Why This is Good

When I first posted about writing when English isn’t your first language, I received a comment asking about British English. This got me thinking about the vast cultural differences between England, America, Australia, Canada and other English-speaking countries and regions. I realized after reading some screenplays written by people living in or from these countries that even if English is your first language, there are still cultural differences that are important to understand.

Dialogue, obviously, needs to be consistent with the character’s background. If you are American but your hero or other characters are British, then you need to study the differences in dialect and slang and terms that aren’t consistent between the two spoken languages. If you are attempting to write a story that is set in America, and involves characters who are supposedly American, it’s very important, even if you speak better English than we do here in America, to understand the slight variations and words that we use that you don’t, or words you use that we don’t.

There are vast differences between both English speaking countries and regions within English speaking countries. Though you should never spell a dialect or accent phonetically, including the proper terms, slang and lingo as used in the region you are attempting to write about is essential.  In certain regions, saying “y’all” is common, but in others it wouldn’t sound natural or believable at all. Australians, Brits and Canadians might say “mum” but Americans would almost always say “mom.” Some of Australia’s phrases and words, like “no worries” have caught on here, but others like “mate” aren’t as popular and would sound odd coming from an American character.

One obvious but often overlooked difference is the metric system. If you aren’t used to measuring things using our odd, illogical system of miles, inches and gallons, it is easy to slip into the metric system while writing about what a person or place looks like, or even within the dialogue. If your characters are in America, make sure you remember to substitute yards for meters, miles for kilometers, and quarts for milliliters. Even if these measurements aren’t part of the spoken dialogue, it will help to give your script a feeling of being set in America, no matter where you, the writer happens to be from. So instead of describing a beautiful farm with green fields stretching for kilometers, tell us about how the acres of green seem to stretch for miles. It’s subtle but will go far in lending authenticity to the overall feel of the script. And of course, if anything to do with measurements comes up in dialogue, make sure your American characters (or characters of any nationality living in America) speak in the correct terms for everyday things like gas (gallons not liters), or distance (miles or yards not kilometers or meters).

For metric/US conversions, click here.

For the same reasons as listed above, I would also encourage you to substitute the American spelling of certain words. Though no one will necessarily fault you for writing colour instead of color, it will subtly remind the reader that the script was written by someone not familiar with our country, which, if the story is set here, may be problematic and create a bias against how knowledgeable you are, no matter how realistic and authentic your writing actually is. Common words that are spelled differently are those with –or versus –our, such as: favorite/favourite; flavor/flavour; honor/honour; rumor/rumour; labor/labour , and those with –er versus –re, such as: theater/theatre, liter/litre, center/centre.

For more on these differences, click here.

The best way to know what is said somewhere and what isn’t is to spend time in that place. If that is not possible, study television shows and news broadcasts from those areas. This is easy to do if you’re trying to write something set in America, as so many movies and TV shows are set here, but keep in mind that the default accent used on TV, movies, and news broadcasts is a general dialect based on a Midwestern ideal that is not the only one spoken, not even in the Midwest. It does accurately represent the dialect spoken most in California and the Pacific Northwest, but regions differ, as in any country. People living in the South, and the Northeast have very different accents, dialects, and slang than what is commonly portrayed as American by Hollywood. Reality shows offer a great resource for staying current with dialogue and slang, especially in different areas. Study them, especially those that feature participants in the age group and from the region you are attempting to portray.

No  matter where you are from or what your native language is, you must write authentically and believably for the characters in your story and where they are coming from. If you’ve never been to America , it’s probably best not to set your story here. Don’t feel that your story must take place in America in order for it to be marketable to Hollywood. That is not true. A good story can take place anywhere, and audiences will relate to well-crafted characters of any nationality or background. But do realize that if you attempt to set your story in America and write about Americans, it must feel authentically American, from what the characters say, to the language you use to describe your settings.

When I see “we see” in a script, I cringe.

“We see” is redundant. Everything you’re writing in your action description is something “we”-the reader, the audience-“sees.” Or at least it should be. Since you’re not supposed to include internal thoughts, feelings, motivations, or past actions, everything in the action description paragraph is necessarily something we (at this point the reader, and someday the audience) are either seeing or hearing.

“We see” is also yet another underhanded way to direct without inserting an actual shot or camera angle. If, in lieu of writing CLOSE UP: hand holding gun, you say “We see a hand holding a gun” you’re still directing, still not fooling anyone, and still taking the focus away from the story.

The worst part of using “we see” is that it takes the reader out of the story and draws attention to the fact that they are reading a screenplay, rather than experiencing an emotionally engaging, intriguing story. Instead of becoming so engrossed in the story that they feel they’re seeing everything through the eyes of the character, the reader is reminded that they are a reader, part of that big audience of “we” who is just reading about what happened to someone else.  This is a sure way to bore the reader and lead them to put down the script and do something else.

A compelling, well-crafted, perfectly structured script can survive a few “we sees,” but it would be better without them. Instead of using these words, focus on finding a better way to describe what we see, insert adjectives, details and vivid description in place of those two controversial words. Just tell us what we see, not that we see it.

It seems counter-intuitive to watch terrible movies to try to learn about screenwriting, but often, they can teach you things that are hard to understand when you limit yourself to only the best. Sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint why something is good until you see a counter-example that is bad. I’ve always felt this way about acting. To someone that’s never done it, acting seems easy. All you do is stand there and do and say what someone else told you to do. Actors in films don’t even have to overcome stage fright or project their voices the way stage actors do. When you watch actors on screen, they seem to be having a good time, acting naturally, and the whole process seems pretty simple. But if you’ve ever seen bad acting you suddenly realize how different it is from good acting, and the reasons why become clear. Bad acting is easy to find in many, but not all, made-for-TV movies, documentaries or reality TV shows that feature reenactments, and sadly, even some big-budget Hollywood films.

In the same way that bad acting reveals what it takes to act well, bad screenwriting can reveal what it takes to write well. Watching a poorly reviewed film can be a chore, but if you approach it as an intellectual exercise, you’ll learn a lot about how to make your film or screenplay better. Instead of angrily walking out of the theater or stopping the DVD in frustration, continue watching the film, no matter how awful it is. But analyze it instead of just hating it. Note what you don’t like and why. Ask yourself these questions both during and after the film:

At what point did you want to stop watching? Why? Is it irritating, emotionally draining, boring, trying too hard, not funny, not believable, or just not your type of movie?

Are you the target demographic for this genre and type of story?

Do you normally enjoy the genre of this film?

Do you normally like the movies this actor/writer/director/studio does? What makes this one different?

Do you like the characters? Why or why not?

Are the situations presented believable? If not, why is this a problem in this particular film? Many stories present fantastical situations that are obviously made up and you are able to suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy the film. What about this story makes you dislike it?

Is the hero someone you would want to spend time with as a friend or partner in real life?

Can you understand why the characters make the decisions they do?

What did you hear about this movie from other people? What about critics and reviews? Did it do well at the box office?

What made you want to see this movie?

If you’re watching it with other people, ask for their opinions on the same questions and compare notes. Do they have the same ideas about the film as you? If not, where do you differ?

When you can learn to pinpoint what about bad movies bothers you, you can use this knowledge to avoid the things you hate in your own screenplays, and be more likely to produce something that will appeal to a wide audience.

Writers, by nature, are creative people who dislike rules, limitations and being told what to do. If we liked rules, we’d be mathematicians, not writers. Screenwriting, more than many other types of writing, is full of rules. Screenwriters are being told what not to do and what to do more than any other type of writer. Prose writers have been expanding the rules of what is acceptable for years, and are now free to write in a mixture of tenses and points of view. Email and texting have made grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage rules more lax, and writing prose has always afforded the writer with the opportunity to say whatever he or she wishes, in whatever way works. There are no limitations on length or subject matter or tone.  Even poets have the freedom to write however they want, rhyming is no longer a requirement, and even punctuation isn’t imposed upon them.

But a screenwriter is limited. The tense must be present, the font must be courier, the margins must be just so, and the overall length must not exceed 120 pages. Screenwriters are so often told what not to do that they feel stifled and rebellious. And this is where attempts to buck the system and break the rules come in. I understand the need and the desire, but I am still here to tell you not to do it.

