Hard. I found it to be so terrible that I walked out 45 minutes through. I have no idea (but will gladly assume) what the final 50 minutes were like.

Genre: Action
Premise: Errr… a former NYPD cop goes looking for his estranged son in Moscow and stumbles onto a complex plot involving weapons grade uranium…or something.
About: Skip Woods has written a lot of mediocre action flicks that are, surprisingly (or I guess not surprisingly) almost exactly alike. Which movies, you ask? How about I offer you Swordfish, Hitman, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The A-Team. If you’re looking for subtlety, depth, cohesive plot, a narrative, words that make sense, then you’re probably not looking for these flicks. Which I guess makes sense. Woods’ background leads one to believe he’s more interested in ‘splosions than any sort of plot or story. He’s a partner at Wetwork Tactical, a weapons handling and tactics consulting firm. Woods is also writing Ten, which is a movie about a group of DEA agents getting hunted down by a gang they busted. That flick will star James Cameron vets Sam Worthington and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Writer: Skip Woods
Details: 95 minutes of pure torture (45 minutes of which I saw)

Shame on you Bruce Willis.

Shame on you Skip Woods.

Shame on you John Moore.

While A Good Day To Die Hard wasn’t as bad as, say, getting tortured by the Viet Cong, it was still pretty damn bad. And I’ll tell you when the moment occurred that I knew it would be bad. It was the scene where John McClane was in the cab after arriving in Russia. The scene has McClane and the cabbie engaging in a goofy (awkwardly directed) conversation. Because the writer is so lousy, he doesn’t understand why you’d have a scene like this in the first place and likely included it because he remembered the scene in the original Die Hard where McClane engaged in that fun conversation with the limo driver.

Here’s the thing though. That original fun conversation with the limo driver actually had a purpose! First, it introduced us to the charming McClane (he sits in the front seat with the limo driver, showing us he’s just a normal guy). But more importantly, it sets up the relationship between him and his wife, which will dictate us CARING when she’s held hostage and WANT John to save her.

This Moscow cabbie scene is a classic Screenwriting 101 mistake. It doesn’t tell us ANYTHING we don’t already know. It tells us John is here looking for his son (already knew that), that John has a daughter (already knew that), and that John is from New York (kinda learned that ohhhh, 25 years ago). So what’s the point of this scene? It’s the definition of pointless.

That doesn’t even begin to infringe on some of the other screenwriting 101 errors though. We follow a scene talking in a car (with his daughter) with a scene talking in a car (with the Russian cabbie). Two boring car talky scenes in a row (that reveal nothing or next to nothing). Are you asleep yet?

Oh, and then there’s the classic screenwriting neophyte tell of characters who repeat their line for emphasis. “Dammit John. You shouldn’t have come here.” Dramatic pause. “You shouldn’t have come here.” This “repeat-line-for-emphasis” move was used at least a half dozen times throughout the first 45 minutes.

Oh, and don’t forget the quirky villain character who’s quirky only because we need him to be, NOT because it’s a logical extension of who he actually is. Our villain here EATS CARROTS. No, I’m not kidding. He just munches on them. Every one must’ve been patting each other on the back after that one. “It will be so ironic! A bad guy who eats carrots!” Except it looks STUPID unless it actually makes sense. Darth Vader doesn’t have that raspy breathing thing because it’s cool. He has it because he can’t breath on his own. It’s embedded into his character’s history. Oh, and they didn’t even stop there! The Die Hard villain also tap-dances! Yes, our villain tap-dances!!!

Oh, you say, but what about plot? Was that any good?

That depends on if you like movies. Particularly good ones. I’ll try to explain.

Die Hard starts with John McClane deciding he wants to look for his son, Jack, who’s recently fallen off the map. He gets word that Jack is in Moscow, so he books a flight to Russia to catch up. Meanwhile, there’s something going on in Russia where a high ranking official has incriminating information about Russia’s president or something. Jack, who’s an undercover CIA agent, is aligned with this official for some reason, who’s on trial for something else (are ya following all this?). When the trial’s about to begin, a third party of bad guys blows the courtroom up and goes after the official. Jack shuttles the official away to a safe house but before he can get there, John POPS UP in front of his car and demands to come along.

The three agree that they have to get the official to America or something, but he refuses to leave without his daughter. So they go and meet her at a meticulously scouted warehouse. John thinks something is off and is proven correct when it turns out to be a trap. The daughter is in cahoots with the baddies! The baddies want this secret file as well, but before they can get it, John and Jack join forces and kill a bunch of people and escape. That’s the point where I walked out of the movie. But I hear that John and Jack then head to Chernobyl of all places where they discover there wasn’t any file to begin with. It was all a cover for some weapons grade uranium that was going to be used to blow up the world…or something.

