November 11, 2008 / 2 Comments

Maybe We Can Fix It In Post…

So, last week I gave a rant that was mostly designed for the novelists and short story writers who regularly look here (all three of them). This week I thought I’d put something out for all the would-be screenwriters who’ve become loyal followers of this blog (both of you).

The rest of you… I have no idea why you keep coming here.

Over the past few months I read scripts for three different screenwriting contests. Two of them are fairly well known. I’m not sure of the exact number, but I probably read well over 200 screenplays in that time period, and I was just helping out part-time.

Seeing this many scripts is, in some ways, a wonderful learning experience. Not only did I get to see the same mistakes made again and again and again (thus reinforcing the fact that I will never commit the same mistake) but I also got to see the entire review process through the eyes of a reader and share my thoughts with other people on this side of the line.

That being said, two important things to remember as I go into this list…

First, readers are human. They generally have to read about a dozen scripts every day (The Stand by Stephen King has fewer pages than a single day’s worth of feature scripts), and they’re usually only making fair to average pay doing it. They get frustrated, they get bored, and they will make snap judgments even when they’re trying to be as fair and impartial as possible. Every time you make it easier for them to render that judgment—one way or the other—you’re doing them a favor.

Second, reading scripts is not about mining for gold, it’s a weeding-out process. For most readers, the job is not to find the best of the best, but to clean away the worst, the barely-adequate, and the mediocre for the higher-paid people above them.

As an additional side note, I’ve determined a simple truth I call the 50% rule. It holds for screenplay contests, and I bet it also counts for anthologies, job applications, and blind dates.

If you take any body of submissions, about half of them will have no business whatsoever being there in that group. These are the submissions where the reader knows by page two there’s no point in turning another page. Maybe it’s because they submitted a western to a sci-fi contest, or vice-versa. Perhaps there’s a 120 page cap and it’s a 200 page screenplay. It could even be handwritten in crayon. One way or another, when you look at the odds for a contest, remember that half those people aren’t even going to be your competition. Or, awful as it may sound, you won’t even be theirs.

Here’s ten of the most common reasons why.

Typos

Yeah, can you believe I’m harping on this again? When I first wrote the “Contest Beat” column for Creative Screenwriting (recently resurrected as “Eyes on the Prize”) I interviewed dozens of contest directors and asked each of them what were some tips for aspiring entrants. Across the board, the answer that every one of them gave was spelling and grammar.

Now, a random typo is not going to sink your chances. We all make mistakes, and readers know that, too. If I’m going through your script and there’s a typo on every page, though… Heck, there were a few screenplays I looked at where I wasn’t even thirty pages in and I’d lost track of how many there were.

Whenever you hand off a manuscript you’re trying to convince the reader that you are an advanced writer. You’re ahead of the average Joe or Jane, someone who can do more with words and letters than just sign their name, send a text message, or scribble a shopping list. The absolute, bare-bones basic tools of writing – any writing– are spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. If you aren’t a master of the basics (you, not your word processor’s spellchecker), how can you hope to do anything advanced?

Apostrophe S

You could argue this goes under typos, but to be honest it’s in a class by itself. Messing up an apostrophe S will stand out on the page like a flare. There is no worse mistake you can make. Seriously. None. As I said above, we all make mistakes now and then, but it’s obvious when a writer’s 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 past basic—it’s a fundamental part of the English language. Stop writing, go get some grammar books like Eats Shoots & Leaves or even just the MLA Handbook and actually read them. Promise yourself, as of this moment, no more guessing or taking wild stabs in the dark. A real writer has to know how apostrophe S works.