The writers I work with fall into two categories: those who are new and don’t really understand or know the rules, and those who know the rules all too well, and break them because they’re frustrated with being told what they can and can’t do. The latter try to subtly, slyly break the rules and fly under the radar with their violations, hoping their reader won’t notice or care. We do notice, and we do care.

The following are the most common attempts to subtly break some common screenwriting rules:

Margins-I see this all the time. When I was teaching screenwriting at Cal State Northridge, the problem was often margins that were too wide. Stressed and busy students who didn’t have time to meet the page requirements for an assignment would try to use huge margins to push their 2 page scene into the 5 pages required. Outside of school, it’s more likely that the script is too long, so tiny margins are used to turn what would normally be a 150 page script into something that falls within the 120 page maximum parameters.

This is obvious and easy to spot. Think about how many pages of script a professional reader observes daily. Anything outside of the norm is instantly recognizable. The same goes for odd spacing or smaller or larger font. Don’t do it, you’ll definitely be caught and written off as an amateur who doesn’t even know the most basic things about screenwriting.

Directing-Screenwriters often fancy themselves filmmakers, or soon-to-be writer-directors, so they cannot help but imagine their script and every single perfect angle and shot that it will take to tell the story best. Because of this, they can’t help but insert their brilliant camera directions into the script. Amateurs who haven’t been told no yet (usually those fresh out of film school) often just put the shots into the script, formatted properly, for a shooting script. Don’t do this. It’s not your job at this stage, and when writing a spec you have to assume that someone else may direct it. If you’re lucky enough to get the funding and power to direct what you wrote, you can go back then and add the shots and angles and lighting notes. If you already have the funding and are directing what you wrote and making your own film, then go nuts, no one but you and the actors will be judging your script. Until then don’t do it.

More sophisticated writers who have been told not to direct rely on the old trick to subtly direct without putting ANGLE ON: directly into the text. This is a gray area because we screenwriting consultants tell you to do this: instead of putting in shots as in a shooting script, write the action description in a way that implies direction. For example, instead of “CLOSE UP: Mary’s hand holding the gun,” write “A hand holds a gun.” This is fine if it’s subtle and limited. But if every single sentence in the entire script is written in this unnatural way in order to control and direct every shot without saying so outright, the script becomes hard to read. Keep this subversive way of directing limited to a few shots, and only use it when it truly matters that we focus on a certain item, or see a scene from a wide angle. You should only do this a few times in an entire script, not a few times in each scene.

Maintaining consistent tone is important for the readability and marketability of your script. Everything about your screenplay- from the style and formatting, to the dialogue and structure-is designed to draw the reader in, engage them, and make them feel the story is coming to life. The reader, like the eventual viewer, needs to relate to the hero and feel they are experiencing the story through that hero’s eyes. Anything-from poor spelling, an incorrectly formatted slug line, a lack of description or stilted, unnatural dialogue-will break the spell and remind the reader that they are just reading a screenplay and not immersed in the world you have created. Breaking tone will do this instantly. Tone can be a hard concept to understand, but it is a vital part of crafting a quality story.

Tone, in this context, refers to the atmosphere and feeling created within the story. Tone is related to the genre as well as the writer’s own unique voice and style. Horror, as a genre, requires a certain dark, ominous, creepy tone, but depending on the writer and the specific story, the tone may also leave room for some irony and laughs, as in Jennifer’s Body or Shaun of the Dead, or have religious commentary and undertones, as in The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, or Stigmata, or be psychologically based, as in The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs. In all of these instances, despite the slight variations, a certain tone is a requirement of the genre, and breaking that tone through incongruent elements will remind the reader that he or she is just reading a screenplay. They’ll stop being scared with the characters, stop turning the pages, and stop caring about who’s going to die next. In a horror movie, a creepy, scary tone must be maintained at all times. Nothing should be inserted into the story that makes everything seem okay, or not that scary, or no big deal. Everyone’s life is at stake, and this necessitates an intense, ominous and suspenseful tone. Signs and War of the Worlds stop being scary the moment we realize how easily the aliens can be defeated. Those revelations break tone, we stop being scared, and the whole world of the story, the whole premise around which the film is based, comes crashing down and ruins the experience.

