Tell your story only in dialogue
Field: That’s talking heads, right there. Film is a visual medium, about behavior and how characters react in extraordinary circumstances and situations. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but you have to know your craft. The Hours could technically be considered a talking heads movie but was an exquisite movie, because it’s still done visually.
Take criticism too seriously…or too lightly
Berger: Think of your work as a product, and of yourself as a business. By adopting what I call a Business Model, you separate yourself from the personal attachments you have to your work. You won’t be guarding your precious words as if they’re “art,” nor will you be so easily willing to trash them as though they’re “crap.” Rather, you will be constantly trying to improve your product, market-test it, increase production, and accomplish it all in a rational, non-emotional way. When it comes to your writing, remember the legendary words of Michael Corleone: It’s not personal, it’s business.
Pitching your script before it, you or the industry is ready
Field: You write one thing today and it could be out of date tomorrow. We’ve evolved dramatically in the last 10 years in telling stories visually. We are in the middle of a revolution due to computer-generated graphics and technology. If you know your story, you can now include elements of CGI without forcing the issues.
Berger: Why is it unlikely that producers and agents will go for that first (or second or third, even) effort of yours? Because it’s the first (or second or third) effort of yours! You’re a new writer. You’re probably not that good yet. Yeah, I know you think you are. But all experience indicates otherwise. The fact is, almost no writer’s first efforts are all that stunning. It always surprises me that new writers don’t get the above fact (although I suffered from the same delusions when I started out.) But again, use your common sense. Would you want to own the first chair a carpenter ever made, or his tenth? Would you want to be your lawyer’s very first client, especially if a lot of money were on the line (like the budget to a feature?) Would you want to be the first patient under your brand new surgeon’s knife? Well, the same goes for screenwriting. And the fact that you don’t think this applies to you is merely a testament to your newcomer’s inexperience.
Think you can pitch your story on the fly to a studio exec
Field: First of all, you have to realize you have 10 minutes to tell your story. What are you going to say and how are you going to say it to achieve a dramatic response from the listener? Someone who listens to 10 stories a day. What makes your story more different, more unique and more interesting than any other story? And you have to practice that. I pitched a script my partner and I are writing and we took about a month to prepare a 20 minute presentation about what the story is about down to about 7½ minutes. We worked on cards and both participated. It was a creative event. What a development exec is looking for is being able to see that movie in their head. And part of it is being able to express the story visually.
Give up
Berger: Life ain’t fair. And as fair as life ain’t, in the entertainment industry it ain’t fair times a billion. So what do you do? How do you avoid this mistake? Find some way to weather the long, lonely road that you’ll have to travel to make it, and keep writing and improving and cranking out script after script along the way. It sounds simple, but this is where almost everybody falls by the wayside. I know I’ve said this many times in different ways, but the key to getting anywhere in this business is longevity. Harrison Ford once said, “I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn’t give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you.”
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About Syd Field
CNN calls him “the guru of all screen writers.” The Hollywood Reporter calls him “the most sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world.” Many Hollywood professionals regard Field as the leading authority in the art and craft of screenwriting in the world today. He starting out making documentaries, became a freelance screenwriter and script reader, and then used his experience in a career teaching wanna-be screenwriters about the writing and selling process. His best-selling books Screenplay, The Screenwriter’s Workbook, and The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver are considered the “bibles” of the film industry, are used in more than 395 colleges and universities and have been translated into 19 languages.
About Stephen Berger
With an M.F.A. from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Berger has sold screenplays to Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers Studios. His scripts have been produced by Miramax Films and Alliance Pictures, and he has optioned scripts or worked as a hired writer on/for the following: producer Nancy Tennenbaum (sex, lies and videotape, Meet the Parents); Dimension Films; Turner Feature Animation; producer Jonathan Krane (Face/Off, The General’s Daughter); director/writer Rand Ravich (The Astronaut’s Wife), and many more. He was a writer/producer for the hit TV series Blind Date, and he has taught screenwriting at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program.
For more information on Showtime’s sophisticated new series, visit the Out of Order site on SHO.com. Out of Order airs Mondays, 10 p.m. ET/PT.
The Do’s of Screenwriting
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