Genre: Comedy
Premise: Show business today may be a snake pit of jealousy and backstabbing, but for an aspiring Court Jester in the late 1800s, it isn’t even THAT nice.
Why you should read: I’m a UK-based writer and I’ve always loved film and TV about the inner workings of show-business, and the chaos, desperation and joy involved when art meets money. ‘I’m Alan Partridge,’ ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ ‘Bullets Over Broadway,’ etc – it’s been done brilliantly many times but I think with FOOL I’ve found a new angle on it. I love sharp, witty dialogue as much as I love broad slap-stick, and in FOOL I’ve tried to them throw both in together. So if you want a fresh take on a much-loved genre, have a read of FOOL. I hope you enjoy it but if you don’t, you can have fun tearing it to bits – another great showbiz tradition.
Writer: Neil MacLennan
Details: 95 pages

Casting this would be really hard. Andy Samberg maybe? Would love to hear your casting suggestions in the comments.

So the new Star Wars trailer hit yesterday and boy do I have some freaking opinions. There is so much subtext behind that trailer and what’s going on with that project, I don’t know where to begin. But clearly something is wrong. I’m going to throw up a dedicated post about it tomorrow. But in the meantime, in the immortal words of Mr. T., I pity the fool who didn’t read Fool!

It’s the early 1800s, my favorite time in history, and can’t a comedian catch a break? Rasmussen is doing everything he can to move up the comedy ladder, playing any tavern that will have him, yet seems to routinely get thrown out the window every time he performs.

The problem seems to be that Rasmussen’s wit is too sophisticated for the clientele. Rasmussen is all about the wordplay. For example, a typical Rasmussen joke might be, “Which animal has death no effect upon? The pig! Because after you’ve killed him, you can cure him, and save his bacon!”

Unfortunately, so few people actually understand Rasmussen’s jokes that he always has to explain them. That is until he gets the opportunity of a lifetime. When the city’s preeminent master of wordplay, Blackridge, is informed by the king that he needs more entertainment for his wedding, Blackridge is assigned to find more comedians!

Terrified that other comedians might show him up, Blackridge and his lackey, Sleev, set out to find the most untalented comedian in the land. And that, of course, is how Rasmussen gets invited to the tryouts.

Here’s the problem. The rich are so terrified to look like they don’t understand wordplay, that they actually laugh at all of Rasmussen’s jokes, which allows him to keep advancing in the tryouts.

Blackridge is freaking out that everyone’s about to realize he’s a farce, and so does everything in his power to ensure Rasmussen fails. Things are going so well for the Ras, though, that he’s able to quit his job shoveling manure. But will he be able to ride this wave of good luck to a primetime spot at the king’s wedding? We’ll have to see!

Fool was funny!

And original!

Imagine that. A comedy script that didn’t have yet another 32 year old white male acting a fool. Actually, now that I think about it, Rassmussen is a 32 year old white male who is literally a fool. BUT at least he’s not driving an Uber.

Fool combines two worlds you rarely see in comedy scripts these days. It gets the funny right AND it has something to say. Neil explores the eternal struggle of what it means to be an artist, discussing the same themes we still talk about today (and in fact, what I just ranted about in my most recent newsletter). When is it time to hang it up?

“Fool” doesn’t just follow Rasmussen on his comedy journey, but consistently takes us into his home, where his pregnant wife and beastly mother-in-law do everything short of begging him to quit his comedy pursuit so he can support his wife. There are nights where he doesn’t even have enough money to bring home food.

And yet Rasmussen continues to pursue his dream.

And I think that’s a lesson all comedy writers should learn. When you write a comedy, it’s not just about being goofy. It’s about putting EVERYTHING ON THE LINE. The more of an “all or nothing” pursuit that it is, the funnier the comedy gets, since we feel the stakes of every joke. Rasmussen is putting all his eggs in this wedding performance basket, risking his family’s livelihood. Each joke is live or die.

