So, you want to write screenplays. Cool. There really are no rules to the process, but there are lots of theories. And there are certainly elements readers will be looking for and when I say readers I mean anyone who has the power to toss your script in the can — script readers, producers, executives, directors, agents, actors, etc. I’ll share a few of tidbits I’ve collected and used, but I’m no guru. This is simply what I did to get my foot in the door. If you’ve had some success, ignore this. It’ll bore you. But if you’re just getting started, if you’re considering the long road of tackling a screenplay, then maybe this will be helpful.
Syd Field has written some excellent books on the basics. You can pick them up at any local bookstore or a quick stop at Amazon.com. There are also some great workshops out there. Robert McKee teaches a great class on Story Structure. I’ve gone to a couple of two-day workshops with David Freeman. And there are others. If you’re just getting started you should check them out. I did and I wouldn’t be recommending them if I hadn’t walked away with some piece of the puzzle.
And understanding the world of the screenplay is a bit like putting a puzzle together. Everyone’s puzzle is different and you never know where you’re going to find that next piece.
The Basics:
These aren’t rules. They are simply the basics found within most screenplays. For each of the following statements you can find a successful movie that contradicts them. But on the average these basics will hold true. And because they are known to be basics, many readers, agents, producers or executives will look for them. If you’re just getting started, it’s a good idea to write as close to Hollywood tradition as possible. So, here they are.
The average feature film Screenplay runs roughly 110 pages.
If you’re just starting out, try to stick to that. Unless you’ve got a proven track record, you really don’t want to turn in a 140 page screenplay. You must remember most readers, agents, producers and executives read dozens of scripts every week. You don’t want your script falling into the discard pile because they flip to last page first and get scared off by page count.
A page of screenplay equals roughly one minute of screen time.
Let the reader know what your story is about by page 10 to 15.
If you’re writing a murder mystery, then there should probably be a murder before page 15 (Se7en, Murder on the Orient Express). If your movie is about an alien invasion, then we should see some aliens or at least see the hint of aliens within the first 10 to 15 minutes (Independence Day, Close Encounters).
Have you ever been watching a movie and twenty minutes into it, you’re still waiting on something to happen? For the movie to get started? You don’t want that.
Inform the reader of the tone of your script early on.
If you’re writing a comedy, then make me laugh so I’ll know what to expect. If you’re writing a supernatural script then don’t wait too long to introduce some supernatural elements. Set the tone. If you’re writing a murder mystery then on page 60 your killer suddenly walks through a wall like a ghost, well, the reader may get confused. Did he or she miss something? You don’t want the flow of your script suddenly interrupted do to unneeded confusion. Set up the rules of your world early on.
Make sure your hero has a clear goal.
This walks side by side with telling the reader what the movie is about. I mean, after the first 10 minutes of Die Hard, is there any doubt what Bruce Willis wants? Is there any doubt what Indian Jones wants? What James Bond is after?
Your Hero should be a likable guy or gal or group.
Do you like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon? Do you like Danny Glover? Take a look at the Wedding Singer with this in mind. They really go out of their way to make Adam Sandler a likable guy in the first 10 – 15 minutes. He sings, he’s charming, he gently chastises his buddy for being a scoundrel, he smoothes the situation over after Steve Buscemi causes a scene, he’s funny, he’s takes care of the drunk kid and even holds his head while he pukes into a dumpster. How can you not like this guy?
Also, consider what an actor is thinking when he or she reads your script. “Is this going to make me look good?” “Is this a role I’ll stand out in?” This is an amazingly important point. Actors have a massive amount of power in today’s Hollywood. If the right actor likes your script then the hurdles normally faced will vanish. Hollywood may hate the screenwriter but it loves the actor. Getting one on your side, or at least on the side of your script can’t hurt. Which means you have to create leading characters that actors will want to play.
So how do you make your hero likable? There are tricks. You’ve seen them a thousand times before. The hero pets the dog. He has a clear goal. He loves his family. He’s driven. He’s funny. Basically just look at your best friend. Why do you like him? Why do you like her? Who do you love hanging around? Take those magnetic personalities in your life and steal some of their traits for your characters. Or watch the movie you love and ask yourself, why do you like the lead? What is it about the lead that makes you adore him or her?
The better the bad guy, the better the flick.
