More than 85 members of the Visual Effects Society, all visual effects practitioners in areas ranging from vfx supervisors to technical artists to animators to vfx producers, contributed subsections about their areas of expertise.  If you are interested in Visual Effects, whether as a hand-on practitioner, or as a Director, Producer or Production Designer, this book will give you a comprehensive overview of the field.

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For starters, don’t ask Josh Olson for notes.  In fact, don’t ask anyone for notes that is unlikely to give them to you (especially if they’re prone to ranting at you).  That category includes everyone you’ve ever heard of in the business, unless either (1) they explicitly ask you to send them a copy of your script or film cut, or (2) you are somebody (i.e. a peer) in the business.  Even if the well known person is an actual friend, it’s usually best to wait for them to ask to read or view something you’re working on based on your telling them about what the project is.  (This is called pitching, and it’s the primary way many scripts get read and films get funded or picked-up — by generating active interest in the story via a short synopsis.)  If you pester someone into giving you feedback, expect the harshest criticism since they didn’t want to do it in the first place and will therefore be sensitive to every flaw in your work.

Getting feedback, however, is not that hard if you know how to go about it.  From the suggestions below, you want to cast about for note givers whose notes you respect and can learn from, until you find a pool of people large enough that you can ask about five of them for notes on any given project (how many people that means depends on how prolific you are — don’t ask any one person for notes more than once every 2–3 months, unless you’ve got a very long term friendship or a very close working relationship with them).

Ask your friends

Some of them are going to be too nice to you, others too harsh out of jealousy, but you might as well ask for notes from the one or two of your friends that you think can be the most straightforward.  The idea that asking your friends for feedback is a bad idea because they may not be experts has one clear flaw: Your friends are your audience.  Most people who go see moves do not know how to write or make them, yet they are going to critique your work anyway.  It’s not a bad idea to get some feedback from people like that up-front.  You will have to guide them, and you’ll probably get a lot of terrible notes from your friends, but hearing about where they are bored or confused is especially helpful since that’s where a general audience may also be bored or confused.  Just don’t take your friends notes too seriously, they are indeed biased, after all.

As time goes on, you’ll make friends with other writers or directors, professional readers, producers, and other industry professionals and well trained aspirants who will both be your friends and also be excellent sources of knowledable notes. These are likely to be your most consistently available source of actually helpful notes, provided you return the favor for them when needed.  But keep at least one reader in your pool who isn’t a pro, because knowing how the average person responds is helpful, even through all the bad notes you’ll get.  (NOTE: Your non-pro friends being a poor audience is mainly true of screenplays, anyway, as those can be confusing and difficult to read for non-experts.  Those friends who aren’t pros are actually a great audience for edits of actual films, because they’re the closest you’re going to get to a public test audience without paying for one.)

Take classes

Even some very experienced writers and filmmakers (usually ones who haven’t broken into the A-list yet) still take workshop classes like those offered by the UCLA Professional Program, or labs like CineStory or Sundance.   Classes serve three major purposes: (1) providing you with deadlines, (2) providing you with a group of people who are obligated to give you notes, and (3) meeting people with whom you may later exchange notes and perhaps even collaborate with on projects.  Classes are the best way to meet people and build relationships that may go from exchanging notes to something more concrete later on.

You may get some terrible notes from classmates, but you’ll also get some very good notes if you pick classes that are at serious places for serious people. Since UCLA offers online classes, there’s no reason to stay in an awful class, but don’t completely discount local courses (especially those at city and state colleges).  Be cautious when considering for-profit adult education programs.  They rarely offer anything that city and state colleges don’t, and are often overpriced for the quality of teachers and students you’ll be working with.

Getting an MFA is also a way to get a lot of critique of your work.  In the U.S., there are the Big Three film schools (UCLA, USC, NYU) and the AFI.  But if you can’t go to any of those, there are also other decent programs out there like Columbia, UT, and various others.  In the UK, there is NFTS, and other countries have major film schools as well.

Join a writing and/or filmmaking group

Many writing and filmmaking critique groups form out of class or retreat relationships, so the two suggestions are compatible.  But even if you haven’t taken any classes, you may find a group in your area through friends, a local college or library, or an online message board.  Some regions may also have film organizations (like San Francisco’s now defunct Film Arts Foundation) that have bulletin boards where you can post looking for a group, and which also host events where you can go meet in-person and try to form a group that way.

There are also online sites which function as virtual critique groups.  Some are just bulletin board forums, such as those at Save The Cat, where you can discuss craft, meet people virtually,  and post requests for critique.  But there are also a couple sites, Trigger Street and Zoetrope, which are specifically critique communities in which you must give critiques in order to receive them.  The whole purpose of those sites is to have users give each other notes, both to help each other, and so that the highest reviewed projects on the sites can be considered by production companies.  Since Trigger Street and Zoetrope are organized forums for exchanging notes, if you give notes, you will also get them.

Only under very particular circumstances — pay someone

Sometimes you’d like notes from a professional reader — the very sort of person who may read your work for a company you sendit to.  Surprisingly, this is quite difficult to find, and even more difficult to find at a fair price.  The only paid notes I’ve found thus far that are worth the price is Scott The Reader’s $60 notes offer, and sometimes the notes I get back from Wildsound and Austin Film Festival.  My general rule is that I will not pay more than about $80 for notes (not consulting, mind you, but a single read and one-time delivery of a packet of notes), unless they are exceptionally amazing and detailed notes.  And I’ve not yet found a notes giver that I’d pay more than $80 for.  Honestly, in terms of disinterested third-party readers that give decent or better notes, I’ve only found the three mentioned above at all.

Also, many people selling note services are not professional readers, they’re professional consultants.  Most professional readers only resell their services outside the studios through festivals (I’ve only found one so far that offers direct service — Scott).  Consultants can occasionally be worth working with — even some A-listers work with story and script consultants — if you have developed a personal relationship with them.  Most of the successful writers who work with a consultant at all usually work with someone that was a professor or mentor of theirs in their MFA or professional program, or at a retreat, workshop or festival.  It’s meeting the person and hitting it off with them that’s most important, though vetting their credits and credentials is also important (con artistry works because those people seem nice and helpful at first, so do your homework when meeting someone new).

For example I always take classes with, and get script notes from, the same professor: Tim Albaugh.  I wouldn’t have worked with him as a consultant, though, if I’d just stumbled upon his website.  It’s the personal relationship that’s important, because otherwise your chances of feeling ripped-off by a consultant are very high (because many — perhaps most — of them are worse than useless, and those that are good can seem terrible if your styles are incompatible).

Get representation and/or work with a producer

All of these recommendations are especially relevant before you manage to get a manager or develop a relationship with a producer who wants to take an active role in developing you and/or some of your work.  Once you do manage to secure one or both of those relationships, your primary notes will come from your manager and/or producer.  Most producers and managers will give you excellent, detailed notes and work with you to see your way through implementing them.  Their notes will be geared towards making your work sellable by them, and may conflict with your vision for the project.  Your job will be to persuade them to stay as close to your vision as possible, while recognizing the issues they’re raising with your material and addressing them in a way that gets at the core underlying problems which may genuinely cause problems for an audience.  That’s your job as a writer or director — to understand the material, and address issues with it in order to make it the best implementation of that material possible.

Working with a manager and/or producer will take your notes to the next level — but you’ll also still want to get notes from about five people for each major draft of each project.  So keep those friends, mentors and hired readers handy, because you’ll always want a group of people you can trust who will give you notes about your work that are as agenda-free as humanly possible.

Also, while notes sessions are different from on-set direction (which will be discussed in other posts), there are similarities, and many of these principles apply to direction: be polite, clear and concise, give the kind of direction you’d like to receive, etc.

