How’s that
for a mixed metaphor?
If you’ve
been here for a bit, you know I’ve read for several contests and have also
placed in and won a few, as well. I’ve
also got a few friends who have read for contests at one point or another to
pay the bills. And as it happens, we’ve
all talked (and ranted, and drank, and pulled hair out...) at length about the
things aspiring screenwriters do wrong with their entries.
That’s a
key point a lot of folks don’t get. Just
as there’s a difference between a spec script and a shooting script,
there’s a difference between trying to win a contest and trying to get a
writing career in Hollywood. What works
in one will not necessarily work in the other.
So—without
further ado because it’s a long list—here are fifteen things that will make a
contest reader groan while reading my script, set out more or less in the order
the reader will probably notice them.
It’s
Filled With Typos--Yeah, spelling. Again.
During my time at Creative Screenwriting
magazine I wrote two different contest columns.
I interviewed dozens of contest directors and asked about advice for aspiring entrants. The first thing most of them said was spelling and grammar.
Now,
readers know we all make mistakes. If
they go through and find a there on
page 23 when it should be they’re,
they’re going to cluck their tongues but keep reading. There’ve been more than a few screenplays I
read, though, where I would’ve guessed the writer came from an ESL
background.
For the record, messing up an apostrophe S is something everyone notices. As I said above, we all make mistakes now and then, but it’s painfully obvious when I’m just throwing down random apostrophes and getting a few right by sheer chance. Knowing the difference between a plural, a possessive, and a contraction is a fundamental part of the English language.
When I hand off my manuscript I’m trying to convince those readers that I’m a real writer. The absolute, bare-bones basic tools of writing – any writing-- are vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. If I establish early on that I can’t handle the basics, why would a reader look any farther? Nothing shoots my chances down faster than a bunch of misspelled or misused words on the first page. Or the second page. Really, if a reader’s finding a typo per page, on average, my script has to be spectacular in every other respect or its pretty much done.
When I hand off my manuscript I’m trying to convince those readers that I’m a real writer. The absolute, bare-bones basic tools of writing – any writing-- are vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. If I establish early on that I can’t handle the basics, why would a reader look any farther? Nothing shoots my chances down faster than a bunch of misspelled or misused words on the first page. Or the second page. Really, if a reader’s finding a typo per page, on average, my script has to be spectacular in every other respect or its pretty much done.
It’s
Totally Inappropriate – This isn’t me being old and stuffy, it’s
actually a tie-in to the 50% Rule.
A lot of contests have very strict guidelines about what they want and
what they’ll accept. The Nicholl
Fellowship doesn’t accept adaptations—even of public domain work—unless you’re
adapting your own work. Kairos only
wants material with strong Christian themes and morals. Shriekfest is only looking for horror
scripts. If I send my adventure horror
story to Kairos under the premise that several people pray to God during it...
well, it’s not their fault I didn’t make the first cut. Likewise, I wasted money by sending a romantic
comedy to Shriekfest. If I’m going to
submit to a contest, I want to make sure I’m submitting to the right contest
for my screenplay.
It’s Squashed-- Sometimes a writer refuses to make any more cuts (for conscious reasons or sheer denial) and ends up with a
170+ page script. So they change
the font size or margins or line spacing and crush the script down into
an acceptable number of pages. After all,
going from 12 to 9 point Courier can shrink my 170 page script down to 130
pages. That’s a fine length for a
script, right?
This is
annoying on two levels. First and
foremost, if I’m manipulating my script like this, it means I know my script is unacceptably long and I’m
making no real effort to fix the problem.
Second, it means I’m assuming the readers are too stupid to realize what
I’ve done and why. Which is
kind of arrogant on my part when you think about it.
Believe me,
readers love it when an arrogant writer assumes they’re stupid. It makes the job much easier.
It’s In Fortune
Cookie Talk -- Also sometimes called Confucius-speak (according
to one friend) or Boris-and-Natasha-speak (so sayeth another
friend). This is when I try to cut down my
page count by cutting all the articles, “small” words, and transitional bits from my script.