The thing is, I read just as many comedies where the writers know how to structure a screenplay, yet aren’t actually funny. “Fool” doesn’t have this problem.

We can’t stop laughing at Rasmussen. Every time he tells one of his wordplay jokes at the pub, not a soul laughs, so he has to explain why the joke is funny, which results in the audience getting angry, which results in Rasmussen getting thrown out the window. Every time.

And it’s clever too. I loved the contrast of how the royalty audience only laughed out of fear that they’d look like they didn’t understand the joke, and how that propelled Rasmussen’s plight.

I loved his dopey manure-shoveling co-worker who Rasmussen would routinely philosophize to, only to turn and see him let out a giant belch and go back to shoveling shit. Or Rasmussen quietly boiling in the corner of the tavern when the town fool performed his pratfall routine and the customers ate it up. Or watching his fellow performer, the wizard, bumble around with his fire routine, always accidentally setting himself on fire.

But I think my favorite part of Fool was how much I cared about Rasmussen. I really wanted him to succeed. I really enjoyed his battle of whether to keep pursuing his dream, give up and support his family, or sell out (by acting a fool and stumbling around on stage).

I think someone should take a chance on this movie. And I think a comedic actor would LOVE to play this part, as it’s unlike any other role they’re likely to get offered.

Nice job, Neil!

Script link: Fool

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

What I learned: One of the most likable types of characters is the character who keeps getting knocked down and yet always gets back up, always keeps fighting. This script doesn’t work unless we love Rasmussen. And his positive attitude despite every endeavor telling him he should throw in the towel, is one of the script’s many charms.

Alright, so the top 25 scripts in the Scriptshadow 250 Contest have been announced. And while I’m sure many of you are happy for the finalists, let’s be honest. You want to know why the hell your script didn’t make the list. I’ve already seen people complaining about the loglines. “This is it??” they’re saying, forgetting that we’re not running a contest for best logline here. If we were, yesterday’s list would be a lot different. We’re looking for the best scripts. And because of that, a lot of the best loglines fell by the wayside. Believe me, I was pulling for them. The holy grail is the great concept WITH the great execution. But those scripts are like unicorns, appearing once or twice a year.

But let’s get back to that question: Why didn’t I make it? In some cases, the answer was specific to the script. I had one script that didn’t advance because the character naming was so ridiculous, it became impossible to take the script seriously. Imagine someone named Clarkwardenfall. IN A DRAMA. Then multiply that by 20 characters. But for most of the misses, there were patterns. The same issues kept coming up. Maybe by highlighting these issues, I can help you do better in your next contest.

1) LACK OF CREATIVITY – By far, the biggest issue was a lack of creativity in the storytelling. Everyone’s writing the same scenes, the same characters, the same plot beats. Nothing fresh or creative or unexpected or unique is happening on any level. I was a million pages ahead of writers on so many of these scripts. This is why the industry values “voice” so much, since voice is the antithesis of this. Writers with voice are constantly making unexpected choices that are keeping the reader on their toes. But you don’t need to be blessed with a unique voice to thrive in this area. Creative choices can be learned. You have to a) be more aware of how original your choices are and b) hold yourself to a higher standard once you recognize low-quality choices (by digging in and coming up with something better). Be brave. Do a few things that surprise even you when you tell a story.

2) TOO MUCH CREATIVITY – There’s a type of writer who writes in the opposite manner to what I just described. They don’t see behind or in front of them, but focus only on the present, writing their stories “off-the-cuff.” Because of this, their screenplays keep the reader guessing (unlike the uncreative folks). But since the writer possesses no plan, their choices usually lead you down paths to nowhere. These writers need to learn how a story is structured (beginning, middle, and end) and they need to spend more time outlining, so that their choices contain a plan behind them. As soon as I realize you don’t have a plan or as soon as things get too scattered or unfocused, I’m out.

