Meet the Reader: What Makes a Good Screenwriter?

I was talking with a writer friend lately about what qualities a person needed to have in order to be a good screenwriter and this is what we came up with:

1. You have to love movies: You’d think that would be a given, but it never fails to amaze me how many people that aspire to write screenplays are quite comfortable saying that they never go to the movies or that they only like old movies or that they won’t watch anything made before 1950 or 1960 or 1970 or that they hate studio movies and will only watch foreign films or that they hate reading subtitles and that they only want to see the latest mainstream special-effects extravaganzas. Likewise, I’m always stunned when I meet budding screenwriters that don’t know the history of the movies or have never seen the great classics of yesteryear and of today. Quite simply, I don’t see how -- if you’re not in love with cinema and its amazingly plastic ability to tell every type of story in every type of genre in every type of way and aren’t tickled pink by the notion that the same medium that can give you Citizen Kane, The Rules of the Game, and The Red Shoes can also give you Animal House, Pirates of the Caribbean, and I Spit on Your Grave; if you don’t understand the history of the medium and the industry and the craft; if you don’t know and appreciate its masterworks -- you can ever write for it effectively. It would be like saying that you want to be a painter, but you don’t understand color, you hate Picasso, and you don’t like getting your hands dirty.

2. You need to have a nose for a good (movie) story: As mentioned above, the cool thing about cinema is that it can be used to tackle just about any type of subject matter, but to work as a movie, a tale must be interesting enough to hold an audience’s attention for two or three hours, contain a suitable amount of action (and by that I mean behavior and incident and visceral conflict, not just car chases -- although car chases are cool too) and be able to be told in ways that are kinetic and visual. People that can recognize tales that have these qualities (and maybe, just as importantly, also recognize those that don’t) have a good chance of succeeding as screenwriters. Those that don’t should probably stick to writing novels or plays or e-mails.

3. You have to know how to write: By that I mean you have to know the basic rules and concepts of dramatic writing -- things such as acts and conflict and inciting incidents and plot twists and reversals and climaxes and resolutions. You need to understand the purpose of each of these things, why they have been codified in the way they have, and know how you can bend or twist or even break these codes without compromising the dramatic integrity of your piece. In other words, all you rebels and iconoclasts and innovators out there -- you’ve gotta know the rules, especially if you want to break ‘em.

4. You have to understand that you are writing for a mass audience: Movies are meant to be shown to large numbers of people all at the same time in a collective viewing experience -- even the most obscure art film is meant to be screened for an auditorium full of people. This means that when you write, you have to do so in such a way that your material is understandable to the people that you want to come to see your film. This does not mean you have to talk down to your audience or dumb down the material or anything like that -- you simply have to remember that when you are writing a movie, you are not writing just for yourself or for your immediate circle, but for large numbers of people that are eager to experience your ideas. It’s up to you to make sure that those ideas are clearly communicated and, if the film fails to connect, to never take refuge in “they just didn’t get it.” As a screenwriter, it’s your job to make sure they get it.

5. You have to be willing to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite: It is always said that “writing is rewriting” and this really is true. In most cases (Mozart may have been the exception), the first draft of anything is really only good for getting your ideas down on paper and because of this most first drafts are sloppy and unfocused and unwieldy. It’s simply the nature of the beast. If you want your material to work, you need to shape it and edit it and refine it until it is razor sharp and communicating everything you want in exactly the way you want exactly when you want it to. Despite this, there are many, many aspiring writers out there that are unwilling to make any sort of serious revision to their work and, as a result, there are an awful lot of scripts floating around that contain some excellent ideas that are buried under tons of excess and dross. If you want to be a serious writer, you need to be ruthless with your work -- to hone the rough edges and throw out things that aren’t working, no matter how much you love them. You need to seek out constructive criticism, listen seriously to it, and then figure out what to do about it. You need to be willing to do whatever it takes to make your material the best that it can be. If you’re not, then why even bother in the first place?

And finally …

6. You have to love movies: In the end, it really all comes back to that, now, doesn’t it?

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Meet the Reader: How Not to Spec

Between contests and my usual work load, I have been reading a lot of spec scripts lately. In doing so, I noticed a number of things coming up over and over again that motivated me to formulate a little list of things that you probably shouldn’t do when writing a spec.

1. Don’t write adaptations of material you don’t own the rights to. Adaptation rights can be very difficult and expensive to acquire -- often far beyond the means of a humble spec-script writer. A number of people plow ahead anyway, seemingly in the hope that if a producer or studio takes a liking to their script, then the prodco will go to the trouble (and spend the money) to acquire the underlying rights. It won’t. It’s too much hassle. It’s much easier to simply pass on your script, which is what the prodco will do.