There’s also a misguided belief among some folks that this will give my
writing more “punch.”
Neo walks streets. Man pulls gun. Neo dodges.
Kicks man in chest. Man
out cold. Neo is One. Goes after Moose
and Squirrel.
Trust me,
there are only two things this leads to. One is annoyance as the story slowly
edges into an unreadable mess. Two is
laughter. Not the good kind of laughter.
It’s
All Crowd Scenes
I read one
script that introduced twelve characters in the first ten pages, plus a handful
of minor ones. The record was seventeen
in the first five pages. As I explained once
to a friend of mine, that’s like pouring out a truckload of gravel and asking
someone to take note of what color stones they see.
I can pace
the introduction of characters. If I
tell the reader ten people walk into a room, I don’t need to give out all their
names, genders, physical descriptions, and character quirks at once. We can get to know them as the situation
arises.
It’s
Got Confusing names --This may sound a little foolish, but if
my script has characters named Steve, Stephen, Steph, Stella, Stan, and Stacey,
it’s going to be very difficult for a reader to keep track of who’s who. I mention it because I saw a double-handful
of scripts that suffered from this problem and it was one of the factors that
kept most of them from making it to the next level of the competition. If you look at most scripts, it’s rare to get
multiple characters whose names start with the same letter or sound—it
just makes for an easy mnemonic. Raiders of the Lost Ark has Indy, Marion, Belloq, Sallah, Toht, and
Katanga. Bridesmaids has Annie, Nathan, Lillian, Megan, and Helen. Casablanca has Rick, Elsa, Victor, Louis, and Sam. Even with the huge squad of Colonial Marines
in Aliens, the only double-up is
Hicks and Hudson (and as my friend Rakie’s pointed out, Lt. Gorman confuses
them on screen because of it).
On a
related note, if I have a grease-covered auto mechanic named Charlie who’s a
woman, it needs to be absolutely clear in the script that she’s a woman. Likewise, if my wedding planner is named
Leslie, I have to make sure it’s obvious he’s a man. Nothing frustrates readers
more than to get ten pages in and discover
they’ve mentally assigned the wrong gender to a character, because it means
they have to go back over everything they just read. So I have to be careful with names like Pat,
Chris, Sam, and so on.
It’s
an “Actor Script” --A popular thing in the indie field is the character script, also known in Hollywood (somewhat demeaningly) as "the
actor script." At its heart, it's a
tissue-thin plot with a handful of character sketches thrown into it. Some men talk about how their lives have gone
in unexpected directions. A group of women
talk about relationships. People in
line for tickets strike up random conversations. And nothing ever really happens.
In a way,
it's hard to argue against scripts like this.
These really are the type of people you'd meet waiting in line, and they
really are the type of conversations and brief relationships that would spring
up. And, let’s be honest, not much
happens in most of our lives on a daily basis.
However, is there anything challenging--or interesting-- about something that's indistinguishable from the
boring, everyday life we all lead?
This leads
nicely into...
It’s
Based on True Events-- This is kind of a broad problem, but all of
the nuances really fall under the same umbrella. More often than not, the title page or
closing cards reassure the reader my screenplay is, in fact, based on the
actual accounts of me/ my parents/ my best friend/ someone I read about in a
magazine. These are tales of cancer
survival (or not), homeless teens, military struggles, Wall Street apathy, and
various other unsung heroes and villains of this world we live in. Often, the fact that this is a true story is
stressed to give a certain validity to what the reader is about to take in.
Alas, nobody cares if the story’s true or not. Nobody.
They just care if it’s a good story and it’s well-told. And in that respect, my tale of an AIDS-infected
orphan in Somalia needs to stand up against the story of a ninja trying to save
the world from prehistoric lizard men from the lost continent of Atlantis. Whether or not one’s a true story is
irrelevant. If one’s difficult to read
and the other one isn’t, if one has flat characters and the other one doesn’t,
if one’s boring and the other one isn’t-- these are what decide if a script is
any good or not. In the end, I’m telling
a story, and it’s either going to have its own validity or it isn’t. Reality just doesn’t enter into the equation
for the reader, so it can’t for the writer.
