Comprehensive, line-by-line screenplay consultancy.
Affordable Prices.
Fast, personal attention.
Contact Paul Peditto
NOTE: Have a terrific holidays, folks. Heading to the Big Apple to see the family, I’ll return January 1, refreshed and re-energized, ready for year 3 at Script Gods. I’ll have some news for you then about a pair of movies in the works. In the meantime, stay positive, and stay vigilant (see below). See ya in 2012….
10 ESSENTIAL steps of HIGHLY-SUCCESSFUL screenwriters!
Killer Loglines! 30 seconds to CHA-CHING!
10 BLOCKBUSTER Story Techniques!
10 Techniques you MUST know to be a pro!
20 Screenwriting Success Secrets that will enable you to EFFORTLESSLY sell your screenplays, become magnetic to agents and managers, and help you become ‘the next great voice’ in Hollywood even if you live nowhere near Los Angeles!
This one will be tricky.
Yeah, I’m a teacher, and a screenwriting consultant, one of THEM. How the fuck can I throw rocks at glass houses? The stones on this guy!
Let’s find some context, ok? Long ago I said I would pack up this blog before I ever tried to bullshit you folks. Of course I shouldn’t say this, but fuck it…the money I make on this site beats digging ditches but it’s not freeing me for retirement in Costa Rica any time soon. I created Script Gods to pass along some knowledge, fight the good fight, make a few gherkins, but not free myself. How many people you hear make millions from blogging? Doesn’t happen, not here anyhow. When this gets old, I’ll pack it up, end of story.
Until then, let me say: There are some slick operators out there feeding you misinformation. And not just some. Take a moment to punch in Screenwriting Consultants into Google. How many pages do you see? Scroll all the way down.
87 pages! Multiplied by 10 entries per page= A shitload of screenwriting experts!
What does that tell you? Tells me there’s money in the game. Tells me you don’t need a diploma or credentials or even to had a movie made to call yourself a screenwriting consultant.
Tells me that you folks need to watch your asses, because you’re vulnerable. You want it to happen. You believe in your projects. Writing isn’t tiling a bathroom. This script is a piece of you, almost like a child. You want the best for it. You might be willing to pay an expert for advise. Of course you’ll check the screenwriting message boards, check sites for recommendations, maybe even look to Creative Screenwriting for their Best Of series.
Better than I have already commented on this subject. Craig Mazon at artfulwriter.com talked about wasting people’s time. Chad Gerivch at scriptmag.com discussed not using a script service. The King of all bloggers, John August, outright told you those who can’t write teach seminars.
Before I give my $60 or $250 notes to people, I make sure they understand that I’m only one opinion. They won’t agree with everything I say, that’s a given. The question is how many of the notes can actually be used. If the writer takes 5 of 10 of my notes, I’d consider that money well spent.
Here’s another tidbit you won’t not hear from the Script Gurus: Who the hell are we, anyhow? Self-appointed experts commenting on someone else’s creativity.
Punch my name in on Google search and I do ok, but go to IMDB and the output ain’t exactly epic. What qualifies me to judge you AT ALL?
First thing I’d do in your shoes—go to IMDB to check the consultant’s credits. Have you ever noticed: The slicker the website, the fewer writing credits the guru seems to have. When you go to a site like Inktip or ScriptShark or any of the other thousand sites, do due diligence. When Inktip directs you to their Facebook page where 100+ movies they developed have been made, go to the page. Ever heard of even ONE of them? Not sayin’ they all suck, I’m just sayin’…
Get past the slick site and promises, see if there’s any substance or accountability. Here at Script Gods, when you send me an email I answer it, usually the same day. You know who’s reviewing your script. When we talk on the telephone, there’s a one-on-one connection.
I would love to watch each self-proclaimed expert stand before an audience of beginning writers to answer why, with all these years in the biz, they find themselves telling others how to make a living in movies instead of making that living themselves.
Let the credit-quoting and name-dropping commence.
And now, without further ado, your trombone lesson…
Thanks to Julian Grant from Columbia College for this list of Themes that movie-makers have drawn upon from the Silent Era until today.
When do you give up on a screenplay?
When is your belief in the script optimism?
When is it delusion?
You’ve been working on this…THING..for weeks, months, shit, maybe even years. You do what the experts recommend: Gather critiques, rewrite, send it out, rejection, more rewriting, send it out again, more rejection. It’s sitting there on your computer and you know you need to make changes but…it’s reached the point where you can’t even look at the damn script. You are utterly and totally exhausted! And not one scintilla closer to getting the thing made, that’s the crusher. The WGA, the 6-figure sale, launching the successful career you told your dad about as he wrote those $20,000 checks for Columbia Film & Video school–ain’t happening.
You want to hang it up. Not just the one script, but maybe the whole mess. I mean, how many screenwriters actually make a living at it anyhow?