Be professional and polite

Successful critiques are ones that are phrased in such a way that you describe the flaws in the work that need correcting in a way that is as positive as you can be without “blowing smoke” and coming off as a phony.  Genuine positive reinforcement in a notes session is easy to come by if you let yourself recognize the hard work that already went in to the work, and acknowledge it even as you observe flaws and make recommendations for improvements.

Nobody likes to be told that they are stupid, or that their work sucks, and hearing that in those terms will cause the note recipient to ignore the notes.  Giving unnecessarily harsh notes is counterproductive.  If you think the person is beyond help simply decline to give them feedback, and if they’re working under you on a production, terminate them.  There is never a good reason to belittle or degrade a colleague or subordinate.

Yes, there are assholes in the industry.  But most of the ones who are successful are not successful because they are assholes, but in spite of it.  Filmmaking is an industry of relationships, and you have to be quite amazing at what you do (or a marketing commodity, i.e. a “star”) for people to be willing to have a relationship with you even though you’re a jerk.  Even then, those who are professionals get the best results from people.  I know a number of prominent directors, writers, and producers through my work, professional associations, and the festivals and conferences circuit, and very few of them are assholes.

Give notes you’d want to receive

When giving notes, even if the person doesn’t ask, give them the notes you’d ask for if you wanted their feedback.  Be as brief as you can with each particular note, while still conveying the point you want to get across.  And give as many details as you feel the recipient deserves.  For example, when I give notes on friends’ feature screenplays, I usually give about four to ten pages of notes (unless they’re pretty far along, and don’t need it), all of them as precise as I can make them, organized more or less follows:

General Notes

• Overall feeling about the piece
• What I think the theme is, what I think the plot is, and whether or not they are coming together successfully
• Overall feeling about the main character, and what I think his or her arc is, and whether or not its working
• 1–3 major moments of confusion, if any
• Any points of confusion that run through the whole script
• 1–3 major moments of boredom / being less interested, if any
• Any boring elements that run through the whole script
• Fix suggestions for any of the above

Page-by-page notes

• What I think the scene is about, or should be about, and whether or not it’s working
• Anything in the scene that’s especially confusing
• Anything in the scene that’s especially boring
• Anything in the scene that’s just not working for me (even if it’s not confusing or boring)
• Fix suggestions for any of the above

That structure of note giving — general overview of what works and what doesn’t, followed by specific critiques on each element scene-by-scene — can also apply to notes to directors from producers, notes to editors from directors, and so on.  And it applies just as well to shorts, TV shows, and even stage plays as it does to feature film work.

Make your comments clear and concise

When giving notes you should be as precise as possible while still saying what you need to say.  Don’t bog down your point with unnecessary details, don’t make tangential comparisons, and don’t make suggestions that are so antithetical to what the writer or filmmaker is trying to do that they’ll just shut it out.

Make the exact point you’re trying to make, even if it seems too direct.  Usually clear and concise is not only more useful, but also less painful to the notes recipient than dancing around something thinking you’re trying to soften the blow.  Rambling notes often wind up sounding like you think the person is soft or an idiot and couldn’t deal with it if you just made your point, which is insulting.

And definitely use correct filmmaking terminology whenever appropriate — technical language is a shorthand that lets experts exchange ideas about a topic more clearly.

A note like:

The protagonist’s character arc is unfulfilled.  You set up his flaw as needing to grow up, but he is just as immature at the end as at the beginning.  It may also be hard for an audience to empathize with him, as he never makes amends to the people he’s hurt with his childish stunts.

Is much better than one like:

You set up your protagonist as this whiny, immature dude who’s always messing around with chicks and getting high.  I hate people like that.  It remind me of my ex-boyfriend, who is a total loser douchebag, and nobody would ever in a million years like a character that’s like that.  I mean, come on.  He’s like that the whole film.  Nothing but weed and chicks the whole time, and he never learns anything about anything.  He treats all these girls like they’re nothing but hoes, and in the end, he still treats them like hoes and is high all the time.  What a total jerk.  Guys like that are just gross.  Why’d you have to make it like that, anyway?  Who’s going to want to see that kind of crap, where some guy is just acting like a teenager the whole time and we’re supposed to like this twit and what’s that all about?  I’d make him a choir boy, who loves puppies and is a complete gentleman tea-totaler, and then people will like him better than the creep you’ve got now.

(Yes, I’ve received notes like that — and even much, much worse ones — but not from professionals.)

Rambling (and, in the example above, unprofessional) notes are going to do two things: confuse and/or bore the notes recipient, and make them think you don’t know what you’re talking about since someone who can’t give coherent notes is unlikely to be seen as someone who can help make the work better.  With notes, it’s not about how many things you say, but how relevant each thing is to helping the writer or filmmaker achieve the goals they set out to.  As Robert Browning said, “less is more”.

Get the notes back as quickly as possible

The person receiving the notes from you is likely continuing to work, and also receiving notes from others, while you wait to get back to them with notes.  This is even true if the person is someone working for you on a project that you’re producing or directing.  The longer you wait, the more obsolete your notes may become, and if it’s your project, the more you may be spending to have someone go in a direction you don’t want.

When you’re giving notes as a favor, it can be more difficult to convince yourself to be quick.  But you said you’d do it, and being timely does get the responsibility off your plate sooner.

Leave on a positive note

End your notes, whether it’s a written set of notes or an in-person notes session, on something positive.  Often the easiest way to get out is a general platitude such as: “great work so far, looking forward to seeing how you make it even better” or “finishing a draft or cut is the beginning of the journey, and we’ve all been there before, so don’t sweat the notes just make them your own and you’ll find your way to a great draft or cut”.

Those will suffice, but even better is to mention something specific you actually liked about the script — a particular character or story point, the writers’ voice, the director’s vision, the editor’s style, whatever it may be — and say that once the bits you’ve given your notes on are as awesome as that, the work will be great.

Giving notes isn’t your opportunity to seem brilliant at someone else’s expense.  Rather, it’s your opportunity to seem brilliant by impressing someone with both your insights and your professionalism.  Properly given notes will further a “I’ll help you, and you’ll help me” relationship.  Improperly given notes can ruin one.

You’re Asking, Not Demanding

Politely, is the first and foremost requirement.  Nobody is obligated to read your work or give you notes.  They’re not obligated to do so even if they already said they would, and they especially aren’t if they’re paying you (they can decide to pay you and never even read your work if they like — it’s their money).

Asking for notes from someone who is a professional (or accomplished pre-professional, such as a studious film student or avid self-producing filmmaker) is actually quite simple.  You identify people who are willing to give you notes, and then you say “will you read this and give me feedback”.  Then they say either “yes” or “no”.

What to Ask

If the person is not a writer, manager, agent, producer or director by vocation or avocation, they may not know how to give notes.  You’ll need to be more specific in what you ask them, without poisoning the well and accidentally guiding them into giving you your own notes back to you (you can also be specific in this way with more accomplished note-givers, but it’s not necessary and may annoy some).

There are two simple questions which are the core of all notes requests:

Where, if anywhere, were you confused?

and

Where, if anywhere, were you bored?

A few more advanced questions that can be asked include:

Is as many or as few words as you’d like, can you restate to me what you think the script is about, both in terms of describing the plot (what happens), and the theme (the moral of the story), and how they fit together or fail to do so?

Who is the main character, what is their problem at the beginning of the story, and how do they change at the end of the story?

Each time you encounter a new character in the script, can you please list that character by name, and tell me what you thought of them at first — and how that changes if you find yourself thinking more about them as you read on?

As you read, can you please write a rating number from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) beside each scene?

Essentially, those questions above are guiding your reader into writing development coverage of your script — or at least the closest approximation thereof that an untrained reader is going to be able to muster.