Now, a
certain subset of “True” scripts could be called Current Events Scripts. This is when I decide to write a script about
a topical subject that’s in the public eye.
Which would be really interesting if five hundred other people weren’t following
through on the same idea. In 2009 there
was a wave of contest screenplays inspired by the brief 2008 Gaza Strip
war. In 2010 there were countless
scripts that used the Wall Street crisis as their backdrop. I’m betting this year is going to be split
between “soldiers coming home from Iraq” scripts and “Occupy (Your City Here)”
scripts.
I’ll even go one step
further and say there are certain events and people who are always in the
public eye—no matter how obscure or rare I might think they are. Anne Bonney. Tesla.
Elvis. Some historical figures
just attract scripts for some reason, and every screenwriter thinks they’ve written something
original... just like me.
It’s
A Formula Rom-Com --The
beautiful-but-totally-business-oriented female executive who finds love
with a middle-class Joe Everyman. The
guy engaged to bridezilla who meets the real
love of his life. The awkward,
nerdy girl who needs to realize she's the most beautiful girl around. The man chasing his dream girl only to
realize his friend has been his real dream girl all along.
Any of
these sound familiar? They do after
you've read nine or ten of them, believe me.
Yeah, flipping the genders doesn't make them any more original, sorry.
Does the
script also have a scene where someone finally ignores their constantly-ringing
cell phone in favor of quality time with that special someone? Maybe a prolonged, awkward scene where
someone has to change clothes for some reason and ends up in their underwear/
robe/ a towel with that soon-to-be-special someone?
If my
script has any of these plotlines or elements, it’s already been left at the
altar. A rom-com has to be really
spectacular and original to impress a reader.
In all the years I worked for different contests, I read one rom-com
that stood out. Just one.
It’s
about a writer --I repeat this one every year. Do not write scripts about writers. Ever.
Out of 150 scripts I read for one contest, nineteen of them had writers as a main character. That’s almost one out of every seven—almost
15% of them! They were all awful and not
one of them advanced. Jennifer Berg, the
administrative director of the PAGE Screenwriting Contest, once joked with me
that if her contest banned scripts about writers they'd probably lose a quarter
of their entries.
It sounds
harsh, but no one cares about the day-to-day struggles I go through as a
writer. Absolutely no one. They also don’t care about the day-to-day
struggles of a thinly-fictionalized version of myself. And they also don’t care about the sheer joy
of the creative process, the wild and quirky nature every writer has, or the
way impossibly beautiful women and handsome men are drawn to creative types (that
last bit is true, though). It’s almost
impossible to do a film about writing because it’s such a quiet, introspective
activity. That’s why most films about
writers don’t focus on writing—they’re about attempted murder (Throw Momma From the
Train), romance (Shakespeare In Love), or escaping from nightmarish
nurses (Misery).
Also, it’s
the most hackneyed ending possible when the writer-character finally sells
their book or screenplay, everything is now perfect in the world, and they win
the Pulitzer/ Oscar/ whatever. The real
reason most contests don’t want contact information on scripts is so the
readers will not hunt down the screenwriters who do this and beat them to death.
It’s
a Crappy Job Script –Kind of like I mentioned above
with writers, no one cares about my trouble at work because we all have
troubles at work. A job issue should
never, ever be the key conflict in my story.
If my script is all about getting that promotion or landing that
account, it’ll be filing for unemployment pretty soon.
Keep in
mind these can be elements in a script, just not the driving force. Lots of famous stories have people dealing
with work issues, but they’re usually indicative of larger issues in the
character’s life. Those kind of issues
are what a script should be about.
Consider Wesley in Wanted, Peter in Office Space, or Bob
in He Was A Quiet Man. All of
these people have awful jobs they struggle with, but none of these films are
about that job.
It’s
a Holiday Script--If you add in movies of the week on cable and
straight-to-DVD, there’s a good case to be made that holiday films are one of
the best selling script genres out there. We’re
not talking sales, though, we’re talking about contests—a lot of which don’t
care if your script is commercially viable or not.