3) LACK OF SOPHISTICATION – In a good 20 of the scripts I read, writers tackled subject matter that was well beyond their level of sophistication. For example, a writer might have written about a tragic World War 1 story, yet the writing was simplistic, lacked detail, and didn’t possess the proper mood or tone to capture the period. If you’re going to tackle weightier subject matter, make sure you possess the writing skills to do so. If you want to get better in this area, read strong literary material, carry a curiosity for vocabulary and grammar, and practice your ass off.

4) SECOND ACT BLUES – There are still too many writers who don’t have a clue of what to do once they reach the second act. One of the scripts I read was cruising through its first act. I was like, “This might make the top 5!” And then the writer spent the first 25 pages of his second act giving us extensive background on his 12 main characters. The screenplay lost all its momentum and never recovered. The second act should be doing three things. 1) Every scene should be moving your hero closer to his goal. 2) The second act should be exploring the major lines of conflict between your key characters, and 3) The second act should be placing obstacles in front of your characters so that they have things to overcome in order to achieve their goal. The second act is the act of “conflict,” so every scene should contain conflict on some level. Even if it’s just two people in a room, there needs to be something unresolved there, something that starts off negative and poses a problem that must be solved, for one or both of the characters.

5) ROSES ARE RED, PROSES ARE DEAD – I read three scripts from writers who may have made the top 25 if they didn’t grind their scripts to a standstill with walls of text. And guys, just because you divide 50 lines of description into 3 and 4 line paragraph chunks? THAT’S STILL A WALL OF TEXT. I’ve found that these writers fall into two categories. The first is the “need to impress” category. These writers tend to be young and believe it’s their job to impress you with their word-skills. The second is the “show-off” category. These are writers who are genuinely talented writers and want to show that off, but don’t realize their scripts aren’t being read in a breakfast nook with a blanket and a hot coffee, like novels are. Screenplays are meant to be read quickly, in a high-pressure industry where people are constantly asking for the new hot thing. So fair or not, it feels like WORK if we’re reading a lot of words to describe simple things. Once your script starts feeling like work ON ANY LEVEL, you’re done.

6) LACK OF NUANCE – There were a lot of scripts where writers weren’t nuanced in their writing. So a character would be really angry one second, then really nice the next, with no insight into why their mood changed so suddenly. Or a character would wake up in the middle of the night, walk outside, and all of a sudden be fighting a bunch of bad guys. How did we get here? Where did these bad guys come from? How did this character even know to wake up and check outside in the first place? There was a TON of this, and I call it “In Your Head Writing.” “In Your Head Writing” is when you’re thinking about what makes sense TO YOU (in your head) and not someone who will be reading this for the first time. To you, you may have thought, “My angry character is done being angry, he’ll be nice now,” so you make him nice. But you never shared with us (the people outside of your head) why that transition took place. If you’re being told that your writing is confusing a lot, step outside of your head and see if your writing makes sense from a third-person’s perspective.

But the biggest thing, guys, is to keep practicing. As hard as this is to hear, you may not be ready yet. I know that sucks but you may need to work more on structure or character development or dialogue. All that stuff takes time to grasp. So keep writing, keep reading (scripts), and keep studying. I’d even add “get more feedback” to that list. How can you know if you’re writing “in your head” if you don’t have a third party giving you feedback? Now get back on the horse and write something great.

Psycho meets Alice in Wonderland meets American Psycho. Could there be a stranger more appealing movie combination??

Genre: Murder-Mystery
Premise: Set in 1953, when a young woman is murdered in a small town, everyone suspects the mysterious gardener who lives with his sick mother.
About: We’ve been tackling so many adult scripts lately, it was time to get back to genre. This script finished #2 on last year’s Blood List (Best Horror and Thriller Scripts of the Year).
Writer: Alyssa Jefferson
Details: 98 pages

Benedict for Charles!