An action-packed thriller must also maintain a certain tone consistently. There is wiggle room, as in horror, for a little humor or sex, but if things get too light, too slow, or too easy, the tone is broken and the story falters. Humor is fine, but often I see writers devolving into comic-book based cartoonish violence and gags when the tone should be serious and realistic. If you’re writing a gritty police murder-mystery thriller there’s no room for the characters to slip on a banana peel or hit the bad guy with a  frying pan. Witty banter is fine, but slapstick is not and completely breaks tone.

The best way to familiarize yourself with the right tone for the genre you are writing in is to read screenplays and watch films of that genre. Immerse yourself in all the different takes on the genre and you’ll see that within all of the myriad ways writers have brought the genre to life, there is always a certain tone associated with the genre. When tone is broken, the reader is taken out of experiencing the story and reminded that they are reading a poorly written screenplay. And that is something you never want your reader to realize.

While working with writers, I often find it hard to explain how to write a screenplay using the appropriate language. Many writers don’t get what is meant by saying screenplays must be written in real time using an active voice. They understand present tense, but not the huge differences between writing a novel versus a screenplay. They include details about their character’s past, things they were doing prior to the scene starting, a note about what the character’s thoughts are on a subject. All things that aren’t appropriate in a screenplay.

A simple way to think about how to use screenwriting language is to think of it as if you are a sportscaster commenting on a live game over the radio. Your writing should give a brief, but specific, precise play-by-play of exactly what is being seen on the screen. Imagine that you are narrating a play an event as it takes place for someone who is blind, or someone who isn’t there. But, like a sportscaster narrating a game for radio broadcast, you should tell your audience what is happening step-by-step, as it takes place. Whereas a sports writer summarizing a game for a newspaper article to appear after the game has ended will include summaries and analysis of what happened and why and what players and coaches and fans may have been thinking, a live broadcast of a game will only include what we, if we were at the game, could see or hear taking place in real time.

While writing action description and information about your characters, keep this analogy in mind and consider if what you’ve written could be part of a play-by-play live broadcast. Is the information something one could see or hear on screen taking place at that exact moment? Have you given a clear description of exactly what we see so that, like a baseball fan listening on the radio, the person reading the script would have enough information to form a picture in their mind of what was going on? With everything you write, ask yourself if the audience could possibly know that what you’ve written is true by seeing or hearing it on screen. If they would need to read the screenplay to know, for example, that your hero has been friends with their boss for twenty years, or that the love interest is kind hearted and gentle don’t include it in the action description, find a way to reveal that information through dialogue and action.

In order for the audience or reader to care about your hero’s successful achievement of their goal, we must not only like and care about the hero, but feel that their goal is noble and that they are worthy of achieving it. You can’t just get the audience to root for the hero to achieve their goal because it’s their goal, they must feel that the hero accomplishing their goal would be not only the best thing for the hero, but for everyone in the story, and possibly, society at large.

Creating sympathy and empathy for your hero will go a long way towards getting the audience on their side, no matter what the goal is. There are lots of examples of films where the hero is so charismatic and likable that we are behind rather unlofty, dangerous and downright wrong goals. We want them to rob the bank and get away with it because we like them so damn much. But even in these films, we are convinced that the hero is justified and deserves to win, that the money is better off with them than with the big evil corrupt government, corporation, or casino (Robin Hood, Office Space and Ocean’s Eleven, respectively-thought there are other examples of all three of those scenarios). It’s not just that we like the hero, it’s that we understand that their seemingly wrong goal is okay in the context of the world of the story. We may frown upon gang violence in real life, but understand that it is necessary in a certain instance when one’s family and honor are at stake and no one innocent is really hurt.

If your hero is pursuing a noble, reasonable goal, your challenge is not to get us to like them enough to overlook the immorality of their pursuit, but to feel they are worthy of having this goal they want. For example, if you are writing a love story and the hero’s goal is to get another character to fall in love with him, we must feel that the hero is worthy of their love interest and deserves to be with them. [SPOILER ALERT] My Best Friend’s Wedding went against the grain- the hero didn’t win her love in the end, but it still worked because we knew that was what was best for everyone involved. Jules wasn’t worthy of her best friend’s love, and Kim really was a better match for him. In this case, the hero, however likable, and the goal, however noble, were not a match-she didn’t deserve to win his love, as she wasn’t yet ready for it. It still worked because we still liked Jules enough to root for her success, but in the end realized, as she did, that it was actually better that Michael and Kim married.

In sports and competition stories, the team or player who we are rooting for must prove they deserve to win the final match or game. If not, it doesn’t matter how much we like him or her, we won’t feel that they earned winning and feel like the story was cheap and played on emotions rather than the truth of achievement and competition. This is why sports movies often use a lot of montage training sequences, so that we feel that the team that began as low-level and incompetent has worked their way up to being worthy of success and that they will be able to win on their own merit, not just because the story says they should.

Make sure that whether or not your hero is pursuing a noble, good goal or a corrupt, law-breaking one, that they are worthy of achieving it, and that the audience feels that the best, most logical outcome of the story would be them achieving this goal.

Yesterday I talked about the vitality of writing for clarity. Today I’d like to give some examples of how to write clearly and show what works and what doesn’t.

There are some simple rules you can follow to ensure you writing is clear and precise:

-Use short, declarative sentences

-Use sentence fragments.

-Use basic sentence structure and avoid run-on sentences.

-Use the active voice, and avoid –ing ending verbs.

-Always orient the reader when you get into a new scene. In addition to describing what each location looks like, especially the first time we visit, briefly describe who is there and what they are doing. If you neglect to do this, and a character starts speaking that wasn’t mentioned in the action description, it seems to the reader that they came out of nowhere. Include entrances and exits-if a character enters the scene or leaves, mention it so the reader is always aware of what the picture in their mind should look like.

-Use names whenever possible, don’t use pronouns, especially when there are two or more people of the same gender. Make sure it is always clear who is doing what action.

For example:

Bob and Tom walk into a bar and sit down. He points at the top shelf whiskey. He pours the whiskey and takes a shot. He looks at him and waits.

There is no way to know which he and him we are talking about. Bob, Tom, and the bartender are all male. We can infer that the he that pours the whiskey is the bartender, but which he asked for it? Which he drinks it? Rewriting for clarity to avoid vague pronouns would look like this:

Bob and Tom walk into a bar and sit down. Bob points at the top shelf whiskey. The bartender pours the whiskey and Bob takes a shot. Tom looks at Bob and waits.

The second paragraph clearly indicates who is performing each action, since it’s all men, we can’t rely on pronouns. In your quest for brevity, never sacrifice clarity and ease of readability.

Reading more screenplays should help illustrate what is good, clear screenwriting and what isn’t. The more good, produced screenplays you read, the more examples you will see of how screenwriters accomplish the task of being brief, concise, visual, dynamic and clear all at once.

As a creative form of expression, and compared to other types of writing, screenwriting can seem limiting. As with poetry, writers are forced to choose only the most vivid, precise and appropriate words to describe things simply, yet clearly. A novelist can elaborate for as long as he or she desires on something as mundane as the color of a character’s hair or the way the cars are moving down the street. A screenwriter is forced to omit minor, unimportant details, and find the right way to clearly and concisely evoke a strong, visual image while using as few words as possible, and, as a further constraint, to do so using simple, easy to read language.

Considering how difficult this is, and the abundance of advice out there on how to screenwrite well, the admonitions to use the most visual, vivid language and imagery, it’s no wonder so many screenwriters get confused, and so many screenplays end up muddled and overwrought.

It’s important to remember that above all the other pieces of advice you’ll hear about screenwriting style, clarity is the most important. A screenplay will be better received and reviewed if it is clear, simple and easy to understand than if it contains unique and engaging sentence structure and creative language. If you are able to be vivid, unique and visual while maintaining clarity, great. If not, sacrifice vivid and unique for clarity. Remember that your screenplay is not a work of art in and of itself the way a book is. Your screenplay is simply the blueprint that will guide the actors, the director, the editor and the team of hundreds who will work to bring the story you wrote to life on screen. It’s not meant to be read, so it does not need to be phenomenally written in brilliantly creative prose. What it needs to be is a clear, efficient guide that tells the story in a way that anyone reading the script can understand. A young teen or smart fifth grader should be able to easily grasp what is going on. Anything more elevated and you’re not being clear and simple. If your story is good, it will stand out and get noticed, whether your language is beautiful and poetic or not. If your story is lacking, then the most amazing, gorgeous prose and perfect use of the English language won’t help save your screenplay from the reject pile.