Here’s what I don’t get. Don’t writers realize that if the plot is muddled and/or stupid, that we’re not going to care?? The whole reason we care what’s happening in a movie is because we understand that if our heroes DON’T succeed, something bad will happen. In other words, there’s something at stake! If we don’t understand what our heroes are doing, there’s nothing at stake. After the embarrassingly clumsy plotting that connected our two main characters (John McClane literally BUMPS INTO his son, Jack, in the middle of Moscow. How convenient!), we don’t have any idea what our characters are doing or why they’re doing it. We’re told of some sort of disk or file that’s needed, but it’s never clear what it is, what it holds, or why it’s important. So we’re supposed to be involved in a pursuit that we don’t even understand! I mean compare this to Die Hard. What’s the plot? SAVE HIS FREAKING WIFE! That’s the plot! How freaking simple is that? How clear are the stakes?? That’s why we’re invested. Cause we understand what the heck is going on!

But, none of this compares to what they turn John McClane into. They rewrite this cinema icon into a PASSIVE HERO! Like, that’s the first thing you learn in A screenwriting class. MAKE YOUR HERO ACTIVE! ESPECIALLY in an action movie! The only way you could do worse is if you MADE the most active awesomest hero of all time passive! The original John McClane was great because HE MADE THINGS HAPPEN. He did things. He ACTED. Here, he’s just following his son around like an annoying little child who keeps asking, “Are we there yet?”

I don’t know if this is because they’re trying to do a “pass the torch” thing with the son, but even if that’s the case, it’s a mortal sin. We didn’t come to this movie to see boring buzz cut no-name actor kick ass. We came to see Bruce Willis kick ass!

In the end, all I ask with the writing is that you try. SHOW. ME. THAT. YOU. ARE. TRYING. There isn’t a single moment in this script that indicates anyone was putting any effort into the choices. I’d be surprised if this script made it past a second draft. That’s how sloppy it feels. I mean it didn’t even get the tone right. Die Hard films are supposed to be fun! Whoever directed this thought he was directing The Bourne Identity or a new Bond flick. Where was the fun???

And don’t buy into the company line that “IT’S AN ACTION FLICK. LOOSEN UP AND ENJOY IT!” Just cause you’re making an action flick doesn’t mean that things like plot, story, and characters don’t matter. I know this because I’ve seen action movies that have done it right. Where the people actually cared about writing a good screenplay. They were called Die Hard.

And it’s not insignificant. If you make a good movie, you make more money! People will keep buying your movie 20 years from now. Just like they still buy Die Hard, the original. So there is incentive to get it right. I’m just shocked that hacks were allowed write this piece of garbage.

Try. Next time, just try. That’s all I ask.

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

What I learned: Don’t write scenes that tell us things we already know! You will bore us. Who isn’t bored by the random weird Moscow cab scene in A Good Day To Die Hard? And the reason we’re bored is because it doesn’t advance the plot in any way, it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and it doesn’t reveal anything we need for later. It. Is. Pointless!

I tend to get hung up on character and structure and story a lot. You know, those things that “supposedly” make your script better. I don’t often get into the nitty-gritty, the smaller details that, when added up, really make an impact on your script. Which is what inspired today’s article. Here are 10 small things you can do to improve your screenplay right now. Enjoy!

1) Cut out the least important character in your script. See, here’s the thing. We’re character whores. We love adding people to our scripts, even if it doesn’t make sense. We just think, “Another character. Yay!” The problem with this is that we all of a sudden have a bunch of characters who don’t matter. So here’s a simple tool to help you. Find the least important character in your script and get rid of them. You’ll feel better afterwards. I promise.

2) Eliminate the 3 scenes that have the least to do with your plot. Writing pointless scenes is an epidemic. Even top-level professionals do it. I just read a 3-page scene the other day where our hero meets a really fun character, who disappears afterwards and is never seen again. Why, then, do we need that scene in the movie? Get rid of your three most irrelevant scenes right now. You will send me an e-mail within the week and offer me cookies for this. I guarantee it.

3) Combine 6 scenes into 3 – Combining scenes is a power skill that will turn your script into a lean and mean power machine. Do you really need two separate scenes for your hero asking the girl out to the prom AND applying for a job? What if the girl he’s asking works at the store he’s applying for a job at? Now you kill two birds with one stone! Take six scenes and find a way to combine them into three.

4) Twitterize your paragraphs. Look at every four-line paragraph and see if you can cut it down to 3. Lean scripts are just easier to read. And I’ve found that with a little creativity you can take most long paragraphs and make them a lot shorter. So just go through your script and everywhere you have a four line paragraph, get it down to three. You can do it!

