How to write a screen play....

I have read all the rules and fine print already. I am already aware of what goes on. If everything doesn't go well I can always try again for next time.

Why is it dangerous?

BTW, my friend is part of the Writer's Guild so I have an advantage in case this doesn't work.

Um, you don't have an advantage at all. The guild does nothing but register screenplays. Zuh?

It's dangerous in terms of it's fine print. They, the rules state, cannot be held responisble if you enter a screenplay, don't win, and yet the winner somehow has a screenplay identical to yours.

Yeah, that's not suss.

The entire peer-judging-peer mentality of the contest though stinks. It's not just reviewing, or anything like that, the contest hangs in the balance, and the good screenplays will be cut down ever so quickly by anyone who perceives it to be better than theirs.

I suggest you wait and enter the Nicholl's Fellowship next year.

__________________
www.esotericrabbit.com

That's what I meant w/the screenplay.

Nicholl's Fellowship???

What I mean is, if he's a registered screenwriter or he works for the guild, that's not going to help you if "it doesn't work out" with PGL. In fact, having a screenplay registered means nothing. A registration protects it somewhat, sure, but a reigistration number on a cover page doesn't impress buyers. There is no advantage in having someone who is registered or someone who works for the guild, because registration isn't an advantage.

Sigh.

The Nicholl's Fellowship is run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Check it out at www.oscar.org

Double sigh.


Thanks for the link! That's the best one to enter?

Apparently.

It's also the most widely entered. The best part is, they name finalists, but let you know what percentile you came in [if you were in the top 10% or top 15%]. It's a nice thing to know, it lets you know where you stand.

Thanks again!

I found this in a post at Zoetrope, posted by poster quoting a letter he got from some guy. I like it, as he did, especially the last little bits. It's exactly what I think [and for that reason, it contradicts my being a writer, so Hell] and I urge anyone who wants to write a film becasuse they liked a movie they saw, or something like that, rather than having a story to tell, to read it...

* * * * *

I'VE GOTTEN A LOT OF EMAILS asking me how to learn screenwriting. Fact is, anybody can learn to write a script and there are a number of books that will teach you how. What they don't tell you is that you'll probably never be any more than mediocre, no matter how slavishly you follow their rules.

You'll notice I said "anybody can learn to write a script." This is analogous to saying "anybody can sing." Unfortunately, simply because one has the ability to execute a task, it doesn't necessarily follow that one will excel at said task.

Sure, if you really worked at it, you may become fairly good, but just because you blow them away on Karaoke Night, it doesn't make you some kind of Sinatra.

Any artistic endeavor requires craft and talent. The more you have of one, the less you need of the other. It's sort of like college entrance requirements. If your SATs are great, your Grade Point Average can kinda suck (and vice versa) and you can still get into most universities.
However, if you want to get into Harvard or Yale, more people are competing for fewer spots, which means both your GPA and your SATs have to be pretty damn good. Real damn good. Of course, having a relative who's a big wheel in the Alumni Society doesn't hurt either.

(Hey, this is turning out to be a better analogy for the movie business than I thought!).

So if you want to make it as a screenwriter, the sad fact is:

You must have talent.

There, I said it. The ugly truth. And it gets uglier:

Talent, no matter what anybody tells you, cannot be learned.

When I say "learned," I mean it in the normal sense, as in out of a book or in a classroom. Of course, that's just my opinion. I have a friend, Cliff Osmond, a brilliant acting coach, who says he can get a great performance out of anyone. And if anyone can, it's Cliff.

But I bet he can't get one out of Steven Segal.

I guess my point is I can't teach you how to be a great writer. Nobody can. But I can tell you how to be a good screenwriter--or at least better than you are now.

First and foremost:

Stop writing screenplays.

Then:

Start reading poetry;
Read more poetry;
Write poetry;
Lots of poetry;
Stop talking;
Listen;
Read;
Masturbate like a doomed lab-monkey;
Write more poetry;
Shoplift food;
Work at a series of meaningless jobs;
Get betrayed by someone you cherish;
Be afraid;
Watch THE SEVEN SAMURAI without reading the subtitles;
Pray for forgiveness. Mean it;
Read your poetry out loud to an unappreciative audience;
Get stoned;
Contemplate suicide;
Help someone for no reason;
Hitch-hike;
Get angry;
Read Bukowski, Fante, Vonnegut and Ellison;
Drink coffee all night;
Be true;
Fall in love (at least twice);
Observe;
Get fired for hitting your supervisor;
Doubt yourself;
Flip back and forth from A&E Biography and The History Channel until you're sure Tammy Wynette built the pyramids;
Drop acid;
Throw an ashtray through the television set;
Have kids;
Quit a job without giving notice. At lunchtime;
Fail;
Listen to music. Very loud;
Toss and turn;
Understand nobility and treachery, practice both, favor the former;
Make passionate love to someone you don't even like;
Tilt windmills;
Get evicted;
Suffer pointlessly;
Pay attention;
Be foolish;
Go to jail (at least once);
Survive all the above, but imperfectly.

Then:

Write a screenplay;
Write another screenplay;
Rewrite the first one;
Write a third screenplay;
Rewrite the second one;
Burn the first one;
Repeat the above instructions indefinitely.

"Ho ho," you're thinking, "that Dan . . . what a card! What a goof!"

Well, here's the ugliest truth of all--I'm perfectly serious.

There is not even a trace of a smile on my lips as I write this. Nobody wants to read a movie about a movie written by somebody who's only seen movies.

And know this: trying is its own reward. The very fact that you are willing to chase a dream makes you better than 99.9% of the humans on planet Earth.

Even if you're not very good at it.

Right off the bat, that's not true and any "teacher" would never tell anyone this. I'm not saying he IS a teacher, but he's replying to people who have asked him how to. If this was the first part of his answer to me, I'd already be assuming that he was cocky and a little less likey to believe anything he said.

Again, there is folly in what he said. Writing and singing are not the same. Apples and oranges. However, I watched a documentary of a woman who couldn't sing a true note that wasn't flat, ever. She took exstensive voice lessons, she wanted to sing for her dying father...she did and it was beautiful. She learned to sing.

Whew...what an *******. Practice makes perfect. Isn't that true?

He's "catch 22-ing"himself here. Here's my own analogy: I need a credit card, but I can't get credit unless I have credit.
Same with his statement: I want to learn to write, but I can't get better unless I'm already good.





That is a load of bull**** and completely pompous of him to say that.

This last statement is the only thing worth remembering, really Mattly.

I don't know Sades... While I think you may be right about some of that stuff, this guy wrote this as a reply to people who were asking him to teach them how to write, and I think his reply is correct, if you have no talent for writing, you are not going to be a succesful writer. However, the way he got this across did show plenty of pompous-itude. I espescially disliked his list of things you should do before writing a screenplay, screenwriting is not about writing from your laundry list of experiences, well, good screenwriting isn't. If someone had experienced all of those things, then they have just as good a chance of writing a decent screenplay as one who's experienced none of that. Part of writing is naivete, and the best writing comes from writing what you don't know. If you have an idea for a story, but you know whats going to happen, and you know how everything is going to be, then write down the idea and move on. Like Ray Carney says (a lot) If you know where your stories going to take you, then it's not worth doing. A good film tells you something about yourself, even if you're the writer.

So if you're going to do what this man tells you, be prepared to write the same thing he will. Life should be about different levels of experience, and often times, inspiration comes from ignorance.




And of course, anyone that doesnt like what I said, will probably say "Well, hero, then you must be awfully inspired". Well, ha, I beat you to it. Bastards.

__________________
"We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm."
--Winston Churchill

Well, personally Sadie, I disagree with you one-hundred-percent in most every way. I don't think you can learn how to write at all, sure you can become better at writing from writing, but you can't offically learn how to write a screenplay and I ultimately think that's his point.

You learn from writing, you learn from experience. His list of things to do isn't an offical thing, it's not saying; you must do these things, it's saying that experience [whether it be life experience or writing experience] is what's going to make someone a better writer. You're not going to be a better writer by writing to writers and asking how to write, and you're definitely not going to be a writer [decent or otherwise] if you start writing the production-line crap that those books teach you how to write. It comes down to experience, and he makes a fine point; you need experience in one way or another to write a screenplay. And that's true. It is, no matter what you want to argue, that's the truth.

Regarding his pomposity, I'm all for it. It makes it a far more interesting read, and I love that sort of harshness in what he's saying. Reminds me of someone.

Think of it this way.
Think of all the people Spudly ever told not to double post, and think of how many people kept doing it, and doing it, and doing it. It's not a matter of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks, it's a matter of not being able to teach a dog anything.

Hmmmm...I love ya', Gummly, but I have to disagree.

That depends on what you mean. I think writing, like virtually all skills, is a combination of talent and effort (or, in cases like this, education). If you're a naturally scrawny guy, professional weightlifting is gonna be tough for you...but not impossible. You'll just have a harder time making up for your natural shortcomings in that area.

I've always felt that with talent, you can be good. Very good. With effort/education/practice, you can, technically, also be very good. But you can be great if and only if you have talent and effort/education/practice. So, I'd modify the statement: you cannot learn to become a GREAT writer. You can learn to become a good writer. If the talent isn't there, though, you'll hit a wall.

