The Professional Screenwriter Boxed Set of Rules, Techniques, and Secrets

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author Info

Introduction

RULE #1

RULE #2

RULE #3

RULE #4

RULE #5

RULE #6

RULE #7

RULE #8

RULE #9

RULE #10

RULE #11

RULE #12

RULE #13

RULE #14

RULE #15

RULE #16

RULE #17

RULE #18

RULE #19

RULE #20

Coda

INTRODUCTION

Film industry professionals see screenplays differently than the average moviegoer.

And within the film industry various professionals often have different perspectives when reading the same screenplay.

When a movie producer first reads a screenplay she’s hoping to be captivated, either by the artistic quality of the writing, or by the potential money the script might make if she is able to get it produced as a film. Of course, she may also be wishing the screenplay satisfies both desires.

A movie director reads a screenplay (assuming he is not the screenwriter as well) usually with an eye to answering a question – is this a story to which I can apply my skills as a filmmaker and bring to life? Sometimes this fundamental question can only be answered by repeated readings of the script because factors such as budget, locations, and actors will come into play.

An actor reads the screenplay to see if she’s interested in the character she’s being asked to portray. She will also examine the dialogue and action the screenwriter has written for her character hoping to gain some insight into the kind of role she will be tackling.

The financier of the production (studio, foreign money, private equity) will read the screenplay in an effort to calculate exactly what the investment will entail and the odds that his (or the company he represents) financial involvement will end up turning a profit.

Department heads, such as the Director of Photography, the Production Designer, or the Locations Manager, all use the script to determine the production elements that will be needed on a particular day of filming. They will also look to the script for inspiration on how to perform their jobs – lighting a particular scene; planning the look of a particular set; or choosing a practical location to shoot the final scene where the two lovers kiss with the sunset in the background.

Despite the differences in the way various professionals in the industry see a screenplay, there is no doubt that modern audiences have become very sophisticated. The gap of knowledge between how a movie is produced and what winds up on the screen continues to shrink. It would explain why so many moviegoers will leave the theatre saying, The script was horrible. I could have written something better.

And yet, if many of these same moviegoers were asked whether they could paint a picture or write a novel, I’m betting that very few would be as confident.

Why the different responses?

Perhaps the explanation begins with how many thousands of hours of movies and TV programs the average person consumes as they grow up. When it’s compared to the far fewer hours reading books, or the little time spent at a museum looking at art, it’s perhaps understandable how screenwriting has become demystified in a way that painting and writing books have not.

Another possibility is that a movie audience tends to pay attention to the dialogue in a movie above all else, often claiming something like, I could have written that dialogue. For your average moviegoer what characters say up on the screen is often times the easiest thing to attack. Everything else is overlooked or never considered.

This is probably a good thing.

An audience watching a good film shouldn’t be aware of the behind the scenes machinations required to transport them to another world. They shouldn’t be thinking of such concepts as a well-paced story, colorful supporting characters, and an amazing first act plot spin.

After ordering our dinner at a restaurant is it necessary for us to know the details behind the cooking of our meal, all the goings-on in the kitchen as they prepare our dish? Aren’t we only interested in tasting some good food? The answer is yes, if you are only a diner who wants to eat dinner. But the answer could be different if you are also someone who aspires to be a chef, the manager of a restaurant, or an investor in fine dining establishments.

It’s a good thing when the audience gets caught up in an engaging film and doesn’t pay any attention to what the writer, the crew, or the financier needed to do to achieve this level of enjoyment.

But when someone is not enjoying a movie, there will be those who say something along the lines of – What’s so hard about writing that? I could have written a better line for the hero, or a better way for the villain to die.

Professional screenwriters learn very quickly that the quality of the dialogue or action are often times directly connected to a well-crafted plot, fleshed out characters, and a thoughtful thematic undertow running below the entire narrative. They know this is true because professional screenwriters are getting paid to create stories that audiences will enjoy. And if they don’t know it, their days as a professional will be challenged. Or end.

This primer on writing screenplays was designed for those who aspire to be professional screenwriters. It’s also for those who have written screenplays, but haven’t achieved the success they were hoping for despite their efforts.

In an industry where very few people are in control, writing a screenplay is one of the rare times during the creative process when the writer actually has all the control. But starting to write a screenplay is intimidating for everyone, even veteran writers. Some of the first decisions a writer makes are important ones if they want to continue to improve their craft and write a good script.

It might be helpful to have a companion on this creative journey to help you face the challenges ahead.