You tried, you really did. You bang away at the front door of the Country Club but nobody takes notice. There’s a sign: DO NOT ENTER- THIS MEANS YOU, JACK! You recall Dorothy Parker: I hate writing. I love having written. Or maybe Tom Petty: The waiting is the hardest part. Time is passing, nothing happens.
Worse than nothing…you’ve heard back from the world at large through screenwriting contests, query letters, manager inquiries, the responses kinda suck. Cryptic reader notes from Page or Austin, generic rejection slips from boutique agencies, no response at all from the bigger joints. Perfection is the sound of Hollywood rejection: Silence.
Maybe you’ve done ok…got Quarters at Nicholl, pitched a concept at Pitchfest and got some response from an agent. You’ve given it to friends and got excellent feedback, ran it through your screenwriting group, vetted it and rewrote, sent it out again and made the Finalist round at the SouthWest Panhandle State Screenwriting Competition, all of which has lead you…nowhere. Not one scintilla closer…
And the years are passing…
Is it worth it? How can you know?
If I’ve depressed you so far, let me just say this: Contrary to what the Country Club gatekeepers would tell you…your time does have value. And here’s another tidbit: There are some things you can control in the process.
I have endeavored here at Script Gods to show multiple paths toward seeing your vision made. Overly simplistic as it might be, there are other paths beside beating your head to a bloody pulp against the front door. You need to be a student of how other people are getting their screenplays read, and their movies made.
I’ve had excellent students who worked for months on a script, submitted it to Nicholl, didn’t make it past the first round and never recovered from the rejection. Two points here: 1-If you pack your writing tent that quickly after a single rejection, well, it might be for the best. You were never a writer in the first place. Screenwriting demands discipline. If you’re writing for the screen you will be critiqued and you will rewrite, perpetually, endlessly, and not always paid for your efforts. This is not a poem, it’s not a play. Unless you’re writing the check to make the movie, you don’t get to decide when the script is done. Deal with it.
2-What strikes me as delusional, or downright ABSURD, is that you would let some person you’ve never met, whose qualifications cannot be verified–a screenplay contest reader, an agent’s assistant, a manager’s just-out-of-college gopher–pronounce judgement over whether the script you just worked eight months on, is GOOD or BAD? What does that mean? Pure subjective opinion, end of story. Why would you let a single person, or even a hundred people, stop you? Don’t toss in. Instead, think about alternatives to the front door of the Country Club. You want in, period. Is there a back door to the joint?
This discussion, at bottom, is pointless. If you want to pack up your script, or even your attempt at a career as a writer, do it. No one but yourself should decide that. Put the script on the shelf and let it sit there. Come back to it later, or never come back to it. The decision is yours.
Don’t ever let the bastards tell you no.
Recently at a Meetup.com group here in Chicago, I was asked to give a down and dirty format lecture in about 55 minutes. Lightning round stuff, I barely had enough caffeine in my system to make it through.
Concerning format, the first three words out of my mouth are The Screenwriter’s Bible, by Dave Trottier. How the hell y’gonna beat it? I thought I knew everything there was to know about the subject but Dave’s has some chapters in there I never even conceived (how do you write sci-fi telepathic dialogue, for instance?) After this there are multiple resources online I like including johnaugust.com.
Not completely against self-promotion, early on here at SCRIPT GODS I had about 15 or so posts on format, which can be found easily scrolling to the posts of January through May 2010.
This post is a recap of the Meetup.com lecture. I’ll include links to the previous format lectures. Hope it helps.
Format isn’t sexy. Your story needs to be original, not the formatting. Format is, almost by definition, conformity. Screenplays need to look a certain way, run a certain number of pages, and obey basic rules that the powers-that-be want obeyed. Why would you want to mess with format and piss off the powers-that-be? Anger them at your peril. For me, the true battle with format is the keep technical jargon to a minimum. You want the reader see your movie, not labor through reading a script.
If your action lines go past five lines you’re being a pain in the ass. I know, you can go to Drew’s Script O Rama right now and find a dozen scripts where writers routinely go beyond five lines per paragraph. I ask you to use common sense. See through the reader’s eyes. Would you rather read a 90 page script with lean, mean description of two or three lines per scene, or 117 pages of endless blocks of Velveeta cheese description that begs the tired eyes of the reader to SKIP IT. And believe me, they will…skip it. They are looking for any excuse to pass on your project. Your Velveeta blocks are the justification.Where the camera naturally cuts, give white space, go to the next paragraph.
Try to keep your description tight. Don’t try to be the production designer and describe every piece of furniture in a Starbucks as a character rolls through for a coffee. I DON’T CARE! Caution too, along with unnecessary detail, is doing the director’s job by including any sort of shot detail. Not your job. While you’re at it, skip the parentheticals. It’s not your responsibility to give the actors line readings. Just get to the story.
