My life as a schizophrenic: As a writer/instructor, I spend my time on the page and in the classroom trying to realize writing ideals, my standards lofty and role models iconic. As a studio story analyst, I slave in the industry coal mines, often enabling shameless hacks to be horrifically overpaid in the service of creating artless schlock.
Tonight, I show a group of students how a cleverly crafted series of setups in a script's first act is the key to effective pay-offs in a credible, contrivance-free climax. Tomorrow, I spend a day doing notes on a script that's a credibility-free contrivance-fest that has no climax... and has already been bought by the studio for half a million bucks.
How weird it is, to preach the tenets of mindful, elegant craft one evening, and to clean up the mess left by bloated, mindless philistines the morning after. Clearly the tension between these roles has been getting to me, as you can see by my last post. After all, I make a certain portion of my living consulting on scripts and teaching screenwriting, so what exactly do I have to gain by telling an audience of fledgling screenwriters that many of the so-called rules of screenwriting are meant to be discarded? Way to lose your client base, dude.
Nevertheless, I continue my self-destructive streak, trying to reconcile the two worlds I straddle, since many of the comments made on that "virtues of writing badly" post made me all the more aware of a yawning gap between What Is Taught and What Is Actually Done in the world of working screenwriters. For example, Chris writes:
Ok, so if no one should actually follow the rules... should those still be the rules? ...I'm baffled by everyone's demand for rules while no one successful actually follows them.
I think we need to define rules on both the micro- and macro- ends of the spectrum. Tony Gilroy, in a great profile of this great screenwriter/director in The New Yorker, cites only two "fundamental rules" that he lives by in writing his movies: "Bring it in within two hours" and "Don't bore the audience."
Well, yes. But on a microcosmic level, there are tons of rules -- the bulk of them, I'd say, having to do with form and format. Simply put, there is a standard: there are tacitly agreed upon craft precepts having to do with what makes a piece of material look like a viable screenplay. There are established margin-sizes for narrative, for dialogue, regulations for length of a scene, of a script; there's even a preferred font and amount of white space advisable to create a maximally-readable draft. Screw with this stuff, and you will be perceived as an amateur.
Go beyond form and there's a smaller set of rules having to do with basic storytelling issues specific to the art of dramatic writing. Most scripts observe the conceit of a three-act structure; most are attuned to certain time-honored traditions of characterization and conflict-building.
Radically mess around on these levels, and you're taking real risks. This is the arena of "learn the rules before you break them," equivalent to learning representation before one attempts abstraction, where talent is the crucial dividing line between being innovative and being capital-r Rong. Discarding the rules of linear time in a story isn't generally advisable... unless you happen to be Tarantino writing Pulp Fiction.
But beyond these two spheres -- call them Rules of Form and Rules of Dramaturgy -- is a great gray area where exceptions prove the rules, and where a little rule-bending can go a long, long way. That's what I was talking about when I observed that professional screenwriters "writing from inside the character" often used supposedly verboten technique, from employing the dreaded "we see..." to baldly stating subtext ("She can't believe he said that, so she...").
Chris, I'm not advocating throwing babies out with bathwater. Observe the rules that work for you -- but don't be fear-based in your devotion to them. That's my issue with R Dobbins:
Established writers can get away with more than the unproven. A script written by heavyweight who was hired to write it compared with a spec script written by an unknown hoping someone will read and buy it is like apples and oranges. For the unproven, unsold spec writer, breaking the rules might mark you as an amateur giving a reader an excuse to put down your script.
Forgive me, Mr. Dobbins, but you really haven't thought this through. Sure, established writers can get away with all kinds of malarky (excessive draft length, using specific song titles because they have the clout to acquire the rights, et al). But in terms of the specific approach I was touting (i.e. writing from the protagonist's point of view and supplying his/her emotional reactions and thoughts), how do you think these writers were writing before they were established? Do you really think Richard LaGravenese suddenly started writing that way after he'd gotten some movies made?
These boys (and girls) who became Big used such techniques from the get -- and what they got, for such rule-abuse and risk-taking, was produced.
Finally, commenter Dave Morris gets me to the point of all this point-and-counterpoint-ing:
William Goldman has a sample script in his book Which Lie Did I Tell? and lots of writers who he asked to critique it tell him off (rightly) for stating things in the screenplay that we couldn't possibly know if we were watching the movie. And Goldman's riposte is that you've got to start with a "selling" version of the screenplay - and that's not good writing, it's the version that's intended to spoonfeed the studio exec who's speed-reading it.
