- Start with the title. – The first exposure anyone else will ever have to your story is the title; therefore, you may want to consider starting there yourself, especially given today’s keyword culture and infinite movie databases. Let the title give birth to a poster; which is the visual metaphor to define your story and introduce the conflict. Craft a good tag-line to introduce your theme. Now you’re thinking like a producer, and those are the guys who sign the checks. If you can’t imagine a good title, picture a good movie poster, or think of a tag-line… Stop now. Don’t write a screenplay. Words and pictures are the vocabulary of cinema. If you can’t think of a combination that’ll get you excited–save yourself the cost of an abortion–don’t let that bastard premise out of your notebook.
- Use word pictures, not words. – Show. Do not tell. Remember, it’s a screenplay. People call them scripts, but that word includes a lot of stuff. This is a screenplay. It will play on a screen. Screens use pictures to talk. This is the vocabulary you have chosen. Respect it. Word pictures are not about the words, but about the images they foster in our imaginations. If an author chooses words the audience is unfamiliar with, the audience is reminded they are reading. Eliminate this. Use the journalists vocabulary that Hemingway favored. Let people get lost in your story, not the vocabulary you’ve cultivated since being bottle-fed on Berenstain Bears books.
- There is no camera. – You are a writer. Put down the camera. Focus on creating word pictures to be photographed. Inspire people to make the movie, don’t tell them what it is.
- Do not use adverbs and gerunds. – Keep the story sharp and snappy. Get in. Get out. Screenplays sell ideas to people who make movies. Activate their imaginations. Don’t waste their time. There is no use or time for modifiers and passive voices. Don’t get weighed down with grammar–simply try avoiding the “ly” or “ing”. Problem solved.
- Plays use Acts, while movies use Sequences. – The Beginning, the Middle, and the End; are not synonymous with Act I, Act II, Act III. There are no curtains in movies. There are reel changes. Write for the medium. Pull up the scene selection menu on a DVD and tell me where it lists the acts. Okay. Now, tell me where this scene selection menu actually lists the scenes. It doesn’t. Those chapters are sequences, and there’s probably 18-21 of them. To create a beginning-middle-end, divide by the number three.
- Cliches kill, but archetypes are immortal. - Both occur often, or are–at the very least–consistently recurrent; therefore, what is the distinction between the two? Simple. One is boring. Don’t be that guy.
- Details–fire for effect only. - If you need to know all the details, write a novel. If you need to see them all, direct the movie. Screenplays don’t have the time or space for details, but our definitions of reality are very closely tied to them, and a story loses a sense of authenticity without them; therefore–details are important. Indeed, the details in a screenplay are analogous to salt in cooking–and should be used accordingly. Writer beware!
- If you’re not cutting gold, the whole thing is shit. - David Mamet likes to cut the best scene from each of his screenplays, but he’s a pussy. This shit is pass/fail and it’s a crazy-competitive market. In every screenplay, there needs to be enough ideas for five movies. If you can’t fill the space, the idea is vacant.
- The reader is smarter than you, but only knows what you’ve revealed. - Respect! Until they understand you, no one knows what you’re talking about. No one has to listen to you. Everyone is busy. Take responsibility for the reader’s experience. You will be rewarded.
- Make them laugh, and all will be forgiven.
Ten Keys to Writing a Salable Screenplay
December 10, 2009 · 6 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Anderson, Cinematic, craft, Creation, how-to, iKitAnderson, keys, Kit, list, Mass, salable, screenplay, screenwriting, tips, Weapons, writing
6 responses so far ↓
pissedandtart // December 10, 2009 at 1:59 am
Can you go into more detail on why gerunds are bad?
Kit // December 10, 2009 at 10:24 pm
@P$T: Sure thing. Gerunds are the calling card for the passive voice, which is a death knell to screenplays. You want the story to exist in the now. For a great breakdown of gerunds and the passive voice with a few good examples, check out this link: http://bit.ly/5Cb6rd
pissedandtart // December 14, 2009 at 2:06 am
That’d be a great link, if only the author knew what a gerund was.
A gerund is when a noun is formed from a verb; adding -ing is just part of it.
“James is running in the park.” Active voice and not a gerund.
“Running is great exercise.” Gerund, but still not the passive voice.
“James is going to take up running.” Gerund, but now as the object of the sentence rather than the subject.
Kit // December 14, 2009 at 4:20 am
@P&T: “James is running in the park.” Passive voice. Running=noun / Is=verb
“James runs in the park.” Active voice.
See how much better that reads. It’s sharp and quick. That’s what screenplays need to be. James is a person. He loves to run. Nike wants him to think that he is running, but he knows that running is a thing he loves to do and if he stops… well, he’s not going to stop being. James is a person, and you are not the contents of your wallet.
pissedandtart // December 16, 2009 at 7:43 pm
In “James is running in the park.” “is running” is a verb phrase. Running is more definitely not a noun.
If running were a noun, we’d be saying “James is the act of running while in a park,” which is clearly not the case, we’re saying “James is engaged in the act of running in a park” (here though, running was a noun).
If running were a noun in that sentence and you saw Jill running in the park, you could say “Jill has been Jamesing for four hours now.” And, that’s just silly, because no one runs in a park for four whole hours.
Kit // December 16, 2009 at 11:53 pm
@P&T: James runs. Show don’t tell. “Clearly not the case” doesn’t fly with busy readers. It is an assumption. In the screenplay format. Assume nothing. Eliminate the to be verb. It’s weak and passive. Write as a journalist or poet. Word.
PS: It’s “most definitely”, and not “more definitely”–but a grammar-shark like yourself already knew that.