Characters get CAPPED the first time we see them. If it’s the protagonist or key secondary character, give short descriptions. Go past JIM, 34, wears jeans…anybody can write that. You have to do better, go further. Get to the visual essence of the character, like this one from BAD SANTA:
A wiry, hard-bitten, sun-baked saddlebag of a man, GIN SLAGEL sits behind his cluttered desk sucking on a filterless Pall Mall. We can hear his in-taken breath rattling over and around the phlegm, growths, and polyps that line his embattled trachea. His words come out on an exhaled cloud chamber’s worth of smoke:
GIN
Fuck stick?
The difference is subtle. Series of shots plays out over a shorter period of time. Montage can play out over a long night, or over a full lifetime. Either can go in parenthesis beside the slugline, like this:
INT. PLAZA HOTEL- NIGHT- (MONTAGE)
Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae sip Maine lobster bisque with Merrill Lynch bigwigs.
They munch Free Range Organic Chicken with Bank of American honchos.
They slurp Nutella crepes with Citibank VP’s.
Or on a separate action, like this:
MONTAGE--FREDDY MAC AND FANNY MAE PARTY IN THE BIG APPLE
--Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae sip Maine lobster bisque with Merrill Lynch bigwigs.
--They munch Free Range Organic Chicken with Bank of American honchos.
--They slurp Nutella dessert crepes with Citibank VP’s.
You don’t want constant sluglines. It’s part of the technical scriptwriting that you want to minimize. Cut out the technical jargon to the best of your ability by using devices like Intercuts and Crosscutting. Here’s how a telephone conversation would look…establish both locations, then use INTERCUT:
INT. PAULY VEGAS HOME- NIGHT
Pauly watches the tube. Picks up the phone and dials.
INT. TOMMY VEGAS HOME- SAME
Tommy about to dig into a cannoli, Tommy picks up the phone.
INT.ERCUT--BOTH HOMES
TOMMY
Yo.
PAULY
‘Sup?
Whachadoin’?
Eating that cannoli.
From Mom?
Yeah.
How is it?
I don’t know, I’m on the phone doin’ the Sopranos with you answering a bunch of stupid questions.
Oooh, eeey! Easy!
INT. FEDERAL LOCKUP -- STAIRWELL -- DAY
Kimble descending. Doors open and close throughout the stairwell but the traffic is light...
INTERCUT WITH... GERARD -- Climbing the stairs. He reaches a landing -- and skims shoulders with Kimble, who pivots past on his way down.
Amazingly, neither man reacts. Not yet.
One flight above, Gerard’s subconscious taps him on the shoulder and brings him to a dead stop. He leans over the stairwell railing to spy... Kimble spiraling downward. From this vantage, it could be any dark-haired man. But still...
GERARD
Kimble.
Others look up out of curiosity... but not Kimble. Two landings below, he falters a step, then tries to regain his step, keeps moving.
But Gerard is pulling his Glock: The hitch in Kimble’s stride told him everything.
Kimble!
Kimble blitzes down the stairs. Gerard moves after him.
Final Draft or Movie Magic are industry standard software. Celtx.com has a free version of Final Draft, buggy but usable. Word is unacceptable.
Cover Pages have TITLE by YOU and CONTACT INFO below. They do not have WGA registration number and should probably not have your home phone number. No cover art, no fancy fonts, bound by two brads top and bottom of three-hole punch paper.
Final Draft software pull down menu has a couple options I never use: GENERAL and SHOT. It has TRANSITION, which I rarely use (the FADES, but never CUT TO). You will use the SCENE HEADING, CHARACTER, ACTION and DIALOGUE almost exclusively. Even then, eventually you’ll use it like Word in the sense of tabbing to the exact spot on the page where the software automatically puts it. Notice I left out PARENTHETICAL. I wish you would too.
Every scene begins with a SCENE HEADING, also called a SLUG LINE. This is three parts: INT. or EXT. (Interior or Exterior). Then the location: BAR, CAR, HIGHWAY, APARTMENT. Then the time: DAY, NIGHT, LATER, SAME, CONTINUOUS always worked best for me. So it would look like: INT. BAR- NIGHT or EXT. HIGHWAY- CONTINUOUS.
Use ellipses and dashes. Three dots = pause. Two dashes = interuption. Why use a parenthetical (pause) or (beat) or (interuption) when you don’t have to?
Don’t write in specific songs unless you can pay for them. It’s not Muddy Waters plays on the jukebox, it’s BLUES MUSIC.
Use O.S. when a character is in the room but the camera isn’t on them. Use V.O. when the character isn’t there.
Foreign languages should be done in the action paragraph: In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Then roll the dialogue in English.
Ideal Screenplay length: Drama: 90-110 pages. Comedy: 90-100 pages.
I occasionally hear it from 19 year-olds in the hallways of Columbia: “I’m good with format, I’ve got Final Draft.” Sorry to tell ya, but uh-uh, wrong. You having screenwriting software doesn’t mean you’ve got formatting down any more than buying the Avid system makes you an editor or buying a 16-wheeler makes you a trucker. You’ve got to learn the craft.
Don’t let a reader ignore the four months you took to write a killer story because you didn’t know how to format. Get to work, get it down, then move on to the bigger battle of story.
