The Genius of Bad Writing

 

Generally after teaching a screenwriting class, I feel a sense of positive accomplishment, however meager.  Something's been learned, even if it's as trivial as the proper formatting of sound effects.  But after my last class, I felt like I was leaving a trail of fire and brimstone in my cloven-footed wake, the air thick with the stench of sulfur.  I had become the screenwriting instructor Devil incarnate. 

Call me a heretic, call me a hack, here's the horrible reality I'd preached, the one that sent my students screaming into the night: The surest path to getting your screenplay sold is to write it badly.

One of the cardinal rules of the screenwriting craft is "Show, don't tell."  Good writing, we all are taught, doesn't over-explain, doesn't pander and pre-direct the action.  Parentheticals, the script writer's equivalent of "indicating," are frowned on: If you need to add (sadly) after a character's name before a line of dialogue, then you haven't written the dialogue right -- the line isn't inherently mournful.

Same goes for characterization work.  "What you see is what you get," another bit of screenwriting gospel, says that you don't talk about a character's emotions and thoughts when you're writing their actions.  The character moment should be self-evident.  Actions speak louder than indulgent inner-voice aping: If you need to explain how a character is feeling, or fill in his reaction to someone else's action, you haven't written the character right -- their personality hadn't been properly articulated.

Good screenwriting is supposed to appeal to a reader's intelligence.  Be clear, be precise, and they'll get what you intend in a given scene.  Your prose should be as spare and smart as a Raymond Carver story.

But as a writer who's been a story analyst and script consultant in the studio system, and thus has read something like 6,893 screenplays over the past 17 years, most of them agented, many of them since sold and developed, I say:

Bullshit.

I can only report to you what's actually going on, speaking to you from the belly of the industry beast (where the gaseous air, come to think of it, is often sulfurous).  Here's what most screenwriters don't want to hear: In the working industry, these rules of "good writing" don't apply.  Most of the scripts that sell are loaded with what's thought of as bad, with telling-not-showing, and I'm talking about the big boys. Eric Roth does it.  Stephen Zaillan does it.  Robin Swicord, Richard LaGravenese, James L. Brooks... Highly paid Oscar-winner Ron Bass (or his massive "research" staff) does it.

Now let me define this it.  The Big Boys and most of the less heralded writers who get their movies made  observe a less well-known rule of the screenwriting trade: The fundamental job of a selling screenplay is to get the reader to empathize with its protagonist.

Paraphrased for emphasis:  The most important task a screenplay must accomplish is to get whoever is reading it to identify with the lead character.  It's really that simple, although often tricky to pull off.  If you can't get an executive, an actor, a whoever the hell is reading the thing to see the story through the eyes of its protagonist, to experience your story's emotions as they're experienced by the person in the starring role... then you are dead in the water.

This is, after all, what we all do whenever we see a movie.  As we watch the leading man or woman, we're subliminally doing a lot of emotional math in our heads: Why's she doing that?  Oh, she's outsmarted him (she's smart).  Wait -- is she nuts?  Oh, no, that was funny (we like funny).  Hmmm, I don't get why she reacted that way (now I'm curious).  Wow, I didn't see that coming!  (This is intense).  Etc.  And the sum total of these largely unconscious lightning responses to a character in action is meant to be: We get them.  We're with them.  We are them.

Like it or not, the savvy screenwriter, ripping up rulebook pages to fuel her audience-identification fire, gets right to the heart of this process.  Here, for example, is Oscar-winning original screenplay writer Dustin Lance Black, early in his script for Milk.  Young Harvey is trying to pick up a guy named Scott who's just caught his eye on a subway platform:

HARVEY MILK: I'm part of the big, evil, corporate establishment that, let me guess, you think is the cause of every evil thing in the world from Vietnam to diaper rash.
SCOTT SMITH: You left out bad breath.

Falling for it, Harvey covers his mouth. Scott laughs. They both smile, realizing they share a wry sense of humor.  A TRAIN IS COMING, Harvey has to work fast.

HARVEY MILK:  So...  You're not going to let me celebrate my birthday all by myself, are you?
SCOTT SMITH (gently teasing):  Listen, Harvey, you're kind of cute for a suit...  But I don't do guys over forty.

OhmyGod!  The telling, the explaining and even (gasp) the parenthetical!!!  A doctrinaire screenwriting teacher would cut that "realizing..." clause, question that "has to work fast," probably damn the "gently teasing."  They'd probably have problems with this bit from a little further in:

HARVEY MILK (an idea, half-jokingly, half-seriously): Why don't we run away together?
SCOTT SMITH: Where to?
INT. FLASH FORWARD - HARVEY'S KITCHEN -  NIGHT
Harvey speaks to the tape recorder. (Throughout the film, these scenes should feel intimate, as if Harvey is telling us things no one else knows.)
HARVEY MILK: In those days, San Francisco was the place where everyone wanted to go... 

