February 2012
11 posts
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Screenwriting Tip #899
Don’t just set up your playing pieces and then leave them there. Create uncertainty around a supporting character. Is she a rival or ally, friend or traitor?
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Screenwriting Tip #898
Target the reader’s senses in your action lines. Don’t just describe images to them — let them hear a busy market, smell the smoke from a bonfire, feel a loving touch on the protagonist’s cheek. Put the reader inside the film, not in a theater seat.
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Screenwriting Tip #897
Leave room in your outline for your characters to surprise you.
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Screenwriting Tip #896
Never repeat yourself. Specifically, never make your protagonist repeat the same emotional beat (realizing she’s in love, finding the true source of her strength, etc.). Phil in GROUNDHOG DAY may repeat scenes, but he never has the same epiphany twice.
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Screenwriting Tip #895
Consider making your scene structure mirror your story world — oblique and elliptical for a spy thriller or noir mystery, straightforward and to-the-point for a bubbly comedy, etc.
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Screenwriting Tip #894
Language is instant character. Your characters’ slang, shorthand and quirky turns-of-phrase aren’t just cool dialogue — they’re a way into their world.
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Screenwriting Tip #893
Real-life conversations go round and round in circles. Movie conversations do not. Unless you’re writing an indie or a courtroom drama, you don’t have the luxury of letting your characters learn things by talking about one particular topic at length.
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Screenwriting Tip #892
Screenplays are not theme-delivery vehicles. Theme, or “message”, is just framework — a set of motifs and a useful shortcut to structure. Your protagonist is your true message.
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Screenwriting Tip #891
One of the best ways to find logic problems is to go through your script and ask, “Why now?”. (An ancient evil awakens! Fine, but why now? The mentor betrays the protagonist to his enemies! Okay, but why now?)
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Script Notes Now Available
Way back in the mists of time, I used to run a script notes service called Hack Notes. It’s been out of commission for a while, but it’s now fully armed and operational once more. Behold:
Hacknotes.net
For those who don’t remember Hack Notes, here’s the deal:
1) You send me your script.
2) I read it twice and write 3-4 pages of detailed notes on how to improve it, and...
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Screenwriting Tip #890
What worked for you in the past may not work on your latest screenplay. Changing your workflow to fit the project doesn’t just improve your writing; it also keeps the mind supple.
January 2012
32 posts
1 tag
Screenwriting Tip #889
For complex scenes, set yourself an objective. This can be a specific moment which you want to reach in that scene. For example: “The moment when the protagonist realizes how she feels about Mike”, “The moment when Bob starts to see Jane as a potential ally”, etc.
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Screenwriting Tip #888
Learn to tell the voice of your own imagination apart from the overwhelming noise of the cultural imagination. It’s small and faint, but it’s in there. And when it chooses to speak, you better listen.
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Screenwriting Tip #887
A bad mystery is when your characters stand around asking the same question over and over (“Why does Old Man Stevens never leave his house?”; “What is the Maltese Falcon made of anyway?”). A good mystery is when you ask the question once, then get on with slowly revealing the answer.
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Audience Tips Winners
Recently, at the Black List Blogs, we asked the question:
“What’s the one thing you would change about movies?”
And you had answers for us — clever, funny, daring and passionate answers. It was extremely hard to narrow the field down to five winners, but we’ve finally done it. The following answers represent the most interesting and entertaining responses, as...
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Screenwriting Tip #886
You don’t need to write every day. Don’t beat yourself up because of some arbitrary schedule. What you need is to finish the draft. If that means a three-day writing frenzy followed by a week of non-writing recovery, then so be it.
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Screenwriting Tip #885
Try writing short films — or, hell, even short stories — between larger projects to cleanse your mental palate. Also, finishing things tends to boost confidence.
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Screenwriting Tip #884
Every failed pitch, every screenplay that doesn’t sell, is an opportunity to figure out what went wrong and never do it again.
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Screenwriting Tip #883
Avoid meaningless generalities in your loglines, e.g. “a tale of love and fate”, ”but it’s not going to be easy”, “unintended consequences”, “hilarious results”, and ”may change their lives forever”.
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Screenwriting Tip #882
If you try to write by the “rules” and find the rules don’t work for you, feel free to break them. But at least try them before you denounce them.
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Screenwriting Tip #881
Mould your world and setting elements to fit your characters’ arcs, not the other way around.
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Screenwriting Tip #880
If you find yourself reaching for the perfect turn of phrase, stop reaching. You’re not writing the Great American Novel — you just need to be clear and precise. Save contacting your Muse for the second draft.
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Screenwriting Tip #879
When searching for something to cut, start looking in Act One. All that setup you thought you needed? Just training wheels. If you’re giving the audience the same information later, then you don’t need it at the start.
