Category: Lizard Men

Pop culture pun.  I don’t do puns, normally, but it works.  As you’ll see.

This is mostly going to be for screenwriters.  Writers of prose—please don’t feel left out.  There’s a couple of things in here for you, too.

Tis the season for screenplay contests.  A few of the big names have opened their mailboxes for submissions, and there’s a dozen more noteworthy ones past that.  It’s a great way to get your name out there and even win some decent money, too, if you plan accordingly.

However…

As some long-time readers know, I used to read for a couple of screenplay contests (four different ones, in fact). I have several friends who read for some of the same ones, and some others, too. This time of year used to be a time of great sadness for us. And also a time of great drinking. Usually for the same reasons.

For an average contest, I’d probably read about a hundred scripts per year. That means there were years I’d read over three hundred scripts, usually all in the space of three or four months. It was a fascinating (and sometimes horrifying) overview of amateur screenwriting. To be honest, it’s one of the big things that convinced me to start the ranty blog.

It also gave me a real sense of certain patterns. There were certain types of scripts that would show up again and again and again. And it got to the point that I (and most of my friends) would let out a groan—an Ecchh, if you will—when we opened the next script and realized it was another one of those stories. Usually we could tell within the first few pages. In rare cases, the story would go along fine for twenty or thirty pages and the big first act reveal was… it’s just another one of those stories.

I drank a lot during this period of my life.

Now, I’m not saying any of these are automatically bad scripts that no one would ever pay a dime for. We could probably check IMDb box office listings right now and find examples of more than half of them. But contests aren’t about the box office, they’re about the submissions pool. Unless it’s something truly, utterly spectacular, each of these all-too-common screenplays is going to get an automatic response from a contest reader. An Ecchh.  And that means my script is already starting in the negative. And even if the reader’s just subconsciously knocking off two or three points for being an Ecchh-inducing script, those points could mean the difference between making it to the next round or winning a contest.

So, a few types of screenplays you should think twice about before submitting.  I’ve mentioned some of these before, so if they sound familiar… well, I thought it was worth repeating.

The 50% Script
I’ve mentioned this idea here a few times. In any pool of submitted material, around half of the submissions can be usually be disqualified by page three. It’s when I submit my stoner sex comedy to a Christian values screenplay contest.  Or my romantic comedy to a horror contest. Or my five-act play to… well, any screenwriting contest. The same goes for short stories. Very few screenplay contests want to see short stories. Hard to believe, I know, but there it is.

The 50% scripts are also the result of me being incompetent and/or lazy. If I  don’t know how to spell, have only the faintest understanding of grammar, and no concept of story structure…  that’s a 50% script. Or if I send in a first draft with all its flat characters and wooden dialogue. Or if I don’t even bother to learn how to format a screenplay. Or if I wrote my screenplay under the assumption I’d be directing it from this draft.

If my script falls in that 50% group, the reader’s going to know very soon. And they’re going to Ecchh because a lot of contests require them to read the whole script… even if they know it’s not going to win. Most readers will toss a 50% script as soon as they can. Sometimes sooner, if they think they can get away with it.

The Writer Script
I’ve said this a dozen or so times. Do not write about writers. I did the math one year as a reader and it turned out almost 15% of the scripts I read had a writer as one of the main characters (yeah, I started keeping track of this stuff). When I was interviewing contest directors for Creative Screenwriting, one joked that if her contest banned scripts about writers they’d probably lose a quarter of their entries. More than a few professional editors have said they’ll toss a book manuscript if it opens with someone writing on their computer.

No one cares about the day-to-day struggles I go through as a writer. No one. Most of you don’t—you’re here to learn about the successes. Definitely not a bunch of script readers, many of whom are writers themselves. If I’m being sincere, I’m going to bore everyone (more on that in a bit). If I make up some idealized writing lifestyle, the readers will Ecchh over that because now I’m delving into fantasy.

Let’s assume they didn’t toss my script aside as soon as they saw the writer character. If they get to the end and said writer-character finally sells their book or screenplay and wins the Pulitzer/ Oscar/ whatever… the reader will crumple my script into a ball and burn it so nobody else will have  to read the damned thing. Then they will get my personal information from the contest director, hunt me down, and cram the ashes in my mouth.

And I probably won’t advance in the contest.

The Current Events Script
I’m going to go out on a limb here. If we could look at the pool of Nicholl submissions for this year, I’d bet we’d see a fair number of Olympic scripts.  Several of them would be about stray dogs in Sochi. Also a bunch of screenplays that tie somehow to health care laws. A few on government gridlock, too. And most of them were probably written in four weeks or less.

