John August

fixed

Read lots of bad scripts

Film Industry, Psych 101

Screenwriter/blogger Bryan ‘Locke’ Naegele speaks the truth: it’s just as important to read bad writing as good.

The first reason to read bad scripts is to constantly expose yourself to what doesn’t work. Don’t learn from your own mistakes, learn from others. That’s my motto. That way yours are much more manageable because they’re fewer. You become hyper-aware of flat characters, shotty dialogue, predictability, clichés, etc.

I assume “shotty” is a cross between “shoddy” and “shitty.” I like it.

I worked as an intern-slash-reader at a little Paramount production company during my first semester of graduate school, and the contrast between the crappy scripts I read there and the great scripts I read for class was really illuminating. And encouraging on some level. I knew I could never write as well as Lawrence Kasdan, but I could easily write better than the schmucks I had to write coverage on.

So, take Bryan at his word.

Cheaper Charlie shirts

Charlie, Projects

hot topic t-shirtReader “Bri” was thoughtful enough to point out that Hot Topic has started selling less-expensive Charlie and the Chocolate Factory t-shirts. They’re perfect for your your rebellious kid sister who wants to express her individuality in a completely conformist way.

The “Life Had Never Been Sweeter” shirt comes from a line of dialogue (narration, actually) in the movie, which comes out July 15th.

You can find the shirts here. (Link dead, March 2011.)

Does bad work spoil mine?

Psych 101, QandA, Recycled

questionmarkI work for a small production company.
While trying to break into the "next" (bigger)
level as a screenwriter, I work here as a reader. Basically, I spend a lot
of time writing coverages for awful scripts that never should have been written
in the first place. I often wonder what is going through some of these people’s
minds when they send this junk out.

I don’t really know when it happened, but at some point it
seems that everyone in the world decided they wanted to be screenwriters. My
question is this: does all that subpar work poison the water for the rest of
us truly
capable folks?

–Aaron Saylor

I hear you, brother.

I worked as a reader for about a year and a half, both at Tri-Star and at
a little production company based at Paramount. During that time, I read the
worst scripts of my life — horrible, horrible atrocities worse than a dozen
cable movies.

In writing coverage, half the time my plot summary was much clearer than the
script’s true narrative, and my comments section became an exercise in finding
creative ways to express the same underlying truth: this script is not a movie,
and this writer doesn’t know what he’s doing.

I got a taste of my own medicine later, when I slipped one of my scripts under
a pseudonym to an intern whose opinion I respected. His coverage lambasted
the screenplay and the untalented hack who created it. I actually got nauseous
reading his critique.

Since then, I’ve learned to temper my disgust for poorly written scripts,
and try to view them as the little lessons they are. Once you start looking
for the common problems, you can avoid these pitfalls in your own writing:

  • Bad scripts introduce ten characters in the first four pages,
    without giving you any real information about them, or making clear which ones
    are important.
  • In bad scripts, characters talk about events you just saw happen, which makes
    seeing them redundant.
  • In bad scripts, characters are always walking through doors, as if it’s a
    play where they need to make entrances and exits.
  • In bad scripts, characters do exactly what you expect they’re going to do.

What’s interesting is that many of these lessons can only be learned by reading
bad screenplays. In a good script, you’d never know what you were missing.
So rather than blaming these bum writers for doing terrible work, rejoice in
their suckiness, and remember that their low standards make your great script
all the more unusual.