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Screenwriting Tip #878
Study the patterns of your own mind. If, for example, you keep writing stories about shell-shocked veterans, or haunted hotels, or doomed love triangles, stop and think about that. Ask yourself why these things matter to you. Then follow them to their ultimate conclusion.
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Screenwriting Tip #877
You don’t need to have been to a place in order to write about it. You just need to see that place clearly in your head, and make the reader believe that you see it.
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Screenwriting Tip #876
At the top of every scene, ask yourself: “What does the protagonist want, and why can’t she get it?”. From that one question, everything else in the scene will flow.
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Screenwriting Tip #875
In highly kinetic sequences, you can use overlapping dialogue and intercutting between scenes to give a sense of constant forward momentum.
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Screenwriting Tip #874
Instead of just throwing characters into arguments, try thinking about their goals for the scene. Who’s trying to achieve their goal, who’s blocking someone else’s goal, and whose goal changes halfway through?
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Screenwriting Tip #873
What does the love interest offer the protagonist? What does he or she provide which is currently missing from the protagonist’s life? If your answer is “a relationship”, it’s time to dig deeper and find the real answer.
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Screenwriting Tip #872
Become a collector. Collect ideas, bits of dialogue, kinds of people, things that move you, social trends. You never know when you might need them.
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Screenwriting Tip #871
If you’ve got a zealous, all-encompassing worldview to sell, your screenplay is not the place for it. Readers/audiences can smell preaching from a mile away.
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Screenwriting Tip #870
Good TV pilots move fast and contain a lot of dialogue, because that’s how TV is. If your pilot is slow-paced, contemplative and quiet, you might want to consider turning it into a film instead.
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Screenwriting Tip #869
Know how you work, and how much work you can reasonably do. Don’t pile up ten different projects just because you want to feel “prolific”. That way lies guilt, doubt and madness.
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Screenwriting Tip #868
Your protagonist should probably not be an idealized version of yourself. And if they are, at least give them your flaws as well.
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Screenwriting Tip #867
The other way to make a character empathetic — after having them be very good at what they do — is to make them extremely passionate about something. Passionate people are interesting, no matter the subject of their passion.
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Screenwriting Tip #866
The most powerful method for refining motivation and stakes in your script is to ask, “So what?”. So what if the protagonist loves a man her parents disapprove of? So what if the villain learns all about the hero’s plan? So what if the main character doesn’t get that big promotion she wanted? And so on.
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Screenwriting Tip #865
When writing action lines, stop trying to make the reader see exactly what’s in your head. Instead give them clear, sparse description and let their head do all the work.
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Screenwriting Tip #864
Yes, you have to update the jokes in a comedy spec or pilot every six to twelve months. Unlike fine wine, comedy doesn’t age well.
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Screenwriting Tip #863
The point of plot is to break through your protagonist’s outer persona and reveal the true character within. To use an unsavory metaphor: you’re the interrogator, your protag is the prisoner, and your script is the rack.
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Screenwriting Tip #862
At some point in the planning phase, backstory goes from ‘useful information which will inform the script’ to ‘useless distraction from real work’. That’s when you stop planning and start writing.
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Screenwriting Tip #861
Horror is when the audience has no idea what’s going to happen next, coupled with the awful suspicion that maybe they don’t want to find out.
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Screenwriting Tip #860
There’s nothing more sobering than hearing an actor read one of your lines completely wrong. The good news is, you can prevent future suck by writing crystal clear, unambiguous dialogue in the first place.
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Screenwriting Tip #859
Don’t spend a lot of time looking back. Learn what you need to learn from past mistakes, then move on.
December 2011
32 posts
1 tag
Screenwriting Tip #858
You don’t need to give up what you love in order to be commercial. The trick is to take what you love and make it commercial.
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Screenwriting Tip #857
If you can’t come up with a unified set of symbols and motifs, steal one from somewhere else. Mythology and the Tarot are good places to start.
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Screenwriting Tip #856
You can’t paper over a cheesy line of dialogue by having your characters step back and go, “Woah, that was a bit cheesy.” Well, you can, but the reader is going to groan.
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Screenwriting Tip #855
Steal another trick from novelists: when you want to shock the reader back to careful attention, deliberately insert an unusual word or metaphor in your action lines.
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Screenwriting Tip #854
If you’re writing a joke and you stop to try and think of something topical and relevant, the joke is already dead. Go with your gut. What makes you laugh will make somebody else laugh.
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Screenwriting Tip #853
Follow the deepest currents of culture, not the obvious surface trends.
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Screenwriting Tip #852
During the holidays, try to find the quiet spaces between family obligations. Then write in them.