[Or you could adapt a work in the public domain. - Ed.]

2. Don’t write sequels to popular films. You may have a great idea for a follow-up to a popular film -- don’t waste a moment of your life writing it down. I think spec script writers that do are almost irrationally optimistic -- thinking that if they can get their script to the producers that control the rights to the parent film, then the producers will see how brilliant it is and decide right then and there to make it the next entry in the series. This will not happen. Sequels are big business and they’re developed in-house by a handpicked stable of highly-experienced, highly-paid writers. Outside scripts stand no chance whatsoever. This is simply a fact. Accept it.

3. Don’t write sequels to your own scripts. Sequels are only made if the first film is a terrific success. Since a spec script by definition has not been made and thus can not have become a terrific success, there is no way to tell if a sequel is warranted. So if you write a follow-up to your own unproduced work, people are either going to think that you’re arrogant or naïve. Either way, they’re not going to take you seriously.

4. By the same token, do not write trilogies or 16-part epics (that last one’s not a joke, I once had to wade through a 16-part sci-fi/fantasy extravaganza. It was a painful, painful experience.

5. Don’t put your production company name on the cover of the script, especially if you don’t really have a production company (they’re actually legal entities, not just a name that your arbitrarily slap onto a cover page -- e.g. Joe Blow Entertainment). This is usually done to make it seem as if the writer is a serious player and not just another aspirant (“Hey, this guy must be for real -- he’s got his own production company!”), but if you’re writing a spec, it usually means you are an aspirant. Trying to make people think you are more than you are isn’t going to fool anyone and you’ll just make yourself look less so by trying.

The bottom line here -- when writing a spec, craft a good, original story and then let it speak for itself. If you’ve done your job well, then trust me -- it will speak volumes.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Meet the Reader: Flashback Back(f)lash

I just finished reading a spec script that began with a flashback. Literally -- the first words in the script were:

FADE IN:

FLASHBACK

Aside from the fact that this opening makes it clear the author of this particular script doesn’t understand that to in order to flashback, you must first have something to flash back from, it serves as a good example of a really irritating (to me, anyway) trend that I’ve seen develop in spec scripts in recent years -- the overuse and misuse of the flashback device. I would estimate that 75% of the specs that I read these days contain at least one flashback and at least 40% are riddled with the things. I’m not really sure how to account for this, but I suspect it has to do with the heavy use of the device in popular films such as the Tarantino oeuvre and Memento and of television series such as the various CSIs, Family Guy, Scrubs, and Lost. No matter what the reason, however, the use of the flashback has become epidemic in recent years and that’s something I take issue with for a number of reasons:

1. It’s bad writing. The flashback is a tool designed to provide exposition to the audience that cannot be comfortably incorporated into the primary narrative. From this perspective, any use of a flashback can be considered a failure on the part of the writer to find a coherent way to place all of the information needed to tell a story into that story. There are, of course, many valid creative and practical reasons to employ flashbacks, but in most of the specs I read, it appears as if the device has been used because the writers weren’t clever or skilled enough to fit the exposition in any other way. As a result, the final product often comes across as unimaginative, clumsy, and ham-fisted.

2. It’s bad storytelling. A flashback is by its very nature an intrusion into the primary narrative, which is why traditionally the device has been used only sparingly. However, most of the specs that I read tend to use them very liberally. As a result, the primary narrative is constantly being interrupted, which makes for some very choppy and often very hard to follow storytelling. This is an especially big problem when -- as often is the case -- these multitudes of flashbacks are concentrated in the first 10 to 15 pages of the screenplay.

Since the purpose of a flashback is to provide information vital to our understanding of a script’s plot or the characters, it follows that, for a flashback to be effective we would first need to know what that plot is or who those characters are first. Which means that, ideally, a flashback should be introduced well into the story -- after the plot has been set up and the characters established. Despite this logic, many of the scripts I read begin using flashbacks on the first page and often in the first paragraph, before the writer has the chance to establish much of anything.

The problem with doing this, of course, is that before the readers can figure out what’s going on in the script’s present tense, they’re yanked out of that situation and plopped down into an entirely new one only to be re-yanked and re-plopped back down into the original circumstances a few lines later. If this happens -- as it usually does -- over and over again, the result is almost always total narrative confusion and disorientation. To repeat a piece of advice I’ve given on several previous occasions, if you can’t get through the first 10 to 15 pages of your screenplay without flashing back, then perhaps you should consider starting your script at an earlier point in time, since your story so obviously does.