That last parenthetical in the narrative is the epitome of a tell-don't-show.  But it sure makes a difference in our understanding -- our "feeling the story," does it not?

Sometimes the "you are the character" POV work is more subtle.  As Simon Beaufoy brings us into the world of Jamal in the first flashback of Slumdog Millionaire, note how succinctly and eloquently the action in this first flashback is pitched from Jamal (and no one else's) point of view:

SALIM: Jamal! Catch it! Catch it!
The seven-year old Jamal stares up at the ball, jinks around trying to get into position.  He pays no heed to the rest of the children who are scattering fast to the edges of the tarmac. The ball seems suspended in the blue sky. Shouts from the other children seem very far away. He doesn’t notice that they are screaming for him to get out of the way. Jamal adjusts his feet for the perfect catch. Then out of nowhere, a light aircraft almost takes his head off as it comes in to land on the tarmac runway.

This is actually good writing (it avoids the interior editorializing while vividly transcribing a "you're a camera in Jamal's head" trajectory in the reader's mind), but the principle (make us be him) still applies.  Here, conversely, is an extreme example from another screenplay, describing a daughter talking to her elderly mother, who's on her hospital deathbed:

CAROLINE: I wanted to tell you how much you’ve meant to me. I’m going to miss you so much...

They hold each other for some time...  They separate... And there’s an awkwardness.  They have nothing left to talk about... nothing left to say to each other... a hole in their relationship... Caroline fills it with the eternal question...

CAROLINE (CONT’D): Are you afraid?

As a screenwriting instructor, I'd be tempted to throw this maddenly ellipse-riddled schmaltz right out of class... except... it's painful to acknowledge... this is an Oscar-nominated screenplay (Benjamin Button) from Oscar winning scribe Eric Roth (Forrest Gump).

Bad or good (and such terms begin to lose their bearings on this turf), getting across exactly how a character is feeling, in its varying degrees of subtlety or on-the-nose excess, is the coin of the realm in professional screenwriting.  When it's done deftly (e.g. Beaufoy) you barely notice it, and it's hugely effective.  Personally, I find Roth's end of the spectrum hard to stomach, but I can't knock his agenda.

"Telling the story from inside the character" is what sells the story to prospective stars, directors, producers... and while it's absolutely Wrong as a supposedly proper approach to screenwriting craft, it's employed by ostensibly A-list writers on a daily basis.  That's because with this kind of neon indicating on the page, nobody reading such material can misunderstand or fail to comprehend the emotional beats in a character's arc.  And these screenwriters know that getting the reader on that same page with their protagonists is their fundamental task.

I ain't sayin' I like it.  I'm just saying... it works.

Now maybe you can understand why in preaching such heresy, I felt like I was telling my students to sell their minimalist-sophisticate souls to the studio devil the other night.  But this is my story and I'm sticking to it: bad writing, shmad-writing -- don't shy away from doing some "telling" in your show, if it'll put your reader more vividly and palpably into your protagonist's shoes.  It's a dirty job, abusing (i.e. over-using) the technique may get you in trouble, but writing your movie from inside the character will get you further with that spec script than most of the rulebook do's and don'ts ever written in stone.

Let the hissing begin.

Comments

[Ray-Anne]

I write Romance Fiction.
You are speaking to the converted. One of my key craft objectives is to make my reader - who I have assumed to be female- totally and completely identify, empathise and sympathise with my heroine.
And somewhere in the first line, first paragraph and first page.
I am a published author who has just sold my second book to the largest publisher of womens' fiction in the world.
And I totally agree with you. :-)

[E.C. Henry]

Will definately remember that writing tip. Quick tag-line summation:

Protagonist rules!

He (or she) is the queen of the screenwriting chessboard, and he (or she) must be loved for the millions to start flowing in!

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[J]

I totally, totally hear you.

I'm an artist, but if I want to add "working" to that title, I gotta do what the industry asks for.

I'm no crazy genius. Those guys are the only ones who can buck the system.

[Third World Girl]

Absolutely Billy. I belong to a writer's group where folks consistently question these "internal" lines and gasp "That's showing not telling!"

But I used to read for a couple production companies and trust me, a reader isn't going through tossing aside scripts because they "cheat." They're not reading with a rulebook in hand. They just want to be entertained.

Yeah, you don't want to go over the top. That showcases your laziness. They'll know you haven't done the work figuring out the external dramatization of the internal, but a little fudging never hurt.

[Racicot]

Hello Billy,

Here's a link to Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie and Adi Hasak's '30 Days of Night'

an example of going too far in the telling...

http://www.horrorlair.com/movies/30-days-of-night.html

[The Big Snake]

This column is the single best screenwriting class I've ever had! And you did it in about 1,500 words. Bravo!

[Lucy]

OMG, absolutely laughing my ass off here. Speaking as someone who reads a lot of scripts that go on to get produced too, this is so, so true in so, so many ways. SUPER LOL!

[Bill Pace]

Must ... resist.

Must ... not ... tell my ... screenwriting students ... this.

How can I ... renounce ... all that I find ... holy?

But wait ...

This kind of writing actually sells?

Oh!

Well, then ...

Okay, class -- today your assignment is to read Billy Mernit's "The Genius of Bad Writing" article!

But ... must ... still slay ... the anti-writer ... ROTH!

[FLewis]

Billy,

I so needed to read this column. I keep telling myself not to get so caught up in the rules that I stop being creative and telling my story, my movie, my way.

Honestly, I was losing that battle until I clicked over and read this post today.

Chocolate and liquor are great. Some sound words of advice can be even better.

Thanks

[ScribeLA]

Hey Billy,
I hope all is better in Mernitland :-)

Terrific post. Thank you. One of your best and most helpful.
Be well.
-Scribe

[Chris]

Ok, so if no one should actually follow the rules... should those still be the rules?

I guess my question is more about the evolution of screenwriting. All arts grow through challenging the preconceptions and accepted practices of that art, but screenwriting can't be its own "art" if its just a blueprint for a film. It's more on the craft side.

So if its art, can it be challenged successfully? And if so, is what you're describing exactly that?

I'm baffled by these thoughts and by everyone's demand for rules while no one successful actually follows them.

You're smart, so I'm asking you.

[JamminGirl]

I think one of the problems with Roth's elipses riddled blurb is that is it such a typical 'movie'
scene. We've all seen it before onscreen though never in real life. He should have written ACTUAL ACTION
from the perspective of the lead. Beaufoy's "The ball seems suspended in the blue sky.
Shouts from the other children seem very far away." drew us in because he chose not to editorialize the emotion for us, the audience.

As far as the rules go, I follow them with a grain of salt. I realize that I can't listen to the rule writers as if they're Gods
because I saw the vomitous 'sweeny todd; demon barber of fleet street' that got oscar nods. I also saw 'Adaptation'
that had Robert Mckee bragging that he gave the writer pointers for the third act. If I had seen the youtube clip of him bragging
I wouldn't have trekked all the way to downtown Toronto on a snowy Sunday for I his 'Story' book.
I'm glad I didn't though. It's a good book. But grain of salt...

The problem I find with these teachers is they never stress the importance of realism in (non-fantasy)film. Another problem is always
encouraging new writers to watch other films for "inspiration". The result is REGURGITATION. Ugh! That galls me!

By the way Billy, don't you worry that you will be taken literally by novice writers to "write badly"?
They may not realize that you mean they should use a particular style of writing.
I suspect the reason so many screenwriters write the way you suggest is because they come from tv writing.
Aparently in tv writing it's encouraged to write the character's thoughts in order to guide the actor.

Check out Alex Epstein's article here http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/excerpts/TV04.html

[Laura Deerfield]

Permission to be imperfect? But how will I manage to keep procrastinating???

[Judith Duncan]

Hey Billy,
You're my hero.(she typed looking out at the autumn Sydney sky)It was so good to read that.(she sighed softly, realizing
that finally she had permission to be...less than perfect)I gotta do one of your classes.

[JamminGirl]

Judith Duncan, how does an actor act "(she sighed softly, realizing
that finally she had permission to be...less than perfect)"?

... and Billy, therein lies the rub.

[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. Unless there is an example of an unknown writer who broke the rules and sold his/her spec, I probably wouldn't deviate too far from what is deemed standard practice.

[Tom Green]

@ R Dobbins

Perhaps you're right. But I think Billy's main point is not that you *have* to tear up the rule book, but that:

"The most important task a screenplay must accomplish is to get whoever is reading it to identify with the lead character."

Achieving that is more important than sticking to 'the rules', whether you're a novice or a veteran.

[R Dobbins]

I get Mr. Mernit’s point and concur. My point however, is that no matter how well written a character may be, the odds of the script getting read are greatly diminished if it appears to be the work of someone who doesn’t know or has simply ignored the rules of the game. Again, show me a purchased spec written by a newbie who broke the rules and I might be convinced.