Additionally, you can ask between one and five specific questions about the script overall (any more, and the reader will get distracted and either give up or provide you with much poorer answers to each).  You want to be careful about picking those questions, and how you phrase them — you don’t want to write your own answer (or fear) into the question.  For example, “Is this film too dialogue heavy?” is a much worse way of posing that question than “What are your thoughts about how balance between action and dialogue in the film?”

Follow-up

People are busy.  Even people outside the industry.  Even your mom and best friend.  If you don’t get your notes back right away, follow-up after somewhere between four and eight weeks.  If your reader still hasn’t responded after another four to eight weeks, ask once more — then give up.  And if they reply and say they’re busy and will get you notes in the future, then patiently wait for the future.   Someone I know got a call from a producer with not only notes, but a request to go forward on the project, one year after they sent the spec script to said producer in response to a query.  If that writer had been desperate, they would likely have alienated that producer by pestering him and never gotten either the notes or the opportunity.

Naturally, don’t just wait for the future.  Keep working on other projects and pursue other opportunities.  And if the people you asked for notes never give you any, find new readers.

If you are passionate about your work, receiving notes can be very difficult and emotional, even when they are delivered in the nicest possibly way by someone you trust.  It is even more trying if the other person isn’t particularly professional about it.  But each person is responsible for themselves, not for changing others.  The only thing you can control is how you respond to the notes, regardless of how they’re delivered to you.

Receive Notes You Hate In A Maximum Zenlike State

Zenlike — not sullen.  Be as calm and detached from the process of receiving notes you hate as you possibly can without seeming to brood or distance yourself from the notegiver(s).  Don’t get defensive, and certainly don’t get angry.  If someone bothered to give you notes at all, they bothered to read your work.  They also bothered to care — maybe more about the project than about you, but at least 90% of all notes are given in the spirit of someone trying to make things better.

Multiple people have suggested receiving all notes with some variation of the the following response: “These are all really interesting ideas. I’ll think them through, figure out how they impact the rest of the story, and see where they lead.”

Ask Questions First, Shoot Later

Don’t start trying to consider and accept, modify, or refute difficult or unpleasant notes right there in the room.  You should ask clarifying questions, if you have any that aren’t confrontational, but otherwise it is incumbent upon you to keep things positive and moving forward until the notes session is over.   Don’t let the session bog down in long discussions (or, worst of all, arguments) about controversial notes.  Let people have their say, convince them you’ll think about their issues and address them, and move on.  Get through everything they need to say, then get the heck out of there.  Leave the room on a positive note, and make sure to thank all present.

Once you’re out of the room and have had some time to stop potentially taking the notes personally (and even seasoned pros sometimes do), then you can start to really analyze them and see what the notes are really trying to tell you.  It’s likely to not be what they say on the surface, because often people’s “bad” notes are just an indicator that they see something wrong but have no better idea how to fix it than you initially did when you wrote it in the first place.

Receive Notes You Love With Enthusiasm

Unless you’re unusually stubborn you’re unlikely to hate all the notes you get, especially on early drafts / edits.  When someone says something you really strongly agree with, let them know.  Get excited.  Thank them.  If you show someone you value their input, they are more likely to also value your input.  When you’ve received some of a person’s notes with enthusiasm, if you ultimately come back to them with a contrary idea for some of the notes you asked to think about, they’re more likely to agree that you’re right — because you haven’t just been rejecting their notes offhand, and have instead even gone so far as to openly appreciate some of what they’ve said.

Bring the passion and enthusiasm you’re supposed to bring to a pitch or general meeting to receiving “good” notes as well.  A friend once told me that in all his Hollywood experiences, generally the most (positively) passionate person “wins” the moment.  Use that to your advantage to focus the energy in the notes session on things you actually do want to do, and let the other stuff go with a mere “quite interesting, I’ll consider these ideas”.

Genuinely Consider All The Notes

When you say you’ll think about someone’s notes, actually think them through.  Especially the notes you hate the most.  Sometimes the notes you hate the most are the most useful (and sometimes they’re not).  You may discover you hate them because either you wish you’d thought of them yourself and are ashamed you didn’t, or because you did think of them yourself and discarded them because you knew it would be painful to make the necessary changes and now you’re faced with verification that you must do precisely that.  Shooting the messenger in those cases will only make problems where they never existed in the first place.

If you find yourself still disagreeing with the note, set it aside.  And if you never come back to it, it wasn’t the right note.  But if multiple people give you the same “bad” note, no matter how much you disagree it’s time to think it through again.  Maybe the notes are “bad” because the suggested corrections are way off — but then you need to find the core of what it is that multiple people are bumping on and solve it your own “good” way instead.  There is a problem if the same general issue is raised by many independent notes (i.e. notes not given in the same room or by people who are in regular discussions about the project).

Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Walk Way, Know When To Run

Once you’ve really considered a note and still disagree with it, if the notegiver insists on bringing it up again in future notes sessions rather than letting you quietly ignore it, attempt to gently persuade the person that your idea is really what they wanted all along.  Shane Black, at the Austin Film Festival, said basically this about “bad” notes in a couple different panels: “Writing is about persuading people.  So persuade them you’re right.”  You want to be passionate in your persuasion, but not confrontational.

You also don’t want to persuade someone out of all their notes.  They want to feel they have contributed something to the process, and that you value them as you expect them to value you.  A producer friend once told me a story about a writer they sent around town who came back excited that they’d persuaded everyone they met with that their notes were wrong.  This writer was not impolite, but even so within two weeks nobody would agree to meet with him anymore, and a career ended before it could even begin.

In the rare case someone is genuinely trying to merely come off as clever or derail a project they detest, you need to figure out a polite and professional way to deal with the issue.  If notegiver isn’t a stakeholder in the project, simply stop asking that person for feedback.  If they are, either find a way to bring that person over to your side, learn to armor yourself against that person’s attacks, or — if the situation is utterly intractable and you’ve got some other opportunities to move on to (and you almost always do) — politely quit the project.  But getting angry will just gird the other person for battle and make things worse, so it’s better for you to win with kindness and persuasion.

Address The Notes (And Have Good Reasons For The Ones You Don’t)

Once you’ve analyzed all the notes, and their impact on the story, your job is then to change the project in such a way that it addresses all the valid notes (and/or their underlying causes) in the way you determine is most advantageous to the story.  Whatever notes you do decide are not valid, you need a good reason for it (one that shows you thought the note through thoroughly — “it’s just not going to work” is not a good reason).   Even if nobody ever brings up a particular note ever again, you want a good reason for any notes you don’t address so you can convince yourself that your reasons for ignoring the note are valid.  Your job is to make the best possible project you can, and that means hard work, including sometimes unpleasant hard work like thinking through notes you detest.

Work At It

If you care deeply about what you’re writing, directing, editing, etc., it may not be the easiest thing in the world to follow this advice.  It certainly isn’t always so for me.  But maintaining a positive attitude during notes sessions is something that can, and must, be learned.  Review yourself after each notes session, and let yourself know what you need to improve on.  Focus on paying attention to what you’re doing in the room.  Force yourself to think before you speak.  If you find yourself getting caught up in the moment, do something that forces you to take a moment to calm down (writing down the note that’s getting me riled up, but rephrasing it in the most inoffensive possible manner often works for me).

Practice getting notes from people you really know well and trust, who will tolerate your initial amateurish, overly emotional responses to notes — and then let them critique how you received their notes.  And if you do screw up in a room with someone, apologize, and make sure you learn from your mistakes.  Becoming someone that giving notes to is a pleasant experience can mean the difference between a stellar career and no career at all.