The trick is to come up with something the reader hasn’t already seen again and again. And
again. And again. They’ve seen Santa quit, get his performance
reviewed, get fired, solve conflicts, cause conflicts, struggle with the times,
and adapt to modern technology. Dark
spirits have tried to put the scare back in Halloween, Cupid has taught someone
about true love, and the first Arbor Day story has been told—many, many times
and many, many ways.
Just in
case you missed it-- they've all been told many times in many ways. If I’m going to do a holiday script, it has to
be really amazing and original.
It’s
a Director’s Draft -- Every now and then a script shows up
littered with stage direction, camera angles, parentheticals, editing notes,
and so on. I saw one guy rant and rave on a message
board because his feedback told him to eliminate such things, and
it had been counted against his screenplay.
He was planning to shoot this film himself with his friends, though, so
not only were these notes acceptable-- they were necessary!
They weren’t,
really.
As a
screenwriter I have no business putting them there unless they are absolutely
relevant to telling the story. When my
script goes to a contest, it’s just a script.
It isn’t the screenplay I’m going
to make with my friends and it certainly isn’t the screenplay I’m going to direct. It’s just a screenplay, one standing up all
on its own against all the others in the contest. And if mine is filled with a lot of camera
angles and parentheticals that shouldn’t be there, well... that’s probably why
it’s going into the large pile on the left.
It’s
a Musical --Musical screenplays are almost impossible to pull off as
specs and they always make contest readers groan. Always.
Lyrics on the page are great, but I can’t assume the reader is going to
be someone with a flawless sense of rhythm and pacing. Without the actual music setting the mood and
the tone, lyrics are just poetry--often very awkward, clumsy poetry. Which means they’re awkward, clumsy lines of dialogue. And awkward, clumsy dialogue
is the kind of thing that gets my script tossed into that left-hand pile.
I’ve also
seen a few comedy scripts which tried to parody existing songs. However, unless I can absolute guarantee every
reader would knows the song, doing this faces all the same issues as the
original songs up above. I shouldn’t
gamble on a contest reader knowing an obscure tune from Peter Gabriel, Florence
and the Machine, or the White Stripes... or even a popular one.
The
Last Words in the Script are “To Be Continued...” - I get one
script to impress a reader with.
One. Nobody wins anything with
the first of an epic trilogy. That one
manuscript has to stand on its own. Ending a screenplay - especially a contest
entry screenplay- with “to be continued” hammers home the fact that this is an
incomplete tale. It tells the reader I
had no idea how to end this story in 120 pages.
Remember, The Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Highlander
were not written as trilogies. Despite
everything you may have heard, neither was Star
Wars. Every one of these films was
conceived of, written, and shot as a lone entity. They had to stand alone and succeed
alone. If they had to do it that way, I
can’t think for a minute that my story won’t have to.
There you
have it. Fifteen things that make
screenplay readers cringe and start them turning toward that big pile on the
left with your script. Make sure they
don’t put it down there.
Next time,
for the holidays, I think I might babble on about love or sex or something like
that.
Until then,
go write.
did i say that about Hudson and Hicks? That sounds unusually astute for me... :D
ReplyDeletenot sure of your view on it, but one of the other blogs i read (written by a guy who reads scripts for a living) says his biggest annoyance is torture-porn. It's apparently rife, and it's his number one reason for throwing a script across the room in anger. :)
Yeah, you said it years ago here when I first brought up the Aliens names. So, credit where credit is due. ;)
ReplyDeleteI think I've lucked out that none of the scripts I've had to read have ever been torture porn. Either that or the writer was shooting for torture porn and was too inept to pull it off... :)
A repost? Or did I visit the future?
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the contest problems, a lot of the same issues come up again and again, Anon. It isn't a repost, but I've gone over a lot of this stuff here before. Probably in other contest-problem posts.
ReplyDeleteWhen people stop doing these things, then I'll have to get some new material... ;)