There you have it: the idea of The Selling Screenplay. Goldman, who certainly knows of what he speaks, is talking about a reality that isn't often articulated in newbie screenwriting circles --that a spec script's purpose is to sell the movie.
There's often a world of difference between the draft that sells and the shooting script of a given movie. The selling draft may be the one that slays people precisely because it's out-of-the-box risky. Its writer puts in the provocative ending that'll never get shot, or the anti-heroic character choice no studio will support, or any idea that makes an unforgettable read... but may never see the light of the silver screen.
Point is, it gets the movie in the door. Of course they'll change it in the development process -- but the writer has gotten a reader (executive, director) excited enough to go to bat for this script. You may remember J.F. Lawton's dark spec script Three Thousand, with its black hooker protagonist who didn't get the guy in the end. No? Oh, that's right: you saw it as Pretty Woman, and whether Lawton wept on his way to the bank or shrugged good-naturedly... he had a check to cash.
Similarly, the style of a spec that's meant "to spoonfeed the studio exec" may break the rules of good writing in order to get an emotion, an action, or a visual moment across. Goldman himself is partially to blame for this trend, having infamously invoked a (then) new style of hyperbole in his screenplay for Butch Cassidy when he described the dynamiting of a train as: The biggest explosion you've ever seen.
What could be ronger than that? Vague, unfilmable, and talking to the reader, no less, yet it spawned an unholy style of screenwriting that proved uncannily effective in getting those darn puppies sold, especially in the '80s (see: the career of Shane Black). This kind of "sell" persists today, albeit with a less in-your-face bent. You can see it at its craftiest in the work of Tony Gilroy. Here's the opening paragraph of Michael Clayton, praised by Goldman in the published screenplay's introduction:
It’s 2:00 a.m. in a major New York law firm. Ten floors of office space in the heart of the Sixth Avenue Canyon. Seven hours from now this place will be vibrating with the beehive energy of six hundred attorneys and their attendant staff, but for the moment it is a vast, empty, half-lit shell. A SERIES OF SHOTS emphasizing the size and power of this organization; shots that build quietly to the idea that
somewhere here -- somewhere in this building -- there’s something very important going on.
There's so much wrong with this passage, in terms of the doctrinaire "what you see is what you get" edict of most Good Screenwriting, that it's liable to make Professor DuCinema faint. But it's undeniably compelling and it makes you want to keep reading (see Gilroy's fundamental rule #2, above, and for that matter, do read the New Yorker profile: Gilroy is a living rebuttal to Goldman's snipe about Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything"). Making you turn the page is what a good spec script does, no matter the height of its writer's status.
Your spec doesn't have to suck. But it helps to acknowledge that it is a sell. It's not a work of art, it's not a priceless pinnacle of writing perfection, it's a draft of a story that wants to be movie. And if letting go of some rules you were taught is what it takes, to get people to see the movie you see in your head... have at it, I say. You have nothing to fear but another rewrite.
Excuse me, sir, but I'll paraphrase myself from now on! As for the bathwater, well, that's entirely my business and I'll do with it as I please.
In addition, this was the hugest follow up to a blog post I've ever seen! Which is to say, thanks for the follow up and for being incredibly smart explaining the fine lines between schlock and skill.
Posted by: Chris | March 16, 2009 at 01:07 AM
I find that the longer I write, the rules that I try to follow change. It's less about the big rules like three act structure or the active protagonist and more about remembering little rules I've gleaned throughout the years. I.E., exploring my story to find the right opening or making sure I show the most emotional, progressive moments for the characters without copping out of difficult scenes to write. I try to keep those sort of rules in mind because I know they make a great story and are constructive for the kind of story-telling style I want to cultivate. And if a three-act structure also makes my story better, great. Maybe my examples of rules aren't the best, but I think my point comes across. It's less about the rules, more about the story.
Of course, most rules were "created" to strengthen story, so that doesn't give us license to just run rampart, knocking rules down left and right. But I think the more you write, the more comfortable you are picking and choosing the rules that work for *your* story and *your* style of writing.
Not that I've ever even tried to sell anything... :)
Amy
Posted by: Amy | March 16, 2009 at 09:07 AM
Although the movie industry has its own quirks, a movie is a lot like other products. Just because a product is being sold doesn't make it a good product. It means that somebody bought the idea and is willing to spend more money to fix it, produce it and market it. Companies that follow certain principles usually put out better products over a longer period of time than companies that shotgun their product design and marketing. Some companies get lots of money to blow on ill conceived products but that doesn't mean their production process should be imitated.