I’m also using it to dis­cuss a phe­nom­e­non com­mon to all aspects of film­mak­ing, and all art: You can always find mis­takes you’ve made, and think of ways to cor­rect them, even after you think you’ve fin­ished.   There is a logic bug in the orig­i­nal scene that both­ered me after I sub­mit­ted it, even though I hadn’t really caught it dur­ing proof­read­ing.  And while it both­ers me, and I’ve fixed it in the edited scene below, I could eas­ily get away with it since it’s the kind of logic bump that is com­mon through­out pub­lished Super­hero writ­ing: lack of clar­ity in the rules of the world can lead to what seem like inex­plic­a­ble rever­sals of for­tune.  See if you catch it in read­ing the sub­mit­ted scene:

(Find the analy­sis “below the fold” if read­ing from the front page — i.e. click “con­tinue reading.”)

The main thing I’m try­ing to do in this scene is write com­pelling action.  The short action blocks, some­times cut on key moments, keep a quick rhythm going.  (I was inspired a bit by the style used in this excel­lent Michael Mann exam­ple from Heat.)

I tried to “keep the action tight” as John phrased it, and the main place I broke from that was in describ­ing Adam and Dr. Dark­ness.  I like “over” describ­ing main char­ac­ters, but don’t fol­low my exam­ple on that front — I seem to be the only one who likes it.  In this instance, I espe­cially like the fact that the descrip­tion hints to a would-be Direc­tor to intro those char­ac­ters with a “heroic hold.”  Super­hero films, I believe, ought to give the audi­ence moments to cheer at the hero’s entrance and gasp at the villain’s.

Brickhouse’s intro, on the other hand, I find quite good if I may be so bold.

“Their bad luck” is a bit of a Shane Black style aside.  They’re not cur­rently in-vogue, but I thought it helped set-up Brick­house quite nicely — and hey, you never know when they might be in-vogue again.

I prob­a­bly should have started his descrip­tion here, to be fully com­pli­ant with cur­rent trends in char­ac­ter descrip­tion, because this is con­cise (and if I may again be so bold, very vivid).

The first action he takes tells you what this bat­tle between Brick­house and the Cops is going to be like: utterly one sided.  He can line drive cops like base­balls, for Pete’s sake.

Flick­ing the park­ing meter heads at the cops tells you impor­tant things about Brick­house.  It estab­lishes that Brick­house may be big and mean, but he’s also imma­ture.  To him, par­tic­u­larly against the Cops he com­pletely out­matches, it’ s just a game.  He’s not an evil killer (he’s pum­mel­ing the Cops, but not killing them like Dr. Dark­ness does later), he’s just self­ish and (as his response to being trapped reveals) petu­lant.  His intro says a lot about his char­ac­ter through action.  The guy hardly speaks, but you know basi­cally every­thing about him by the end of this scene.

Adam gets a long, Marvel-style hero introduction, a slick character emerging from chaos:

To me, this is the least successful part of the scene, because it doesn’t say all that much about Adam in terms of per­son­al­ity — only that he’s pow­er­ful and con­fi­dent.  On the other hand, that’s the intro­duc­tion of a lot of Super­heroes.  Still, dock points for being less than orig­i­nal here.

We learn moments later, how­ever, that Adam is pretty quick and shrewd as well as cocky and powerful.

What we don’t find out is his flaw, or any­thing about his back­story.  Dr. Dark­ness should per­haps have pum­meled him a big and com­mented on it, before Adam’s dar­ing escape, but I didn’t really feel it fit into this scene.  If this were a whole script, that sort of stuff would be in other scenes.

I did clean-up his intro a bit in the edit below, and if I’d set-up more of his back­story with ear­lier scenes, I’d give him one or two more poignant (and char­ac­ter reveal­ing) lines.  In terms of char­ac­ter, though, this scene is more Brickhouse’s than Adam’s.  Adam and Doc are still impor­tant in the scene, and if this were a full script (maybe some­day it will be) they’d be more impor­tant in the over­all film, but this scene would be Brickhouse’s moment in the script (though not exactly the finest moment in his career as a supervillain).

Every scene should develop char­ac­ter, and this one does to vary­ing degrees for all three supers, but it does it more through the action than dia­log.  The dia­log is this scene is not par­tic­u­larly deep.  But I’m ok with that (though I did clean it up a bit in the edit).  Last I checked, peo­ple don’t really say any­thing all that deep in the mid­dle of a fight any­way (in fact, out­side of the world of hero fic­tion, it appears that they mainly just grunt a lot).  What each super does is more impor­tant that what they say.

The scene itself actu­ally has a struc­ture, not unlike the three act struc­ture of a whole script.  All good scenes do.  The idea is for the scene to have an arc, but to also end in such a way that you want to find out what hap­pens in the next scenes.  So you want your scene to have a rise in the action / ten­sion / stakes, a peak, and then a res­o­lu­tion of the scene moment — but then, unlike the res­o­lu­tion of a whole script (usu­ally), to exit on a ques­tion that leaves the reader want­ing to know more.  Here’s what this scene looks like in 3 “acts”:

1. Brick­house has the upper hand ver­sus the cops.  He’s pretty rough, but nobody’s get­ting killed.  Still, he’s got the MacGuf­fin.  He’s going to get away with it, until…
2. Adam arrives on the scene.  They fight, Adam and turns the tables on Brick­house.  But just as it seems like he’s won, Dr. Dark­ness arrives and imper­ils Adam.  He’s doing some­thing that Adam is hav­ing a hard time with­stand­ing (he strains against the Scepter as the Doc does his thing), and he’s about to anni­hi­late him when…
3. Adam turns the tables on Dr. Dark­ness.  He not only escapes, but he weak­ens the Doc.  He and Brick­house barely make it out alive.

Because I wrote the scene with the idea that it was a scene, and not a whole story, it also ends on a cliffhanger that adds ris­ing ten­sion: Who is The Scepter and does that mean Our Hero is now in even worse dan­ger?  That’s bad, because he just barely defeated Dr. Dark­ness — he had to chuck a black hole at him to get away.

As for the logic bug, the real prob­lem is what Dr. Dark­ness says.

He claims the black hole drained all his energy, but then he goes on to melt the steel off Brickhouse’s legs and engulf sev­eral cops in a cloud of Dark Energy.  Obvi­ously, it didn’t drain all his energy.  But it did drain him enough that (a) Adam was able to escape, and (b) he needs to go see the Scepter in order to con­tinue with his evil plan (what­ever it may be).

I didn’t want Adam to have done some­thing truly evil, so I wanted to explain away the idea that he endan­gered inno­cent bystanders with his black hole gam­bit.  This made it essen­tial to me that the Doc­tor to explain what hap­pened and why Adam wasn’t about to kill a bunch of folks — he knew that Darkness would defeat the black hole before it did real damage.  Dark­ness osten­si­bly explains this to his denser com­pa­triot, though really he explains it to the reader (expo­si­tion is a par­tic­u­larly nec­es­sary evil in fan­tasy, sci-fi and super­hero sto­ries).  And while the full work­ings of the Apoc­a­lypse Staff are intended to be a mys­tery in this scene, I decided to make clear that Dr. Dark­ness has at least one clear use for it in my fix.  So here’s the fix:

So he’s not at full strength, but he still has enough left to melt steel and dis­patch the Cops.  And it’s impor­tant that he does, because it tells you that he’s pow­er­ful enough to be a real threat to the hero.  This guy can col­lapse a black hole with his Dark Energy and still have enough left to sim­ply brush-aside mere mor­tals (even in groups).   You’d believe this guy is a threat, and if he’s a threat, this Spec­tre must be a real badass.  The idea is to leave the scene with ris­ing ten­sion.  I want the reader to believe that Adam is still in seri­ous dan­ger — he may have won the bat­tle, but the war is not nec­es­sar­ily going in his favor.

