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If I opened a discussion about whether second-person present-tense is an effective form of prose, you'd probably respond with "writers should be able to spell their own name"
Go back and read the first post. I'd love to see you pick apart the examples I posted and show me how you'd "fix" them.
This is an interesting debate going on, especially for someone who has only learnt what he knows so far from this site and people on it.
I think the main thing for a site like this is for people not to discourage people due to format issues or breaking the rules. If you've told someone once about something they are doing wrong and they do it again, simply don't read another script by them.
Personally, I take on board all format comments about something I post, simply because I don't know enough about it myself. I am going to be buying 'The Bible' soon though so will have a better understanding of it hopefully.
Little football(soccer) analogy - If you have a poor football player, you tell him to keep it simple. Don't do anything too fancy. If you've got the next Pele on your hands you tell him to do whatever he wants.
Martin, Thank you for starting this thread. It has been a great read and I am worried it is starting to fall apart now just when it was getting good. I too have been questioning on whether what I am doing is really the best way to learn to be a screenwriter, But maybe as James and others have said It was worthwhile taking the time to learn the rules before having a serious crack at a feature, and I guess with that in mind probably lessons worth learning.
But I have begun to get a bit disillusioned with screenwriting recently, it is just all feeling too formulaic as though I were painting by numbers and this site sometimes really does seem to value formatting over content. I really want to learn how to find my own voice, how to write a screenplay that will have a chance of being sold and I really want to soak in as much from other writers as possible but the more I read on here the more I realise how many scripts on here seem like they were written by the same person. (Maybe they are, maybe apart from the usual crowd the rest are all written by Don!! )
Of course don't get me wrong there are some great scripts on here and some great writers, there are some individual voices peaking through the pages but there could be more. Threads like this should be much more commonplace on this forum, these are the debates that are helpful to us newbies and will help me better my craft. I know I am as guilty as anyone in getting bogged down in pointless debates and arguments about genres or the merits of Michael Bay and I have already decided to stop contributing to such debates. If there were more threads like this it would be easier! And just looking at the replies to this thread is proof enough that this site is exactly what I first thought it was. So hopefully we can start to redress the balance in our reviews, as well as helping the newbies get the formatting right can we not start to look at ways of reviewing that will really help us find our voices, write better stories, make a screenplay that is as individual as we all are?
Janney says: "Diablo Cody's script for Juno was very, very special. It struck me in the first two pages her dialogue and rhythms. At first you wonder, is it believable? [[ But then I met her and yes, that's pretty much how she talks.]]" How rare is it to find such a distinctive voice in a new writer?, "really rare. There are so many writers and storylines that are too familiar."
Now the minute I read that I asked myself "How can I get someone to say that about my screenplay?" Not through fonts and margins, not through never saying 'we' or 'ing'. And the truth is I still am unsure, I have a pile of books that talk about structure, format and acts but nothing that talks about being different, individual or finding a voice.
This is from page 2 of Juno..
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Juno marching down various street, pumping her arms like a jogger and chugging intermittently from the huge carton of juice. We watch her breathlessly navigate suburbia, clearly on a mission
Lots of 'ings' and even a 'we watch', "how do we know she is on a mission, Cody told us, she never showed us " etc...
If there is anything I want from this site is to learn how to write a screenplay that sounds like me!
If there is anything I want from this site is to learn how to write a screenplay that sounds like me!
That springs from loving what you are write, Gary. Writing for yourself, and trusting your audience to "get it".
You can try to write the next souless blockbuster -- hell, you might even succeed -- but if that is why you are writing, most of it will probably ring pretty hollow.
Loving your characters and the story you have fashioned -- having fun instead of calculating which page should contain the next plot point -- that is where your voice will come from.
When you wrote "National Pride", that had its share of "voice". I think you knew it would not be the most popular script on the boards, appealing to only a few, but it was obviously a script you wanted to write. And it is arguably your best work.
Too many authors around here write about psychopathic killers and motiveless hitmen because they think that is what people want to read. And that is why they are virtually carbon copies of one another -- because they are writing to an audience, not for themselves. The stories have no voice of their own -- they are just echoes.
That is, in part, what the OWC was about. It has grown too large now, but in the early days, many of the authors were identified long before the names were revealed. There were voices and styles that one could identify.
If you want to develop an identifiable voice, you have to write what you love, write for yourself, and trust that your audience will find you.
And I have moved to the camp that believes bending a few rules can help with that. Starbuck Starr was mentioned a few times on this thread (thanks guys), and those scripts are actually filled with stuff you ain't supposed to do -- on purpose.
Not all of it worked, but frankly, it was the most fun I ever had while writing something that was eventually posted on these boards.
Try it sometime. Pick a story you are working on, toss caution to the wind, and see what happens. You might fail miserably. But that, too, is part of finding a voice.
That springs from loving what you are write, Gary. Writing for yourself, and trusting your audience to "get it".
I think you are 100% correct here Bert, this must be it.
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When you wrote "National Pride", that had its share of "voice". I think you knew it would not be the most popular script on the boards, appealing to only a few, but it was obviously a script you wanted to write. And it is arguably your best work.
Thanks Bert, I really appreciate that because it is without doubt my clear favorite of the scripts I have written.
I have taken a step back recently and apart from my Scarefest experiment (which i did not enjoy writing) and a silly little 5 pager for the Movie Poet site I have not written anything since January. I felt I was just writing for the sake of it and not really improving or getting anywhere. I am going to be starting something this weekend and will be thinking about this thread when I do.
When Tierney mentioned that some writers don't allow their work to breath, I was reminded of an article by Phillip Lopate that I posted on the General Chat board.
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Workshops like those offered by Robert McKee, taken by thousands of wannabe scriptwriters, break down the screenplay into bite-sized formulae. Manuals like Syd Field’s Screenplay dispense wisdom such as “The days of ambiguous endings are over,” and where the first major “plot point” should occur. Tom Laughlin, of Billy Jack fame, offers a newsletter subscription guaranteeing you mastery over the nine plot points which will make a successful movie. Actually much of what Syd Field and others like him say makes sense. The problems occur when their prescriptions are applied too literally: the movie develops a homogenized, mechanical, predictable pace. Too many studio executives in Hollywood take Field’s or McKee’s ideas religiously: we were better off when the world was wired to Harry Cohn’s A**. The prevailing mantra in film schools is that movies are above all are a visual medium; therefore dialogue must be kept to a minimum, or you risk sounding “literary”; a voiceover is a “literary device” and a form of “cheating”; “literary” is bad. Translation: words and ideas are bad. The result is a fearfulness that creeps into the screenwriter’s intestines whenever his characters start to speak up for more than two sentences. One important result is that the scenes are getting shorter. Sometimes very short indeed: in action movies, one character may say “s***!” and another say “Duck!” and that is all she wrote. The shorter the scene, the less chance there is for that tension between characters to reach danger point where true communication can break out between them. As scenes grow shorter, too much pressure is put on the wisecrack, inserted between expletives and hot pursuit, to carry the load of character shading. The art of writing movie dialogue has become less a matter of constructing scenes than of coining one-liners that can be quoted as marketing slogans in trailers and advertising campaigns. Dirty Harry’s pioneering “Make my day” has become “Schwarzenegger’s “Hasta la vista” and on down to “That guy can make a bomb out of Bisquik.”
I think the best way to sound like you -- to find your own voice – is to expand on the repertoire. Try things that you never have before.
I’m obsessed with character description. How can I tell a reader everything they need to know about this person in 2-4 lines? So, here’s a mini sort of unsanctioned writing exercise/challenge. Write a description of a character where you actually have to describe your character’s character.
Here are two examples of character description from 2007:
1. JUNO - JUNO MacGUFF stands on a placid street in a nondescript subdivision, facing the curb. It’s FALL. Juno is sixteen years old, an artfully bedraggled burnout kid.
What do you now about Juno? She lives in the ‘burbs, she’s sixteen and she’s wearing the burnout uniform as only kids from the suburbs can. She’s not really a burnout. It is just a pose.
2. MICHAEL CLAYTON - MARTY BACH looks up from his papers. He’s seventy. It’s his name on the door. Big power. Sweet eyes. A thousand neckties. A velvet switchblade.
You know everything you need to know about this man based on the introduction. Anything you learn about him in the script will confirm and expand on these sentences.
I encourage everyone to try it who is interested in finding their voice. Good and revealing character description forces you to write like a writer and not a technician.
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