Look at Alan Rickman in Die Hard, in Robin Hood. If you love the moments when your bad guy is on screen then you’ve done your job well. Have you ever watched a movie where the bad guy made you want to assault the actor playing the role? Remember when the guy dressed in white kills Sean Connery in the Untouchables? You hated him. You cheered when Costner threw him off the roof later. You know the saying, “The characters we love to hate.” Malfoy’s father in Chamber of Secrets, Rickman in Robin Hood, Sloan on Alias. Darth Vader.
Of course, this goes for the non-human bad guy as well. Aliens, Jaws, etc. And we don’t have to see the bad guy to get the same result. We don’t see Kevin Spacey until the third act of Se7en, yet we see his deeds. In Predator we don’t see the hunter for some time, but we see his actions.
A feature script will have three or four acts.
Act one is roughly 30 pages long. Act two is roughly 60 pages long. Act three is however many pages it takes to wrap up your script.
Act One
So, what is an act? Act one is basically your script’s set up. You set the tone, you tell the reader what the movie is about, you introduce your likable hero and give he or she a clear goal, you reveal your formidable antagonist (bad guy) as well as reveal his goal. Act one allows all these pieces to unfold. Your story starts down a path.
If you can spin the story at the end of act one, great. That should be your goal. Create an obstacle and send your story down a different path. In Independence Day, the aliens attack. In Aliens, the marines get their butts kicked. In Jurassic Park the fences fail, the lizards escape.
It’s always a good thing if you present an obstacle or present a big twist at the end of your first act.
Act Two
These 60 pages are the meat or your script. This is where your hero chases after his goal, through obstacle after obstacle.
I personally like to break those 60 pages up with a mid-act break falling around page 60. When I mentioned that scripts have three or four acts, this is what I was referring to. It’s often called a mid-act climax. Basically spin the story again. In Jaws they kill the wrong shark and the town considers the threat ended. In Close Encounters, Dreyfuss sees the missing clue, Devil’s Tower. In Se7en Freeman and Pitt find the Killer’s apartment.
Mid-Act Climax to End of Act Two
In these 30 pages your story begins to focus toward an ending. It’s great if it looks like your hero is on the right track. He’s building to the big win and that’s when you hit the End of the Second Act and flip the whole story on its head. It’s the moment of ultimate defeat. Normally happens around page 90.
The compound is about to explode and Newt is captured by the Aliens. The engines are dead and the boat is sinking in Jaws. In Independence Day, Will and Goldblum are trapped in the mothership, the shields are down but the president and his fighter plane team just don’t have the firepower to destroy the ships and one of the ships is about to destroy the loved ones in the compound. The drill is blown off the surface of the asteroid in Armageddon. The last ditch effort of assault nukes has no affect in Deep Impact. In the Romantic story this is the moment where the guy loses the girl.
This is basically the moment where all is lost for our hero. If you’ve done your job the audience will be sitting hopeless seeing no way for your hero to get out of the fix you’ve put him in. But if you’ve masterfully set up a way out then now is the time to reveal it — as we enter act three.
Act Three
The hero finds the missing clue. The hero makes a last ditch effort. Comes up with the cool plan.
Luke trusts in the force. Randy Quaid Kamikazes into the spaceship. Brody shoots the air tank. Bruce Willis tapes a gun to his back. Affleck shows up with the second drill. Duvall flies the shuttle into the belly of the asteroid. Ripley gets over her fear and goes after Newt. For this to work perfectly you will have to set up the way out. Thus when the moment happens it’s not like the old Westerns where the cavalry shows up spontaneously saving the day and having nothing whatsoever to do with your hero’s efforts. You want the set up and the pay off.
This is the moment where your hero wins by overcoming, being smart, etc.
It takes as long as it takes. In some movies it’s only a few pages. In others it 30 pages. Third act lengths vary from movie to movie. I wouldn’t go over 30 pages though.
You can sort of map out the acts by using the Romantic Comedy as a key.
Act one: Guy meets girl.
Act two: Guy falls in love with girl.
End of Act two: Guy loses girl.
Act three: Guy gets girl back.
Pretty Woman, Untamed Heart, Something About Mary, pretty much every Romance or Romantic Comedy follows the above in one variation or another. Of course, as always, there are exceptions (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), but for the most part, the key works. And it should give you a good idea of Acts and act breaks.
If possible give your hero an arc.
Ripley is terrified of the Aliens and by the end faces her fears. Luke’s a na⤢ve kid and by the end learns to trust in the force. Clarice considers herself poor white trash and must face her demons to get Hannibal to talk. Jim Carey goes from zero to hero in The Mask. Ben Stiller starts out a selfish stalker in Something About Mary and by the end he sets things right and walks away.
This stuff is pretty self-explanatory, but we are talking the basics here. And again, there are exceptions to the rule. For instance, would we really want James Bond to have an arc? We’d go nuts if Bond learned to love one woman in a very dramatic turn. Dirty Harry, Indiana Jones, these guys are who they are and we like them for it. So again, there are exceptions, but an arc is a nice personal rule to follow or at least consider. I can assure you readers will be looking for it and if it’s not their they’ll either get what you are going for or they will toss it in the can. My guess is that 9 out of 10 will toss it in the can.
Remember every reader has a boss. There are only a handful of people in Hollywood with the power to say yes and give you money to write a script. There are several hundred thousand with the power to simply say no. And no one gets in trouble for saying no. They are looking for an excuse to toss you in the can. Saying yes puts their butts on the line with the bosses. Saying yes can get you fired.
It’s also nice to give your other main characters a personal goal or desire.
Independence Day is a pretty good example. Will Smith dreams of flying the space shuttle. By the end he flies an alien craft. Jeff Goldblum is an environmentalist who wants to save the planet. By the end he assists in saving the planet. Judd Hirsch has lost his faith, by the end he regains his faith. Self explanatory and maybe a little cliché but the truth is, it works It gives your characters some meat and readers love this.
Make sure your scenes are pushing your plot forward
Take a look at each scene. What happens in that scene? Then ask yourself, “Because of this, how does the story change?” If the answer to this question doesn’t move your plot forward then you may not need the scene. But think about this one. It’s easy for it to get lost in all the work you do. Every scene should push the plot. Make sure your scenes serve a purpose. Character driven scenes are fine but why not add those character beats within a plot driven scene. A scene that if you cut it from the movie the story would suffer. Scenes that could be cut without hurting the story really don’t belong there in the first place.
Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes you need to spend some time setting up your characters or giving us some exposition, but again try to do those things while pushing the plot forward.
Since we mentioned exposition…
Exposition: to convey information. You gotta have exposition to tell your story. But when giving this information you don’t want to be on the nose. In other words, find a better way to say, “I hate Joe.” Or better yet, show it. Have your character take a piss in Joe’s soup, or wipe his bum on Joe’s pillow. Or kill Joe’s Dog. Or screw Joe’s wife. You do those things then rest assure the audience will have no confusion aboutyou’re your character feels about Joe.
And when conveying large chunks of information that are essential to the story, get creative. This happens many times at the end of a mystery. It’s the part where the cop or the bad guy suddenly stops everything to explain how we got to this part of the story. That’s exposition and it can be horribly boring. So, again, be creative with it.
Look at Jurassic Park to see one brilliant way to handle it. Remember how we found out about misquotes stuck in tree sap and Dino-DNA? Goldblum, Neill, Dern and the back-stabbing lawyer were sitting in the little ride thingy, Attenborough stood before them. How monotonous would that scene had been had Attenborough tried to explain all of that stuff? But what they did was great. An animated DNA strand began interacting with Attenborough and we were given the exposition in a very visual, unique and interesting way. That whole scene was exposition. Relevant as it was it didn’t move the plot forward except to maybe set up the frog DNA that would be mentioned later. However, since it was done in an interesting and unique way, nobody was bored.
Write what you’re passionate about
Write was scares you. Write what makes you laugh. Write what makes you cry. Stick with the genres you love. Stick with what you like. Don’t worry about the masses. You can’t write for them. You can only write for you. Write what you want and hope that at the end of the day, your opinions mirror the opinions of the masses.
Off the top of my head, I’d say those are some of the screenplay basics. There are exceptions but I think if you took all screenplays and put them under the microscope you’d see that the above basics occur more often than not.
The Basics of Getting Started:
It’s tough to sell a script if you don’t live where they make movies.
I started writing screenplays in Dallas, but I didn’t make any money until I moved to LA. If you’re really considering a career as a screenwriter, then start thinking about a move to LA, NY, Toronto, Vancouver, etc. Go where they are making movies. You could in theory sell a screenplay from Alabama, but don’t count on it.
<Study
Watch movies. Read screenplays. Read books. Take classes. Read the Newspaper. Watch the News. Live life. Get around the people who are in life where you want to be, then Listen and Observe.
Ego is important
You gotta have a pretty big ego to make it out here. You’re gonna get doors slammed in your face. You’re gonna have the boss’s son tell you how horrid your script is. You’re gonna get edited by people you don’t like. You’re gonna be forced to make changes you don’t agree with. The assistant’s assistant to the executive will call to give you his notes. For everyone who loves your script, ten will hate it. You’re the writer. Arguably the least powerful guy in Hollywood. You’re the easy target. Few will tell the actor he made a bad choice. Few will tell the moneyman his idea is bad. However, it’s always open season on the writer. You’ll go to meetings and lay it all out there on the table for everyone to see. You drop your drawers, flop out your penis and hope they are impressed. Of course, many times they will point and laugh or simply say your penis is not the penis they are lookinp>g for.
You gotta have a strong ego to get through that stuff. Stay confident. You write because that’s what you do. If you’re like me, you’re pretty much unemployable at anything else. This wasn’t a one-night commitment, this is your life. This is your dream. You gotta have the ego to take the hard knocks and keep going.
However, know when to flush your ego.
You may not agree with the notes, but no one out here wants to hurt a project. Everyone’s intentions are normally for the best. Listen to the notes. Don’t put up walls because you dislike the messenger.
I’ll take a good idea when it’s offered. I’d be an idiot not to. Some of the best moments in a number of my scripts came from others’ suggestions. You gotta have the ability to recognize the good stuff and use it when it’s offered. That’s the difference between a good writer and a great writer. It’s not only your talent at forming a sentence but it’s also your ability to recognize brilliance when it comes your way. Don’t turn down a good idea just because you didn’t think of it. Don’t be stupid.
And when you reach that impasse, here’s something Dean Riesner (Dirty Harry, High Plains Drifter) once told me.
“If I don’t like a note, I’ll argue twice. If I can’t change their minds after that, then I’m not going to. Make the change and cash the check.”
Invest in your business
Buy the books, buy the movies, buy the scripts. Buy a scriptwriting program. I started out using Scriptware (Scriptware.com), now I use Final Draft. But there are others. They’ll increase your productivity by fifty percent. Buy yourself some nice clothes. Don’t go to a meeting dressed like a member of a grunge band. Keep your shoes polished. You shouldn’t wear a suit but don’t go in cutoffs and flipflops. Do that after you get the job. Before you leave for your meeting, check yourself out in the mirror and say, “Damn, I look good”. Then go knock them dead.
Don’t shirk when it comes to your tools. I come from a background in construction. When you buy the best skill saw, it last longer, it’s higher quality, it makes better cuts. In the long run you’ll save money and produce better quality work.
Every meeting is a sales pitch
Remember when you’re trying to get your foot in the door, you’re either selling an idea or selling yourself. Every meeting, every party, every e-mail, every phone call. And, of course, when you do get your foot in the door this doesn’t change.
Finally, have fun
You’re chasing your dream. Most folks don’t. They’re too afraid to take that leap of faith. Not you. Be happy in your courage. You’ve thrown caution to the wind, filled your old truck with your 386 computer and some garbage bags full of clothes and headed down the road of possibility.
Too many people get out here and get bitter when it doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t do that. It’s predictable. Fight it. Bitterness kills creativity. It stifles it. You’re above that. You ain’t gonna make it overnight. I was three years from showing up in town and getting my first greenlight. The average is ten years. I’ll assume you have the talent so you’re now relying on luck and who you know. And who knows how long it will take for those three tumbles to click. However long…accept it and don’t get bitter. Don’t get up. Enjoy the journey.
Be happy when others have success. Get inspired when your buddy makes it. Enjoy the ride. Learn from your mistakes and laugh about them.
This isn’t just about writing a brilliant screenplay. It’s about the journey. It’s about the euphoria of pursuing your dream.
Hope this stuff helps.