Finally, here’s a full edited ver­sion, with the logic bug fixed.  I didn’t make it shorter — I think it’s a pretty good length for what the scene is.

I have, on the other hand, met many people who consider themselves aspiring screenwriters who have never actually read a screenplay.

“But I watch tons of movies” is often the response to my amazement that someone who wants to write screenplays has never read any.  As mentioned in my post about screenwriting books, this response is like meeting an aspiring composer who says she doesn’t read sheet music, but says “I listen to a lot of music.”  If you want to be a screenwriter, of course you have to watch a lot of movies — but you also have to read them.

Some people, when confronted with the incongruity of their situation, complain that they are unable to find any screenplays to read.  Others say that they don’t really know what to read or how to read it.  Since you can’t write something you can’t read, this post will help you figure out both where to find screenplays to read, and how to go about reading them.

(Click “con­tinue read­ing” below, or on the head­line above, to get to the full post from the front page.)

How do I read a screenplay?

Screenplays have a few basic components:

Fade in is a transition.  It is traditional to start a script with it, but another transition might get substituted.  It is no longer common to put a transition between every scene. The slugline starts with INT. or EXT., gives the short name of the location the scene takes place in, and ends with DAY or NIGHT (sometimes the time of day is a little more specific, but simple DAY vs. NIGHT is more common currently).  Action blocks introduce characters, describe locations, and specify on-screen action.  Character names, dialog blocks and parentheticals (when used, they’re not preferred these days) tell you who is speaking, what they’re saying, and perhaps gives a small bit of direction in the parenthetical.

Those are the basics.  Some screenplays may specify shot callouts as well.  These would be in ALL CAPS and left justified, and may have keywords such as ANGLE ON, POV or INSERT.  Or it may just describe a place, such as ACROSS THE STREEET.  This is considered uncommon in spec scripts and pre-shooting drafts, but you’re likely to run across it if you read screenplays.

Essentially, knowing that format is all there is to reading a screenplay.  You can study a lot about structure and various theories about character and theme, but the main point in reading a script is to determine whether or not it “worked” for you (you enjoyed and/or it moved you), and if so, why, and if not, why not.  That’s not necessarily a matter of fitting the experience into a theoretical construct.

You can learn practical lessons about writing by figuring out what kind of style and flow appeals to you for both dialogue and action, as well as examining the inter and intra scene pacing.  Pacing is simply a matter of relative lengths: when  action blocks, dialogue blocks, and scenes are long vs. when they’re short, basically.  Also pay attention to when, and how often, plot signifigant things happen.  Signifigant moments for character relationships and theme, on the other hand, should happen in every single scene in a great script.  Future posts will deal more in-depth with structure and theory, but it’s best to first read a bunch of scripts “fresh” — but before you bog your mind down with such things.

Where can I find screenplays?

There are a number of general screenplay libraries on the Internet.  Here are some of the more extensive:

Daily Script
Drew’s Script-o-Rama
Internet Movie Script Database
JoBlo’s Scripts
Movie Script and Screenplays
Simply Scripts
Weekly Script

Especially interesting are collections of scripts that are posted by their authors, such as John August’s library and Alex Cox’s writing page. There aren’t many of these, so if you come across more let me know and I’ll amend this post (and the links page) with those links.  All of the above sites offer their scripts for free.  Since the screenwriters get no money from the sale of copies of their scripts, I highly recommend you scour the free libraries (and do a Web search) first, before moving on to sourcing your copy from any of the places that sell copies of screenplays (usually for about $15/each) such as Script City or Hollywood Book and Poster. Both of these kinds of sources, paid and free, are quasi-legal at best — but their existence is thus far tolerated.  They are the primary source of pedagogical material for aspiring screenwriters who don’t have access to the most reliable and ethical sources: the script libraries at USC, UCLA, NYU, The Academy, AFI, or some similar institution.

What should I read?

Screenplays on these sites are generally in one of two formats: text or PDF.  Sometimes you find Final Draft (.fdr), Movie Magic Screenwriter (.mmsw or .scr), or Word (.doc or .rtf) documents as well.  Generally, PDFs are most likely to be accurate replicas of a version of the script as actually written by the screenwriter(s).  With the other formats, it’s generally not clear whether the document is a reformatting of a printed version of the screenplay or a transcript of the dialog and scene description written by someone watching the film.

From the point of view of screenwriting craft, transcripts are essentially worthless (Script City and HBP are both pretty good at noting when the copy they’re selling is a transcript — the copious eBay script sellers are generally not open about this).  Transcripts don’t show you the actual words the writer(s) put onto the page.  You’re better off just watching the film.

The formatted scripts you’ll run across are shooting scripts, and pre-shooting drafts.  Of the two, you’ll learn the most about writing spec scripts from the latter.

Spec Scripts & Pre-Shooting Drafts

A “spec script” is the name for any script written without any contract, in the hopes of selling it to someone or making it yourself.  It is material written “on spec,” i.e. “on the speculation” that someone might buy it.

The best way to get exposure to large numbers of spec scripts (of wildly variable quality) is to become a profesisonal script reader for the studios.  But if you can’t (or don’t want to) do that, screenwriting community sites like Zoetrope and Trigger Street are full of spec scripts — also of wildy variable quality.  The way those communities work is that you read and comment on some number of scripts, and once you’ve done so, you can submit your own script for comment.  The more scripts you read and comment on, the more comments you can get on your script(s) — a system which is both fair and promotes perfunctory critique.  Critique community sites like those are basically on-line writers’ groups, though an in-person writers’ group (by virtue of being smaller, and more personal) is more likely to give you in-depth critique.  But for the purposes of finding a lot of spec screenplays to read, such sites are excellent.

Occasionally you stumble across one, but it is relatively uncommon to find spec scripts by established writers (generously, John August’s library and Alex Cox’s writing page both have some).  For material that was the writers’ original, and not a contract assignment, what you are most likely to find circulating online (and in the script shops) are pre-shooting drafts of scripts — revisions of the original spec, post studio notes — and not the spec that sold in the first place.  When you see a script that says “first draft” on it, it more likely means that you’ve found a first studio draft than that you’ve found the original spec script.  However, in terms of writing style and format, these pre-shooting drafts are the same as spec scripts, the writing is just more refined in the post-spec drafts.

Pre-shooting draft scripts are your best bet for reading the kind of writing you’re aiming for: the format is correct, and the writing has been polished.  You should read as many of these as you can.  Definitely read scripts written by masters such as William Goldman, Paddy Chayefsky and Billy Wilder, and by contemporary “literary” screenwriters such as The Coen Brothers and Charlie Kaufman.  But also read scripts in the genre(s) you intend to write, good and bad.  If you train yourself to start paying closer attention just as you’re losing interest, reading bad scripts will teach you as much about what to avoid doing in your own scripts as reading good ones will help you understand what to do.

Spec scripts and pre-shooting drafts look basically like this excerpt from John August’s Go spec:

Shooting scripts

Real shooting scripts add various information that should not be in a spec script.  This includes scene numbers, camera information, and revision information.  Revision information comes in the form of a list of revision dates and color codes on the front page of the script, changes made in each revision printed on colored pages, and a revision call-out on the page (basically in case you need to fax the material to the talent) that looks something like this: REVISED — GOLDENROD.  There may also be shot call-outs inserted into the scenes that don’t use camera angles specifically, but specify MONTAGE or INTERCUT or call out shots such as “ON BOB” or “ACROSS THE STREET” that look like new scene headings (all caps, left justified) but without new INT./EXT. or time of day slugs.