Excess Title Info

You would be stunned how many scripts were submitted to these contests with things like MY TITLE—crap draft right on the first page. One didn’t even use the crap, but a more vernacular form. No, I’m serious. Sometimes they’re in the file name with electronic submissions, which is also a bad time to see MY TITLE—(other contest’s name) Submission. Even just plain old MY TITLE—1st draft. Only your first draft? And you thought it was ready for a contest? Well, okay… I guess that’s better than the script that was copyrighted back in 2001 and probably hasn’t been changed since…

Don’t give a reader any reason to prejudge your script. Strip off any and all draft numbers or extraneous comments to yourself before you send it out. I’ve got over a dozen screenplays to read today, and honestly, if you’re going to hand yours off and tell me it’s crap right up front… well, you’re saving me some time, thanks.

The script is about a writer

Seriously, you would not believe the percentage of scripts that are about novelists or wanna-be screenwriters. 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–over 14% of them! They were all awful and not one of them advanced.

Not to sound harsh, but no one cares about the day-to-day struggles you go through as a writer. Trust me, I do it for a living, I know. They also don’t care about the day-to-day struggles of a thinly-fictionalized version of yourself. And they also don’t care about the sheer joy of the creative process, the way impossibly beautiful women and handsome men are drawn to creative types, or the wild, quirky, and outgoing nature every writer has.

And for God’s sake, it’s the worst ending in the world when the writer-character finally sells their book or screenplay, everything is now wonderful and perfect in the world, and they win the Pulitzer/ Oscar/ whatever…

The story never addresses things

It’s okay to have mystery in your story. It’s okay not to reveal everything. Heck, it’s even okay to have wild, absurd coincidences. Many movies and shows have had success by not fully explaining who that cigarette-smoking man is, why that girl down in the well is so evil, or what the heck is going on on that damned tropical island. We all like this sort of stuff, and when it’s done well it what makes your story the one people talk about and remember for ages.

However, these things still need to be acknowledged. A story can’t just get away with “it’s a secret” and expect that readers (and an audience) will just accept it. A reader can see the difference between a real mystery and a bunch of awkwardly-withheld information. It’s also apparent when a writer is keeping a secret and when they’re just trying to be mysterious because… well, people like mysterious stuff.

You can get away with a lot of bizarre stuff if your characters at least acknowledge the mystery or absurdity of it. On the show LOST we found out that someone on the plane was travelling with a pregnancy test. Yet before the audience even had a chance to mock this little bit of deus ex machina, one of the characters did. “Who travels with a pregnancy test?” laughed Kate, trying to calm her friend Sun. And with that, this ridiculous coincidence was addressed and allowed. A few years back in an issue of The Incredible Hulk, writer Peter David had sidekick Rick Jones saved from an exploding Skrull warship because he always wore a mini-parachute under his clothes in case he had to escape from an exploding Skrull warship. When Bruce Banner pointed out how absurd that was, Rick looked up at the sprawling cloud in the sky and said “ What do you mean? I needed it, didn’t I?”

Again, there’s nothing wrong with mystery and coincidence. Just make sure it really is a mystery, not just an attempt to look like one.

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 recently explained to a friend of mine, this is like pouring out a truckload of gravel and asking someone to take note of what color stones they see.

Pace the introduction of characters. If you tell me ten people walk into a room, you don’t need to give me all their names, genders, physical descriptions, and character quirks all at once. We can get to know them as the situation arises.

Confusing names

This may sound a little foolish and obvious, but if your story has characters named Paul, Paula, Paulina, and Paola (and one short I read did) it’s going to be very, very difficult for a reader to keep track of who’s who. Confusing as all hell, to be honest. I mention it because I saw a double-handful of scripts that all 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 many published novels, you’ll see it’s actually rare to get multiple characters whose names start with the same letter—it just makes for an easy mnemonic. You’re more likely to see Andrew, Bob, Cedric, and Dave than to see Andrew, Angus, Bob, and Bill. The Matrix had Neo, Morpheus, Smith, Trinity, and Cypher. Casablanca has Rick, Elsa, Victor, Louis, and Sam. Raiders of the Lost Ark had Indy, Marion, Belloq, Sallah, and Toht. Even with the huge squad of Colonial Marines in Aliens, the only double-up is Hicks and Hudson.

