Basic Language Skills<\/strong>
\nLook, the reality is that basic \u2013 and, indeed, excellent \u2013 proficiency with the English language is our trade. Knowing whether the comma goes inside or outside the quotation mark isn\u2019t incidental to this craft. It is actually fundamental. If you got a D in your sixth grade English grammar class and didn\u2019t bother to learn the their, there, there\u2019s, they\u2019re rules, there is no shame in going out as an adult and purchasing a grammar book and learning those rules. (There is no shame in having your script professionally proofed, either.) I would actually argue very strongly that a basic, firm understanding of grammar, spelling and formatting is absolutely essential to a career in writing. Let\u2019s live in the real world, shall we? I don\u2019t have an intimate knowledge of all of the qualities of paint, and thus I don\u2019t call myself a painter. I don\u2019t have psychic communication with horses, and so I\u2019d never call myself a horse whisperer. If someone is going to call himself a writer and yet brazenly laugh in the face of our most basic tool \u2013 proficiency in grammar and formatting \u2013 then I will feel just fine laughing right back. \u201cSo, you thought you were going to be a writer? Guess again.\u201d And your baby, your \u201cgenius\u201d script over which you\u2019ve slaved now for a year \u2013 that has four formatting and three grammatical errors in the first two lines alone \u2013 will go straight into the bin.<\/p>\n

Please pay attention to expressions as well, and in particular foreign expressions that have been anglicized. I recently read a script wherein one of the main characters was \u201cMADRE DE.\u201d When I did a flip through, I kept wondering, \u2018Mother of what, exactly?\u2019 Of course, when I got to that character \u2013 who was not a mother and was a man \u2013 the writer had meant to say, \u201cMaitre d\u2019,\u201d French for head waiter, but didn\u2019t do enough research. If you\u2019re going to use a colloquialism, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to jump in,\u201d don\u2019t misquote it and say, \u201cyou got a jump in.\u201d Do the research and find the correct phrasing.<\/p>\n

In the competitions I read for, a script can be disqualified at reader discretion if it contains too many typographical errors, including grammar and formatting errors. This isn\u2019t because a bunch of grammar snobs are thumbing their noses at you, who has no basic mastery of your own language (which, sadly, isn\u2019t that uncommon anymore). This is actually a much more practical issue: if an organization is going to pass along your winning script to successful agents and producers, it has to look professional. Not professional as in, with another three passes professional. Professional, as in, ready to go now professional. You can have a couple of errors throughout your script \u2013 but more than that, and you\u2019re pushing your luck. But, if you thinks you use to getting way with Or, maybe you\u2019ll just get lucky and your reader\u2019s grammar will be as terrible as yours!<\/p>\n

On Final Draft<\/strong>
\nGo to the Writers Store (www.writersstore.com<\/a>) and buy yourself a copy of Final Draft screenwriting software. This is the industry standard, and it will save you time and energy trying to format your script properly. It does it for you with the magic wonder of the Tab key. Final Draft is not prohibitively expensive \u2013 it\u2019s about $250. If you think you are a good enough writer to be sending material out \u2013 i.e., if anyone other than yourself will be reading it \u2013 then you really ought to invest in some software. I know, I know \u2013 you tell yourself it\u2019s just a hobby, and you don\u2019t want to spend that much on a hobby. Okay, then \u2013 it\u2019s a hobby. Never, ever send that script out. To anyone. Otherwise, if anyone other than Aunt Ima May sees that script, you\u2019re going to look a little like an asshole, and that is not putting your best foot forward. Especially in a town where people keep databases.<\/p>\n

I actually covered a script the other day that was 130-some pages of unformatted goodness (and when I say unformatted, I literally mean text hanging off the printable page margins) \u2013 and when I imported it into Final Draft, it was 188 pages of delicious holy-crap-do-I-really-have-to-read-this pure wonder. Very few people can write 188 pages of cinematic goodness. And, I would be willing to bet my right arm you\u2019re not one of them.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine told me it was a little bitchy on my part to look down on those not using Final Draft software \u2013 especially when in the competition realm we\u2019re dealing with students. But, yet, I have to be honest: when I pick up that next script, and it\u2019s capped title sings to me in its little Paula Abdul voice, \u201cStraight up, now tell me, is it gonna be you and me together, oh oh oh?\u201d If I turn the page and it\u2019s all kinds of cockamamie crap all over the page, my only response can be, \u201cNo. Hit and run.\u201d Next.<\/p>\n

Margins and Font<\/strong>
\nI just had a conversation last night with a friend of mine who\u2019s also a professional reader and she indicated that her biggest peeve is when people adjust the standard page margins (1.5\u201d left, 1\u201d top and bottom, half inch right). Margins are non-negotiable. Margins are yet another way to standardize the material because it is intended to be filmed. Standardization in screenwriting is a good thing. Any time you stray from the norms you become suspect.<\/p>\n

Font is 12 point Courier. Always. This is for a few reasons, but namely it standardizes the number of characters that can appear on a page. So, if you use a proportional font, where you can fit more characters on a line, and you also adjust the margins, the only thing the reader will be thinking about you is that you\u2019re a douche for trying to cheat \u2013 because it\u2019s obvious the minute they see the first page that you\u2019re trying to keep your page count down. It isn\u2019t the margins that should have been bumped \u2013 it\u2019s all those extraneous scenes and beats that you needed to cut out.<\/p>\n

The minute you as a writer do something to fudge the standard conventions, the only thing on the reader\u2019s mind will be why. And, we look for the why. It\u2019s our job. Fudged font and margins assume overwriting and indulgent beats \u2013 and worse \u2013 because if the script had been professionally well written, the writer wouldn\u2019t need to pull that kind of crap to come in at 106 pages.<\/p>\n

Page Count<\/strong>
\nSo, last night when I was talking with my friend, the margin debate opened the door for us to consider page count. My friend thought that within the last ten years, the consensus is that shorter is better. You don\u2019t often see that many scripts that hit 120 pages anymore. In the competitions that I read for, I do see longer scripts, but I just usually assume that these writers haven\u2019t trimmed the fat because they think 120 is still industry standard. It\u2019s not, really. Yesterday I read a horror project I loved, and it was 120 pages, but I really skimmed act 3, and if I am being brutally honest, that writer could easily cut it down by about 15 pages, no problem.<\/p>\n

In fact, people who read and work with scripts on a daily basis know how long your script is simply by feeling it in their hand. I used to work for a creative executive at Warner Brothers, and one fine Friday afternoon, as she loaded her weekend read onto a little cart, she launched into an absolute tirade about page count. She picked up one script \u2013 one that was clearly closer to 120 pages \u2013 and started screaming that those extra ten pages were going to be the death of her, and didn\u2019t writers know that she has a life, and because that script was overwritten, it was going in the bottom of the pile for sure.<\/p>\n

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. A 103 page script would get read first because, well, it\u2019s shorter. A 120 page script would get read last \u2013 and be resented at every page turn. Now, it\u2019s true that some genres demand a longer page count, simply because they have more intricate plotting (historical epics, biopics, political thrillers, some psychological thrillers), however, in general, shorter is better. Horrors can come in at 90 pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Basic Language Skills Look, the reality is that basic \u2013 and, indeed, excellent \u2013 proficiency with the English language is our trade. Knowing whether the comma goes inside or outside the quotation mark isn\u2019t incidental to this craft. It is actually fundamental. If you got a D in your sixth grade English grammar class and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[3,4,13,17,19,20,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}