Some spec scripts do the latter (shot callouts, without angles or move specifiers such as PAN or DOLLY), if utterly necessary, but specific camera angle/framing/move callouts, scene numbers, and revision pages are considered solely the domain of the shooting script.  Once you know how a shooting script differs from what should be put in a spec script, you can safely read them as examples.  They often don’t read quite as smoothly as a non-shooting draft, and specific camera angles and moves may have replaced some of the descriptive language that you’d need in a spec, but otherwise they’re relatively similar.

This sample from There Will Be Blood shows scene numbers, two camera angle callouts (CU.), and three other shot callouts:

And this one shows camera move and framing callouts:

That kind of camera information is verboten in a spec script because putting it there denies the Director and Cinematographer the opportunity to do one of the most fun parts of their jobs.  It also makes the script a more awkward read.  The screenwriter is obligated to convey the visuals with description, and the minimum amount  of technical callouts.

There is another kind of shooting script, mostly used in shooting industrials and some documentaries, and is not at all like a spec script.  That is the two-column shooting script.  This format is useless for narrative screenplay writers, because it’s never used for that.  Sure, it could be used for narrative film shooting, but it isn’t.  Two column sripts look like this example from a Florida Department of Education training video:

Newmarket (and similar) “shooting scripts” books

Book company Newmarket Press offers a series of books that contain the shooting scripts for various films.  However, these scripts have been reformatted to fit into book form.  They are generally not printed using 12 point Courier on 81/2 x 11 paper, so the page counts are off and/or the text has been rescaled for the smaller format. Not all books of so-called shooting scripts are actually even in the shooting script format.  Some do not have line numbers (in the Newmarket series, the American Beauty script does not, but Shawshank Redemption does), others are completely reformatted for the book format and don’t even look like non-shooting draft scripts (the Newmarket books I’ve seen thus far generally are in a screenplay format, but some other books of screenplays do not look like screenplays at all).  The shooting scripts in books definitely don’t have colored pages and revision annotations.  There is also a claim that the scripts that are printed in these books are revised after the film has been shot to always match the final edit, rather than to truly reflect what was used to shoot the film.  I don’t currently have both the Newmarket (or other publisher) book of a script, and a script that I know for a fact to really be the final shooting script draft of a film, to make a comparison.  If someone does and passes along that informaton, or if I come across such a pairing on my own, I’ll write a future post about it.

In general, the Newmarket books seem pretty good in terms of faithfulness to the format, particularly by comparison to other script-as-book offerings.  But you’re sill better off reading PDFs that are either scans of printed scripts as used during development and/or production (or that were made from the original computer files of the script as delivered).   If you are interested in the book format, here are a few interesting offerings from Newmarket:

The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series) Frank Darabont, Stephen King

American Beauty: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) Alan Ball

Stranger Than Fiction: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) Zach Helm

Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts Series) Michael Arndt

Black Hawk Down: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series) Ken Nolan, Ridley Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer, Mark Bowden

Michael Clayton: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) Tony Gilroy

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series) Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry

Milk: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script) Dustin Lance Black

The Truman Show: The Shooting Script Andrew Niccol, Peter Weir

The Matrix: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series) Larry Wachowski, Andy Wachowski

The Savages: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) Tamara Jenkins

Juno: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) Diablo Cody

Screenwriting requires knowledge of a very specific format. It is quite different than the formats used for novels, stage plays, interactive media (games, educational, etc.), or teleplays (which has different historical formats: one-hour film, half-hour film, and half-hour tape).

Using professional screenwriting software will make adhering to the format a lot easier, but doing so is not an excuse to avoid understanding the format and how to use it. It’s up to you to make sure you know how to use your software and what the results should look like, particularly with regard to things like whether or not you want default behavior from the software when it does something currently out of vogue (cont’d at the bottom of pages with continued dialogue blocks being the most obvious).

Why should I spend two hundred bucks on an overspecialized word processor?

Regarding such software, some people inevitably ask: “Can’t I just do all this in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice, Framemaker, LaTeX, Emacs, etc.?” If you enjoy wasting your time setting up formatting in one of those pieces of software, and you don’t asipre to write for the screen professionally, go for it. (People also ask if they can use a font other than courier, the correct response to which is: “What benefit could you possibly attain by using a different font?”)

The reason I say that you need professional screenplay formatting software if you aspire to write professional is definitely not because I think that a truly great screenplay can only be written in the proper format — but its chances of being read by anyone who might help your career along are greatly diminished by failing to do so.

Furthermore, if you get to the point where you are collaborating with another writer, you will be expected to (a) know how screenplay formatting software generally works, and (b) already own the software they use and be able to exchange files right away (or one of you will rush out and buy the software your collaborator prefers and use your (a) knowledge to quickly get up to speed with it).

Being a screenwriter who doesn’t know how to use professional screenplay formatting software is like being a terrific carpenter who doesn’t use power tools: you may be amazing at the craft, but good luck getting taken seriously in the profession. The sad fact is that a better writer who isn’t as up-to-date with trivium about formatting, style, business approach and tools of the trade is less likely to succeed than a lesser writer who is. It sucks, but I didn’t make the rules.

Which screenplay formatting software should I get?

There are several screenplay formatting tools on the market (and available for free), but if you are serious about this business, there are only two that you will ever purchase. They are:

Final Draft Version 8

The heavyweight industry champion, Final Draft.

Movie Magic Screenwriter Version 6

And the scrappy challenger, Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Any competitor will have a long way to go to catch up with these industry leaders in terms of features and user base, and even those that do are unlikely to survive (case in point is Sophocles, which was a fantastic piece of software that just vanished one day — leaving you unable to buy it, and its owners unable to get support). Other dedicated formatting software is so utterly irrelevant, I am not going waste my time mentioning it.

I will mention Celtx, which is a free preproduction suite that also has an integrated script formatting tool, and even more importantly, can import and export to MMSW and FD (though it does so via text, which can be a lossy process).

Since Celtx is free (the right price for software that isn’t industry recognized), it’s a potentially good choice for your no-budget projects that are totally DIY, and don’t require professional-track tools. You can learn about screenwriting, storyboarding, and scheduling by using Celtx, and then move on to more industry standard tools as your skills and career progress (including transitioning by getting MMSW or FD to write with, and still doing your boards and scheduling in Celtx).

I happen to have both Screenwriter and Final Draft, because through writing classes, writing groups, and collaboration with other writers one-on-one I’ve run into situations where one or the other is required. Both are suitable for writing screenplays (and teleplays, stage plays, and so on — they come with lots of formatting templates).

Given the option to choose, though, my personal preference is for Screenwriter, and it is for one simple reason: I adore the docked left-hand panel that has outline, scenes, notes and bookmarks navigation views.

To me, this is a great writing UI.

Overall, the user interface feels better to me in Screenwriter. Even Final Draft version 8 seems a bit outdated, despite being newer than Screenwriter version 6. Here are the pros and cons of each package:

MMSW — Pros	FD — Pros	MMSW — Cons	FD — Cons
Scene view is integrated into primary UI, as is outline, notes and bookmarks view (you can get rid of it if you want, though).	Scene view has been restored in version 8.	Can’t print to a stack of individual index cards (a 1x1 layout option exists, but it doesn’t print 3x5).	Only one predefined index card layout.
Good customer service.	Good customer service.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.
More choices for index card printing.	Industry standard package and format.	Bug sometimes causes outline or scene view to redraw improperly, but panel is reset by switching to another tab and back (used to crash MMSW, this is now very rare).	Format Assistant used to frequently crash the program.*
More contemporary feel to the user interface.	“Preferred software” status with WGA registry (but you can register within MMSW too).	New version release schedule seems a bit slower than Final Draft.	Simply paging down the script caused redraw problems.*
More format templates.	Better general report options (scene, location, character, cast).	Can’t edit script when viewing index cards, though you can see both windows.	Cut and paste also used to crash intermittently.*
More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	Collabo-writer Internet real-time shared writing environment.	More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	No outline, notes or bookmark navigation view.
Better breakdowns and integration with Movie Magic Budgeting.		Annoying free-form title page layout is only option.	Can’t view index cards view and script view side-by-side.

