There’s an adage in Los Angeles that everyone has a script. If you’ve ever been out during the middle of the day – when people should be working, but yet the coffee house is packed – you get the creeping feeling that this is true. And a major bummer for anyone trying to break into the film industry. If there are millions of scripts floating around out there, why would anyone bother with yours?
Have hope. I have read a lot of these ‘floating around’ scripts. Let me assure you, they’re terrible. Terrible comes in a variety of shapes a sizes: no character introductions, convoluted plotting, bizarre subject matter, no heart.
I have been reading scripts and writing coverage for eight years now – for independent producers, production companies, other writers, screenwriting competitions – and, despite all the material available to help people improve the quality of their writing, the material is still pretty dull.
Perhaps in trying to check all of the right boxes we’ve somehow lost track of the basics. Basic storytelling and how to do it in a way that’s fresh, with a voice, and with heart.
So, as a reader exhausted of reading mediocre scripts, I’ve decided to start posting some of the problems I run across again and again – in the hopes of giving you, my fellow writers, more tools with which to craft.
So, the story begins here. Screenwriter to screenwriter.
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