I often say not to go over 3 lines a paragraph when you’re writing a screenplay. So you may think that when I read a script like The Gardener, which regularly hits up to 8 lines per paragraph, that I’m predisposed to hating it.

But that’s not the case. I’ve always been of the belief that you can break rules. In fact, the rules you break are what help define your voice as a writer. Quentin Tarantino likes to write 10 minute scenes. I wouldn’t advise the average screenwriter go anywhere near that number. But Tarantino knows how to write these scenes and he’s good at it. So it works for him.

Likewise, I don’t mind paragraphs that go over 3 lines as long as your writing’s good, you’re setting a tone, and you’re taking us places we couldn’t normally go inside a pithy 3 line-paragraph. In other words, there’s got to be a method to your madness.

And the best example of this style of writing working is in horror and mystery scripts where the writer is trying to set a dark uncomfortable tone. Less than two pages into Alyssa Jefferson’s screenplay, you know that’s what she’s going for.

She even goes so far as to explain what kind of socks our hero, 30-something Charles Dempsey, is wearing.

Charles, it turns out, is a weird guy. And that’s BEFORE we find out he’s suspected of murder. He lives in the house at the end of town with his sick mother, the two having run a successful gardening/florist business for years now. Except since his mother’s gotten sick, Charles has had to do all the work himself, and it’s starting to stress him out.

One day, on the way to work, he stops in the park to take a rest, only to notice that the body of a dead woman is lying on the grass beside him, a woman with beautiful fresh flowers placed in her hair. Before he can react, Alice Calloway, a local journalist, snaps a photograph of him. Charles runs off to work, disturbed by the whole incident.

It isn’t long before a couple of detectives come by and ask Charles what he was doing at the site of a murder, but he’s adamant he had nothing to do with it. As Charles gets back to his schedule, Alice starts dropping by his shop, and the two develop a friendship.

As more young women start turning up dead around town (all with flowers in their hair), the detectives put more and more heat on Charles. But with Alice continuing to vouch for him, they’re able to keep the detectives at bay. That is, until, the murderer strikes close to home, attacking Alice before disappearing into the night.

Will Charles and Alice be able to figure out and stop the murderer in time? Or will Alice end up, inevitably, like all the other women?

Rooney as Alice!

So let’s first discuss this “huge paragraphs” issue. Jefferson is clearly someone who comes from a novel or short-story background. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was her first script. Everything is extremely descriptive, as I pointed out in the opening. And Jefferson does a nice job taking advantage of those descriptions and setting the tone.

But The Gardener’s biggest fault is that the plot doesn’t move fast enough. And the main reason for that is that so much time is dedicated to describing rooms and the way people are standing and what people are doing, that there simply isn’t any time left to add more story beats.

When you come off of a slugline, you’d preferably like to move past the description and into the main action or dialogue exchange by the third paragraph. Good writers can get everything taken care of with one paragraph, meaning they’re into the meat of the scene by paragraph two.

There were a lot of times here where we’d go 5-6 paragraphs of description after the slugline. And even when that was cut down, it was usually because the paragraphs were longer. So we still had to read through the same amount of words to get to the point of why we were here.

So let’s say you have a male character at a fast food restaurant who’s going to hit on a female character. That’s the scene you want to write. You’d set up the restaurant and each character (assuming both characters have already been introduced in previous scenes) in one paragraph, two tops. Then you’d have the male character talk to (or attempt to talk to) the female character (the key action that starts the scene).

Now there are always going to be exceptions to this. And setting the mood for a particularly spooky scene could be one of those exceptions. The problem was, Jefferson did this almost everywhere, and it starts to take a toll on the reader. It’s hard to read through that many words and get so little action that actually plays into the plot. You start to distrust the writing, assuming it won’t provide you with the calories necessary to satiate your appetite.