* NOTE: These 3 bugs caused me to abandon FD until the recent version rev, and I’ve only briefly tested version 8 in which all 3 seem to be fixed (so far, under very light testing conditions).

Ultimately the two pacakges are not radically different (there are differences, but they ultimately do the same thing). Which one you choose is primarily a matter of personal choice: download the demos and try them out. The package that you like better is the one that’s best for you.

1. Do as I say, not as I do. Don’t read more than a couple of the “how to” structure / formula type books. They’re all saying basically the same things, so just try to actually understand the one or two that seemed most appealing to you from the get-go before trying another one.
2. Anyone who says that following their pet structure formula is a necessary condition for success is lying.
3. When you read (or, for that matter, are taught by a mentor) that you’re always supposed to do (or not do) something, come to deeply understand the reason for it rather than taking it as axiomatic. Once you have that understanding, then you’ll be able to figure out when you can actually get away with not doing it (or doing it).
4. Some advice and technique that other people swear by, you’ll absolutely hate. And vice-versa. It’s all a matter of what works for you, and what doesn’t.
5. There’s no substitute for actually writing. You’re not really going to learn all that much about screenwriting by reading about it. Frankly, you won’t even know what mistakes you need to get advice about how to avoid until you make them.

With all that in mind, here is my screenwriting book round-up (click continue reading below, or the headline above, to get to the full post from the front page):

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting — Robert Mckee

Everyone in the business has read Robert McKee’s Story book, and many have taken the class as well. Like a lot of folks on the screenwriting lecture circuit, McKee has a formula, and he wants you to follow it. Whether or not you actually enjoy McKee’s book and follow his formula, you need to read it anyway in order to speak the same story language as everyone else you’ll ever be in a meeting with.

The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition — Christopher Vogler

Chris Vogler’s book is another one that many people have read. It is based on Joseph Campbell’s theories about myth, which are claimed to the be the secret to the success of the original Star Wars films. It’s a relatively interesting book, especially for a screenwriting book, and even if you don’t use the mythic structure directly when outlining and writing, it’s not a bad thing to know about.

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting — Syd Field

Syd Field’s book is considered the “classic” screenwriting book, so much so that it’s falling out of vogue. But like with McKee’s book, everyone in the business has read this, and that means you should too.

Screenplay: Writing the Picture — Robin U. Russin, William M. Downs

Russin and Downs do in one book what a number of other screenwriting pedagogues do over several smaller books — present a complete course on screenwriting that includes format, structure, narrative, dialogue, and so on. The authors do not have a pet theory of screenplay structure they’re peddling (the structure chapter covers several, and then suggests that whether you use any of them or not to organize your writing that you still need to make sure that something interesting happens in every scene, or else why bother having the scene). Since it doesn’t offer a magical formula for screenplay success, this book isn’t very popular, but I think it’s one of the best screenwriting books out there.

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need — Blake Snyder

Like McKee, Blake Snyder has a formula and he insists that you follow it or success will elude you. However, unlike McKee’s book, Snyder’s isn’t dense. It’s conveys real ideas about writing structure, but does so with a humorous tone — it’s outright funny in places. And if your mind works in such a way that this kind of categorization and structuring scheme appeals to you, and helps you write, Snyder at least makes his theory accessible and easy to understand. Save The Cat is the most populist and approachable of the “follow my structure or perish” type of books and classes. While targeted at writers aspiring to create high-concept blockbusters, Snyder is careful not to to denigrate other styles of filmmaking and explain how his techniques may apply to other kinds of scripts. Going into it I honestly didn’t expect to like this book, but I actually did (though I don’t agree that any particular formula is the key to screenwriting success).

Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434: The Industry’s Premier Teacher Reveals the Secrets of the Successful Screenplay — Lew Hunter

This is an attempt to distill Lew Hunters’ well regarded UCLA Screenwriting 434 course into a book. It isn’t as successful as McKee’s at packing the totality of the course into the book, and a fair percentage of it is taken up by an unproduced script presented as a learning tool. Like with most classes, the in-person experience is more valuable. One of Lew’s writing retreats would be a lot more fun.

Making a Good Script Great — Linda Seger

Another highly regarded book. It’s well organized and readable, and could be worth your time, especially if Field’s or McKee’s styles don’t really excite you.

Creating Unforgettable Characters — Linda Seger

Another book by the well-regarded author of Making A Good Script Great, Linda Seger. This book is not as successful in my opinion. It’s got some interesting interviews with other writers in it, but it’s really more a scattered collection of thoughts, observations, and experiences than a coherent look at the topic of characterization.

Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time — Jordan Rosenfeld

A book about individual scenes is a great idea, but this one doesn’t fully deliver. It has some good ideas in it about how to structure and categorize individual scenes, and if that’s your thing, you might like this book. But it’s not as readable as it ought to be, considering part of what it should be teaching is how to make writing for scenes really flow.

Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way — Hal Ackerman

Ackerman is another highly regarded UCLA professor. I feel he did a better job than Hunter at coalescing ideas developed over years of teaching into a book. In terms of getting the UCLA experience from a book: actually doing so is impossible, and this book is no substitute for actually taking a UCLA class (they offer them online, and some of the online professors are quite good — especially Tim Albaugh and Paul Chitlik). It’s not a bad screenwriting book (I basically liked it), but it’s also not particularly innovative.

Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing (Plume) — Richard Walter

Across town at USC there’s Richard Walter, another highly regarded writing professor. I’ve never attended a USC class, so I can’t comment on how successful this is at distilling one into a book. Like Ackerman’s book, it’s decent but with no particularly great insights if you’ve already read other screenwriting books.

Crafty Screenwriting: Writing Movies That Get Made — Alex Epstein

Epstein’s book is one of the more readable “dos and don’ts” type of screenwriting advice books. It’s overtly targeted at a particular type of writing (high-concept blockbuster type scripts), but if that’s your bag, this book has some advice and is not too dry about delivering it.

The 101 Habits Of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insider’s Secrets from Hollywood’s Top Writers — Karl Iglesias

This book is particularly interesting because it is comprised entirely of interviews with working screenwriters. Some if it is more inspirational than instructional, and just because someone is successful doesn’t mean their advice applies to you. But because this book collates advice from practicing professionals, it has “street cred” that many other writing pedagogy books lack. If you like the interview format (and I do, because as a storyteller I love anecdotes and “war stories”), this is a decent book.

William Goldman: Four Screenplays with Essays — William Goldman

Just like you’ll learn a lot about music by working through some Beethoven sheet music, you will learn a lot about screenwriting by reading great scripts. Theory is all fine and well, but you also need to learn the form by experiencing it — and watching a movie is not the same as reading the script, just like hearing music is not the same as reading it. William Goldman is one of the best screenwriters in history, and this collection of scripts is a great read. He writes in an older style that’s not currently in vogue, but you’ll still learn a great deal about the craft by studying the works of a master. The Princess Bride alone is a work of genius.

The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Screenplays Volume 2 — Paddy Chayefsky

Along with the Goldman collection above, I also recommend this collection of Paddy Chayefsky scripts. For all the same reasons, including a singular work of genius in a collection that is nothing but genius: Network.

