At times, screenwriting can feel overwhelming. From flaws to acts to conflict to irony to theme to subtext to arcs to suspense, the sheer number of stuff we’re asked to incorporate into a screenplay can seem paralyzing. Which sucks because once we start to fear writing, we’re less likely to write. And you’re not going to finish any screenplay, much less a great one, if you’re not writing. Which is why today, we’re going to strip all the complexity away and remind ourselves that writing is simple. Here are ten guidelines that should make your next screenplay easier to write than baking a pumpkin pie.
1) Make sure your idea is built around a goal – A goal driven narrative is one in which the hero is going after a goal. Raiders of the Lost Ark (find the Ark), Avengers Infinity War (stop Thanos), Searching (save the daughter), Murder on the Orient Express (solve the murder). The majority of problems screenwriters run into come when they write non-goal driven narratives. That’s because it’s less clear what the main character should be doing (since they’re not chasing a goal), and this leads to wishy-washy plots. Yesterday’s script, The Toymaker’s Secret, is a good example. There wasn’t really a goal in the story. It was a bunch of toys trying to stay out of the way of the new owners. Not surprising, then, that the script had a “Where the heck did that come from?” third act.
2) The goal comes from the problem – If you don’t know what your hero’s goal should be, it’s simple. It’s whatever the result of the problem is. In almost every movie, somewhere in the first fifteen minutes, a problem arises. In Jaws, it’s the arrival of a killer shark. In Misery, it’s that the writer’s car has crashed and he’s been kidnapped. In Halloween, it’s that Michael Meyers has escaped. In The Martian, Matt Damon is stranded on Mars. To find the goal, introduce a problem.
3) Make sure the story feels like it matters – There must be a sense of importance to your story or audiences will be uninterested in it. One of the reasons Tag was such a dud was because there was no sense of importance to the story. Who cares if a bunch of friends finally tag their elusive buddy? Meanwhile, in the movie that the film was modeled after, The Hangover, if the friends don’t find the groom, he misses his wedding and possibly dies.
4) Make your hero likable – I realize not everyone likes this rule. But since we’re talking about KEEPING SCREENWRITING SIMPLE, I suggest you adhere to it. If we like your hero, we will forgive nearly any other mistake you make. Check out Swingers. It’s an AWFUL plot. There’s no overarching goal. The characters wander from party to party, state to state. There’s no purpose, no destination. But Jon Favreau made sure, at the beginning of that screenplay, that you fell in love with Mikey (who gets dumped) and Trent (who cares only about making Mikey feel better). And so we didn’t care about the plot. Also check out “The Gal Who got Rattled” in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. That narrative is a little wonky. But boy do they make sure you fall in love with Zoe Kazan. She’s earnest, thoughtful, kind, and wants to do the right thing no matter what.
5) Show don’t tell – This is one of the most oft-quoted screenwriting rules in existence. Yet writers continue to fail at it in almost every amateur script I read. A character, for example, will shoot an arrow to kill the bad guy in the climax. Except I’ll have no recollection of the hero ever knowing how to shoot an arrow. How does that work, I ask the writer. “It’s on page 27,” the writer replies, defiantly. “His best friend, Nick, says, “You don’t want to mess with Jake. He can shoot an arrow 100 yards and hit his target dead-center.” WELL OF COURSE I didn’t remember it. A character SAID it. Readers never remember that. They only remember when a character DOES it. If you want us to know that Jake can shoot an arrow, you have to SHOW us that he can shoot an arrow!
6) Obstacles, obstacles, and more obstacles – If you really want to distill a story down to its essence, all it is, is a) a character with a goal, b) that goal matters, and c) he encounters a bunch of obstacles along the way. Your job, then, is to create those obstacles. His wife leaves him. He wakes up in the trunk of a car. His house just blew up. The bad guy keeps popping up at every turn. The monster is getting smarter. The cops think he’s the murderer. He loses his only weapon. His best friend double-crosses him.
7) When writing dialogue, make sure the characters aren’t on the same page – They can be butting heads like rabid mountain goats, or have a respectful disagreement on what needs to be done next. As long as they’re not on the same page, you’re going to have conflict, which is essential for good dialogue. If your characters are on the same page, there’s no reason for them to speak, and therefore no reason to have a scene. Watch virtually any scene in Little Miss Sunshine to see this in action.
