I just read a friend's script that was really good and professional--what a relief! And yet this friend is feeling stuck in his/her career, and looking for new representation. New writers don't understand this; That you get good at screenwriting, and write work that is top notch, and you still can't get an agent.
Well, yeah. There's still a difference between a good script and a script that lights up the town. And, clearly, if I knew the magic formula, then you would all know exactly who I am, and follow me on twitter, and hear me guest on the Scriptnotes podcast. Craig Mazin retweets all my dog pictures!
Sorry, I went somewhere there. I'm back now.
Reading someone else's good script is a really good exercise in trying to figure out why a good script still fails to excite the marketplace. My friend's good script, with its fun trailer moments and funny jokes, could still be better. The characters read kind of paint by numbers. Everyone sounded the same.
We've all heard this character complaint before. You've probably tried to solve it by giving one character a speech impediment, another a fancy vocabulary, a third an accent. This doesn't work. Oh, I know you're still gonna do it. Go ahead, give each character his/her own dialogue font. Don't listen to me. What do I know? Not how to get to Craig Mazin's house for A-list Screenwriter D&D night, that's for sure.
Everyone thinks Tarantino and Sorkin's big secret is in their dialogue, which, yeah, is awesome. (Hey, why did you switch to Tarantino and Sorkin to point out good dialogue? Umbrage! --Craig) Everyone tries to match these two (Three! --Craig) writer's word-recipes. And they fail, And reading my friend's script makes me think I know how to solve this problem:
Stop worrying about your recipe and butter your pan.
Tarantino and Sorkin and Mazin (Happy, Craig?) aren't worrying about the right words to say. They're giving every character a want for every scene. Once you do that, opportunities for two characters to want opposing things, or the same thing, leads to tension and opportunity for conflict.
My friend had a list of characters that filled his town, and they all moved together through the town's struggle, taking their turns to quip, be the hero or die. But nobody wanted anything unique, otherwise. So they never really fought amongst themselves. So I knew pretty much where the script was going the whole time and I was putting the script down from time to time.
Good script! But I put it down to check email and update my Capitals game moves.
If you really want to make it as a screenwriter, you have to write a script people don't put down. When people give you notes, just ask them if they put the script down to check Word With Friends, and if they say yes, then that's all you need to know. Go rewrite it or write something else.
And the first thing you should do with your rewrite is go through every scene to make sure each character has a want. If your sidekick is in a scene because he has the big clue in his pocket, and now's the time for your protagonist to solve the crime, then you've just sent me to check my email. But if your sidekick is in the scene because he's secretly been in love with the protagonist, and reveals those feelings by coming to the warehouse to save the protagonist, and so now your protagonist knows the sidekicks feelings, and AWKWARD, because the protagonist still needs what's in the sidekick's pocket--that's a way better scene where I won't need different fonts to hear different character voices.
But what about the store clerk? The character so inconsequential that he's literally there so the protagonist has someone to pay when he tries to buy salsa? Well, even then, give the store clerk a want. He wants to close early. He's fighting on the phone with his boo. Your protagonist has to buy this salsa to save the world and time is running out and the store clerk's want is now putting that world in jeopardy!
Otherwise, your characters become a mish-mash of story-puppets, and your screenwriter blog is anonymous. But that's okay, because I have my Gandarf's undying love! #Gandarf #cutestdogever
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