On a somewhat similar note, if you have a wedding planner named Leslie who’s male, make sure it’s plain and obvious he’s a man. Likewise, if your grease-covered auto mechanic Charlie is a woman, it needs to be clear up front she’s a woman, with no ambiguity at all. Nothing frustrates readers more than to get ten pages in and realize they’ve mentally assigned the wrong gender to a character, because it means they have to go back over everything they just read. So be careful with names like Pat, Chris, Sam, and so on.

Nothing ever happens

Most professional script readers will give you to page ten and then stop reading if they’re not gripped by your words. If your writing in and of itself is phenomenal, they might go along with you until page twenty or so. However by page twenty if there isn’t a definite, solid story happening, your script ends up in the large pile on the left. One script page is roughly one minute of screen time (a little less, actually), so try to find a movie where at least the basic story hasn’t been set out for the audience by twenty minutes in.

If your story (your real story) hasn’t begun by page twenty, look back over your script and see what is happening in those pages. Is it vitally important to the character? Is it advancing the story? If not, you may want to trim it out, or perhaps move it to a later scene.

Pointless changes

A common storytelling device is to take a known story (either fictional or historical) and change an element to put a new spin on it. Disney used to do this quite often with their animated versions of stories like Robin Hood. Another way to look at this is the “What if…” method of storytelling. What if aliens did build the Egyptian pyramids? What if a time traveler killed Kennedy? What if someone won the lottery?

The catch here, of course, is that such a change implies other elements of your story would change. If your team of agents find evidence Kennedy was killed by a time traveler and then continue to deal with the OPEC crisis… what was the point? Why bother to have your main character win the lottery if winning it doesn’t change a single thing in their life?

If you’re going to have a major tweak like this in your story, there should be a reason for it. If you’ve decided to tell the history of the Maya with cgi geckoes acting out all the parts… it should be apparent why.

Short brads

Yeah, this is stupid and it really shouldn’t have anything to do with how your script is received… and yet…

Few things are more frustrating than having a script constantly fall apart while you’re trying to read it. You turn the page, the brads bend, and suddenly you’re holding a pile of fanning papers. And the last thing you want is for a reader to be going through your screenplay and feel constantly frustrated.

If you’re alredy investing forty or fifty bucks to enter a contest, go the extra few feet and get the right size brass brads. You want the big, beefy ones that are over an inch and a half long– enough to go through 120 sheets of paper and have plenty left over to bend back.

There they are. Ten things that crop up again and again, most of which will guarantee you a place in that large, left-hand pile.

So go look at your writing, and make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

September 10, 2008 / 1 Comment

The Ignorant Stranger

Exposition gets a bad rap.

People like to shriek that exposition kills a story, brings things to a grinding halt, and you’ll never make a sale if you use a lot of exposition. It’s an easy target, which is why lots of gurus warn against it and so many people latch onto it as an ironclad rule to be obeyed until the end of time. They can’t figure out how to do it, therefore no one should do it.

Of course, exposition isn’t a problem in and of itself, only when it’s part of bad writing. Honestly, you need to have exposition at some point or your story’s probably going to leave a lot of unanswered questions (and not in the good way). If you want proof, just look at a handful of the mildly successful movies or novels that use tons of exposition.

Star Wars – Ignoring the fact every movie in this series begins with a two minute text scroll, let’s look at the classic first film. Obi Wan spends a good four or five minutes explaining to Luke what the Force is and how it works. Darth Vader has to explain his relationship with Obi-Wan. The rebels have to explain the plans to the Death Star and how they’ll exploit its weakness.

Shogun—James Clavell’s best selling novel involves constant explanation as Captain Blackthorne, called Anji-san (Sir Pilot) by his captors, is forced to learn the Japanese language and culture in order to survive. He has to learn from scratch and drags the audience along with him.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – Right in the beginning of the film, Indiana Jones and Marcus Brody have to tell the two visiting federal agents about the legend of the Ark, its mythic powers, and where it may be hidden, a lecture that comes complete with pictures and chalkboard diagrams. Note that the two Feds don’t need to explain who the Nazis are and why they’re bad—everyone knows this.