Rewrite: A Step-by-Step Guide to Strengthen Structure, Characters, and Drama in your Screenplay — Paul Chitlik

Chitlik is another UCLA professor, and a good one. His rewrite book hasn’t been quite as well received as his rewrite class, but that’s in-part because the class is considered too good to distill into a book. However, this is the only book dedicated solely to rewriting, and it contains a lot of advice about the subject. It’s not perfect, and you’re still much better off taking his class. But, if you must have a rewriting guide in book form to refer to at your desk, this is it for now.

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller — John Truby

John Truby is well known on the screenwriting pedagogy lecture circuit, and is the designer of the rather complicated Truby’s Blockbuster technique and software. This book is a presentation of his 22-step “extremely precise map of your entire plot.” The technique is not always straightforward and thus, like the software, parts of the book seem to make certain ideas more complicated than they need to be.

The Art of Plotting: Add Emotion, Suspense, and Depth to Your Screenplay — Linda J. Cowgill

A standard book on plot construction, but aimed at screenwriters rather than novelists or playwrights. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not revolutionary, either. If you need help with plot, this book may have a few insights for you, but so do plenty of other books mentioned here.

Writing for Emotional Impact — Karl Iglesias

Iglesias does a pretty good job of organizing and presenting the basic tenets of screenwriting, and presenting his ideas on each one. Not groundbreaking, but solid.

Secrets of Screenplay Structure — Linda J. Cowgill

A typical screenwriting book from another well known script pedagogue. Nothing particularly secret about its contents, which are similar to that of most of the books here.

Writing Screenplays That Sell: The Complete, Step-By-Step Guide for Writing and Selling to — Michael Hauge

A typical “write sellable scripts” type of screenwriting book. Hague is yet another well known personality on the lecture circuit, and this book is pretty typical of such fare.

Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting — Jeff Kitchen

You may have noticed a trend amongst these books, but in case you haven’t, here’s a clue: this is another book by a well known lecturer about how to use his structural theory as a formula for screenplay success. If that kind of organizational approach appeals to you, Kitchen’s book is up there with Snyder’s in terms of being coherent and well organized (but it’s way more pedagogical in tone).

Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay, Updated and Expanded edition — Andrew Horton

A typical screenwriting book. Nothing too exciting. It is character focused more than plot focused, as the title indicates, but otherwise this is another competent yet commonplace look at the craft of screenwriting.

How Not to Write a Screenplay: 101 Common Mistakes Most Screenwriters Make — Denny Martin Flinn

Flynn’s book is a “dos and don’ts” type book that’s unique in that it’s written from the point of view of a professional script reader about how to avoid getting tossed into the reject pile. That perspective is probably worth the cost of entry, especially since it’s a relatively recent book that therefore may still be relevant in terms of “industry insider” type advice. This book is really only applicable to new screenwriters, but if you are a new screenwriter working alone without a professional mentor, it couldn’t hurt to read either this book or Trottier’s.

The Writer’s Guide to Writing Your Screenplay: How to Write Great Screenplays for Movies and Television — Cynthia Whitcomb

Cynthia Whitcomb writes TV movies, and lots of them, so at least she’s got street cred. I didn’t find this book particularly engaging, but if its style clicks with you it’s yet another option in the crowded “typical screenwriting book” field.

Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives — Lajos Egri

This is actually a book about writing plays first published in 1942, and is responsible for the current wave of character-centric views of drama. It’s also referenced in about a billion screenwriting books and courses. If you want to read it for yourself, here it is, but some modern readers may find it a slow go.

Poetics (Penguin Classics) — Aristotle

Aristotle’s Poetics is also referenced everywhere and by everyone (though I’m not convinced they’ve all read it). Aristotle emphasizes the importance of plot (this is exactly the book that Egri was writing in opposition to). Unless you’ve got an existing interest in classics you’ll probably never actually read it, either.

Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets From the Greatest Mind in Western Civilization — Michael Tierno

This book attempts to apply Aristotle’s Poetics to screenwriting. So does every book on plot-centric screenwriting, even if it does so indirectly. This book is primarily useful for those who wanted to read Aristotle, but couldn’t bring themselves to actually do it.

The Screenwriter’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script — David Trottier

Trottier’s book is a classic reference book for screenwritiers. It reads like a reference book, too. Still, if you’re new to the format, structure, and jargon of the screenplay, it’s a relatively useful book.

Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (Hollywood Standard: The Complete & Authoritative Guide to) — Christopher Riley

This is a book mainly about screenplay formatting. I can’t imagine a more boring topic. It’s about the same vintage as Trottier’s book, which I felt covered more ground. You decide.

Your Screenplay Sucks!: 100 Ways to Make It Great — William M Akers

Another “dos and don’ts” type of book, along the lines of Flynn’s (but with more of an emphasis on style and structure). It’s also decent, but it’s tone is like that of a harsh schoolmaster (hence the title). You don’t need more than one (if any) of these “dos and don’ts” books, so pick the one you like the most.

Psychology for Screenwriters: Building Conflict in Your Script — William Indick

As popular psychology books go, this one isn’t bad. And as a writing book, the fact that it focuses on character depth at a psychological level rather than on a plot-driven quick sale is interesting. If you’ve actually studied psychology, however, you’ll find a lot of the same territory covered here.

Inner Drives: How to Write and Create Characters Using the Eight Classic Centers of Motivation — Pamela Jaye Smith

I thought this book would be more like Indick’s book, but it’s actually about chakras and stuff like that. I wasn’t impressed. If that’s your sort of thing, you might like this book. As a gamer, I did appreciate the fact that it’s organized sort of like a player’s manual guide to powers and abilities.

The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue & Vice for Box Office Success — Stanley D Williams

A book about premise, theme and subtext from the perspective of morality. If you haven’t understood premise, theme and subtext from other books or teachers, this is not a bad book to give a try.

Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot: A Guide for Screenwriters — Peter Dunne

An attempt to look at structural theory from the perspective of emotion, rather than plot. Really, they’re two sides of the same coin. A reasonably readable book, and while it’s not bad, there’s nothing revolutionary in here.

The 3rd Act: Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay — Drew Yanno

This is the only book out there that focuses solely on third acts. It’s a bit dry in its presentation, but definitely has its merits. It makes good points about the connection between first and third acts, and describes the third act’s internal structure. You can find (more compact) versions of the ideas in this book in most structure books, but if you’re still having third act problems after going to other sources, you may find something of value in here.

Romancing the A-List: How to Write the Script the Big Stars Want to Make — Christopher Keane

Another “how to write something really, really sellable” type of book. This one takes off from the idea of of pitching an A-List actor, but it’s a pretty standard sellable script book all the same.

And the Best Screenplay Goes to…Learning from the Winners — Sideways, Shakespeare in Love, Crash — Linda Seger

Another book of anecdotes. If you like that sort of thing, you might enjoy this book. You can learn a lot from anecdotes told by working writers, but keep in mind that if their specific situations and ways of working don’t always apply to you that doesn’t mean much.

How to Write a Selling Screenplay — Christopher Keane

Yet another “how to write something really, really sellable” type of book. Typical advice, nothing too exciting.

Screen Plays: How 25 Screenplays Made It to a Theater Near You–for Better or Worse — David S. Cohen

More anecdotes, which I always enjoy. I found this one particularly interesting in that it tells how various films went from draft to final shooting script.

Adventures in the Screen Trade — William Goldman

As you have already figured out, I like books of anecdotes (stories are more amusing to read than theory). But if you’re easily discouraged, don’t buy anything by William Goldman other than his screenplays. He’s much too honest about how hard this business is for the faint of heart.

Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade — William Goldman

The exact same advice applies to this book as to Goldman’s “Adventures in Screen Trade” above.

Breakfast with Sharks: A Screenwriter’s Guide to Getting the Meeting, Nailing the Pitch, Signing the Deal, and Navigating the Murky Waters of Hollywood — