I once got really angry with my agent. Real, bile seeping, coffee cup flinging, head pounding on wall angry. He had dared to suggest some rewrites for a screenplay that had sold twice, but hadn't got made either time. Feet on desk, hands behind his head, beatific smile across his smarmy agent's face, he had dared to utter one highly loaded phrase. He had dared to say: 'it's not rocket science, is it?'Bombshell. Things between us crash landed. I shed him, like a hand grenade sheds its shell, there and then. How dare he...?!?
But, now I've several years perspective on the row, I am big enough, I have the heart enough, to be able to admit: He was right. Reworking a script isn't rocket science. If you know what you are doing.
That's a very important If.
"If you know what you are doing..."
If you've spent any time trying to write, and you've got any kind of internet connection at all, you will have realised there are a million other guys out there hacking away at screenplays, all apparently convinced they know what they are up to, and shouting like wild animals at anyone who dares disagree. They sound so authoritative, so compelling, so right - and yet so few of their screenplays ever get past the first hurdle of the initial slushpile reader, let alone to the desk of anyone with any commissioning power.
Meanwhile the people who do sell scripts seem to go on selling, and selling. Common sense would tell you they are obviously doing something different. Common sense would tell you that what they are submitting to the production companies is quantitatively different to what you are submitting.
How hard can it be to work out what the differences are?
As you are probably aware, its very, very hard.
In fact it's so hard it took me about ten years before I cracked it.
Here's the ten headlines. Ten rules of thumb. Ten stepping stones I follow religiously. Follow them conscientiously in order and you WILL see results. I promise.
1. Make your audience care. Get a person at the heart of your story who is deeply loved. Make terrible, awful things happen to them.
2. Make sure you are writing in a genre.
3. Happy Ending. You need one.
4. Love your hero, and force them to choose between two equally powerful alternatives at the end.
5. Design your villain so they can attack your hero in the most personal, damaging, agonising way. Love your villain as much as your hero.
6. Get your story right before you write a word of dialogue. Write a ten page treatment of this story, describing what happens to your beloved lead character.
7. Get a gang of your friends to read the treatment. If three or more of them pick up on a point independently, you might have a problem there. If enough people say something it is probably true.
8. Pick the first paragraph in your treatment. Think about it over and over again, visualise it in the bath, when you wake up, when you are walking along the street. Visualise what happens until you can run it through like a little movie in your mind, seeing what happens, almost hearing the dialogue. This will be your first sequence.
9. Get out your word processor, or your script writing software, whatever, doesn't matter. You can format it later. Get that sequence down now. Write the scenes. Make the characters move, and talk, and feel.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 over and over again, until you have got to the end of your treatment.
You have just finished your first draft.
Format it. Print it. Weigh it in your hand. Admire it. You should be proud. Few people get this far. And if you followed these steps, it's going to be far more readable than anything else you have written.
I hope you are intrigued by my stepping stones. Most writers take years and years of trial and error before they discover how to write in a way that people want to read. Many of them never ever get there, and give up, having wasted years of their life. Click here if you want a shortcut. (Oh, and John Smithery is a pen name. I'm still in the business, and there's no way I want the producers I work for so see how easy it is. I like the way they pay for my time...)
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