Scriptshadow here to interrupt your regularly scheduled writing time.
I’ve been reading a ton of scripts lately. Usually two a day. What happens when you read that many scripts that close together is you become more in tune with PATTERNS. You start to see the similar mistakes writers are making.
This is great for you guys because it means I can warn you. Which means you can assess if you’re doing the same thing. You can then adjust. And you can make your scripts better as a result.
But before I get into the biggest problem I’ve been seeing lately, I want all of you to take a guess what that is. Stop reading this post and see if you can assess what the problem may be. Because it’s a good sign when screenwriters can be proactive. You should be sussing out potential issues with any screenplay you’re going to write and then coming up with a game plan to circumvent those potential issues.
All right.
Are we ready?
What do you think the problem is?
Here’s what the problem is:
Writers are sticking too closely to the established cornerstones of the genres they’re writing in.
In other words, if you’re writing an action movie, you give us a wise-talking does-things-his-own-way protagonist and every one of your action scenes is one we’ve seen before.
If you’re writing a biopic, you give us that classically misunderstood genius hero (Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game) and a linear cradle-to-grave storyline with 4-5 flashbacks, usually to a childhood with a difficult parent.
If you’re writing a serial killer script, you give us a detective who’s having some difficult life problems he’s dealing with, a killer who leaves mysterious clues, and a series of investigative visits to leads that provide just enough info to give us to the next lead. Until we get one final big twist we weren’t expecting.
If you’re writing a zombie movie, once the virus has spread, we get a lot of scenes of characters walking around houses or buildings with zombies popping out from behind doorways. We get the same kind of zombies with no alterations whatsoever.
Writers are becoming slaves to the genres they’re writing as opposed to trying to expand, challenge, or reinvent said genre.
For beginner writers, this is inevitable. Beginners often operate by the model: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” They just want to prove, whether they’re aware of it or not, that they can write the same kind of script professionals do. So they write something that comes from the wrong place. They’re copying others as opposed to expressing themselves. After writing several screenplays, these writers start having something to say themselves and begin to value of being unique rather than being similar.
But this issue can be a problem even for intermediate and advanced writers. I’ve written scripts myself where I wanted to do something different. Go off the reservation, try crazy things. But these drafts ended up being messy and tonally inconsistent and, you could argue, no longer a representation of the genre I was writing in.
So in my subsequent drafts, I would pull back. I would get rid of the wilder stuff so it felt more like the genre I was writing in. And then, in every draft after that, I would reign in the script even more, until, by the end of the process, I had a really slick screenplay… THAT FELT EXACTLY LIKE EVERY OTHER SCREENPLAY IN THAT GENRE.
I can’t emphasize enough that this is ONE OF THE BIGGEST REASONS A SCRIPT WILL NEVER GET NOTICED. And it’s SO FRUSTRATING for writers because even coming up with a pretty good screenplay with a solid main character and a plot that builds in a nice fashion and concludes satisfactorily – that’s hard. That’s hard to do. So the writer feels accomplished when they do so. Which they should. Cause that script is still better than 80% of the scripts written.
But it’s fool’s gold. Cause now you’re in that purgatory. You’re in the top 5-20%. But you’re not where you need to be – in the top 2-3%. You’ve got a competent script but not a script that leaves an impression. And the reason it doesn’t leave an impression is because you’re sticking too closely to the characters and plot beats of that genre. You’re not taking chances. You’re not trying anything new. You’re not pushing yourself with your scenes and your set pieces to really write MEMORABLE moments that we haven’t gotten from other movies.
Another tricky aspect to this is that there is a certain amount of audience expectation in ever genre. If I go to a romantic comedy, I want to see romance and comedy. I don’t want to see action and murder. So if you try and deviate too far from a genre’s tropes, people don’t like your script either. Cause it’s not giving them what they signed up for.
So you have to find that sweet spot. I know that one way to find that sweet spot is to write in a genre that you don’t know well (or even care for) because it’s impossible to write in a genre you don’t like and not make your script feel different from the scripts that usually come out of that genre.
I’m reminded of the way Taika Waititi approached Thor: Ragnarok. From all accounts, Taika was not a superhero fan. This is what he said on the Smartless podcast: “You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films,” Waititi said. “It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur. But I was poor, and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, “You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.’”
He wasn’t even a Thor fan! “And ‘Thor,’ let’s face it — it was probably the least popular franchise,” he continued. “I never read ‘Thor’ comics as a kid. That was the comic I’d pick up and be like, ‘Ugh.’ And then I did some research on it, and I read one ‘Thor’ comic or 18 pages, or however long they are. I was still baffled by this character.”
Yet, many people consider Thor: Ragnarok to be the best Marvel movie. A huge reason for that was Waititi injecting his unique sense of humor into a character who, up until that point, had been kind of dull. It brought the character alive and made all of us see him in a different, more exciting, light.
There’s something about not having this precious responsibility to a genre that allows you to push the boundaries of it.
The other way to circumvent this issue is to be OVERLY CONSCIOUS of the problem going into the script. You may love a genre. LOVE IT! But you must tell yourself that that love is going to get you killed if you’re not careful. You actively commit to not writing the predictable obvious version of that story. Do something different with the main character. Do something different with the point of view. Jump between 8 characters instead of staying with one. Doing something different with time, like what David did yesterday with his real-time script, Clementine.
But, most importantly, don’t give us the same old tried-and-true set pieces, scenes, and moments that we get in that genre. Standout scenes are the ones that have the potential to stay with your reader. If you write a really great one – like the childbirth scene in A Quiet Place – it completely reinvents how the reader sees your script. We’re now imagining a MOVIE as opposed to nodding our head thinking that the writer is pretty good.
“Pretty good” is WORTHLESS. It has zero currency in Hollywood. But pretty good is what you’re going to get if you write the version of that genre that everybody else does. I promise you that’s the case.
So stop settling for the obvious. Stop regurgitating characters and scenes and set pieces from your favorite movies. Cause guess what? All we readers see when you do that? Is “lesser versions of that awesome movie we already saw.”
I don’t mean to be blunt but I’m trying to give you a kick in the butt here. If you can embrace this mantra, I promise you your scripts are going to be so much better than the majority of your competition. Cause most writers don’t want to put in the work that it takes to get to that originality. Okay, back to writing. Good luck!
