Townie Bastard is one of my daily reads, and he recently posted on his attempt to write his first novel. Or rather on the frustration of discovering that what you thought was pretty good, still needs work. I can relate.
For the most part I quite like my screenplay, and in general it's been pretty well received by the people who have read it. But granted, those people have been friends or relatives. A couple of my relatives have links to the film industry and have offered up some pretty good suggestions which I've tried to incorporate in the screenplay. Recently a client who is a writer read the screenplay and had glowing words for it…
"You've really hit the mark. Very powerful work. Touches on all the horrors & the honours we have learned about WWI. But best of all you hit the humanity in each of the many characters…"
It's important to know however that he doesn't write screenplays. Nice to hear but is it a good screenplay? My growing frustration with never hearing back from production companies or agents, along with my suspicions that perhaps while the story might be good it might not be a good screenplay, led me to send my work to a screenplay consultant. Someone who worked in the industry and was well thought of.
I've just received his analysis.
I can't tell you why I decided on this genre as a vehicle for my writing, because really I know nothing about the mechanics of script writing or the industry. But I did, and my lack of knowledge of the medium, well lets just say it shows. I've got a lot of work ahead of me.
It's not that the story or writing is bad, but I have formating problems (I've already cleaned most of them up), and I have to learn to write for film. I tend to describe too much and have too much dialogue, my story is also rather episodic. I need to show more and talk about it less. Although it seems rather obvious, I've got to learn to write a movie, not a novel on screenwriting software.
The process with the consultant (who was a reader for Miramax) isn't over yet, there remains some followup, but in the mean time I have to absorb what I've done right and what I could do better. I suspect that once I trim some of the dialogue that I'll be ten or so minutes shy of the length I need so that's another problem. All in all though I think there is a really good story here, that will make a good movie, now I just have to write it that way. There goes this year's Oscar.
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4 responses
It’s a process. Good for you for seeking readers so you can grow and learn! Awesome!
I have a graphic novel I like called “Fortune and Glory” by Brian Michael Bendis. He’s a pretty successful comic book writer now, but when he wrote it, he was telling the story of having one of his first series “Goldfish” bought by a production company and they asked him for a screenplay.
And it was hystical because he had never written a screenplay before amd his first draft was 300 pages long. The guy reading it called it “a bit wordy” and then said he had a good movie in there, maybe even three. And laughed at him.
I don’t know much about screenplay writing, but there’s always this very good rule of thumb to follow – one page equals one minute of screen time. Your screenplay shouldn’t be more than 120 pages.
There’s screenplay writing software out there, which I assume you know about. Also, kfmonkey.blogspot.com is a good blog by John Rogers, who has written for movies and TV and knows a lot about the craft and how to break things down. Plus, he has tons of interesting links.
Good luck with it. Hopefully you beat your screenplay into shape quicker than my novel…
” I need to show more and talk about it less.”
Huge thing for me to learn as I moved from print to TV. Show, don’t tell. It takes time to get your head around it.
Thanks Liza. Its a process I’m enjoying for the most part.
I write with Final Draft Craig, which is pretty much the industry standard. I’m familiar with the 1 page equals 1 minute of film ROT. It was one of the first things I looked up, wanting to know just how long this thing had to be. Pretty much everyone wants screenplays of 90 pages (give or take) from unproven screenwriters, unsolicited or through an agent. Mine came in at 95, but the last page and a bit were notes for the reader and/or the credits. After I corrected the glaring format errors I come in around 93, but I’ve got alot of dialogue to trim. I suspect I’ll end up with 80 pages or so, ergo I need more story.
Thanks for the link to John Rogers’ blog BTW
Kent, I did better after my first big rewrite but still have a way to go. As a friend told me – Imagine you show up at a party and the host says, you should have been here earlier, there were models skinny dipping in the pool and a millionaire was handing out packets of $5000. Would you rather hear about it or have been there to see it for yourself?