Y’see, Timmy, if I saw a news report about some fascinating nuance of the world and realized it’d make a great script… it’s a safe bet at least a thousand other aspiring screenwriters saw the same news story and had the same idea. Probably more with the way stories spread on the internet. Even if only half of those writers do anything with the idea, and even if only ten percent of those people are sending their script to the same contest as me… that’s still fifty people rushing out scripts about the exact same thing I am. Even if half of them are completely incompetent and the other half are just barely on par, it means the contest reader is going to be reading a dozen scripts just like mine. Ecchh. And that’s if we stick to a thousand as our base number.

Mine may be the best in the batch, of course, but it’s going to lose a lot of appeal because now it’s a tired, overdone idea. And none of us want to be thought of as the best take on a tired, overdone idea.

The Actor Script
When people are trying to be positive about this one, they’ll call it “a character script.” It means my screenplay is just a thin plot with a handful of over-detailed character sketches piled up in it. There’s usually lots of deep and meaningful multi-page conversations about mundane things, often held in a few basic locations, and very little action. Of any sort.

The thing is though, is there anything remotely interesting about a story that’s indistinguishable from the boring, everyday life we all lead? Is there anything impressive about me putting all that boring stuff down on paper? Is there any sort of challenge there, for me as a writer or you as a reader?

Ecchh.

As it happens, this leads nicely into…

The True Script
A kissing cousin of the character script is the true script. On the cover or either the first or last page (sometimes several of these) I assure the reader this tale is based on true events involving me/ my parents/ my best friend/ someone I read about in a magazine article. These true events are often stressed to give a certain validity to what the reader is about to take in. After all, they can’t call my story or characters or dialogue unbelievable if it really happened, right?

Thing is, no one cares if my story is true or not. Nobody. Ecchh. They just care that it’s a good story and it’s well-told.  So my tale of prepubescent paraplegic drug addicts in 1990s Los Angeles needs to be as enjoyable—on some level—as a story about Neanderthal superheroes battling prehistoric lizard men in 1990s Los Angeles. Whether or not one of them’s a true story is irrelevant. In the end, I’m telling a story, and it’s either going to be good or it isn’t. Reality doesn’t enter into the equation for the reader, so it can’t for me.

The Formula Rom-Com
The man pursuing his dream girl realizes his best friend has been his real dream girl all along. A woman’s engaged to a condescending, controlling executive and then meets a poor artist and discovers he’s the real love of her life. Aphrodite/ Cupid/ an angel comes down to Earth on an assignment and falls in love.

Do any of these sound familiar? They should. Pretty much every one of them has been made into a dozen movies and a few thousand screenplays. Yeah, flipping the genders doesn’t make them any more original, sorry. Once it’s clear on page three this is a rom-com… Ecchh.

My romantic comedy has to be really spectacular and original to impress a reader. Again, it’s that sheer numbers thing. In four years of contest reading—a hundred romcoms, easy—I read one that stood out. Just one.

The Holiday Script
If you add in straight-to-DVD, movies of the week, and pretty much everything Shane Black‘s done, there’s a good argument to be made that holiday films are one of the best selling genres out there. However, just because my script is very sellable does not mean my script is very good. Or original. And if my contest is looking for good (see above), well…

The trick is to come up with something a contest reader hasn’t already seen again and again, to the point that they go Ecchh as soon as they see the mention of Halloween decorations. And—speaking from experience—they’ve seen most of it. They’ve Santa Claus quit, get fired, and get replaced by a temp, an elf, Mrs. Clause, his son, his daughter, his evil twin, his evil other personality, a robot, an alien, another holiday figure, another supernatural figure, Jesus. It’s all been done. The Easter Bunny has learned the true meaning of Easter, Cupid has learned the true meaning of love (see above… again), and Gobbles the Turkey has learned the true meaning of Thanksgiving. The hard way. Many, many times and in many, many ways.

There you are.  Seven very common types of scripts that will make a contest reader Ecchh. Probably more like eight or nine if you read between the lines a bit.

Again, I’m not saying I could never, ever win with one of these scripts. But I am saying that if I’m going to go this path I absolutely must knock it out of the park. No questions, no conditions, no exceptions.

Speaking of movies, next week I’d like to talk about the lessons we can all learn from that fine classic film Satan Met A Lady and its slightly more well-known remake, The Maltese Falcon.

Until then, go write.

             Minor pop-culture reference for those of you who are good with movie quotes.  And if you are, you’ll see the conflict with today’s little rant…

            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 Screenwritingmagazine 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.

            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 reallove 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 Highlanderwere 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.