3. It’s gimmicky. In the past decade, non-linear storytelling -- the jumping back and forth from past to present to future rather than simply telling a story in chronological order -- has become all the rage. While I do think that non-linear storytelling can be an interesting and effective tool when it is an organic outgrowth of a particular piece’s theme and/or content -- Memento and Betrayal come to mind as excellent examples -- otherwise I think it’s just a gimmick -- something tossed in to jazz up a piece to make it seem more exciting. My feeling about this is that the excitement in your script should come from your story, not the way the story is told. If the tale you’re telling isn’t inherently compelling, then all of the bells and whistles in the world aren’t going to make it so. If it is, then trust it to take us where you want us to go.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Meet the Reader: Readers (Don't) Suck

As I mentioned in my last post, Script recently reprinted an old column of mine call “How Not to Annoy a Reader” -- a humorous list of do’s and don’ts for screenwriters based on the mistakes I’ve encountered in the thousands of screenplays that I’ve read over the years. I also reported that the response to the reprint was generally positive, although there were a few negative reviews as well. One of my favorites was a delightfully cranky diatribe against the very idea of readers. The comment echoed the usual complaint that writers have against professional readers, which goes something like this:

Readers are all angry, low-paid cretins -- would-be writers who couldn’t make it and are now so full of spite and bile that they hate everything they read even when it's brilliant and routinely pass on terrific screenplays because they are so jealous of genuinely talented writers that they do everything they can to sabotage those writers’ careers. Even if readers do like something, it doesn’t matter because they are so lowly and unimportant that no one listens to them anyway. The commenter went so far as to opine: “If a 'reader' is reading your script, nothing will happen with it. Readers are the step before the producer’s assistant. You need to meet producers and directors to have a chance at getting your work made.” It’s a popular assessment, but it’s not accurate and I thought it might be a good idea to set the record just a little bit straighter.

Readers are the first link in the development chain -- it’s their job to take the piles of scripts that a production entity (a studio, production company, or independent producer’s office) receives and separate the wheat from the chaff. They carefully read (not just skim through the first 10 pages while watching TV, talking on the phone, and eating crullers, as many urban legends allege) and assess (in a carefully written report) each piece, passing on the obviously bad or unsuitable (if you’re reading for a company that’s forte is horror films, then a rom-com, no matter how well written, just isn’t going to cut it) scripts and then identifying the strengths and weaknesses of those that remain, before finally either suggesting that the production entity give a piece serious consideration (this rating is usually given to a script that has a great deal of promise but that also has a number of significant problems that need to be solved) or else heartily recommending it as an absolute slam dunk (this rating is given to scripts that are pretty much perfect. For obvious reasons, it is given only rarely). Depending on the structure of the company, a reader usually reports to a story editor or a development executive -- not the producer’s secretary. If the office is small enough, the reader may report directly to the producer him/herself. Obviously, the reader is not the one that makes the final decision or anywhere near about whether a script is bought and/or made, but it is his/her initial assessment that sets the wheels in motion. I can count five or six scripts (including one pretty big Oscar-winner) that were produced by companies that I worked for and that I know I did the initial assessment on. I am in no way claiming that I’m responsible for getting these scripts made, but I know that I certainly played a not-unimportant role in the process.

Most readers are pretty darn smart, many are highly educated, and yes, many are aspiring writers. Almost none of the ones I’ve met are particularly angry, although they can sometimes get a bit sarcastic (so would you if you had to read as many bad scripts as they do). They do pass on a majority of the scripts they read -- not because they’re jealous, but because most of the scripts out there just aren’t very good (sorry, but it’s true). Because they read so much junk, most readers I know are thrilled when they come across a good script (because reading one literally restores your faith in the art form) and rather than kill it, do whatever they can to bring it to the right person’s attention. (Sometimes going to ridiculous lengths. Several years ago, I read a script that I thought was terrific. The prodco I read it for passed, so I’ve been carrying it around ever since and give it to anyone I think might be interested. No takers yet, but I’m not giving up.)

It hurts to have a script rejected -- it is, after all, your sweat and blood -- and when this happens it is probably easier to blame it on some imaginary villain than to accept the fact that your piece just wasn’t up to snuff. But if you’ve come up with something extraordinary, then believe me, a reader’s going to be your very best friend -- a friend that may need to borrow a dollar to get a cheeseburger (because that whole low-paid thing is true), but a friend nonetheless.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.