I just like putting up Matrix pictures. This has nothing to do with the article.
Just like when I review a script on the site, I have “what I learn” moments when I do script consultations as well. Of course, most of these things, I’ve already learned. But if there’s one thing I’ve come to realize about screenwriting, it’s that you occasionally need to be reminded of things.
Which was the motivation for today’s article. I thought it would be fun to share the big lesson I learned (or, was reminded of) in each of the last ten script consultations I did. It’s going to be a little tricky because I can’t share the details of the scripts. But if I need to get detailed, I’ll just adjust the concept and specifics to keep everything private.
Afterwards, I’ll provide you with a ranking of how often I come across this particular issue in screenplays. 1/10 means I barely come across it. 10/10 means it’s one of the biggest issues in all of screenwriting. Okay let’s get into it!
1) Fear of being on-the-nose – For an airplane pilot, the scariest thing that can happen is that all of your engines go out mid-flight. For a surgeon, the scariest thing that can happen is that the patient goes into cardiac arrest during the surgery. For a screenwriter, the scariest thing that can happen is someone telling you that your script is on-the-nose. We actively avoid “on-the-nose” to such a degree that we actually create the opposite problem for ourselves, which is that the specifics of our plot, characters, and theme are so vague that the reader has no idea they’re even there. For example, if you wanted to build the flaw of “selfishness” into your main character, but were so terrified of being on-the-nose you only mentioned the selfishness a couple of times in the script, then when that character transforms in the end and becomes selfless, we’re utterly confused. Cause we never knew the character was selfish in the first place. — In my experience, the writers who are obsessive about avoiding on-the-nose moments are being too vague in general. It’s okay to draw attention to things that are important in your script.
How often I run across this issue: 5 out of 10
2) Picking the wrong point-of-view – Sometimes when you write a script, the hero is obvious. If you’re writing “John Wick,” for example, you know whose eyes the movie should be seen through. But sometimes you run into scenarios that have more characters, a less linear storyline, and, therefore, it isn’t as clear whose point-of-view should take precedence. For example, if you have a movie like Knives Out, where there are all sorts of characters to choose from, you have to think harder about which character the spotlight should be on. The answer is typically the person who’s the most active. So, in a movie like that, the detective is the most active. But you also have to take into account which character has the most interesting storyline. That will play into whose POV to follow as well. In this particular consultation script, I was posed with one character – let’s call her “the killer” – whose kills made her somewhat interesting to watch and another character – let’s call him “the detective” – who had the more active storyline, since he was investigating these murders. An argument could be made to go with either character. But I felt that the benefits from the discoveries that would come from the detective’s investigation outweighed watching the killer, whose killings wasn’t interesting enough to be the sole focus of the story. The killer wasn’t Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, for example. POV can be a difficult decision to make in some scripts. But when it’s all said and done, go with the person whose POV leads to a more entertaining story.
How often I run across this issue: 5 out of 10
3) Execution is too familiar – No matter how many scripts we write, a pitfall we’re never safe from is being too formulaic with our execution. And there’s a specific reason for this. When we fell in love with a particular genre growing up, we fell in love with everything about it. We fell in love with the characters, the scenarios, the dialogue, the plot twists. And so when the time came to write these scripts ourselves, we wanted to do what we saw growing up!! We wanted to write those same characters. We wanted to write those same scenes. And some weird cognitive dissonance didn’t allow us to realize this was a bad thing – that readers were going to tell us that our scripts were formulaic and cliche. To combat this, you need to deconstruct the genre on some level and actively avoid writing the characters and scenarios and dialogue you were so fond of. You’re still going to write those things to a degree. But you’re actively looking to write your version of it and not just straight up copy and paste.
How often I run across this issue: 8 out of 10
4) Way too much going on – There are two primary reasons why someone might label your script this way. One, you have too many characters. Or two, you have too much plot. But, by far, the worst violations of this rule are when you do both. You have way too much plot – you’re jumping around to a million different locations and trying to cram in too many storylines. And, by proxy, because you have all this extra plot, you populate it with more charters than your story can handle. Reading these scripts is like reading college textbooks. They’re big and cumbersome and feel like you’re taking notes as opposed to enjoying yourself. I think the reason writers make this mistake is because they have the wrong mindset. Their mindset is, “I have all this stuff to get into my story. How can I best position my story to squeeze it all in?” And since that’s the objective, they feel really good when they’ve done it. It’s like, “Wow! I was able to get every single thing I wanted into the script.” The objective should instead be, “How can I write the most entertaining story?” If you start from there, you probably won’t ever get this criticism thrown at you.