8) Instead of summarizing everything in agonizing detail, utilize highly descriptive words or phrases – Screenwriting is about distilling everything down to its bare essence. Therefore, instead of taking five paragraphs to describe how disgusting your hero’s apartment is, simply describe it as a “rotting pig sty.”
9) Stay away from the past – That means avoid flashbacks. That means stay away from elaborate backstories. Movies work best when characters are trying to figure things out NOW, in the present. This doesn’t mean the past won’t come up (Obi-Wan telling Luke he remembers fighting with his father in the Clone Wars). This doesn’t mean you can’t allude to the past (a character mourning the recent death of their spouse, for example). But this should never be the focus. The focus should always be the present. That’s where stories possess the most energy.
10) Contain your time frame – Movies work best when the timeframes are contained. Under two weeks is preferable. 72 hours is perfect if you really want your script to move. But any timeline that “frames” your movie will work. For example, Jaws takes place during one summer. There’s something about knowing where the destination is that solidifies the structure and comforts the viewer.
And there you go. Now get some writing done this holiday weekend. I’ll see you on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!!!
P.S. This pizza has turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Now if only I could convince my family to adopt it as our Thanksgiving Day meal.
Genre: Family/Drama/Fantasy/Animation
Premise: A group of old fashioned toys live comfortably in an abandoned house. However, their world is turned upside-down when a single mother and her daughter move in.
About: This is Alex Garland’s latest script. He wrote it for his wife, Paloma Baeza, to direct. This would be her first feature. She’s directed four short films. The most recent, Poles Apart, is an animated film about a polar bear who meets a grizzly bear for the first time. Helena Botham Carter voiced the polar bear.
Writer: Alex Garland
Details: 106 pages
Alex Garland is one of my favorite writers. I loved his last two films, Ex Machina and Annihilation. And if you want to go back a ways, I thought his novel, The Beach, was excellent. So I’ll read anything he writes. Even if it’s a children’s story! That is, of course, if this is a children’s story. The Toymaker’s Secret is a bizarre amalgam of genres – family, horror, fantasy, ghost story, comedy, drama – which works in its favor sometimes, and against it in others. I guess you might call this a “darker” version of Toy Story. Let’s check out the plot.
In East London, 1891, the Toymaker is on his deathbed. It’s here where he tells his apprentice that it’s time to pass on his secret – the secret of bringing toys to life. The apprentice is crawling out of his skin, he’s so excited. But first, he brings up a quibble.
“Master, one question.”
“Speak.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?”
“I just said. It’s the way it’s always been. Since the days of Merlin.”
“Yes, but just given the importance of the secret, it seems so risky to wait until now.”
“Well, there’s a nice symmetry, isn’t there? At the moment of death. Passing the secret of life.”
“But it does make the timing unnecessarily critical.”
“Well quite. And given that time is fast running out — “
“— But what if something had happened to you? You could have been hit by a horse-drawn carriage.”
“That’s exactly why I look both ways before crossing the road.”
“Or been struck by lightning.”
“Could we address these questions after I’ve imparted the secret, rather than before?”
The Toymaker then brings the apprentice close and whispers the secret. Moments later, he’s dead. The apprentice jumps for joy. But not for the reasons we think. “You old fool. I see it all now. The greatest secret in the history of mankind. And for centuries, it has been wasted on children’s toys. But no longer. I shall use it for a very different purpose. I shall build an army of mighty automatons. All shall fall before me like dry wheat beneath the scythe! And I shall rule THE WORLD!”
The apprentice then runs outside, gets hit by a horse and carriage, gets struck by lightning, and dies.
Cut to Alfred, a teddy bear, Tulip, a doll, Celine, a snake, and Gawain, a knight, watching from the window. The toys realize they’re on their own now, and when a new family moves in, they’re forced to relocate to the walls, where they build a new home. They watch this family live for 80 years, until they are no more. Then they spend the next couple of decades living in the house alone.