So, what do you say – let’s start on this road together…

SOME CAVEATS: This primer is tailored to writing a screenplay, not a teleplay.

Though there are obvious fundamental similarities in learning and honing the craft of writing screenplays and teleplays (or TV series writing), there are also fundamental differences. This primer focuses on writing a screenplay.

Also, this primer does not address screenplay format. For that type of info, I suggest you Google other sources which describe the details required to writing an industry standard screenplay. That’s not to say that writing a screenplay in the standard format should be ignored by an aspiring writer. I assure you that as a working film producer there have been numerous times I have stopped reading a screenplay after just a few pages because I could not endure the writer’s ignorance or apathy regarding the rules of a professionally written script.

And finally, I mention the acronym TDP – the letters stand for – Talent, Discipline, and Perseverance.

The advice I give in this primer (and the other books that will follow) will only go so far in helping one become a better screenwriter.

At some point the TDP of the individual writer must kick in. This primer is about getting you pointed in the right direction.

20 BASIC RULES OF SCREENWRITING

All 20 rules have been violated by screenwriters and filmmakers over the years. And many of these screenwriters/filmmakers have had their work celebrated. But none of that matters when it comes to a screenwriter first starting out, or one who is trying to get a better understanding of his craft.

Before you can break a rule, it’s important that a writer has a firm understanding of the concept behind the rule they are breaking.

Only then can one endeavor to color outside the lines.

BASIC RULE #1

one screenplay page equals one minute of screen time.

The accepted industry standard is one page equals one minute of screen time. As a beginning screenwriter, that’s the rule you should generally abide by.

However, this is a rule that is also closely tied to the project or production of the screenplay.

When it is shot, a paragraph in a screenplay can end up timing out to two or three minutes of screen time. And two pages of dialogue can time out to one minute of screen time. So what you write in your screenplay is relative to what ends up timing out on the screen.

Going further than the above, sometimes pages can time out differently when they are shot and edited, depending on the style of the writing – maybe the dialogue between the actors is not meant to flow like a David Mamet screenplay, but more like a Harold Pinter screenplay.

When I produce a film, my standard operating procedure is to step through the script with the production manager and line producer prior to production. We will literally act out the entire screenplay, speaking the lines of dialogue out loud, as if we were the actors performing the different parts. We will also read the script’s narrative text in a way that attempts to approximate how long each of the shots from the actual movie will last.

And we use a stopwatch to keep track of the entire process with the goal of getting an accurate prediction of the total running time of the movie we are about to shoot.

In theory, everything in the script has to be shot – but the way it is performed and filmed will change the concept of time. And time on film is different than it is in real life.

For instance, in real life, brushing your teeth can take a few minutes. But watching someone brush their teeth up on the screen for more than ten seconds can put an audience to sleep.

As a screenwriter, the most important thing about this rule is to simply be aware that pages mean time, and timing in a script is about pacing. The best development executives and film producers, even agents, have an acute sixth sense for pacing that lets them know when scenes are playing too long (There’s too much happening in this scene, and it lasts too long, the audience will be tuning out before we get to some of the most important pieces of information)… or too fast (I think we missed an opportunity here to let the story breathe a bit, allow the audience to bond with our heroine).

Take a look at the original script pages for the screenplay I wrote with Franklyn Guerrero which became the short film The Town that Christmas Forgot. Then view the finished short movie here (directed by Franklyn Guerrero) and compare the scripted pages to the actual film (the scripted scene occurs right after the opening credit sequence).

If you watched the movie through that first scene you will see that it stayed pretty close to the original script and that the running time of the scene was a little under two minutes.

So in this case, one and half pages of written script played out to two minutes of screen time.

However, other pages in this script played faster when they were shot and edited because on the page we purposely wrote many details describing the characters, what they were wearing, motivation, etc.

And other scenes had one written line that ended up playing on screen much longer because we were trying to milk the suspense.

Overall though, what we scripted and what we ended up with in the final film were pretty much in sync. One page ended up equaling one minute of screen time.

The industry standard is something all screenwriters can take to heart.

BASIC RULE #2

the overall length of a screenplay should not exceed 120 pages.

When I started screenwriting, the words above were the accepted rule, but actually many in the industry today expect screenplays to be even shorter, generally closer to 100-110 pages.

A few of the reasons for the changes:

- Modern audiences start to get restless as they approach the two-hour mark of a movie.

- Theatre owners want to have as many performances of a movie per day as they can and anything over two hours begins to cut into that rotation.

- If one page of a script equals one minute on film, than 120 pages is going to be more expensive than 110 pages.

One of the greatest limitations in the screenplay format is the built-in time a screenwriter has to tell a story. This is one of the big differences separating storytelling for a theatrical motion picture vs. TV.

Let’s use the different productions of the book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (a novel written by John le Carré) to illustrate the point.

Arthur Hopcraft, the teleplay writer of the 1979 BBC mini-series, had approximately 290 minutes of screen time, a large storytelling canvas, to capture the complicated plot, characters and essence of the book.

When the same book was produced as a theatrical movie in 2012, the screenwriters, Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, had a much smaller canvas to tell the same story. The total running time of the theatrical movie was 127 minutes.

Same complicated plot, characters, and themes, but less than half the time to create a movie that would resonate with audiences. You can bet screenwriters O’Connor & Straughan had some critical choices to make along their creative journey to adapting the book for a theatrical movie. Their choices, not only what to keep and what to lose from the novel, but what they needed to create in a different way that would creatively service the strengths and limitations of the theatrical screenplay format. And not just service, but in their creative efforts, work out a version of the original novel that would eventually lead to a film that could proudly stand on its own as a work of art.

Now let’s move in a different direction, the page requirements of popular genres, horror movies for instance. The screenplay of horror scripts tend to be even shorter than the page count of a drama film screenplay. Some produced horror screenplays are shorter than 75 pages. This is because many scripted scenes in horror movies will play longer on screen than the amount of space it takes to describe on the written page.

The script may read –

Jamie walks down the long, dark, shadowy hallway, looking as if she will jump through the ceiling at the slightest scare…

But the actual total running time of showing Jamie walking down the dark shadowy hallway could be more than a minute of screen time.

I should take a moment to note that this rule doesn’t refer to the page count of a studio produced shooting script (which will easily number more than 120 pages) that ends up containing everything involved with the production, including scenes never shot, scenes shot but do not end up in the final cut of the movie, and scenes that were eventually shot by the second unit that were not in the original script. For financial and legal reasons a studio must have a shooting script that encompasses everything that was in play during the production, but for our purposes, has nothing to do with this Rule.

I will further note that there are films helmed by a renowned director that often go way past the two hour running time because of the caliber of talent associated with the movie, including the director. If a Steven Spielberg or a Martin Scorsese have a story to tell that is three hours long, their contracts with the studio will allow them the opportunity to create a final cut that can approach the elongated running time.

Need I write the obvious – there are only a few filmmakers in the class of a Spielberg and a Scorsese.

If you are just beginning or still trying to establish yourself as a screenwriter (or a filmmaker who is writing the script) your screenplay should be 120 pages or shorter.

Indeed, your goal should be to have a clean and lean script that weighs in at 90-110 pages if you are keeping up with modern audiences, and if want to leave the industry reader wanting more… not less of your story.

BASIC RULE #3

screenplays are traditionally broken up into a Three- Act structure.

The three-act structure is the backbone of most quality screenplays.

There are several key points within the three-act structure that make all the difference in writing a screenplay that will get noticed within the industry. However, we’ll start with the rule of making holy the three-act structure in writing a successful script.

The three-act structure has been around awhile.

When the poet Homer created and recited for an audience such epics as The Iliad and The Odyssey, he essentially was operating within a three-act structure.

The first time a group of actors walked on stage to recite the first written lines of dialogue by a playwright, their performance was probably being guided by a story with a three-act structure.

No doubt there were different ways of laying down a foundation for early storytelling, but the three-act structure has ended up outlasting all the other pretenders, at least in the world of modern commercial filmmaking.

One of the main reasons the three-act structure has lasted this long is because it has also become ingrained in the psyche of your average reader/audience member. A storyteller who breaks the three-act structure risks a response by an audience that will inevitably have trouble engaging with their creation.

Obviously there are those rare filmmakers who have come along in the last fifty years who have stretched the boundaries of the three-act structure and ended up succeeding.

Stanley Kubrick is one prime example (perhaps the best example). Two of his most critically acclaimed films – 2001: A Space Odyssey (screenplay by Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke, based on several stories by Clarke) and Full Metal Jacket (screenplay by Kubrick, Michael Herr & Gustav Hasford, based on the novel The Short Timers by Hasford) – break away from what is normally understood as the three-act structure. And yet both films have over the years become universally praised for their artistic achievement.

I will point out however that both films were initially greeted on their theatrical release with a ton of negative reviews from both critics and audiences.