How often I run across this issue: 9 out of 10
5) Rules of your world are too complicated – This is an issue I run into almost exclusively in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. This is your mythology. This is your world-building. And what’s great about that is, when you get it right, it’s awesome. The Matrix is awesome. The rules are cool and fun to learn. But there’s a version of The Matrix where there are 20 more rules about how things work. Where there is three times as much backstory. Where there is so much exposition, it starts to contradict itself. Time travel scripts, in particular, can become incomprehensible if you don’t simplify your rule-set. I remember I wrote a time travel script once and I must’ve had a dozen time travel rules that I thought were expertly crafted. I felt that if anyone had me in a room and challenged me on these rules, that in just under an hour, I would be able to convince them that it all worked and made sense. It probably took me another five years before I realized how stupid that was. That the goal is not to be able to prove your point. Your goal is always (always always always) to entertain the reader. Period. This is a reminder to everyone writing sci-fi and fantasy to err on the side of LESS IS MORE. I know you want to show us how intricate your multiple universe time-travel rule-set is. But movies don’t have the capacity to keep track of all of that. You need to distill it down to the essentials.
How often I run across this issue: 5 out of 10 (but would be 8 out of 10 if this was just an assessment of sci-fi and fantasy scripts)
6)An unimportant subplot – Whenever we sit down to construct our latest screenplay, we tend to have a number of things we want to put in the script. Because these become the “OG” elements of your screenplay, you become attached to them. You think they are unchangeable. It’s sort of like laundry on your bedroom floor. The longer it sits there without you picking it up, the more it starts to feel like a permanent part of the room. This can lead to subplots that aren’t necessary for your story sticking around, draft after draft. In this particular script there was a subplot with a character that was only peripherally connected to the main plot. So, whenever we visited this character, we felt like we were a million miles away from the main story. It can be hard to ditch these subplots. But if a subplot isn’t helping push the story forward, it’s probably not important. Even if that subplot is helping develop your main character, it probably needs to go. 95% of screenplays move too slowly. Unnecessary subplots are a big reason for that.
How often I run across this issue: 4 out of 10
7)Over-setting up the first act – This is an adjacent tip to number 4. First acts are tough because they’re the setup act. They set up the main character, the supporting characters, and the plot. When your stories are simple, like Taken, this is easy-peasy. But when your stories are complex, like Avengers Infinity War, it can be a lot tougher. Because you just have a lot of stuff you’ve gotta cram into that opening act. But, in the case of this consultation, the story was relatively simple, yet the writer tried to include way too much in the first act. For example, instead of just telling you what the main character was up to in their life, they tried to include another 40 years of their backstory. And then, as soon as that happened, we had a death to deal with, and then a funeral to deal with, and then a will reading to deal with. Why not just open with the will reading? As I like to remind screenwriters any chance I get, the most common mistake I see is writers making things overly complex. The solution to most problems in screenwriting is keep it simple.
How often I run across this issue: 5 out of 10
8) Concept isn’t big enough – A concept must be special. As in, this is something we don’t typically get to see and therefore is worthy of making a movie about. And the stakes need to be high. The story must feel like it matters. My primary issue with this consultation script was that the story felt too small. I needed the stakes to be bigger. If you ever want to see what it looks like when concepts aren’t big enough, check out the tail end of the 1990s – early 2000s indie era. This is when writers were getting super experimental, and, in the process, writing a bunch stories that had low stakes and no compelling central idea. A couple of films that come to mind are Gerry, a movie that has Matt Damon and Casey Affleck roaming around a desert for 90 minutes. And Bubble, from Steven Soderbergh, which was about a doll machine plant. You can still make these movies if you direct them yourself and keep the budget low. But it’s hard to compete on the spec script market with a low-stakes or medium concept script.
How often I run across this issue: 7 out of 10
9)Starts off fast, loses momentum – We seem to be aware of three important checkpoints once we get into screenwriting. The first 5 pages, the first 10 pages, and the first act. We know we need to make these segments of the script sing. Cause we need to get people into our script if we expect them to finish our script. Unfortunately, this leads to an oft-overlooked side effect, which in that we don’t write with the same level of immediacy after the first act. Granted, you can’t make every single moment in your script thrilling. But you should still have that mindset of, “The writer could be getting bored. The writer could be getting bored.” So that you continue to write an entertaining script the whole way through. This particular script started out like gangbusters. But the writer took his foot off the gas about 15 pages into the second act. And it took what was, up until that point, an ‘impressive’ script, and turned into just barely ‘worth the read.’ So don’t take your foot off the gas, people!
How often I run across this issue: 8 out of 10
10)Being too clever for your own good – Sometimes I come across really smart writers who are so driven to write something great that they forget to write something good. In other words, they unnecessarily overwrite their script. This particular script was a mystery and it was just so insanely detailed and had so many little clues and key moments along the way, along with voice overs and flashbacks and voice over from past characters playing over present storylines. It was so intricate that by the time we got to the ending, I was trying to see the story through thirteen layers of intricate plotting and therefore struggled to understand what happened. In the Sixth Sense, we get it right away that Bruce Willis is dead. If you try to overcomplicate that setup and the reveal, it doesn’t work. I’m not going to give you the advice to “dumb it down.” But writers who try to outthink everyone… you don’t need to outthink us as much as you think you do. Which brings me right back to my most common screenwriting advice: Keep it simple!
How often I run across this issue: 2 out of 10
LABOR DAY DEAL! – I’m taking $200 off my screenplay consultations if you order them this weekend! If you want to get super cheap notes now or on a future script, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com. Use subject line “Labor Day” and let’s rock n’ roll!!