That is until Catherine, a single mother, and Emily, her 9 year old daughter, move in. The toys are annoyed, but they’ve done this dance before. Then everything changes when a local contractor stops by to look at the house, and announces that the kitchen ceiling is going to need to be replaced. Since 90% of the toys’ secret home is above the kitchen, this forces them to uproot and move everything to a different section of the house.
When more contractors show up and suggest more changes, the toys realize that if they don’t think of something fast, their secret existence will be discovered. That’s when they come up with a plan to haunt their inhabitants. They do a pretty good job of this, with Tulip allowing herself to be “discovered,” only to pull an Exorcist, twisting her head around and making weird noises.
The only problem is that Emily is on to them. She finds her way into the secret world of the toys and demands to know what’s going on. They confess that they’re terrible “people” and tried to get them to leave. Emily forgives them, but both sides then encounter a new threat. It turns out that a toy the Toymaker never finished has also been living in the bowels of the house. And now he wants revenge for being left by the other toys…
While Rian Johnson may have forever turned the phrase “subverting expectations” into a screenwriting swear word, it’s still something you want to be doing when you’re writing. Subverting expectations doesn’t have to be the opposite of a big twist we were expecting, or the opposite of the climax we all wanted. It can include going against any expectation the reader has, even the smallest ones.
When I started The Toymaker’s Secret and he was on his deathbed and he prepares to tell his apprentice his big secret, I groaned. I’d seen this scene way too many times before. I got ready for a lonnnng read. But then the apprentice asks, “Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?” and I laughed. Not only did it subvert my expectations, but it was a dead-on observation that I’d always wondered myself. I went from skeptical to intrigued.
Then, after the apprentice learns the secret, he screams out how he’s going to make an army of automatons and take over the world, and I groaned again. “Oh,” I thought. “It’s going to be one of those movies.” Then the apprentice runs outside and gets killed. My expectations were subverted a SECOND time. Once more, I was intrigued. I should’ve known better. This wasn’t some weekend screenwriting warrior we were talking about. It was Alex Garland. Lesson learned.
The best thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the characters, specifically the toys. I loved three of the four toys immediately. Each of them had such distinctive personalities. Alfred was the rule-follower and task-master. Tulip was the overly curious one. And Gawain was extremely serious about his duty. That’s one of the most important parts of the game, guys. You want the reader to know who your characters are. They should never be confused or wishy-washy about them. The lone wishy-washy character here is Celine, the snake. And she disappears into the background as a result. The same will happen to your characters unless they’re DISTINCT. We must know who they are and what they represent. Never forget that.
The worst thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the plot. Remember that when you stick your characters in a single location for the majority of the story, you are limiting your narrative options. It’s not a coincidence that the word “movie” comes from the verb “move.” Movies like stories that MOVE SOMEWHERE. The exception is when there’s an outside force inflicting conflict on the characters in the location. Like David Fincher’s movie, Panic Room. Those characters are constantly threatened by an outside force.
The Toymaker’s Secret’s narrative is driven more by the impending collision between humans and toys. That’s really the only reason to keep watching. We’re curious how the two are going to meet, and what will happen when they do. This type of story engine can work. It’s just hard. And you can see Garland struggling with it throughout. The plot never truly gets going.
It all catches up to him in the third act, where we throw in the insane toy who’s been locked in the basement the whole time. The “late-arriving villain” is another toughie to make work because we don’t know him well. Therefore we don’t know what he wants. Therefore we’re not scared of him. Therefore we don’t give him a lot of weight. When you try and build your climax around a plot point like that, the results are predictable.
Which is too bad because I loved these toys. I thought Gawain, in particular, was hilarious. And Tulip was adorable. The scene where she sneaks into Emily’s room and uses a VR headset for the first time – rocking everything she knows about life – was wonderful. There’s a movie you can build around these characters, for sure. But this script tries to cover too many bases and, in the process, never discovers what kind of movie it wants to be. With that said, Garland keeps it readable, and I was never bored. So I’d say this is worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One word can add so much to an image. When Tulip is stabbing the contractor’s toe through the wall with Gawain’s sword, Alfred comes flying in to stop her before she’s discovered. Here’s the description.