If you can get past that though, and judge The Gardener as a story, it’s pretty good. It’s one of those scripts where you’re not sure if the main character is crazy or not. So you don’t know if he’s killing these people or if he’s being set up. You’re constantly being ping-ponged between “Of course he’s the killer” and “Oh, there’s no way he’s the killer.” So you’re mainly turning pages to figure that out and, as a writer, it doesn’t matter how you’re getting your reader to turn the pages, as long as they’re turning the pages.

And I think the straw that saved the “worth the read’s” back was the character of Charles himself. The dude was straight up creepy. The way he’d stand in front of the mirror and meticulously comb his hair until every strand was in place. The way a singular altered millisecond of his day could send him into a mental tailspin.

But probably the scariest thing was how calm he stayed in the face of intense pressure. The casual manner in which he’d answer the detective’s questions about the murdered women would make your skin crawl.

A good mystery and a good main character will get you a long way in a screenplay.

And finally, this script has one of the most chilling final images I’ve read in awhile. We’ll just say it’s the kind of image you won’t forget anytime soon, and likely one of the reasons this script has been passed around enough to get voted onto The Blood List.

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

What I learned: There’s an old saying in screenwriting. Come into a scene as late as possible. This doesn’t just mean story wise, but writing-wise as well. In other words, try to get all of your description down in 1-2 paragraphs and then get into the main action of your scene. You will find exceptions to this in your first act though, particularly if you’re introducing a lot of characters. Since most new characters get their own paragraph of description, we could go 3-4 lines deep before the action starts simply because we have new characters to introduce.

Scriptshadow 250 Contest Deadline – 80 days left!

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A group of Appalachian rednecks declare war on the local government when they’re told they must leave their mountain.
About: WGN continues their slow move into scripted television. They’ve been happy with Salem and Manhattan (liked the Salem pilot, Manhattan, not so much) and now want to add another player to that list, with Titans getting a 13-episode order. Titans comes from Rescue Me’s Peter Tolan and Paul Giamatti, as well as playwright Peter Mattei, who wrote this first episode.
Writer: Peter Mattei
Details: 70 pages (6-3-14 draft)

Brad Pitt can obviously play a redneck.

One of the nice things I’ve noticed about television’s reinvention is the 13-episode order. As you know, networks have always ordered 22 shows, which is an insane amount of television to write in such a short period of time when you think about it. This is why old-time television was so boring. You had to have a procedural or recurring format (cops, detectives, medical, law) in order to keep the episodes easy to write (it’s easy to have a new murder every week, a new emergency, a new court case).

10 and 13 episode orders are way more serial friendly. Since you don’t have to come up with so much product, you can move away from the pre-formatted dynamic and start telling more long-form stories. This is why TV has gotten so good. It’s basically become a bunch of long movies.

Today’s show is no different. It’s about Appalachian rednecks. Would you have been able to make that show in 2002? No way. Every network exec with a beamer would have said, “Where’s the show past episode 5?” And the thing is, there may not BE an episode past 5 but at least these same execs now know that it’s possible with all these past successes. I mean when you think about how long Breaking Bad ran without a single set-structure episode, it’s kind of amazing.

So does Titans have that kind of longevity?

Not sure how many redneck clans you know but these Appalachian gypsies run a different kind of operation than you and me. While we might, say, go to a movie with our dads, fathers and sons in the Kentucky Mountains like to beat each others’ brains in for entertainment. And that’s how we meet Big and Lil Foster, members of an extended backwoods clan known as the Farrel’s.

The group is both infamous and above-the-law in these parts (we get to know them doing a Walmart run where the workers watch them steal a thousand dollars worth of items, their mouths agape like they’ve just seen Justin Bieber) but their dominance is coming to an end.

The state of Kentucky sees dollar signs under the mountain they’re squatting on in the form of coal. The Farrel Clan has faced threats like this before. But this one is official. It’s coming straight from the government.

