Why This is Good

While working with screenwriters on critiques, one of the most common margin notes I make is: “How will your audience know this?” I include this question when the action description is full of information that would be impossible to convey on screen. This is usually thoughts and feelings a character has, but can also include job titles, personality traits, motivations, things the character did in the past or is planning on doing in the future (as discussed in my last post), and sometimes the passage of time.

Keep in mind what will, if you’re lucky enough to sell it, happen to your screenplay. It will be taken and turned into a motion picture. That means that everything you write is meant to be used as a guide for telling your story on screen, not on the page. If you include information that can only be understood if it is read, your audience will never be privy to the information your reader is, and the story won’t make sense. Of course, rewriting is possible, but as a writer shopping a spec script, you want to present the most complete, polished, production ready material possible, and including things that could not be understood by someone watching the film on screen is poor screenwriting.

Screenwriters are constantly told to write visually and to show not tell. One of the easiest ways to make sure you do this is to continually ask yourself how the audience watching will know that what you’ve written is true. If you tell your reader that your character is tired because she was out drinking the night prior, the reader will know this, but the audience will not. If, instead, you write that your character has bags under her eyes, winces when the sun hits her face, and tells her roommate that she has a nasty hangover, then the audience will know that she was out drinking. It’s a subtle difference, but understanding that difference is a key part of screenwriting.

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.

To illustrate what I’ve been discussing in the last few posts on how description in a novel versus a screenplay can differ, I’ve taken descriptions of characters from several different adapted scripts. Here you can see the difference between the language the author of the novel is able to uses, versus the more succinct, visual language the screenwriter has to choose in the adaptation.

The first example is the description of Chiyo’s mother in Memoirs of a Geisha. The excerpt from the book is long, detailed, and mentions things we are not necessarily seeing at the present time. The writer describes each character’s personality in a way that would be inappropriate for a screenplay:

“Because from my earliest years I was very much like my mother, and hardly at all like my father or my older sister. My mother said it was because we were made just the same, she and I-and it was true we both had the same peculiar eyes of a sort you almost never see in Japan. Instead of being dark brown like everyone else’s, my mother’s eyes were a translucent gray, and mine are just the same. When I was very young, I told my mother I thought someone had poked a hole in her eyes and all the ink had drained out, which she thought very funny. The fortune-tellers said her eyes were so pale because of too much water in her personality, so much that the other four elements were hardly present at all-and this, they explained, was why her features matched so poorly. People in the village often said she ought to have been extremely attractive, because her parents had been. Well, a peach has a lovely taste, and so does a mushroom, but you can’t put the two together; this was the terrible trick nature had played on her. She had her mother’s pouty mouth but her father’s angular jaw, which gave the impression of a delicate picture with much too heavy a frame. And her lovely gray eyes were surrounded by thick lashes that must have been striking on her father, but in her case only made her look startled. “

By contrast, the screenplay description condenses these images down to a few short lines, and the mother and daughter’s personalities are revealed through actions throughout the story, rather than talked about right when they are first introduced. The screenwriter must show, not just tell, what the characters are like:

“MOTHER (40) reclines, wrapped in a quilt. She is frail, her face etched with pain. She opens her eyes briefly to drink a medicinal tea: they are a silver color.”

This description still mentions the gray eyes, since they are an important detail, but rather than elaborate on each physical feature, the screenwriter gives an overall sense of the mother’s illness and state of pain by showing us that she is ill through her actions.

In Twilight, Stephenie Meyer spends a lot of time describing what the characters look like. In fact the entire book is filled with descriptions of how gorgeous Edward is. The author also spends a lot of time describing Bella, and not just what she looks like, but what this means about who she is and how she fits in:

“Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix, should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond—a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps – all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun. Instead I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself – and harming both myself and anyone who stood too close.”

By contrast, the screenplay description is short and simple, while still capturing the essence and most important points of her overall look as described in the novel:

“ISABELLA SWAN, 17. Long, dark hair frames alabaster skin. She’s a vulnerable, introverted, imperfect beauty.”

