My
company has been accepting scripts mostly through it’s
website at http://www.coffeefilms.com
since 1998. We’ve read literally thousands in that
time, and replied with feedback on almost all, but a lot
of our feedback tends to say the same thing; new writers
all make the same mistakes.
So
before you send out that next batch of screenplay e-mails
to a bunch of production companies you’ll probably
never hear from again, refer to this checklist and see
if you can’t give your script a better chance.
Incidentally
I’m more than happy to accept that these “rules”
aren’t cast in stone; they can be broken and they
can be broken well, but I challenge anyone to show me
a film which breaks more than one of these (without being
mad experimental bizarreness) and remains a good film.
1.
Formatting
I remember when I started and heard people wouldn’t
read scripts unless they were properly formatted; “How
dumb is that?” I thought, “They could miss screenplay
gold.” This was before I noticed a distinct pattern
emerge; those who couldn’t be bothered with screenplay
format generally couldn’t be bothered with such irrelevancies
as spelling, grammar, plot, dialogue and characterisation
either.
Any
company that begins to receive large volumes of scripts
will automatically bin unformatted ones because it’s
always an indication that everything else will be bad;
bear in mind anyone getting lots of scripts probably also
has a very full slate.
Formatting
is easy to pick up and achievable with Word if you have
a little patience, learn more about formatting at http://www.films.com.br/introi.htm,
or you can probably download a free copy of Final Draft
from somewhere or other.
2.
Those Irrelevancies Again
You are a writer and that means people expect proper spelling,
punctuation and grammar, dialogue can be phonetic on occasion
but scene descriptions definitely can’t be. These
kinds of mistakes indicate you probably haven’t proof
read your own work, and if you can’t be arsed to
read it you can’t expect anyone else to be either.
Also
avoid putting draft numbers on your cover page; “draft
2” indicates it’s probably underdeveloped, “draft
20” indicates it’s beyond help, and even something
safe like “draft 4” will indicate you don’t
draft very carefully if it still retains typos and so
on.
3.
Storyline
A lot of stuff I get is just rehashes of work already
out there; obviously, when one big fantasy film hits the
box office everyone starts writing LOTR style scripts,
it’s writing for the market, but here in Britain
I’m still getting the same tired witty-London-gangster
scripts I was 5 years ago and none of them offer anything
new, it’s just Guy Ritchie material with different
character names. Writing for the trendy market gives your
script a short shelf life which is bad news for an unknown
writer, it probably also means you’re writing outside
your field of experience; I get witty London gangster
scripts from people who have lived in Yorkshire all their
life, it’s ridiculous.
All
writers should write about things they know and understand,
especially early on, if you have to wade into unknown
territory you need to research it very thoroughly; that
means more than skimming a couple of pages of Google results,
if you want to really have a good chance of getting produced
or recognised you need to bring a different angle to your
chosen genre.
4.
Dialogue
To write good dialogue you need to write how people in
general speak, not how the Terminator speaks. You also
need to consider character, the way that person speaks.
When reading a script a character is most clearly defined
by their dialogue, inexperienced writers will often give
everyone the same voice; they all joke and talk about
the same things in exactly the same way and it’s
very dull and stands out a mile. An easy way to get around
this is to base your characters on people you know, or
even on famous actors, when you write you can picture
them saying it and how they’d say it and get a more
natural variance to your dialogue and far more interesting
characters.
5.
Character Progression
Referred to also as ‘character arc’; your lead
characters need to start in one place and finish in another
or it’s been a pointless journey. In it’s most
basic form imagine an Arnie cheesefest where someone kidnaps
his neglected daughter, in finding her again Arnie learns
just how much she means to him and how he must be a better
Dad; his character has progressed, he starts an idiot
and finishes reborn giving his character a clear storyline
arc. Ask yourself what your main protagonists have learned
from their film experience and make sure it’s something
interesting.
6.
Budget
My company is very small and based in the UK, which has
one of the most retarded film industries on the planet,
budgets are tiny for all but the romantic comedies released
by Working Title (“Four Weddings…” etc).
Our background is in underground, zero budget, occasionally
experimental short work, probably the most we or most
of the other UK producers can aspire to is around £1-2m
for a feature if we’re really, really lucky all of
this is either common knowledge or made crystal clear
on the website. With all that in mind consider the opening
lines of this script submission;
“We
open in a luxury beachfront penthouse in LA, a Porsche
and a Humvee sit in the driveway, we swoop majestically
over the building to see …”
Is
there really any point in me reading the rest? It got
sent to me though. Until your budget gets well into the
millions everything needs to be cheap, this means avoid
foreign or high cost locations, avoid demands for sweeping
helicopter shots, avoid demands for hordes of CGI werewolves
to attack the hero, avoid stunts, avoid guns, avoid demands
for chart topping music; it’s not rocket science,
these kinds of films cost millions of dollars for a good
reason, it’s expensive specialist stuff! If you want
all that in you need to go for the big companies and to
do that you will need an agent or a lot of time spare
to play the Hollywood “casting couch”.
7.
Structure
This one’s a harder thing to learn, but it’s
also an essential and something most new writers think
isn’t important or they don’t need to know.
All writing is structured; film, books, theatre, music,
everything, it’s a bit like working out the track
listing for a compilation CD, what’s the best order
to put the individual tracks (scenes) in?
Films
typically run in three acts, the first introduces the
characters and the main situations, the second (often
referred to as “the mess in the middle”) develops
and sometimes twists those characters and situations,
the third winds everything up in a satisfactory manner.
Most people get this much (for anyone interested in developing
more try studying Shakespeare’s five act structures,
much better for complex or very character driven work),
but they don’t get that there needs to be structure
to the scenes within those acts as well; at it’s
most basic level you may feature the same location three
times in a row when it would be more interesting to cut
away to other locations in between, on a more complex
level it could be the structure of the character arcs;
you need to consider what each character knows at each
time and how that affects everything else.
The
only sensible way to deal with this is to plan and develop
your idea rather than wade in; trying to write a script
straight out from scratch is usually impossible to achieve.
You should start with a one page synopsis, then develop
that into a treatment; basically the script without dialogue,
list every scene and what happens in it, juggle scenes
around, see what works or what becomes most interesting
before committing yourself to pages of dialogue.
8.
Ego
Do not headline your name above your script title i.e.
“Steve Piper’s The Evil Cat”, apart from
the fact it’s really sad, it also typically correlates
with the kind of writer so deeply entrenched in their
own arsehole that they will be completely impossible to
work with, or will expect to retain all rights to their
script (forget it if you want a career).
All
writers need to be prepared for a lot of criticism, getting
accepted by a producer is just the start; what probably
faces you is weeks or months of rewriting as the producer
and director pick out little things they don’t like
or developments they want to see more of; do pay attention
to their suggestions, what works on paper doesn’t
always work on screen and good producers and directors
should have a really good understanding of that which
they’ll want to use to make the script as good as
it can be.
9.
General Presentation
I hate getting a script with the cover e-mail note that
reads “here’s my script”; what am I, your
dog? Producers are the only people who can get your script
made into a film, at least have the decency to address
them with some kind of pitch/synopsis cover note that
sounds like you might care if they were interested.
10.
Ten Pages
You’ve probably heard how most producers only read
the first ten pages and make a decision from it; it is
the truth and it surprised me to learn it’s not as
dumb as it sounds. After ten pages you know whether the
writer is capable or not; the spelling, the dialogue,
the story idea, I have yet to read the script that had
a weak first ten then suddenly got amazing. Opening scenes
are often the best in the script; you enter a new world
and meet new characters and learn about a new set of circumstances
involving those things; most writers have lots of events
in the opening scenes (essential to get a viewing audience
involved), so if it doesn’t happen in those first
ten pages, it never will. If your first ten pages are
good, then you can be fairly assured that at least the
next 20 pages get read!
Further
reading:
The
web is awash with sites on writing in all its forms. There
is a list of good screenwriting links at http://www.coffeefilms.com/scriptlinks.html,
from which I would particularly recommend www.wordplayer.com.
It helps to study the competition as well, both www.simplyscripts.com
and www.script-o-rama.com
offer huge libraries of screenplays to download completely
free of charge. Always keep up to date with the trade
press; one of our writers came up pretty much with The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen only for me
to make him aware of the comic and at the time forthcoming
film; a month’s work wasted!
Steve
Piper is the managing director of Coffee Films, a production
company based out of England that focuses on all forms
of zero-budget filmmaking.
His
company website is: http://www.coffeefilms.com.
(Reprinted
with permission from Steve Piper and Microcinema Magazine.
Originally appeared at http://www.microcinemamagazine.com.)