We are with TULIP, about to JAB SAM again —
— when suddenly she is RUGBY TACKLED by ALFRED.
Garland could’ve easily used “tackled” all by itself. It does the job. But by adding “RUGBY” before it, it creates a much more specific image.
The Coens remind us why they’re two of the best screenwriters of all time.
Genre: Drama/Western/Dark Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) An anthology film comprised of six stories, each dealing with a different aspect of life in the Old West.
About: It’s been eight years since the Coen Brothers’ last hit (True Grit). Since then they’ve hit us with the hard to like Llewyn Davis, then cast George Clooney at his most muggiest to give us the messy waste of time, Hail Caesar. Perhaps the Coens knew they needed to stretch their creative muscles and try something new. Which is why they went to Netflix. Streaming didn’t require anything resembling a three-act structure, and they went all in with that freedom, giving us six short vignettes as opposed to one giant movie.
Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen
Details: 2 hrs and 12 minutes
It isn’t a stretch to say that while the Coens are technically living in the year 2018, spiritually they’re living in, like, 1870 or something. So it’s apropos that their latest film is set in the Old West. I have to admit, I’ve lost a lot of faith in the Coens recently. I thought Llewyn Davis was one of the most miserable characters ever conceived. If the U.S. military ever wants to build a weapon that injects depression into its target, all they need to do is show their enemies that film. But with today’s review, I’m happy to say that the Coens aren’t just back. They’re back with a vengeance.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs isn’t a single narrative. It’s six separate narratives, all set in the same universe of the Old West. The first follows Buster, an oddball outlaw who enjoys talking directly to the audience, using his impressive shooting skills to dust his adversaries, then joyfully singing about it. We watch Buster kill a couple of local tough guys before finally meeting his equal. Will this man, who is also strong with song, be the end of Buster?
The second vignette is Cowboy James Franco robbing a bank. After failing to do so, he’s strung up to a tree to be hung by the local sheriff. But when Comanches come galloping in and kill the sheriff and his gang, Cowboy James Franco is left at his horse’s mercy. Should the horse move too far from the tree, James will fall from the saddle and choke to death.
Vignette three follows a broken down drunk played by Liam Neeson who makes his living wheeling around a performer with no arms or legs. The performer recites high-brow material, such as poems about Cain and Abel, and while at first, he kills it, every city they visit, his audience gets smaller and smaller. Liam Neeson realizes he has to find a new act if he’s going to survive. But then what to do with the performer, who’s completely dependent on him?
The fourth film follows an old failed prospector who finds a stream in a picturesque valley. He sets up shop and begins sifting for gold. Weeks go by until finally, shockingly, he finds it. He hops down into the hole he’s dug to get a closer look, only to be shot in the back by a cowboy who’d been watching him this whole time, waiting for him to do the work so he could could glide in and collect the gold effort free. But maybe our prospector is more resilient than we first thought.
The fifth film introduces us to Alice, who’s to be married to a friend of her brother’s in Oregon. The siblings lead a caravan down the Oregon Trail, but, on the way, her brother dies. After burying him, we learn that Alice’s brother made an arrangement with the caravan’s leader to pay him $400 for the job. The only problem is that Alice can’t find the money. As each day passes, she dreads confessing to the man that he’s doing all of this for nothing.
The final film follows a group of five people in a stage coach that is carrying a mysterious dead body on its roof. The five pontificate about life, interjecting the conversation with the occasional song. Eventually, we learn that the owners of the stage coach are bounty hunters.
Look, I get it. Sitting down to watch a Coen Brothers film isn’t like sitting down to watch a Marvel movie, a horror flick, or even a biopic. It requires a certain level of mental commitment that can be agitating in this day and age. You have to put yourself in a state of – gasp – concentration. Some people don’t want to do that. And that’s okay. I’m the same way with movies like Call Me By Your Name and Ladybird. I know I’m going to have to invest in some boredom at first to ultimately appreciate something that, hopefully, affects me on a deeper level.
But, man. If you pass this one up, you’re missing out on something special. This is the Coens bringing their A-Game. You’re watching something you can’t get anywhere else. In a medium that’s been so oversaturated, nobody bats an eye when franchises get remade five short years later, it’s amazing to witness true originality.
