Advice From 1000
and Counting
At having
evaluated one thousand properties for Hollywood --
screenplays and novels for adaptation -- and
counting, ten ingredients for effective screenwriting
stand out to me today. These do no replace the
basic ingredients in screenwriting like structure,
strength of plot, distinctive characterization and
great dialogue. These do, however, deserve
attention if you want to be sure to wow a story
analyst like me, and see your script progress as a
Hollywood project.
1. MAKE ME CARE
Make me care about
your story by making me care about your characters
and their situations, whether that be to relate to,
wonder about, hate, love, worry over, cry with or
laugh at them.
Why? Because,
people care about people, what happens to them, how
they react, and how they cope. If you
don’t capture my interest with your characters,
I won’t invest my rapt attention into reading
the script, and then I’ll be bored -- if not
from the start, certainly by the finish. Do you
have time to waste on stuff that you don’t care
about? Cross my heart, Hollywood filmmakers
have no time and even less money to waste on projects
that don’t truly grab them.
“Hotel
Rwanda” did a good job of making us care about
its characters. We, of course, care about
innocent people being indiscriminately slaughtered,
but “Hotel Rwanda” took us deeper into its
two lead characters, making them people to whom we
could relate. Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina
and Sophie Okonedo as his wife Tatiana were
characters who cared about things we could relate to,
and their caring made us care too. Paul cared
first about keeping his job and preserving the
hotel’s reputation, then about keeping customers
and vendors happy and, most importantly, about saving
people. Tatiana cared about her neighbor, about
her husband and children, and about her extended
family. Their interests and investments showed
us extra facets of their personalities, and invited
us to care even more about them.
2. TAKE ME THERE
Take me there,
wherever there is, and remember that viewers’
senses are waiting to be aroused, delighted,
satisfied. Set the scene vividly -- the whole
scene -- with the large and small trappings of life,
wherever your story takes place.
How come?
Because I need to escape Hollywood, my life, this
earth and sometimes this very dimension, and being
immersed in the sights and sounds of some other place
by way of your writing is the only way that I can get
there. Ever have the experience of leaving a
movie, exiting the theater and being truly surprised
that it was daytime (or nighttime) outside?
Give me that experience, even in a character-driven
tale. Take me so far away from my world that I
have to stop for a moment, when I set down the
script, to return to the here and now.
I read a script
recently featuring a fish-out-of-water premise -- a
World War II-era German Jew who had fled Germany to
China. This script should have been rich in
exotic details, as well as culture clashes, as the
protagonist faced his new life in a truly foreign
environment. But, not only did the refugee not
react to the overwhelming newness of his environment,
the screenwriter almost entirely ignored the task of
painting the visual aspects of the story in favor of
developing its relationship-oriented plot and the
wartime setting. In this script, setting should
have been given as much attention as a main
character. In most scripts, setting deserves
very serious attention so that readers can vividly
imagine the visual details.
3. SURPRISE ME
Surprise me in some
way with how the story unfolds; don’t be
predictable but do be plausible.
We live to learn and
grow and adapt, sparked by being surprised by
something. We are all about input, and fresh,
new input has 100 times the effect on us as rehashing
the same old thing. Make me think this about
your script or its developments, “Wow, I
didn’t see that coming, but it certainly
worked.”
Sometimes, just an
unexpected point of view gives a story an entirely
new spin. A recent reading assignment was a
script in which sparring family members reunite to
wait out the death of a cantankerous matriarch.
One would expect the story to revolve around the
siblings, their relationship with each other and with
the reviled mother, and their reactions to her
impending death. Instead, the story used the
unusual point of view of a sibling’s husband --
reluctantly dragged along for the death vigil -- and
how his odd, brief relationship with the dying woman
changed his life. Unpredictable and, therefore,
very interesting.
4. WRITE A STORY
TO BE TOLD IN MOVING PICTURES WITH SOUND
Recognize the value of
every inch of the screen, every frame of the film and
every second of the soundtrack. Film is not the
stage, where characters speak from a static platform,
and it’s not radio where sound is the only means
of communication. Film is about people in
action in a dynamic world. Take us places, show
us things, put your characters into motion while they
speak, and include the ambient sounds that surround
them.
Why? Because
I’m paying $10 for a ticket to enjoy the vivid
view, the dynamic action and the Dolby sound.
“The
Aviator” played out with this idea firmly in
mind. Scorcese filled his frames with a variety
of locales and the sights and sounds of the period,
kept his characters active as much as possible, and
layered evocative music on top of the action.
His film earned the $10 for each of our tickets.
5. HAVE A THEME
OR TWO
Themes may be central
to the lead player’s challenge or may be subplot
or background, but do include themes to make your
script about something more than just its surface
agenda.