Again the screenwriter doesn’t need to mention here that Bella is clumsy, as the novelist does, because this will be show later through her actions during the course of the movie.

In the story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, the narrator, Red, describes his first impression of Andy in great detail. Here is another example of the type of detail that the prose writer can delve into, going off in tangents and mentioning things that aren’t being seen or heard in the present moment of the story:

“When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was a short neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His fingernails were always clipped, and they were always clean. That’s a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose, but it seems to sum up Andy for me. He always looked as if he should have been wearing a tie. On the outside he had been a vice-president in the trust department of a large Portland bank. Good work for a man as young as he was, especially when you consider how conservative most banks are…and you have to multiply that conservatism by ten when you get up into New England, where folks don’t like to trust a man with their money unless he’s bald, limping, and constantly plucking at his pants to get his truss around straight. Andy was in for murdering his wife and her lover.”

Stephen King doesn’t just describe Andy, he makes a comment on how New England bankers are, and mentions what Andy does for a living. He goes off on a tangent, because stories are not linear and are not meant to occur in real time, as a screenplay is. In the script’s description of Andy, Frank Darabont is much more succinct, and mentions what Andy normally looks like in contrast to how upset and agitated he is when we first see him:

“ANDY DUFRENSE, mid-20’s, wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek.  But these circumstances are far from normal. He is disheveled, unshaven, and very drunk. A cigarette smolders in his mouth. His eyes, flinty and hard, are riveted to the bungalow up the path.”

In The Time Traveller’s Wife, author Audrey Niffenegger spends a lot of time introducing Clare at age six, describing what she is doing in great detail:

“She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is still wearing her school uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and knee socks with penny loafers, and she is carrying a Marshall Field’s Shopping Bag and a beach towel. Clare spreads the towel on the ground and dumps out the contents of the bag: every imaginable kind of writing implement. Old ballpoint pens, little stubby pencils from the library, crayons, smelly Magic Markers, a fountain pen. She also has a bunch of her dad’s office stationery.  She arranges the implements and gives the stack of paper a smart shake, and then proceeds to try each pen and pencil in turn, making careful lines and swirls, humming to herself.”

The screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, describes the same action, but in a much more succinct, simplified way. Also note that in the screenplay, the action is already in progress when we first see her. Unlike the book, the movie has the constraint of time, and doesn’t waste precious minutes detailing how Clare unloads and sets up her art project. The action is already underway, so the more important parts of the story can take place sooner:

“CLARE ABSHIRE, 6, sits on a large beach towel on which she has spread crayons, colored pencils, magic markers, and a stack of paper.”

In the novel, Fight Club by Chuck Palanuik, the Paper Street house is described in detail, giving the reader a good sense of how it feels to inhabit such a dilapidated, odd home.

“The shingles on the roof blister, buckle, curl, and the rain comes through and collects on top of the ceiling plaster and drips down through the light fixtures. When it’s raining, we have to pull the fuses. You don’ dare turn on the lights. The house that Tyler rents, it has three stories and a basement. We carry around candles. It has pantries and screened sleeping porches and stained-glass windows on the stairway landing. There are bay windows with window seats in the parlor. The baseboard moldings are carved and varnished and eighteen inches high.  The rain trickles down through the house, and everything wooden swells and shrinks, and the nails in everything wooden, the floors and baseboards and window casings, the nails inch out and rust.”

The script mentions a few details in the action description, but more often shows us how the house is by mentioning things as they occur, and uses some brief voice-over to describe some of the home’s quirks.

“It’s a grand old three-story long abandoned.”

“Tyler and Jack climb CREAKY STAIRS to the 2^ND FLOOR LANDING”

“Jack turns on the water. LOUD VIBRATIONS from the walls. Water spits in starts.

Reading novels and screenplays is a great exercise to help you contrast how screenwriting differs from other types of writing you are used to seeing. By choosing the right details and the most vivid, descriptive words, screenwriters are able to convey images as effectively as novelists using far fewer words. This skill is extremely difficult and takes time and practice to master.

In addition to the differences discussed yesterday, dialogue in novels and dialogue in screenplays must be written differently. The reason why becomes apparent when you look at what each medium is. Novels and short stories are meant to be read, usually by a single person. Reading a novel is primarily done silently, so the dialogue is generally not spoken aloud. Because of this, dialogue in novels is often more formal than dialogue in screenplays. The dialogue in a novel can be long, drawn out, and flowery because it will rarely be spoken aloud.

Dialogue in a screenplay is ultimately meant to be read aloud, and because of this the screenwriter, unlike the novelist, has to take extra care to make sure their dialogue sounds as natural as possible. Many first drafts are full of dialogue that is stilted and formal because the writer neglects to use contractions, and doesn’t think about how people really speak. Most people rely heavily on contractions, including words that aren’t commonly seen in print because they aren’t really words, like “gonna” for “going to,” “dunno” instead of “don’t know,” “lemme” in place of “let me” and “wanna” for
“want to.” While English teachers permit the use of only the accepted, properly spelled contractions: don’t, won’t, can’t, I’d, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, etc., these new abbreviations aren’t really words, and won’t show up in most novels. In screenplays, however, it is perfectly acceptable to use these types of words, as they clearly represent a more natural, casual form of speaking that everyone recognizes as sounding realistic. Do not, however, go so far as to spell out accents and dialects phonetically. This gets much too tedious and difficult to read. Better to note if a character speaks with a strong accent in a parenthetical or a character description.

The screenwriter also faces another challenge when crafting dialogue that the novel author does not. As discussed yesterday, a screenwriter has to rely almost completely on the dialogue to reveal what each character thinks and feels, because unlike the novelist, they are unable to delve into the characters thoughts, and must convey emotion via the dialogue. While the novelist can have dialogue interspersed with long paragraphs describing what the phrase or word meant, how the character felt about saying it, how the other character felt upon hearing it, and then spend pages examining what these feelings mean, the screenwriter is left with only the dialogue. And of course, they must express their character’s inner thoughts and emotions while keeping their dialogue from becoming too expository or on-the-nose.

A fine line is walked by the screenwriter because while dialogue is the only tool they really have to express emotion (the actors, of course will express much with their skill when the script is turned into  a film, but the writer doesn’t have that tool at this stage), it still needs to sound real, and real people don’t generally wear their hearts on their sleeves, nor do most people even fully comprehend, let alone reveal, how they really feel in any given situation. Subtlety is the rule here, and psycho-babble laden, overly introspective speeches on a character’s emotions are a sign of a poorly written first draft by a newbie.

Emotions, feelings, and thoughts must be revealed slowly, naturally, and with as much left to the imagination as possible. The dramatic, extremely emotional scene in Chinatown when Evelyn reveals to Gittes that she has been the victim of incest is not dialogue heavy. Evelyn does not sit down and explain, in long-drawn out story, all of the pain she carries after having been raped by her father, she doesn’t get into how it happened, how it made her feel, what she thought about it then, what she thinks about it now. She does nothing but utter the few, memorable words, after much prompting from Gittes, “She’s my sister and my daughter.” This simple explanation conveys the emotion and pain behind the revelation much more effectively than if that scene had read like an hour long therapy session in. She does explain a little, but it is still relatively terse and succinct, given the nature of the event, and this works much better than pages and pages of overly revealing dialogue.

Citizen Kane expressed all of his longing for his childhood and lost innocence in a single word that had the other characters guessing and investigating what he meant. Imagine how much less powerful would that film have been if he had murmured instead the on-the-nose dialogue: “I’m sentimental about my childhood and longing to go back to a simpler time when I felt young and free and innocent.”

Screenwriting is dramatically different type of writing as compared to what most people are used to writing-narrative prose. Most children don’t practice writing stories in screenplay format and are used to reading and writing in traditional novelistic prose. These stories are nearly always written in the past tense, which is the first and most glaring difference between the format of narrative prose work and screenwriting.

There are other, more subtle differences that often take years to get used to. I always recommend new screenwriters read as many screenplays as possible, not just see movies, so they can familiarize themselves with how screenplays are written. Because it is much more than changing to present tense, using Courier, and formatting the margins differently. There are things you can do in a novel that you cannot do in a screenplay, and the style and language used in novels and short stories is so ingrained in our brains that it is a difficult habit to break.

Today we’ll discuss narration and point of view and how that differs in novels and screenplays.

In screenplays, narration is written by someone who sees everything from the outside, someone who only sees and hears. (In this article, when I mention narrator I mean the author of the action description, not a narrator who may offer a voice-over narration via dialogue). Novels are written in either first- person, or third-person, some use a combination of both. The narration is usually omniscient-meaning the narration covers everything every single character sees, thinks, or feels through an all-knowing, all-seeing god-like narrator. Other writers rely on one character’s perspective and only include what that character would realistically know, see and feel. In screenwriting, we write third- person narration that sees everything every character does and says, but does not see at all what the characters think or feel. Unlike novels, which can and nearly always do get inside the characters’ heads to explore what they think, what happened in their past, and how they feel about everything, the narrator of a screenplay cannot get into the emotional head of any of the characters.

Though this habit is extremely difficult to break, if you break down what screenwriting is, it’s easy to see why you cannot do this in screenwriting. Unlike novels and short stories, which are meant to be read, screenplays are not the final form of the medium they are a part of. Screenplays are read, but that is not their sole purpose. A screenplay is meant to serve as a blueprint or a guide to direct the production of a film. The final medium that is intended to be seen is the film itself, not the screenplay. Anything that you write, therefore, needs to be something that the audience can see on the screen, because, in theory, that is all the audience will ever see. If you include thoughts, feelings and background information in a novelistic, non-visual way, ask yourself how the audience will see these things.

Screenplays should only include what we see-in the action description, and what we hear-in the dialogue. Other details can never be shown on screen, which means the audience won’t see them. If there is information included on the script that cannot be shown on screen, your reader will know these crucial details, but your audience will not. That is why you must write visually and guide the directors, actors, and producers who will make your film to show everything pertinent to the telling of a story on screen. Emotion can be show on the actor’s faces or revealed through dialogue. Backstory and the histories of characters can be show through flashbacks or, again, revealed through dialogue. Thoughts must be spoken aloud or conveyed visually by skilled actors. The screenplay must indicate exactly how these internal elements should be conveyed by using specific, step-by step instructions that will result in the production of a film.

When reviewing your own scripts, watch out for things that could not be seen or heard by anyone other than the person reading your screenplay.  As you read action description and descriptions of characters and their reactions, ask yourself if everything you wrote could be seen on screen, and how. Ask yourself how the audience will know that your hero feels sad. If all you have written is that he feels sad, you need to convert this novelistic style into screenwriting by noting how his face looks-his mouth is turned down in the corners, his shoulders slumped. If you’ve written that the mother is tired from years of backbreaking work taking care of her children while her husband is away, how will the audience know that this is true? Instead, show us in a way an audience can see. You could insert a flashback to the woman washing loads of laundry and cooking for screaming kids while she is all alone. You could show her worn, red, dishpan-hands, her hunched back from years of strain, her gray hairs from worrying. But you cannot rely on the same elements a novelist does to convey the inner thoughts, emotions, and background details about your story.

After going over the ways to make a character likable, I want to point out that your characters can and should be flawed. Every hero in a film needs to have experienced some trauma in their past that has caused them to react to the world in an unhealthy way. The experience that they will go through during their story-whether it is meeting the love of their life, accomplishing a career or personal goal, or changing the world-will heal this wound, teach them that they have to live life in a healthy way again in order to be fulfilled by accomplishing their goals.

We know from Storytelling 101 that a well-written script involves a protagonist with a goal who tries to accomplish this goal but faces opposition, which he or she eventually overcomes. Opposition comes in two forms-external and internal. The hero cannot accomplish their goal because the antagonist, circumstances, or forces of nature are preventing them from getting what they want. For example, in Shrek, Shrek cannot be with Fiona because she is betrothed to Lord Farquaad. This is the external opposition. But Shrek is also wrestling with his own internal obstacle. He lacks the confidence he needs to admit his feelings, and he has been hurt and rejected in his past for looking different, so much so that he has shut down and decided it’s better to be alone than to open up and face possible rejection. He is forced to overcome both obstacles before he can accomplish his goal, and finally be himself and live a full life.

In crafting your characters, delve into their past and determine what happened to them that made them the flawed, incomplete person they are today? This is usually something that happened in their childhood and deeply affected them. Write out that scene, in prose form, so you can fully explore their life before you put them into your screenplay. This event will most likely not be a part of your script, but it can and may come out in dialogue. Whatever it was, it has created in them a fear of doing the one thing that they will be forced to do in the climax of your story. Overcoming this fear is the only way they can accomplish their goal and achieve true happiness and an authentic life.

Movies are dynamic. They’re not called stillies. The first films were silent, and some say it is the true test of the quality of a film if the story can be understood without dialogue.

Of course, it would be silly to take this to mean that a film can exist in the 21^st century lacking dialogue, but there is wisdom in this rule, and that is to keep in mind that films are in constant motion. Plays are dialogue based. Novels can use flowery language and long-winded descriptions, stopping for pages and pages to delve into a character’s history, or explore her innermost thoughts and feelings. Screenwriters don’t have this luxury. We are writing something that is not meant to be read, but instead is meant to be turned into something inherently dynamic, a motion picture. Every scene should move the story forward, expand on the character development, and represent a change. There should be no neutral scenes in your screenplay. If a scene begins positive, it should end negatively. If a scene begins on a negative, it should end either positively or even more negatively. Things can and usually do go from bad to worse, and occasionally (usually just before something really bad happens) things go from bad to good. But, unlike in real life, in a screenplay, a scene should never go from good, to extremely good. That’s boring, unrealistic, and does nothing to move the story forward.

Review your script, and ask yourself what purpose each scene served. If nothing changes as a result of the scene, eliminate it. Pointless filler bores the reader and causes audiences to lose interest in your story. As discussed in the last post, even seemingly unimportant details may come into play later, or be purposefully inserted to force the viewer’s attention in another direction. If backstory needs to be revealed, do so while the characters are in the midst of something much more exciting, do not create an entire scene devoted to revealing some piece of personal history. Move the story forward with each word you write, and never forget that you are writing a motion picture.

Finding the perfect word is a struggle all writers face. In screenwriting, this becomes an even greater challenge, as you must use very few words. The words you choose are critical to the way your script reads, and the images you are able to evoke in the mind of the reader.

Unlike prose writing, screenplays are only able to describe what we see or hear on screen.  Because of this it is essential that everything you write be visual, vivid, and descriptive enough to paint a clear picture in your reader’s mind. All while using as few words as possible.

In elementary school, I had already developed a reputation for being an overly prolific writer. I’m not even sure if I was ever a particularly good writer, or if I just got attention for the volume of verbose essays and short stories I was able to produce. When we graduated from sixth grade our teachers wrote a poem about each child and what they would do when they grew up. For me they wrote: “The length of the novel War and Peace was outrageous, Ginger wrote a book with twice as many pages.” Writing concisely, in the terse, simple style that a screenplay requires has been a challenge for me.

When writing your first draft, focus on the story and getting the ideas down on paper. Don’t worry about how many words you’re using, this is limiting and will keep you from moving forward in creating the story. In subsequent revisions, you can focus on limiting the words, and finding the perfect word choice. When re-reading your script, it will be easy to see what is redundant and repetitive. It will also help to have others proofread or edit your script for you. Reading the screenplay aloud will also help you identify unnecessary words.

