Screenwriting Tips Store

Screenwriting Tips Store

Screenwriting Tips Store

Screenwriting Tips Store

What is Proper Screenplay Formatting?

So, Just How Do You Format a Telephone Conversation? What About Camera Angles and Voice Overs? when Do I Use Them? and Don’t Get Me Started on Wrylies!

I know, you may read screenplays all the time that don’t follow the normal conventions of screenwriting, but those guys are usually produced writers or they work in-house for that particular production company and they have their own rules.

Follow the formatting rules and focus on the story. Some people get obsessed with formatting so much that they lose their voice in the story. If you have a great story, many readers will overlook little formatting errors. Not big ones mind you, but little ones. Most of the popular software out there will keep your screenplay properly formatted, but you still have to understand the basics.

There are some basic rules for SPEC writing as of the posting of this blog, but they tend to change every year or so. These all come from Dave Trottier’s book.

1. A Spec Screenplay is 90-100 pages. (I know, 120 pages is what you may see, but 90-100 is the current trend in Hollywood).2. Use the Three-Act Structure.3. The Title page should have the Title, “written by” your name, your contact info.4. Don’t put the WGA or Copyright info on the title page. Readers assume you have protected your work and it says “amateur” if you you do.5. Spell check, spell check and spell check. Then read your script backwards to catch what it misses.6. Avoid Flashbacks and Dream Sequences if you can. Only use them if they ADVANCE the story in some important manner.

So my advice is to stick with known authors and industry pros like Dave Trottier, Christopher Riley and John August to name a few. Dave is the KING of formatting and he has THE BOOK on the subject entitled “The Screenwriter’s Bible.” The fifth edition came out recently, and you can find it on Amazon, bn.com or at the Writer’s Store.

Dave also publishes a secondary book called “Dr. Format Answers your Questions.” This book is a compilation of his online columns over the years that drill down even further in detailed formatting of very difficult scenes. It’s also available at Dave’s website. Those are just some of the rules and tips you will find as your progress, and every script you write will teach you something new about formatting. Just keep writing, keep getting better at it.

Screenwriting Tips

I have read many screenplays and while its not my favorite thing to do (personally I would rather watch a film than read a screenplay any day) I have put together some tips and ideas for screenwriters based on what I have seen over the years.

I remember back when I was in college and took creative writing courses, my professors (like many throughout the world) were of the

Okay, you’ve finished your book, novel or true story, and you’d like to have it made into a movie.

Perhaps you’ve read some books on screenwriting or taken some classes and you’re thinking about writing the screenplay based on the book.

If so, there is something you must keep in mind. You will have to remove much of the content of your book that took you months, perhaps years to write. You may balk at the concept but you must do it.

A book can average 200 – 500 pages and contain 60,000 – 200,000 words. An average screenplay runs 90 – 120 pages, much of it white space, and has about 20,000 – 25,000 words. That’s quite a vast difference.

How do you manage to get all of your story into a screenplay? In most cases, you don’t. It’s a sad but true fact.

That said, what do you cut out?

One step is to keep most of the major scenes and cut those smaller, less important ones. Go through your book and look at it with an eye to what is critical and what is less important.

Do the same thing with dialogue. Keep only what moves the story forward.

Eliminate some or all of the subplots.

You can eliminate some of the characters or combine several of them into one person and let that person serve in the role of what those varying characters did in your book.

And while you’re at it, get rid of any lengthy character descriptions. In a screenplay they are not only unnecessary, they are counterproductive. In screenplays, character descriptions should be purposely vague to give more casting options.

Don’t describe someone’s height, unless it is critical to the story, hair color, eye color, flesh tones, etc. The more specific the description is in a screenplay, the harder it will be to find a leading acting to fit the role.

And finally, don’t mention the race of the character, unless it is an essential part of the story. For example, a police detective can be of any race, unless the detective’s race is an essential part of the story. For true stories, of course, casting directors need to know the race of each person to make it closer to reality.

If you do these things, the more successful you will be when you decide to turn a book into a move.