Which is ironic because it’s this very originality that makes it so difficult to learn anything from “Ballad.” I mean, it’s not a feature. So there are no screenwriting lessons about feature-length structure. It’s not a TV show, so you can’t explore it as a series of episodes. We’re talking about six short films. What the hell do we learn from that?
I suppose one lesson is the “Aftermath” narrative. The most popular narrative structure in storytelling is the Goal-Driven narrative. And we actually have that here in the fourth film, where the old man is digging for gold. Finding the gold is the goal. But the Coens like to work with the “aftermath” of a goal – what happens after our hero succeeds or fails at his goal. You see this in the second film, when Cowboy James Franco’s goal is to rob the bank. He attempts to rob the bank, fails, and is then sentenced to be hung. The rest of the film focuses on the aftermath of his failure.
You can look at Fargo as an “Aftermath” narrative as well. The goal is for a husband to fake his wife’s kidnapping in order to con her rich father out of a bunch of money. The wife is accidentally killed during the “fake” kidnapping and the rest of the movie is the aftermath of this error.
The cool thing about the Aftermath narrative is that you can start it anywhere you want. For example, the first 60% of the movie can be the goal. And the final 40% can be the aftermath. The reason you would do this is to keep the audience guessing. Most movies deal with their goal during the climax. So if your characters accomplish the goal before that, the audience has no idea what’s coming next, which is exciting. A recent example of this is the script “Triple Frontier.” If I remember correctly, the first 65% of the narrative is goal-driven: Steal the money from the drug dealers. The final 35% is the aftermath, which is trying to get 300 million dollars from deep South America into the U.S.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this anthology is that the short I was most bored by initially ended up being my favorite. That would be the Liam Neeson one. The first half of the short kept hitting the same beat, with the performer reciting his poems over and over again, which would end with Neeson packing up and moving to the next city. There didn’t seem to be any point to it.
But as the audiences began to shrink, I realized we were heading towards an impasse. Neeson was going to have to figure out what to do with this guy. It then occurred to me that while the story itself had been repetitive and boring, the Coens had sneakily been developing the characters in the background (The performer couldn’t go to the bathroom without Neeson’s help – that’s how close their relationship was). So by the time Neeson finally has to make his decision, it’s devastating. Is he really going to do this to this man we’ve fallen in love with? I was shocked at just how much I cared about the answer. And I loved how the Coens showed the final action. It was something only they could’ve thought up.
I don’t know why we haven’t seen anything good from these two this decade. But I’m willing to forgive their missteps, because The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is freaking fantastic. Probably the best thing you’ll find on Netflix. At the very least, check out the fifth story, “The Gal Who Got Rattled.” It has a killer ending. This better win some Oscars.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: While the Coens make some exotic writing choices from time to time (fourth-wall breaking singing cowboys who are the polar opposite of the cowboy stereotype), they often use very simple storytelling devices. If you look at the fourth vignette, “All Gold Canyon,” that story has two devices – a goal (find gold) and an obstacle (a man shoots him once he finds the gold). Sometimes, that’s all you need, a goal and an obstacle.
Today’s batch of scripts comes with, probably, the most original-sounding idea I’ve heard all year. I have no idea if the execution matches up with the imagination, but it should be fun finding out. Also, a head’s up. Just like Halloween, I’ll be doing a HOLIDAY AMATEUR OFFERINGS right before Christmas. So if you’ve got that great Christmas or Hanukkah or New Years or “I Hate The Holidays” script just waiting to be discovered, you’ll want to get it ready!
Another heads up. I’m probably going to review The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (on Netflix) on Monday. Interested to see if the Coen’s, two of the best screenwriters ever, have got their mojo back. So check it out if you want to be part of the discussion. If I change my mind and decide to review something else, I’ll give you a head’s up in the comments.
If you haven’t played Amateur Offerings before, all you have to do is read as much of the 5 screenplays below as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments section. Voting closes on Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.
Title: MARENIGHT
Genre: Musical Drama
Logline: In the late 1800’s, a Native American teen finds his remote western town under siege from an extraterrestrial force.