5) Give every character in your script either a memorable introduction or a memorable description. Easy-to-forget characters are a time-honored tradition in amateur screenwriting. Don’t be a part of that tradition. The best way to make your characters memorable is to make them stand out when we first meet them. Do this by showing them doing something interesting, or have that kick-ass description that makes them immediately visible in the reader’s eye.

6) Stop being derivative. Go through every scene in your script and ask yourself (honestly) if you’ve seen that scene before in another movie. If you have, change it. Find an angle, even if it’s tiny, to make it feel fresh. One of the biggest problems with amateur scripts is that they feel too similar to stuff we’ve already seen. This is an easy way to prevent that.

7) Take your three heaviest exposition scenes and find a way to SHOW that information rather than TELL it. For example, instead of a character telling someone their girlfriend just broke up with them, show them burning all her pictures.

8) Simplify your writing. Stop trying to impress us with your hundred-dollar words or Pulitzer-Prize-worthy prose. Scripts are about understanding what’s going on. Just tell your story simply. You still want to add some flavor, but where I see scripts go south is when writers over-flavorize their description. Get complex with your plot. But keep your writing simple.

9) Place your character in un-obvious locations. Too many writers have their characters talking in coffee houses, restaurants or living rooms. Because these settings are boring, we’re bored reading them. Spice up your locations. Maybe the characters are fixing the satellite dish on the roof while talking. Maybe they’re at a drag race. Maybe they’re at a puppy daycare. Have fun with your locations. They’re going to spice your scenes up.

10) Never EVER cheat your margins (both horizontal and vertical). It took me awhile to figure out why – all else being equal – some scripts read slower than others. It’s because the writers cheated their margins. They fit more words onto a line and more lines onto a page, usually by invoking the old Final Draft “tight” formatting tool. Good God never do this. I’ll be sitting there feeling like I’m on page 20, look up and see I’m on page 10 and, besides being pissed off that the script is taking forever to read, wonder how that can be. On almost every occasion, I check the margins and, sure enough, the writer’s cheating.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When a failing TV writer sees his friend, Charlie Kaufman, become a screenwriting mega-star after his indie hit, “Being John Malkovich,” he decides to kill him.
About: While there have been rumors that Charlie Kaufman wrote Killing Charlie Kaufman under the pseudonym “Wrick Cunningham,” those rumors have been confirmed to be false, as Charlie Kaufman’s people themselves wrote to tell me that that’s not the case.  As for what that means on who did write “Killing,” who knows?  It could be anyone who’s a Charlie Kaufman fan.
Writer: Wrick Cunningham
Details: 112 pages – March 5, 2002 draft (1st draft)

Rick Cunningham is on suicide patrol – for himself. He’s got a wife he doesn’t really like. Kids he can’t support. He’s a writer but his agent barely talks to him. Therefore he’s decided life isn’t worth living anymore. That is before he gets a surprise phone call that he’s been invited to work on the Donny Most show, a sitcom centered around a comedian named Donny Most.

The staff is a little surprised to find out Rick’s never actually worked on a TV show before. In fact, Rick doesn’t even WATCH TV. But gosh golly gee they sure do like making fun of his name (Richie Cunningham?). People like to ask him how the Fonz his doing. If he’s talked to Ralph Malph lately. It drives Rick nuts. But at least he’s getting paid to write.

That is until an unfortunate accident. While pulling out from a parking space after work, Rick accidentally RUNS OVER Donny Most, the star of the show! The injuries are enough to put Donny in the hospital for months, which means the show is cancelled! Which means all those writers are out of jobs. Which means they all HATE Rick.

Well, all except for one. Another writer on the show named Charlie Kaufman can’t thank Rick enough. He HATED working on Donny Most and the cancellation has given him new life. In fact, it means he can finish this passion project of his, a feature script called, “Being John Malkovich.” Rick thinks the idea is way too bizarre but encourages Charlie to stick with it. Who knows, it might make a great writing sample someday.

Meanwhile, Rick’s career starts tanking even more spectacularly than before. Everyone in town thinks that he killed Donny Most (even though he’s fine – just injured) and therefore won’t hire him for anything. On top of that, Rick gets word that his old friend Charlie sold that crazy John Malkovich script. And even more surprisingly, Malkovich, the actor, is doing it! Hmm, he figures, that’s nice. Too bad it will only make 10 bucks at the box office.

Malkovich ends up making more than 10 bucks at the box office. In fact, the success of the film launches Kaufman into the screenwriting stratosphere. Everyone wants to be in the Charlie Kaufman business. For some reason this devastates Rick, who ends up joining a “We Hate Charlie Kaufman” support group, made up of people who have known Kaufman at one point or another and now want to kill him. In fact, the focus of the group is offering up dream scenarios in which they kill Charlie is bizarre and violent ways.