Screenwriting Tips

After cracking hundreds of screenplays sent into the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, the same problems in the execution of the story and script continue to emerge. Here is a general overview of these persistent issues.

Do you realize what you’re saying??In the theatre, they read plays aloud over and over in the process of script development, and one of the reasons they do this is to hear the dialogue. When I hear dialogue in my head, it might sound very good, but then when I hear a person actually speak it, I often have an impulse to jump in front of a bus. And over and over and over and over, when I read screenplay entries to BlueCat, I am immediately dismayed when the characters start speaking. Excellent everything else, awful dialogue. And I often wonder if the writer has actually heard the lines they have written for their characters out loud. Either read the whole thing aloud to yourself, or even better, get a group of your friends to read it. You do not need professional actors to evaluate dialogue. Just people excited to help. Videotape it. I have videotaped readings, and then sat down and worked out an entire rewrite off the tape, addressing every single line that bothered me. Which leads me to another thing.

Ha.It’s hard to pass a screenplay on to industry contacts if an unfunny joke is sitting in the middle of page two. It’s highly difficult if there’s twelve by page five. You might have a payoff in your third act that would break my heart, but if your jokes are poor, the heart of your audience will be shot, probably resentful, and your work will be recycled. Please try your humor out. If your beats aren’t funny to some people, rewrite. Trust a truly hilarious bit is coming. Think of the patience you need to muster through this writing process as courage, because it is.

If you find you are not funny, write a script that is not funny. Many, many great scripts are not funny, as we all know.

Mispellings.Do you think the development people in Los Angeles, basically the smartest people in the film industry, will not be annoyed and continue to read your script when you have misspelled three words in the first five pages? Perhaps. How do you feel when you’re reading something and you find misspelled words? How does your attitude shift towards the author? Exactly. If you don’t think many scripts have this problem, start a screenwriting competition.

OKAY, WE GOT IT!Try to limit your scene description. When a person opens your script, how many INCHES of action slug are they looking at on page one? Is there anyway you can convey what you want us to SEE with less words? I always go back and CUT CUT CUT to prevent my screenplay from fatiguing my reader with excess words as they try to listen for my story. Do we need to know what necklace someone is wearing? We all understand making motion pictures is collaborative. I strive to let the art department and the costumer and the prop master and so on DO THEIR JOB by not making their decisions in the screenplay, because I have little passion for it and don’t do it well. They will make their own choices, and most likely better ones, so why bother? Always use fewer words to say the same thing.

It’s not show and tell, it’s show not tell.I constantly find myself being told something by the screenplay the viewer of the film will not be aware of. Screenplays are not literature. They are words assembled to describe what motion pictures will play out on the screen. Telling us a character is a jealous person is passive and dull. Showing a character in an act of jealousy is more effective and essentially cinematic. Let the words and actions of your characters carry your story. This is not easy. You want the actor or director to understand what you want and what you mean. Allow the description of physical actions and the recording of spoken words reveal the narrative to the filmmakers. The script will read faster and offers the reader a richer opportunity to imagine and discover.

The Joy of Making Things Up.I really cherish the idea, that as a writer, I can make things up. If I want the guy to say something, all I have to do is type it. But I have to fight against creating characters and interactions amongst characters derived from movies I have watched and television I have seen. I often find myself writing a scene only to realize I’m not drawing from my imagination or my own life experience or my observations of people, I’m drawing from the millions of hours of observing actors play human beings on television and in movie theaters. And because I’m writing a “MOVIE,” it is even more difficult, because I’m fighting against a subconscious or unconscious observation that this is “how people act in movies.” Stop yourself and ask, would this happen on planet Earth? Do I know how people from Miami really speak? What would a person actually say if they had a gun in their face? Can you possibly imagine what could happen? This is your opportunity to be truly imaginative. Answer your own expectations of original work. A mature writer develops a strong capacity to recognize and reject the false.