Why You Should Read: As a writer, sometimes you get an idea that comes fully imagined in your mind including the score. Luckily, I have some limited ability to tinker out a tune on a keyboard and I applied that to this story. I’ve never done anything musically on this scale before, however. Certainly no experience with music software, but I’m pleased that in presenting a musical, I’ve also created 23 tracks that give an idea to those who always say upon reading a musical script, ‘Well, I need to hear the darn music!” Those sample tracks are marked throughout the script and can be found here.
As a musical, this is a story that wears its heart on its sleeve. I’ve written the story and score to be accessible and appeal to the older audience, young people who like singing with their spectacle, and the gay crowd who like to see a prominent character they can identify with. All have been from beginning of time the backbone of support for the musical in all its forms. I’ve attempted to make the “strange attractor” in this story as big as it is, to take a balcony seat to the central relationships, the human element. I hope that’s apparent, but I also hope the spectacle, the odd and atmospheric will delight.
If chosen, it gets its premiere here with an audience of readers that know their stuff and hit the high notes every time in critiquing entries and making them better.. I do hope I get the chance to hear them sing.
Title: Raw Meat
Genre: Horror
Logline: When troublesome student, Mason, gets sent to an isolated boarding school under suspicious circumstances, he discovers that the teachers are secretly killing the students and then eating them.
Why You Should Read: Some of you might remember me posting the logline for this script in the comments some time ago (under the title ‘The Dead of Winter’), as well as a link to the script. The goal was to get some real feedback so I could attack my next draft with an actual purpose. The comments I received were amazing, which resulted in a totally new direction, turning this script from what was once a psychological horror/thriller to a straight up horror film. On top of that, I used Carson’s logline service – which I really, really recommend if you want to get your logline in order (shameless plug) – and now I believe I have a great horror script ready to go. — But most importantly, I took Carson’s advice in the first place and actually wrote myself a horror. More than that, I wrote a high-concept horror set in a single location that would require minimal special effects/costs to produce and make. Do I think that this will be made? I sure hope so! But if not, I believe it’s a step in the right direction.
Title: BURDEN
Genre: Drama/Superhero
Logline: A struggling single mother’s world is turned upside-down when Atlas, the world’s only superhero, decides to transfer his powers over to her.
Why You Should Read: Hey, Osagie here! Love reading SS, deciding to put myself out there with AoW. The impetus for this two-hander script was a stressful period where I wondered how other people dealt with overwhelming liability, leading me to imagine how a real-world “superman” or “superwoman” would cope. And so a “hero” finds his way out of the job by thrusting it on a single-mother, already making her own reckless choices in her normal life. How’s this flawed character supposed to handle the weight of the world on her shoulders? How would any real person deal with “great power and great responsibility”? The superpowers drive the plot, but the characters drive the story. Hopefully my focus on real-world situations and characters meld well within the fantastical, sometimes discounted, element of superheroes. “I just tried to write characters who are human beings who also have superpowers” – Stan Lee
Title: SMITH 23
Genre: TV Pilot – Sci-Fi
Logline: After global warming and several wars have taken their toll on Earth, most of humanity has been thrown into starvation and anarchy while the elite thrive in a few fortified cities, the last bastions of civilization. From the teenage prostitute to the genocidal leader of the powerful city-state Smith 23, all struggle to survive in this new uncharted existence.
Why You Should Read: This script offers something for everybody. Important issues like sexual exploitation, global warming and income inequality should appeal to the Scriptshadow gatekeepers while big set pieces, and old-fashioned sex & violence will entice Larry The Lyft Driver. More importantly, over the years I’ve figured out that the only way to present this stuff is through character. These characters are not necessarily likable but always interesting.
Title: Ushar
Genre: Romantic drama
Logline: A trepid documentary filmmaker falls in love with a beautiful African tribeswoman, and then discovers that the native women sacrifice their husbands as part of the wedding ceremony.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been writing short fiction since I was 9 years old, and trying to break into the film industry since high school. I try to watch movies on a daily basis, and I’ve written a handful of screenplays, many of them unfinished. However, I felt Ushar was such a good concept that I sent it out to Script Pipeline — I even paid to get some script notes. Needless to say, although I didn’t place in the competition, I did get some very positive feedback, including some things to think about for future rewrites. However, to my knowledge, that was just one judge’s opinion, and I would like to send my script out to as many people as I can, if anything just for some exposure. I don’t care if someone says my script sucks, but I’d really like to get a sense of where I’m at in this crazy world of screenwriting. I thought you could help.