Why? Because
themes give color to our lives and depth to your
scripts. Just as moviegoers can watch a
movie’s action and listen to unrelated dialogue
at the same time, they can simultaneously follow a
story line and note the themes that lace it.
The point is not to load your script with Sunday
School lessons, but to include thematic threads that
will give extra dimension to the story.
A screenwriter client
and I recently discovered a great little theme
waiting to be highlighted in her
script-in-progress. In the script, a supporting
character survives being lost at sea. Sparked
by a flashback to the character’s childhood,
where she is seen poring over an old book about
amazing survival stories, we found a dual theme to
develop: we learn from the past, and our own
experiences can become lessons -- the amazing
survival stories -- for future generations.
Developing this theme didn’t call for dramatic
changes to the story or structure, but it did add
some very interesting flavor to the script.
6. DO YOUR
HOMEWORK
Do your job by
investing adequate time to develop your characters
and settings to the point of being so real and vivid
that they become indispensable to the story.
How come?
Because it is you who breathes life into the
characters, and who draws the settings with
believable reality or equally believable
fantasy. It’s your job -- not the
director’s, nor the actor’s, nor the set
designer’s -- and if you don’t do it, your
script stands little chance of advancing in
Hollywood.
7. GO AHEAD, BE
BIGGER THAN LIFE
This is, after all,
THE MOVIES! Look for the drama, the conflict,
the highs and lows, the truly unique, and cut or
condense where necessary to avoid the ho-hum.
Why? Because, in
reading your script or seeing your movie, I’m
looking to be swept away, thrilled, moved, enchanted,
terrified or awed. If I want to observe real
life, at normal speed and with normal flavor,
I’ll go hang out at a Laundromat.
Charlie Kaufman turned
his back on normality when he wrote “Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” He took us
inside someone’s mind and memories to show us
the highs and lows of a relationship, the impact of
love, and the drama of feeling your precious memories
and connections slipping away. We’d never
have seen this play out at the Laundromat. It
could only happen at the movies.
8. BE YOU, WITH
PASSION
Understand this so
that you can let it go and write with confidence: not
everyone will like your script. Not everyone
will appreciate your vision, relate to your story or
even “get” it. You can’t write
for everyone -- it’s impossible. So write
what works for you, what grabs and intrigues
you. Know that if it’s well-written and
compelling and engaging, it will find its way to
champions and supporters in Hollywood, and to an
audience.
Producer Richard
Gladstein and the others responsible for
“Finding Neverland” surely knew that a
period piece, set in England, about a man who writes
children’s stories would not equate to a
blockbuster Hollywood hit. But they felt that
this story of a man who lost and then regained his
creativity would make for a very good film. It
wasn’t to everyone’s taste. It
didn’t try to be. And it succeeded very
well.
9. MAKE AN
OBJECTIVE STORY SUBJECTIVE
Make an objective
story into a subjective story by making your
characters more than just their circumstances.
Compelling stories are
not just about circumstances; they are about people
and how circumstances affect them. We, as
viewers, are social creatures, not merely
fact-hounds.
Have you noticed how
much more interesting coverage of the Olympic Games
has become with the inclusion of those little
vignettes about the lives and dreams of the
athletes? Learning those characters’
backstories transforms the games we watch from
objective stories -- about anonymous contestants in a
competition -- to subjective stories -- about people
for whom this contest means everything. Knowing
how much someone cares about achieving a goal, how
long they’ve struggled, what personal odds they
must overcome, and how a win or loss will change
their lives gives their story dramatic significance.
10. LET ME DO SOME OF
THE THINKING
Let me do some of the
thinking, during or after reading the script or,
ideally, both. Leave some questions unanswered,
some histories unexplored, some outcomes up in the
air, some dots unconnected.
Why? Because you
want me to participate in your story and actively
soak it up, not just stand there as it runs off me
like rain off a duck’s back. Because you
want me to be affected by your movie, and to remember
having watched it. Don’t you? Ha,
ha, made you think!
“Million Dollar
Baby” invited viewers to wonder, and to dive in
and think about several topics that were not neatly
explained in the movie. What was the history
between Clint Eastwood’s character Frankie Dunn
and his estranged daughter? Why did Frankie
spend so much time harassing his priest? Did
Frankie do the right thing, or the moral thing, by
granting Maggie Fitzgerald her last wish? Where
did Frankie disappear to at the story’s
end? Did he buy the diner near Maggie’s
home, or did he just stop for a piece of real lemon
pie as a salute to her memory? People will
ponder those questions, and think about the movie,
long after leaving the theater. And that’s
what it’s all about.
Go now and write, and
make the next 1000 properties I read vibrant and
memorable.
My Done Deal article, published in
September 2005