[Dave Morris]

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.

However, as you pointed out with the Slumdog example, there's a way to "spoonfeed" and *still* make it good writing.

[Judith Duncan]

Judith
(incredulous)
But...I was only kidding.

She walked away knowing she had given her best performance of 'less than perfect' since acting school.Then...a smile curled the edges of her lips.

Judith
oh well(she thought
to herself)I'm sleeping
with the director.So it
just ...doesn't...matter.

[JamminGirl]

TV writers often write what the characters are thinking. This works as a kind of shorthand:

JACK

Hey, I called the other night...

Oh, my God. He knows! Jill tries to cover:

JILL

Yeah, I accidentally kicked the plug out. I’m such a klutz.

If the actor knows what the character is thinking, he can act it. The alternative would be for you to go into way too much depth of detail about what we see:

JACK

Hey, I called the other night...

Jill shrugs, maybe a little nervously. She forces a self-deprecating grin.

JILL

Yeah, I accidentally kicked the plug out.

And even then, the reader may not get it, the director may miss the point, and the actor may just be confused.

Aside from making for snappier writing, telling us what the character is thinking also puts the reader more into the character’s point of view. The episode will read better.

...

You have to be careful with this tool, though, and only use it for good, not evil. Someone can act “Oh my God, he knows!” Someone can act “Oh, great. I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I?” Someone can even act, “Isn’t that just like a man?” These are all shorthand for distinct emotional reactions — specific flavors of alarm, embarrassment and disdain. But no one can act a thought:

The hematologist said the exact same thing!

http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/excerpts/TV04.html

[JamminGirl]

The writer finishes the chapter with this advice:

MONTAGE

of every moment Cordelia’s made a fool of herself.

Be careful writing directly to the reader this way. It’s slightly naughty. It may be justified when you’re on staff, but it’s risky in a freelance script, and very risky in a spec. Use it only when you’re sure of what you’re doing.

[Martine]

Very interesting (yet touchy) advice. I've been in situations where producers insisted that I put in more of this kind of "explanation", quoting me examples from screenplays I considered to be very badly written. Made me wonder if it's only screenwriters who care about the rules and if the rest of the people involved in production just love this stuff.

It's all about finding the right balance... and keeping yourself from screaming when you're still in the producer's office!

[mernitman]

RayAnne: Glad we see eye to eye on this -- congrats on the publication!

Check and double check, EC.

j: "no crazy genius" could be a sign at my local cafe...

Third World Girl: Sometimes a little fudge just hits the spot.

Racicot: And... scene! And... AURGH...

Thank you Big Snake!

Lucy, I love it when your ass laughs off.

Bill: Your... resistance... is... futile.

FLewis: Chocolate and liquor? Add sex and you've got the pleasure trifecta.

ScribeLA: We're all on the healing path, thank you!

Chris: You're now featured in a blog post (almost) all your own.
Just when you thought it was safe to put your comment on a post...

JamminGirl, I agree with your thought re: realism. But being educated in different ways to write (via seeing other people's work) is a time-honored and worthy method of learning from all disciplines throughout the ages. Regurgitation is the problem of individuals who don't pay back what they borrow with interest --
it's not the method that's at fault.

Re: the TV issue, thank you for the link, which is great, and it's true that TV writers often write that way. But none of the "big boys" I cited come from television with the exception of James L. Brooks, so it's highly unlikely that TV work had anything to do with their chosen writing style.

Oh, Laura, come on: we can ALWAYS find ways to procrastinate!

Judith, come on by (he said happily).

Jammin: ... can also be found on three men in a tub.

RDobbins: See the new post above. Meanwhile, I read specs all the time that are sold (featuring the techniques cited) but to rise to your challenge, I'll keep an eye out for a specific title or two, and get back to you with it when I find a typical offender.

What Tom said (Hi Tom!).

Dave: See post above; you're almost famous.

Judith: Sleeping with the director -- can't go wrong with that.

Jammin: They oughta put a warning label on the jar ("Overuse of this technique will lead to eye-rolling, nausea, and a gig on AS THE WORLD TURNS")...

Martine: Now, there's a few rules to live by:
1) Find balance
2) Keep from screaming
Nice! ;->

[~Aileen~]

It takes a strong and of course amazing writer to admit that most of the "rules" are subjective, and that there ARE exceptions in almost every case.

Do keep the advice and revelations you have flowing!! It's been so helpful and enlightening.

P.S: great news to hear that your Dad's doing well :)