Admit it. Most of us have thought at one time or another, especially after seeing a particularly bad movie, that we could write a much better script than some Hollywood “hack.” We would write a movie everyone would want to see.
It isn’t as easy as it looks, though, and Hollywood itself will attest to it in movies and television shows that show the trials and tribulations of screenwriting–two recent examples being the Oscar-winning film Adaptation, about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman‘s arduous task of trying to adapt a book into a movie.
Becoming a screenwriter is serious business, so Hollywood.com consulted two working professionals on how to make it happen: Syd Field, one of the leading authorities in craft of screenwriting and whose book Screenplay has become somewhat of a screenwriter’s bible; and Stephen Berger, a working screenwriter who’s sold scripts to Paramount and Warner Bros. and has taught screenwriting at UCLA Extension.
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.
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 Jonathon Krane (Face/Off, The General’s Daughter) Billy Campbell (TV’s Now and Again); 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. Stephen also teaches the PowerWriting Seminar, the first “motivational” screenwriting seminar on the market, using techniques of management training and sports psychology to maximize a writer’s potential, both creatively and business-wise (for more information call (310) 967-1385.)
The Do’s
Know your craft
Field: First, you must accept the fact screenwriting is a craft. And it’s a craft that can be learned. Talent, of course, cannot be learned–you either have it or you don’t. But talent doesn’t necessarily stop you from writing a good screenplay if you know the craft. Part of it is understanding that the screenplay has a specific form. That’s No. 1. No. 2 is to understand a screenplay is told in pictures. And No. 3 is you know you have to tell your story in pictures in about 120 pages. Once you understand that and it becomes really a part of you, telling your story with pictures, then you can let go of all the rules and just tell your story.
Berger: New writers think that if they’ve got talent then their very first screenwriting effort will be the golden document that is not only a Great American Script, but will launch a glamorous and lucrative career as well. The truth is a little less mouth-watering, but it has the advantage of being true. And while it’s a fact that some people will never get the knack of writing, the rest of us have to develop the talent we do possess. Therefore, those first screenplays are going to be far from perfect, and only rarely (very rarely) will get you work. For most every talented, working writer the road to success is paved with a lot of writing that doesn’t sell, isn’t very good, and serves one single yet invaluable function: getting you to the point where you are good enough to sell your work.
Do your homework
Field: Reading and evaluating other screenplays is essential in knowing your craft. I have people and students come up to me and say they have a great idea for a screenplay. So I ask them what it’s about. And then they say, “Well, we start out in the desert and we see a cloud of dust coming slowly toward the camera–and it’s an old VW bus.” And then they look at me. I ask them what happens next? And they say, “Oh, I don’t know, I got to work that out.” It’s so common. But that’s not how you write a screenplay.
Berger: Writers ask me, “Why should things like typos and grammar matter if it’s a good script?” You know why? Because it’s probably not a good script. It’s like the “broken-window” syndrome in law enforcement. Neighborhoods that tend to have high crime rates typically have things like unkempt lots, loose garbage, and broken windows. Similarly, dumb mistakes almost always correlate with dumb scripts. And you are dumb if you let your script go out with dumb mistakes, and readers know it! I come down hard on this one because everyone claims to know it but it’s so often ignored by new writers, to their detriment.
Tell your story
Field: You start with the story. What is it about? Who are the characters and what happens to them? For example, your story could be two girls who go on a crime spree. What crime do they commit? And who are the women? What’s their background? And then you figure out the specifics of it. Where does it take place? What drove the women to commit this crime? And what happens to them at the very end? With all that, you have the beginnings where you can then start outlining your screenplay. Then comes the character development, which is everything. Structure and character are the two principal components in writing any visual art.
Berger: You had better be damn sure that there is something animating your pages, some kind of conviction, some kind of emotion, something that comes from that part of you that makes you human. Because, guaranteed, a reader/development person can pick up on this quality just as easily as they can pick up the heartless, by-the-numbers approach. The former makes them look more closely, even if other elements are missing. The latter makes them snooze, even if the story in question is “commercial.”
Write, rewrite and rewrite again
Field: I think in rewriting, everything happens. Clarity, simplicity and understanding.
Berger: Did you make sure your script was in shape? Did you find a small group of like-minded individuals (fellow writers, industry insiders,) collect their notes, and rewrite your guts out? Or did you give it to your mother, your girl/boyfriend, and your best buddy who’s in real estate, tweak a few things, and call it a final draft? You’d better have done the former. And you’d better have really listened to the comments, gone back and rewritten massively, have your script read again, massively rewritten again, and repeat this process at least once more (or however many times it takes) before you are absolutely, positively convinced that you cannot improve this document one iota more, until you are so sick of looking at it that the mere mention of your main character’s name evokes the gag response, until you feel in the uttermost depths of your soul that you have done everything on God’s green earth to make this piece the absolute best it can be. Then you have to stop or you’ll drive yourself crazy.
Know the game
Berger: I’m perpetually amazed at how people who claim they want to be in this business are oftentimes very indifferent moviegoers. But every single successful screenwriter I know is a movie fiend, catching absolutely as many movies as their work/personal schedule allows. And not just movies they’re interested in, either. You have to see everything, good and bad, in genres you like and those you don’t, if you want to play this game. Also, you should get subscriptions to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.
Field: I make lists of the various actors and actresses I see in the parts. And you should have this in mind when you are writing the screenplay as well. Sometimes it gives you a very clear picture of a particular mannerism. Think of writing something for Jack Nicholson, for example. But that isn’t necessary all the time. I also make lists of directors that I admire and whose work I feel would be appropriate for the material. I make a list of producers who may have produced a film like my screenplay. Then I use a publication called Hollywood Creative Directory and go through it to look for the production companies and studios who might be interested in this. You do as much research in selling your screenplay as you do in writing it.
Keep writing, no matter what
Field: The process to selling a screenplay takes so long, with so many meetings, that if you just sit there, waiting by the phone, you are wasting valuable time. You’ve got to move on. So, once your screenplay is out there and you’ve done the work to get into their right hands, you have to go on to the next screenplay.
Berger: The only people I know who gained success in a reasonable time were those who had no time limits set. It was this dedication and single-mindedness that made it happen. Try this, folks. It’s magic, it works. Start with 1/3 page a day. Write only 1/3 page a day, no more, for two weeks. Then, at the end of this trial time, re-examine your writing chops. See if you don’t find it’s a more natural, almost reflexive part of your makeup.
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The Don’t’s
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.
Don’t ever 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.”