"Experience" is a very, very, very, very, very vague word. It sounds to me as if, in this context, it refers to "interesting things," basically. Heartbreaking things, inspiring things, etc. I don't think these are required to write well. I think there are all sorts of things that can inspire, and that no one is anywhere near required. It depends on who you are. Many people can become wonderful writers simply by reading a great deal, even if they haven't had their heart broken, or contemplated suicide.

Well, yes, but what is "experience"? Sounds to me like it just means "life," and it's sort of a no-brainer that you need to have lived a little bit of life before you can write.

Who? You, or me?

I'm not all for it, personally. Being good and knowing you're good is just fine. If Larry Bird is telling me my grip on the basketball is all wrong, I won't think of him as pompous. If some guy I've never met tells me the same thing, though, I'm going to doubt him until he shows me somehow that he knows what the hell he's talking about. The person you quoted has given me no solid reason to believe he's a good writer or knows what he's talking about. I don't hand credibility out. You've got to earn it. I want to bear witness to his knowledge...or at least get some friggin' credentials.

Ding. We agree there.
You can learn to be good. But I'll argue that unlearning what you've learnt can make you great. I will argue this.

Experience, for lack of a better word; in this case, let's make it writing experience [of course, you have to write to experience writing, yes], reading experience, and yes, I don't think you can be a great writer without life experience, honestly. I don't mean full on having travelled Africa or anything, I mean, just having felt feelings and experienced things that make you write. I don't think you can just make yourself write unless you have something to say, and you develop ideals and thoughts and such, you develop the things you want to say through life experience. You do.

And I meant me.
But it can also be applied to you.



Have I earned your credibility? Oh, master of non-free credibility?

I don't follow that second sentence.

Anyway, I stand by my point (I can't tell if you agree or not, really): writing a good screenplay does not require much talent, but it sure helps.

Well, that covers damn near every writer. It seems to me that if you use a broad defintion of "experience," then the statement has an incredibly high "duh" factor. If you use a narrow version, it makes even less sense.

Hard to say. You make me laugh and you write quite well...but you're a total prick, too.

No, writing a screenplay doesn't require talent, writing a good one does. Simple as that.

No, it doesn't. There are writers who don't write because they have something to say, or that they have experienced and felt things they need to talk about; they write because they think it will get them into the movies, they think it'd be easy, they think it'd be cool.

Quite well? Very well, I think.
Total prick? Yes.

Hmm. Depends on whatcha mean, my dear Watson. Everyone has talent, if you want to get technical. However, when people refer to "talent," they tend to mean "abnormally gifted in this area." As in, born with an above-average level of skill at a certain trade or craft or something. I think you can be born with a very average grasp of the English language/writing, read like hell, and write something genuinely good. I think it happens all the time, too.

However, if someone reads a bunch of stuff, and as a result learns to write fairly well, most people would refer to them as having "talent." Most people just use it to refer to an above-average skill...not an innate above-average skill.

Even then they have something to say...it's just not necessarily their reason for starting to write. Someone sits down and decides it'd be cool to write a movie is still going to decide that they want to say something at one point. They just won't be writing it for the sake of writing it.

Seeing as how you're a total prick, and you acknowledge it, you'll understand when I refuse to feed your ego further.

Feed me. And so on and so forth.

Okay, Chris; let's be technical
Talent in writing...

I think you've misunderstood me. It sounds like you may be using "talent" as a synonym for "ability." If so, then everyone has talent for writing. Everyone has SOME skill in that area.

Regardless, though, I maintain the same: you can come into this world as a purely average writer, read like hell, and turn yourself into a good one. I think it's not only possible, but even probable. The idea that anyone born as a completely average writer (in comparison to everyone else) cannot become a good writer through practice and preparation is patently absurd to me. It's not a one-shot deal. It's like any other skill, really: having it helps, but you don't need to be born with any above-average facility for it to be reasonably good at it.

Now, to be great at it...that's another story.

And you should know that when it comes to me, it should automatically be implied that we're talking about great.

A person can write a screenplay.
A good writer can write a good screenplay.
A great writer can write a screenplay.
A person can become a good writer.
A good writer cannot become a great writer as easily as a person can become a good writer, in fact, it's rare.
A great writer can be born.
A screenplay requires ability.
A good screenplay requires talent.
A great screenplay requires ample talent.
A masterpiece can only be written by geniuses.
A genius is hard to come by.

I don't think I'm that hard to come by...

Any ways, so, you're saying that a person can become a good writer, and then graduate to a great writer, but even a great writer requires ample talent to write a great screenplay?

I'm so very, very lost in this argument, I personnally blame lack of sleep, because I was up so late last night writing a masterpiece.