As noted in the last post, have as many people as possible-of all educational levels and ages-read your script. Ask them if they understood what you were saying and if the action description is clear. If it is not, rewrite those sections that gave people trouble to make them clear and precise. Omit the big showy vocabulary words that impressed your creative writing teacher and choose simple, common words that everyone clearly understands and knows how to pronounce. Screenwriting is the place to showcase your storytelling and dialogue writing skills, not your expansive vocabulary. Save the imagery and flowery prose for your novel. In screenwriting, clarity reigns and clarity is the style element you should strive for above all others.

As a consultant, of course I strongly believe writers can benefit from having a paid professional evaluate their script and give them useful feedback. A professional can pinpoint areas that don’t work and tell you exactly how to fix them, giving you constructive criticism you can use and explaining why the problems in your script exist. That said, I also think it is extremely important to have other people read your script.

Once you’ve polished a final draft that is free of typos, spelling errors, format mistakes and gaping story holes, get that draft registered with the WGA and/or copyrighted. Then start asking everyone you know to read your script. If you can at all afford it, go with a professional consultant, but in addition ask your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, everyone who is willing, to read your script. Offer to take them out for coffee or lunch to discuss their thoughts and thank them for their opinions. Getting varied opinions from non-professionals and non-writers extremely important to the development of your script.  Laypeople won’t be able to tell you what screenwriting rules and principles you violated and how to fix the problems like a professional screenplay consultant or fellow writer can, but they can tell you what about the story worked or didn’t work for them. They can tell you if they liked it or not, if the characters felt and sounded authentic, and behaved in believable ways. Most importantly, they can tell you if the script, in its current form, held their interest. This is one of the most valuable pieces of information you can get from a friend or other non-industry reader-when the story bored them. Ideally, it was so compelling throughout that they couldn’t put it down and ended up neglecting their appointment, forgot to answer an important call, or stayed up really late finishing the read because it was so awesome and exciting that they just kept turning pages. In actuality, especially for early drafts, there are places where the story is lacking and when the person reading will get bored, put it down, and move on to something else. Your friends, fellow writers, and paid consultants will keep reading out of obligation, but a reader, agent, contest judge or producer will not, so it is vital to pinpoint where the story bores the reader so you can remedy the flaws before submitting to professionals.

Put together a list of people you know will be willing to read your script for you. Make it as varied as possible. It should include people in your target demographic, and those outside of it. Ideally, the age range should go as young as ten or eleven (assuming it’s not too graphic and R-rated) in order to determine if you are writing clearly enough for a young person to understand. Make sure the people on this list will be honest with you and not spare your feelings or just tell you it’s great. Moms are notoriously unreliable sources of criticism, they’ll praise your crappy screenplay as highly as they praised the crappy gold spray-painted collage of macaroni you made in second grade. When you have a list of people, give them your script and ask them to keep in mind the following questions as they’re reading:

-Do you like the story?

-Are there any parts that don’t make sense, or that you don’t understand?

-Do you like the main character? Why or why not?

-Did you read the script all in one sitting? Why or why not? If not, when did you put it down? While you’re reading, mark the page whenever you stop reading to take a break.

-If you saw a preview for a movie like this, would you want to go see it? Why or why not?

-Who do you see cast as the lead? Why? What about the other major characters? What actor seems to fit them best?

-Was it easy to tell who was who, or did you have a hard time keeping the characters straight?

-What did you think about the ending?

-Did you laugh, cry, smile to yourself, or feel any other strong emotion while reading? When? Why?

-Where there any implausible or hard to believe events or holes in the story?

-If this script were a book, would you recommend it to a friend to read? Why or why not?

-What movies would you compare this one to? Is it better or worse than those similar movies?