The Farrels turn to their group elder, 75 year-old wheezing wheelchairing cancer sufferer Lady Ray Farrell. Lady Ray is not one to claim that violence solves all, but this appears to be a declaration of war, and so, she announces, that’s what they must prepare for.

Speaking of Lady Ray, it’s no secret her time on earth is as limited as toothpaste in a redneck supermarket. So a mix of power-hungry hillbillies are squaring up to take her place. Big Foster is the leading contender, but he’s no favorite of Lady Ray and getting her endorsement seems to be the key to winning the election.

Instead, it’s Asa Farrel, a dark horse, who has the inside track. The only Farrel to have gotten an education, it was just a week ago that Asa tried to kill himself. But having seen the light, he’s back with something the Farrel clan has never had on its side before – knowledge. Big Foster is quick to sense Asa as a threat and puts him on his shit list. The question is, how far will Big Foster go to become the new leader? For a community that basically prides itself on being inbred, I’m sure the answer is: far enough.

Titans is a pilot with a lot of potential that’s about as messy as the redneck clan it follows. With that said, it’s so different from everything else out there that you can’t look away.

The script’s strong-point is the set-up of an impending redneck-versus-our-necks war. You sense that these gypsies will do anything to keep this mountain, and that’s the kind of suspense that’ll keep an audience coming back week after week.

Strangely, as soon as that war is mentioned, which is around the midpoint of the pilot, the script switches gears to a set of new storylines and gets totally lost in the process. It gives us a scene where the Farrel’s rob a random old man in town, followed by the beginning of a Farrel moonshine business followed by a kid killing his father after getting drunk on said moonshine.

On the one hand, it makes sense to start setting up story threads for future episodes. But it seems weird that we’d set up this giant war in the first half of the script only to move on to more mundane stuff in the second half. Every script should build to its finale, whether is be a feature or a TV episode, with the biggest event coming at the end. We needed the announcement of war to come at the episode’s conclusion. Sure, we get a murder, but since it’s born out of a moonshine storyline that only commenced 10 pages ago, it felt tacked on and anti-climactic.

Another frustrating thing about this episode is that there are all these hints that things are going to turn supernatural, yet they never do! Half the time I’m waiting for the group to turn into werewolves (wolves are a big thing on their mountain) and the other half for someone to perform a magic spell. In the very end of the episode (spoiler) we see the ground rumbling above a grave. Does this mean we’re now going to get a zombie show???

I think you owe it to the audience to tell them what your show is about in the pilot. I don’t see how it works if you keep your main hook a secret. At the very least, have the ending shot tell us, and let that be the cliffhanger. A rumbling ground isn’t enough. Audiences don’t have the patience these days to be dicked around. They have too many options.

It’s also interesting to note that we’re seeing yet ANOTHER sitting king who must choose his/her successor storyline. We saw this with Game of Thrones, Empire, Badlands, Tyrant, and now Titans. Some of you may be wondering WHY everybody’s picking this storyline. Are they all just copycats who can’t come up with their own ideas?

The answer is CONFLICT. This concept sets up a group of people fighting for the crown, and when you have that, you have conflict, deception, betrayal, and DRAMA built into the premise. You always want to come up with an idea that does the work for you. If you set up a story where a bunch people are all fighting for the same thing, the story is going to write itself. If you set up a story where a group of people are all trying to be better people, you’ll have to work a lot harder to find the drama since it isn’t naturally there. That’s why this setup is so popular.

Titans is a little like the moonshine its characters produce. It’s not the most pleasant way to drink, but in the end, it still gets you drunk. There’s a messiness here, for sure. But the subject matter is so unique, I can’t help but see the potential in the show.

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

What I learned: Titans only did this for a page, but it was enough to frustrate me. The end of your script should be the FASTEST PART OF THE SCRIPT TO READ. Everything’s coming together so our eyes should be racing down the page. I don’t understand, then, why writers write some of their thickest paragraphs in the final 10 pages (4 and 5 line paragraphs when the rest of their script is 2-3 line paragraphs). Minimalize your action lines in the final act. If there’s a lot that needs to be explained, rethink the act until there isn’t a lot to be explained. And if you absolutely need a lot of words to tell the reader what’s going on, break your paragraphs up into smaller pieces.