I’m sure you’ve heard this stat before. 97% of screenplays are bad. Or even 99% of screenplays are bad. Doesn’t take a whole lot of math to figure out, then, that only 1% of screenplays are good. This stat always messed with my head. How does one break into the top 1% of anything? It sounds impossible. So whenever I heard that stat, I conditioned myself to ignore it. Now that I’ve read a ton of screenplays, I can confirm that the stat is correct. But the numbers aren’t as daunting as they seem. By going through the percentages, you realize that a large chunk of the 99% are people who aren’t nearly as serious about this as you are. And from there, it’s a matter of working hard and writing a lot. But we’re going to get specific. Below is a step by step breakdown of how to get you to that coveted 1% Let’s jump into it.
Reaching the top 70% – All you have to do to beat out the lowest 30% of screenwriters is to write a second screenplay. The large majority of screenwriters cling to one “brilliant” story they’ve got (usually their life story or some really cheesy popcorn movie they thought of when they left Transformers 4) and never write anything else. Because these are first scripts, they’re always terrible. This means that by simply writing a second screenplay, you’re ahead of all these numbskulls.
Reaching the top 50% – I realize this is redundant, but it’s true. All you have to do to get to the top 50 percentile is write a third script. Most people who try their hand at screenwriting believe it’s easy. That they just need to get that one great idea down on paper and they’ll be rich. And, if that doesn’t work, oh yeah, they’ve got that other idea. So they’ll write that too. But once that doesn’t shock the world (and why wouldn’t it – everyone masters everything the second time they do it), they consider this practice too hard and give up. By merely writing a third screenplay, you display that you are serious about the craft, and therefore have half of all the screenplays out there beat.
Reaching the top 45% – You read Scriptshadow. No, seriously. If you’re continuously reading screenwriting sites with strong educational content, it means you’re constantly learning. Every tip you can pluck from Scriptshadow and implement into your writing gets you that much closer to the top. It doesn’t have to be Scriptshadow, of course. It can be one of those other sites. As long as you’re constantly educating yourself, you’re getting closer to the top of the mountain.
Reaching the top 40% – Getting structure down. If you’re going to get out of F territory (anything below 60%) you need to know how to structure a screenplay. It tends to take most people 5 or 6 scripts to get a good feel for structure. That means understanding the 3 acts. Understanding basic elements within those acts (inciting incident, mid-point shift, the obstacle-heavy second act, the “All is Lost” turn that takes us into Act 3). Getting this down allows you to properly pace your script and build your story towards an exciting conclusion, so it’s necessary.
Reaching the top 35% – Dialogue. You must overcome your on the nose tendencies. No more bland lifeless chit-chat between characters. No more endless expositional dialogue. You need to learn how to “dress up” dialogue (dialogue that has a bit more spark than every day conversation). Write dialogue individual to each character. Create dialogue-friendly characters. Use subtext. Use dramatic irony. It’s easy to spot amateur writers because of how boring and lifeless their dialogue this. Once you learn this stuff, your scripts become a lot more fun to read.
Reaching the top 30% – You must get feedback on your scripts, and you must get it from more than one person. You can only improve so much if you’re not getting real-world feedback on your writing. As a young screenwriter, I remember thinking I had it all figured out. That I didn’t need second opinions. A friend encouraged me to get feedback, even pay for it (what???) and after a while, I surrendered and got a consultant. One of the first things he pointed out was that my writing had zero voice. It was bland and lifeless. He compared a page in my script to one from a professional script and I immediately realized he was right. So you need feedback to get better, guys. And the reason I say more than one person is that some writers give their scripts to a single person – a friend or family member – who’s too sweet to give hard-hitting feedback, the only kind of feedback that actually helps you.