The DaVinci Code – In Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, which pauses to explain historical details every ten or fifteen pages or so, Langdon and Sophie pause for two whole chapters in Leigh Teabing’s library while he relates a dozen or so different hypotheses about the blood line of Jesus, his relationship with Mary Magdalene, and how the Catholic Church has corrupted the Bible over the centuries to serve their own needs.

The Matrix—This movie has a staggering amount of exposition considering it’s known as a dynamic action film. It begins with characters discussing Neo (in voice-over no less), moves through Trinity and Morpheus each describing the mystery of the Matrix, and then Morpheus explaining the truth of it once Neo wakes up in the real world. The crew is explaining things constantly as Neo’s training begins. Cypher gets a little speech, so does Agent Smith… the exposition just goes on and on and on in this film.

Now, Damon Knight makes an interesting point in his book Creating Short Fiction (go buy it—most of his lessons are universal for fiction writing). A fact you don’t know that’s presented to you is information. It holds your attention for the sheer reason it’s something new. A fact you already know that’s presented to you is noise. It’s something you want to ignore and block out so you can get past it and back to the good stuff. This is why a lot of exposition fails—it’s information the audience either already knows or would be able to figure out on their own with minimal effort.

I’ll add one other tenet to that little point. Relevance. Information the reader needs for this story is vital. Information that has nothing to do with the story is wasting time and space. The catch here is the audience won’t know if something’s relevant or not until the final scene or the last page (although sometimes it’s painfully obvious). Notice in the above-mentioned scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the good Doctor Jones doesn’t progress into a lecture on Masada, the fortress-city where almost a thousand Jews were besieged by the Romans in 70 AD before committing mass suicide rather than be captured. The first time we all sat down, we wouldn’t’ve know any better and I have no doubt screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan could give us a completely gripping lecture on Masada. But then we’d reach the end of the film and say “What the hell was all that stuff about a fortress in there for?” Masada has nothing to do with the story of Raiders, which is why no one talks about it.

All those stories mentioned up above manage to pull off their reams of dialogue because they all do it essentially the same way. People in the know are giving information to people not in the know who need it. Years ago while writing one of my very first DVD reviews (for the miniseries adaptation of Shogun, actually) I came up with a term for this which I call the ignorant stranger. It’s when a character who is a source of information gets to do an infodump on a less-educated character. The name comes from John Blackthorne, the main character of Shogun, a man who is ignorant of Japan’s culture and language for the simple reason that it’s all completely new to him—an ignorant stranger. This is a surefire, never-fail, completely acceptable way to have exposition in your writing.

So, keeping that in mind, here’s the only two things you must remember so you can pull off the ignorant stranger in your writing.

First, the ignorant stranger can’t actually be stupid—there’s a big difference between ignorance and stupidity. It’s this particular situation that has put him, her, or them at a disadvantage. Your stranger has to be on the same level as your readers or viewers. We, the audience, are learning alongside them, so we don’t want to wait while the stranger’s educated on where hamburgers come from, what firemen do for a living, where Oklahoma is on a map, and who his friends and family members are.

Second, the Source explaining things has to be smarter than the stranger, and thus, smarter than your audience. If what’s being explained is something we can figure out on our own, or something that we’ll never need to know (within the scope of this story), then the Source is wasting their time, the ignorant stranger’s, and ours by explaining it. Remember, you want information, not noise. Yeah, maybe for whatever reason the Source doesn’t know much about U.S. currency, cooking on a grill, or this thing called love, but on the topic they’re explaining this character needs to be an authority. They don’t need a degree of some kind, the audience just needs to be clear the Source’s knowledge and understanding dwarf the ignorant stranger’s.

That’s it. Follow those two simple rules and you’ll be amazed how well exposition can work in your novels, screenplays, and short stories.

Speaking of which… aren’t you supposed to be writing?

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