Reading other screenplays will help you identify the proper screenwriting style that you need to employ to most effectively convey your story. Start with your favorite movies, then start reading scripts from films that have been successful, or won Academy Awards. Take notes as you read on how the author described settings, people, and action and what visual details they chose. Familiarizing yourself with the language used in professional screenplays will help your own writing.

Below are some beautifully written examples of vivid details and descriptions that paint a visual picture of exactly what is going on. These descriptions, however short, create an image in the reader’s mind, as well as a sense of tone.

From the Academy Award Winning screenplay for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

“With seven walls of white stone, so strong and old that it seems to have been not built, Minas Tirith looks carven by giants out of the bones of the earth.”

“Minas Morgul, a massive dead city, set upon a rocky knee at the head of the Morgul Valley. Corrupted and loathsome, it glows with a sickly luminous light – like a corpse candle.”

“Silence surrounds them, there are no birds, no wind. Only the ominously muffled thud of their horses hooves on the dank fern needles.”

“Tall peaks rise on either side, like pillars holding up a sagging sky.”

“The Wall of Rohirrim Horses and spears is seemingly unstoppable! Entire Orc companies vanish under their hooves, like sand beneath a foaming breaker.”

“Show Don’t Tell” is a basic writing tip that is nonetheless an essential part of successful screenwriting. This simple rule can help you decide what makes sense for the script and what doesn’t. Instead of telling your reader about a character, show them, by what the character does. In a novel it’s okay to write what the character is thinking, what happened to them in their childhood, and why they are acting a certain way. In a screenplay, you are limited to what we can see and hear on screen, making background information, internal thoughts and feelings inappropriate.  If you tell us that “Sarah feels happy,” how will we see that this is true? Better to write that “Sarah smiles and walks with a bounce in her step.” This shows us Sarah is happy.

The same is true when describing a location. Show us what each new place looks like by providing key visual details. Instead of saying “the building is old,” describe the peeling paint, neglected lawn, and broken windows.  Because screenwriting must be terse, it is a constant struggle to find the perfect words and the most visual and important details to use in your script.

It is particularly difficult to make this distinction when writing for film, because you are using a “telling” medium, the written word, to define what will eventually be a “showing” medium, a film. Writing that is meant to only be read-novels, short stories, articles, etc.-can rely on telling because there will always be someone reading the written word. Writing that is not meant to be seen-screenplays and stage plays-need to provide details that show both the reader and the future potential viewer what is happening regardless of whether they are reading the written word or watching those words coming to life on screen.

Screenwriting is hard. I’m here to help make it a little easier.

As one of my professors told his frustrated students as we were whining and complaining about  how difficult it was, “You are attempting to do something which pays as high, or higher, than a lawyer or a doctor, of course it’s hard!” And although he was speaking to a group of students enrolled in a university course on screenwriting, as he pointed out, unlike those other highly paid professions, no one cares if you go to school for screenwriting. You don’t have to. All you have to do is write an amazing story.  And that, of course is incredibly difficult. If it were easy, and anyone could do it, it wouldn’t pay so well.

Rather than trying to discourage us, I believe these wise words were meant to show us that yes, the process is hard, but it is to be expected, it’s hard for everyone, because the payoff is great. And so I write this not to discourage you, but to point out that yes, screenwriting is ridiculously hard, and therefore the payoff is huge. I’m also here to offer help and advice, and to make the journey a little easier, or at least let you know that you’re not alone out there at your computer. All of us writers are going through the same experience. It isn’t easy for anyone and we’re all facing the same struggles-the fear of the blank page, the distractions and excuses that keep us from writing, the search for the perfect word, the perilously long second act, and of course, the rejection that is such a big part of being a screenwriter. So take heart, read on, and above all, keep writing!