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.
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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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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 Don’t’s of Screenwriting
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