Posted by: Mark Martino | March 16, 2009 at 10:36 AM
Brilliance is seldom acknowledged in it's time. But this post was BRILLIANT, Billy. Thanks for posting it.
"(Your spec script is...) not a work of art, ... it's a draft of a story that wants to be movie."
Get it people! That's where it's at.
Billy, you're in a GREAT position to put your stamp on movies being made. IF I were you, I'd relish in that. If you know you've got a lemon, you have a real opportunity to improve the art, put your stamp on it, and have a VERY cool story to tell after the movie comes out.
And if you like Philisitines, you're gunna love what I'm writing right now... Oops, that was a sidenote:)
Anyway, thanks for sharing your take on screenwriting rules pro's v.s. the vast throngs of hopefulls on the wrong side of the castle gates.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Posted by: E.C. Henry | March 16, 2009 at 05:41 PM
Thank you for another interesting post. My experience as a screenwriter (I've earned my living from this since 1993) is that it takes a lot of effort and time to learn the "rules", to listen, to read, to watch, to write and rewrite, to WORK in production - and then something wonderful happens: you start to feel this knowledge deep inside and you can just concentrate on what you want to tell. But some people are not willing to accept any rules at all and I think they should go for writing novels instead. Some years ago I worked as an editor at a publishing company, and it was fascinating to see how some writers just got it right and told a sparkling story, even though they didn't know one thing about storytelling in theory. One (a 65-year old woman who released her first novel, a fabulous story) didn't even own a computer... So what I like to say, I guess, is what reality is like: never let perfection stand in the way of a success.
Posted by: Anna from Sweden | March 17, 2009 at 01:23 AM
I agree with you Billy and I think a spec monkey breaking the rules at certain places in the script can actually enhance it.
If you follow the rules for the majority of your script, but in certain places, for extra emphasis, the reader, perhaps you (and if you ever read one of mine, please advise me first, carton of wine on its way - express!) will probably subconsciously accept that this writer has followed the rules but has deliberately chosen to stretch/break the rules in these certain instances. So they may accept it as technique rather than amateurism/American Idol audition skill level.
The ones who break them all the way through and get a sale, lucky, skilled or both:)
Cheers
Dave.
PS red or white……best to be prepared!!
Posted by: Dave | March 17, 2009 at 05:52 AM
Man, you are the best screenwriting teacher I've ever had and I haven't had to pay a penny.
I'm not sure if I should be happy or annoyed at this fact.
Posted by: J | March 17, 2009 at 02:32 PM
Mr. Mernit,
As a novice, I have purchased your book and frequent this site for advice and input. I simply wanted to contribute my point of view. In fact in my second post I stated that I understood your point and concurred. Imagine my surprise to discover that you mention me in your most recent post.
But per your request I am happy to forgive your condescension and will happily answer your question. Do I really think Richard LaGravenese suddenly started writing that way after he'd gotten some movies made? Of course not. As with any artist his work likely evolved over time. But in attempting to make your point you have proven mine. I mean no disrespect to LaGravenese’s, but look at his successful career of fifteen films. With only one exception his work as a writer is either based on another established source or he has been rewritten by another writer.
My point? He was hired to writer a screenplay based on another writer’s characters. He didn’t have to break the rules to create a character another writer did that for him. That is not a criticism. He wasn’t out there hocking his own spec either. While I have not read any of his work, I have seen several of the films he has written for. Clearly he is a successful writer, but to paint him as a rule breaking maverick in his early career is a stretch unless you can cite specific examples that only “a story analyst and script consultant in the studio system, and thus (having) read something like 6,893 screenplays over the past 17 years” would know. But being a novice, I defer to your expertise.
For the writer who doesn’t know or have a firm grasp of “the rules” breaking them is risky business. Breaking the rules may give you a masterpiece or it may get your script tossed in the round file. It’s a crap shoot. That was my point.
No sir, I have thought it through. Your comment about “how weird it is, to preach the tenets of mindful, elegant craft one evening, and have to clean up the mess left by bloated, mindless philistines the morning after” is eye-opening. It should give the readers of this blog and those mindless philistines you deign to save some insight into your character as well as the person who signs your check. Your words have certainly done that for me.
Posted by: R Dobbins | March 19, 2009 at 08:53 AM
Chris: Thanks to your good nature, I'm sure baby and bathwater are in relatively good condition.
Amy: "Picking the rules that work for you" sounds exactly right to me.
Mark: Thank you for a very intriguing POV and metaphor. Good food for thought.
EC: Sure. Philistines can be fun.
Anna: I'll drink to that.
Dave: And I'll drink to that (red or white): Cheers to anyone who manages to break through.
J: According to our President, we're officially in The Time of Being Able to Think/Feel More Than One Thing at a Time. And that's like, a good thing... isn't it?
R Dobbins: My bad -- I should've checked with you, via a personal e-mail, before putting your name into a post -- but I'm a little perplexed by the vitriol in your response. Can we possibly take a step back from all this, with a little less seriosity?
If you have been reading my blog, you know I tend to be playful and facetious (e.g. "Mindless philistines" is less than a straight-faced, sober assessment of the people I work with on a daily basis). Apologies for evidently having been too light and flip in dealing with you and with these issues.
You're absolutely right about rule breaking being a risky business, and you make a good point about LaGravenese and the origins of his projects. But I stand by my general point, regardless of the specifics of his career in particular: This "writing from inside the character (and thus bending traditional rules of form)" mode of screenwriting has been with us for some time, and it turns up in spec scripts and assigned feature scripts alike on a daily basis. It has proven to be a helpful factor in the accessibility and sale of many, many screenplays. As I said, that doesn't mean I'm all for it. But my larger point is that we all might want to consider being less dogmatic and doctrinaire about the How To's of spec writing, in the service of getting read, and getting produced.
Posted by: mernitman | March 19, 2009 at 09:54 AM
Your stock just went back up with me. I had my copy of Writing the Romanic Comedy over the fire, but couldn't let it go into the flames. I really do like it and refer to it often. My apologies as well. Chalk mine up to male pms.
Posted by: R Dobbins | March 19, 2009 at 10:10 AM
R Dobbins: You are a good man (and you know, they're hard to find) to spare my book from the flames. Know that I welcome your comments, whether we agree or not, and thank you for providing a great topic for another post: "Male PMS -- Myth or Menace?"
Posted by: mernitman | March 19, 2009 at 10:26 AM
I remember reading the script "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and that was 180 pages long and described everything the characters were thinking and gesturing, and it suggested shots and it rambled and spewed, and every rule about screenwriting seemed to have been broken except the most important one: write with passion.
It was so fun to READ! And Goldman the writer has admitted since that the story is short on action and the script is too talky, but you loved those two guys and you rode along with them right to the shoot-em-up at the end and you were out of breath from laughing and crying--you loved them on the PAGE. It just didn't matter that the script was all wrong in every textbook way. The guy wrote it from his gut, and anybody reading that screenplay would've said "This has gotta get made!"--it was that passionate and exciting.
Rules choke writers. Rules squeeze writers by the genitals, where all good screenplays come from. It's good news that so-called bad scripts are successful. But it's not because of the little rules they break. It's because they come out with both barrels blastin' into a hail of Bolivian bullets.
Posted by: Bob | March 19, 2009 at 02:24 PM
Great post. Has me over-thinking and over-analyzing but, it reminds me of a complaint recently spouted by my father, a complaint which has absolutely no analogical value here. He lamented on his failed third marriage and asked why women only like it dirty until they get a wedding ring. So I thanked him for the disturbing image, asked him to pay for my therapy and pointed out that his particular women had NEVER liked it dirty. They just did what it took to make the sale.
Posted by: MaryAn | March 19, 2009 at 08:38 PM
Thanks so much for these posts; I feel entirely liberated. To me, it only makes sense to spell things out a bit; you need to make sure your reader knows where you're coming from.
And what strikes me about the Michael Clayton passage you cited is that, if I were the director, it would turn me on. I'd be thinking, 'Okay, how can I make that happen?' The director's vision truly matters at that point. He's no longer reading a manual; he's reading something far more exciting and evocative than that. I'm all for it.
Posted by: Ellen | March 20, 2009 at 04:38 PM
Stephen King says you can’t turn a bad writer into a competent writer, or a good writer into a great writer, but using rules can make a competent writer into a good writer.
However, following the rules slavishly is not enough. You have to grasp that ‘show not tell’, for instance, is a principle – write your scene one way and it’s involving, write it the other way and it’s distancing. Most of the time you’ll want one effect more than the other – but not every single time.
There’s a big market in selling storytelling rules to the public and that’s where the idea seems to come from that they are sacrosanct.
Posted by: dirtywhitecandy | March 21, 2009 at 11:42 AM