Breaking & Entering: It’s Not Easy Being Green – Being a Screenwriting Amateur is Child’s Play – Script Magazine The Muppets break it down for you. All the things you should never put in your spec script.
Read moreReaders Just Wanna Direct
It can’t be a revolutionary idea, but I’ve never read it in a book or been taught it specifically by any of my outstanding teachers, so I’ll just say it here. Write your spec script to entertain your reader, not as the draft you’re going to shoot. Consider how you read a novel, and how…
Read moreThe Cats I Have Seen Saved
Found footage of my cat. Fade out. Poe’s Law infers that there is no way for me to know what the pie chart looks like for Ironic Cat-Saving vs. The Book Said to Save a Cat on This Page vs. Cats Saved by Coincidence vs. Other, but it is not an SRS I’m talking about….
Read moreburtreynoldsismyspiritguide: GRAMMAR NAZI ZOMBIE I’m getting this put on a tee shirt, which will be worn by me.
Read moreEverybody Mansplains
Mansplaining goes on in spec scripts. A lot. So as not to offend, I will call it the gender-neutral “screenplaining” instead. It is a structural problem that happens when the writer believes that readers need certain information up front to be able to properly interpret the story. However unintentionally, screenplaining condescends by assuming that the…
Read moreDialogue, Contest Readers and You
Unlike a reader who can pass on a script after the first awkwardly constructed page, a competition reader must read on, deeply, in order to provide feedback to the writer. You want this reader on your side immediately. Dialogue can help. Even how it looks on the page helps. BALANCED WHITE SPACE IS YOUR BEST…
Read moreWe Already Know This
If you think twice, you don’t have to say it twice. Just five years ago, if you faded out on page 120, you were still shy of the red zone. Now, opening a hundred and twenty page script makes me moan with inconsolable self-pity and drop my head on my keyboard. 109 looks like fighting…
Read moreUsual Suspects: I hurt for Chazz
Now @chrismcquarrie is a ten out of ten, who the hell would argue? But this is just a terrible thing to do to Chazz Palminteri. From the actual Oscar Winning screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie: VERBAL The D.A. gave me immunity. KUJAN NOT FROM ME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. THERE IS NO IMMUNITY FROM…
Read moreFIRST WE MUST KILL ALL THE CLUNKERS
It’s late, your optic nerves are shriveling, your laptop is so hot it’s burning your thighs. You need to get from here to there, fast. You’re in a weakened condition. You take a shortcut, you shoehorn a raw and bloody slab of backstory into a conversation where it doesn’t belong so you can move your…
Read more