Last week, we discussed the five pillars of complexity. Some of you had fun with my attempt to break it down into mathematical terms, which is fine. I will hate you forever. But I think I got the point across. As long as you’re aware aware of the things that complicate a script, you’ll be more likely to find a solution.

Well, I had so much fun writing that article that I’m going to write a similar one. Except instead of focusing on negative subject matter (what not to do), I’m going to focus on the positive (what TO do). Today, I’m going to write about screenwriting MASTERY.

Now here’s something you might not know. It takes the average screenwriter seven years to break into the professional ranks (to get paid for their work). How do I know this? It’s a combination of talking to hundreds of screenwriters and reading hundreds of screenwriter interviews. That number seems to be the one that keeps coming up the most.

It’s probably no coincidence then, that there are seven pillars to screenwriting mastery. Now for those freaking out about waiting seven years for success, I have good news for you. Just the fact that you KNOW these seven pillars exist will help you speed up the process. How quickly? That depends on how talented you are and how hard you work.

So what are the seven pillars? They are, in no particular order, concept, plot, dialogue, character, message, story, and writing. Some more good news. You don’t have to master all of these to sell a script or get paid as a writer. But you do need to be proficient in almost all of them. Let’s take a look at each pillar individually and see what they consist of.

CONCEPT – We were just talking about this yesterday. Concept seems like it shouldn’t be a pillar, because a concept literally takes 5 seconds to come up with. But it is a pillar. In fact, it might be the most important pillar of all. That’s because a lousy idea negates everything that’s written after it. And when I say that you need to come up with a good concept, I don’t mean you need to come up with some huge monsters vs. aliens premise. There’s nothing wrong with a small story. But just like any idea, the concept must have specificity, it must have elements that intrigue, there must be conflict inherent, the stakes must feel high, and if you can add irony, all the better. Let’s say, for instance, that I wanted to write a movie about high school. Here are two potential concepts for the subject matter. “A bullied teenager who struggles to make friends tries to make it through his first year of high school.” “A bullied teenager with a speech impediment finds success when he becomes the unexpected hero of the debate team.” Look at how much more specific the second idea is. A random teenager is now a teenager with a speech impediment. Instead of dealing with just “school,” we’re dealing with the world of the debate team. Because it’s the debate team, stakes are implied (competition). There’s even some juicy irony there (someone who can’t speak joins the debate team). Coming up with a good concept is tough. Some of us are better at it than others. The best thing to do is ask others about your ideas. If they don’t like your ideas, ask them to be candid as to why. Sometimes you need to hear out loud what’s not working about your ideas in order to change your approach (I offer this service by the way – but be ready, I will be honest).

PLOT – Plot is the sequencing of events that tell your story. If you have your main character, Joe, buy apples and then, in the next scene, break up with his girlfriend, you’re plotting. You’re taking one sequence and following it up with another. The reason plotting is so difficult is because you have to do it over 110 pages. And, unfortunately, just showing Joe go from one task to the next for an entire movie isn’t going to keep our interest. You need to show him pursuing something important. You need to show him run into unexpected obstacles. You need to decide when the bad guys catch up to him. This is why the 3 Act structure was created, to give you a sense of where to put these things. But as you’ve all figured out by now, the 3-Act structure only guides you. In the end, it’s your creativity that’s going to dictate how you plot your story.