Pretty soon, Rick wants to kill Charlie too. He’s convinced that Charlie’s responsible for his dying career. So he goes and buys a gun and starts prepping for the murder. In the meantime, a new pill comes out that allows you to feel exactly like a Charlie Kaufman movie – both happy but also a little bittersweet. People in the group start taking the pill and find happiness in being able to feel like Charlie.

Rick gets distracted when an updated “Happy Days” show gets ordered and they want him to work on it. They think it’s hilarious that a writer named Rick Cunningham would be on the writing team. Rick finds his way back to a good place and decides to re-distribute his anger into writing a script about how he wants to kill Charlie Kaufman. Once finished, he sends it to Charlie, who loves it! He wants to make it. Which would be great except Rick falls into a coma (after getting shot by Donny Most, who was pissed off that Rick ruined his career)!

Then (of course) after he awakes, he falls into ANOTHER coma! And when he awakes, he finds out he’s been taking the Charlie Kaufman pill, which has made him believe he’s Charlie Kaufman. Which means that it wasn’t Rick who wrote “Killing Charlie Kaufman.” It was Kaufman himself! Kaufman tries to explain all this to Rick (or is he explaining it to himself?) as Killing Charlie Kaufman becomes a giant hit starring Tom Cruise as Charlie Kaufman. Uhhh, confused yet? Yeah, me too. Then again, would it be a Charlie Kaufman script if you weren’t?

Okay, lots to say about this one.  Let’s start with the first act. Rick Cunningham starts off miserable. He’s already in a bad place. He already wants to kill himself. Therefore, when Charlie starts doing well and Rick becomes miserable, I had a hard time accepting that he’d pin all this on Charlie. He was no worse than he was a few months ago. I thought the script would’ve worked better if it had started out with Rick at the top of his career. He was kicking ass in the TV world. He was on his way to becoming one of the top writers in the business. Maybe the Donny Most Show was actually his first show-runner job. Things were looking up.

Then Charlie Kaufman ruined this somehow and went on to become famous. Actually, that was another beef I had. I couldn’t figure out why Rick was so upset with Charlie. The two were friends. Rick encouraged Charlie to pursue the Being John Malkovich script. Why would he want to kill him after he became successful with it? It wasn’t like Charlie screwed him over or was a dick to him. He simply became successful.

The script probably needed Charlie to be more of an asshole or screw Rick over in some way. There needed to be a moment where Rick could’ve submitted his weird quirky script to one of the producers of the show, but decided against it cause he felt it would go nowhere. Charlie then did instead, which led to his career skyrocketing. In other words, Rick could’ve had this life himself, and he feels Charlie stole it from him. Then it would sort of make sense why he’d become obsessed with killing him. As it stands, I didn’t understand the hate.

Then, when we get into the Charlie Kaufman drug and the producing of Killing Charlie Kaufman, things start to get weird. Like, really weird. It’s always tricky when you have a screenplay mostly grounded in reality then try to throw in a dose of fantasy – such as the Charlie Kaufman pill. If there’s anyone who can pull it off, it’s Kaufman, but I had trouble wrapping my brain around the pill and what was going on with it. It felt a bit too “out there.”

And of course I hate wrapping major plot points around murky story elements. At first the pill appears to be a joke, something to talk about during the group therapy sessions. But then it becomes an essential part of the story, with Rick starting to believe he’s Charlie (or something) and writing a script under Charlie’s name, which is actually under Rick’s name, which is actually a pseudonym for Charlie, which is actually written in real life by “Wrick Cunningham,” who is of course Charlie Kaufman.

When you’re trying to pull shit like that off, you have to make sure the edges are as sharp as can be. And they weren’t, often leaving me wondering what the heck was going on. You could read me the section where Kaufman explains to Rick how Rick thought he was Charlie when he wrote the script a million times over and I still wouldn’t get it.

You know, I originally wrote this review thinking it was written by Charlie Kaufman.  I don’t know what to make of it now being written by some other completely random person.  I mean, it would’ve been pretty cool if Kaufman orchestrated the whole facade and a totally Kaufman like thing to do.  But I guess we’re just left with a really big fan of Kaufman who sorta kinda sounds like him and has too much time on his hands.  Regardless of who wrote it, it didn’t really click.  This one wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: Avoid wrapping major plot points around confusing or murky story elements. We’re not really sure what these “Charlie Kaufman pills” are or how they work. So when the final act consists of our protag “becoming” Charlie Kaufman and “sorta” writing this script as Kaufman since he was on the pills, we’re just confused.