Reaching the top 25% – You have to be someone who gets their scripts out there. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. This is a numbers game. The more people who read your script, the better the chance you’re going to find someone who likes it. I’ve seen some writers who had the talent to make it but they didn’t have the hustle. A great example of a hustler is the writer who wrote Final Journey, a script about an eskimo woman who’s forced out of her village and must survive alone on the savage arctic tundra. The writer got a lot of no’s on that script but he hustled. Eventually he found someone in the industry who loved it, sung its praises, and the script ended up making the Black List.
Reaching the top 20% – Concept choice. It’s strange how long it takes screenwriters to figure this out. But unless you’re coming up with marketable concepts and writing inside well-established Hollywood genres, you’re going to have a tough time making it. I realize this lies in stark contrast to the example I used above (Final Journey). But learning to write movies that Hollywood wants to buy is a critical momentum shift in a writer’s career that changes the way their scripts are received. — Oh wow, we’re getting close to the top of the mountain. And there’s been nothing asked of us that’s that hard. Maybe getting to the 1% isn’t impossible after all.
Reaching the top 15% – Understanding character and relationships. This is huge – HUGE HUGE HUGE. You must learn how to make a character sympathetic. How to give a character a flaw. How to arc a character. How to do so naturally (so the character arc doesn’t feel like it came out of a screenwriting book). How to construct unresolved issues between characters and use the script to explore and ultimately resolve those issues. The writer who gets to the point in the journey where they realize it’s not about the plot, but about the characters, is the writer who establishes themselves as a real screenwriter. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Learning how to do the above effectively takes between 1-3 years, depending on things like talent and how in tune you are with human psychology.
Reaching the top 10% – Keep going. This is going to sound like lip service but I promise you it isn’t. A lot of writers quit at this stage, mainly because they’ve been at this for so long. They feel like they understand the craft really well. And they do. Yet, somehow, they still haven’t made it. It messes with their head. They start wondering if it’s impossible, that you really need to have a famous dad or uncle in the business. And the pain of sending one more script out there that doesn’t stick is too much to bear. So just by the nature of staying in there, of continuing to fight, you give yourself a chance at this.
Reaching the top 5% – This is where the rubber meets the road. Once you’ve gotten this far, you’re competing against writers who are either a) insanely dedicated, b) very talented, or c) both. I remember when I used to play soccer as a 10 year old kid. I’d play against these kids who were sucking their thumbs in the corner of the field while watching squirrels zip around the trees. You could dribble past most kids simply by waiting for them to fall down. Then I made the All-Star team and all of a sudden, everyone was ferocious, everyone was strong, everyone was GOOD. That’s similar to what you’re dealing with when you get to this point. You’re not dealing with people who don’t know you have to capitalize a character when they’re introduced. To me, this section is all about outworking the competition. You have to write more. You have to rewrite more. You have to get your scripts out to more people. You have to keep learning. You can’t slack off once you’re this high on the mountain. Write write write write and then write some more. That’s the only way you rise above the All-Stars.
Reaching the top 1% – To get to the top, you need everything I mentioned above, and a script that displays one or more of these three things: A strong voice, a really strong idea, stellar execution. The first should be obvious. The overwhelming majority of the scripts readers read are boring. It’s so refreshing when they get a writer who sees the world differently. Who writes in a fresh manner that makes the mere act of reading the script fun. Christy Hall (Daddio) is the current poster-child for voice. The second is a really strong concept. A fun exciting concept is the ultimate screenwriting deodorant. All those other script problems disappear while the reader imagines how cool this movie would look in a trailer. Jurassic Park, The Martian, A Quiet Place. The third is for the writer who doesn’t have a crazy-unique style or a killer premise. But they they’ve done all the hard work, they know this craft inside and out, and they’re able to nail every nook and cranny of the screenplay. Pretty Woman comes to mind. The Equalizer. The Goonies. Toy Story. None of these were voice-y world shattering concepts. But the scripts were executed perfectly.
So, you see, once you break the numbers down, it’s really not that bad. The majority of your competition doesn’t take screenwriting seriously enough for you to worry about them. The truth about success in screenwriting is no different than success anywhere. You need to put in the time and the work. If you do that and you have a reasonable level of talent, you can succeed at this. Especially since I just gave you the road map to do so. Now back to writing!