STORYTELLING – Contrary to popular belief, storytelling and plotting are not the same thing. There is some overlap, but whereas plotting is the art of sequencing events, storytelling is the art of coming up with events (or ideas, or characters). So when you say, “Ooh, what if my main character is actually a ghost and he doesn’t know it!!??” you’re coming up with your “story.” Still confused? Let me try and clarify. There’s a scene in Psycho where Norman Bates pushes the car of the woman his “mother” has killed into a lake. “Storytelling” is coming up with that idea in the first place. “Plotting” is deciding where to place that scene in the screenplay. Let’s try another one. Storytelling is the idea that people in the Matrix can bend space-time, allowing them to have special “powers,” and the subsequent distribution of those powers to all the relevant characters in the movie. Plotting is figuring out where in the movie to best introduce these powers. To that end, storytelling is the art of creation, of coming up with a series of ideas to buff up your story. The mastery of storytelling comes from understanding when an idea is cliché or subpar, and pushing on until you come up with something better. Most new screenwriters have a low bar for their ideas, and go with whatever comes to mind. Veteran screenwriters have a high bar and therefore keep searching until they find an idea good enough for their story.

DIALOGUE – Here’s the thing with dialogue. On the one hand, it’s not as important as the story itself. What do I mean by that? Let’s say you met someone who witnessed and told you the story of Pearl Harbor. The guy may not be the best talker, but the story would be so fascinating that you wouldn’t care. With that said, the most obvious sign of a rookie writer is bad dialogue. Unfortunately, dialogue is one of the hardest things to teach because it’s based more on feel than any other screenwriting component. I can give you a head start though. Here’s a recent post I made on improving dialogue.

CHARACTER – In my opinion, character is the single hardest component of screenwriting. Hands down. I say that because 95% of the characters I read in a script don’t feel like real people. And the reason they don’t feel like real people is because the writer hasn’t created any depth to them. And the reason the writer hasn’t created any depth to them is because they didn’t do the work. Creating characters that feel real requires tons of work on the front end (character biographies) and the back end (rewriting). I rarely read a character that feels honest and fully formed in a first draft. It’s only through the writer getting to know their character over drafts and drafts that they finally become a real person to them, and by extension, us. Character is where the true pros make their money. You can get lucky with a good premise. You can fake your way through a plot. You can have some natural talent when it comes to dialogue. But it takes hard work and dedication to the get the characters right. And only the best writers are willing to do that work.

MESSAGE/THEME – Do you subscribe to the theory of, “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.” I feel you. I was once like you. Until I realized that theme UNIFIES a screenplay. It brings it all together. Don’t believe me? Go read a bad amateur screenplay (we’ve posted a few here on the site). The commonality you’ll find in all of them is that they’re lost and unfocused. Why? Because they have nothing to unify them. They have no theme! When you have a message you’re trying to convey in your script, you have a story with purpose. Theme can easily be overlooked in screenwriting, but it shouldn’t be.

WRITING – Last but not least, let’s not forget the actual WRITING. I wasn’t going to include this one but as I looked back at all the amateur scripts I’ve read, I found a major trend: sloppy writing. Overly complicated sentences, sentences that were too long, sentences that were too short, misuse of words, trying to be too cute, dependence on SAT words, bad grammar, purple prose, clunky sentence structure, endless description, you name it. A reader can’t appreciate your story if they can’t get through one of your sentences without wanting to gouge their eyes out with a rusty spork. Each genre will have its own tone, each screenwriter his/her own style, but for the most part, you should write simple clean easy-to-read sentences. If you need help, find a screenwriter you love and read all their scripts over and over again. Pay close attention to how they write and use their style as blueprint for your own.

And that’s it my little screenwriting rapscallions. It’s a good idea to rate yourself in all these categories and, wherever you’re weak, do something about it. For example, if you’re weak in plot, watch a bunch of movies and ONLY focus on plot. If you suck at dialogue, read a bunch of scripts by great dialogue writers and figure out why their dialogue works. For most of you, your screenwriting education is self-taught. Blindly writing screenplays over and over probably isn’t going to help. You need to identify your weaknesses and specifically work on them. These seven pillars are a great place to start. Good luck!