Ouch.Forced exposition. This is when a brother tells a sister on page two that he will be attending a school which dad wouldn’t pay for because he bought a farm that the whole family will be moving to tomorrow because he found that the city was a really bad place to live in after mom was really scared because of that mugging thing that happened after they came back from the sister’s graduation from high school. When characters engage in an unbelievable conversation about matters in which they would be familiar with, or when they proclaim something completely out of nowhere simply to inform the audience of key facts crucial to their understanding of the movie, you have a problem. This awkward exposition will not be seen as genuine human behavior and will detach your audience from the emotional current of your story. Exposition is necessary and difficult to execute. Be careful how you offer information crucial to your story at the start of your screenplay. This is a common problem in early drafts. Exposition needs to be seamless and graceful.

Format.You know what? Go get a script and copy what you think it looks like and you’ll be fine. Trust me. Spec scripts are sitting on desks all over Hollywood and their format is not consistent at all. Getting crazy about format sells screenwriting software. I use two tab settings and copied stuff from a book and not one person in the film industry has ever said a thing to me in ten years. But if your script looks like a book, or a poem, or a magazine article, your screenplay format is wrong. Just make it look a little like a movie script, and if it kicks ass, guess what.

So do you.

Article URL address: www.bluecatscreenplay.com/About/advice.php About the AuthorWinner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA, Gordy Hoffman has wrote and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. Made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW,world premiering at 2005 Locarno Intl Film Festival. Also founder of BlueCat Screenplay Competition, which provides written screenplay analysis on every entry.Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering personalized feedback, http://www.screenplaynotes.com.

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The Three Most Common Screenplay Mistakes

When you send your screenplay off to someone to read, you want to make a good impression – producers and readers see hundreds of scripts, so it’s vital that yours is looked at favourably right from the outset.

However, before you even get to the quality of your story, there are three common mistakes that screenwriters often make, each of which is guaranteed to immediately put a reader’s guard up. It is vital to ensure that this doesn’t happen with your script, because once people start to form a negative impression of someone or something, it takes a huge amount to change their view.

In other words, if you are making any (or all) of these basic screenplay mistakes, your script is going to have to be exceptional in every other way if people are to look past your mistakes.

So before you send your screenplay to anyone, make sure that the basics are in place. That means ensuring that you have paid extra careful attention to:

Spelling and Grammar: I know this sounds obvious, but you would be amazed how many scripts are sent out that have poor spelling or dodgy grammar. You have to check and double-check your spelling and grammar – think about it, almost by default, anyone that you send a script to (production company, analyst, etc) is likely to be someone with a love of words. Abusing the English language will immediately give them a negative feeling about your work.

Format: There are no ifs and buts here – you have to get the format right. Poorly or incorrectly formatted scripts drive readers crazy. By far the easiest way to avoid formatting problems is to use screenwriting software like Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter. If you can’t afford either of those, you can try using free software like CeltX, or even set up Word to format your writing properly. But whichever route you take, make sure your script is properly formatted. Poor formatting is the mark of an amateur.

Length: Size matters! Too many spec scripts are over length, which is another huge turn-off for readers. Why? Put yourself in their position – would you rather read the tightly written 110-page script or the loose and fuzzy 150-page script? The bottom line is that your script should be between 90 and 120 pages – any shorter than that and it’s not really a feature film, any longer and it suggests that you don’t have control of your craft – it’s your job as a screenwriter to write a script within those parameters.

Are there exceptions to this? Of course – Peter Jackson’s King Kong script runs around 163 pages. But until you have directed a trilogy of movies that have grossed over two billion dollars you need to stick to the rules!

These are the absolute basics, the things you have to get right every time you write and send out a spec script. Think of them like strikes in baseball – each of them is one step closer to striking out. Three strikes and you’re out!

Are you a great writer? I have no idea. But I do know that if you don’t pay attention to the basics, no one will ever read your scripts all the way through.

By making sure that your spelling and grammar, your layout, and your script length are all on the money, you are giving yourself the best chance possible that people will read your scripts with an open mind – and as an unproduced screenwriter that’s a good place to start.

Screenwriting Tips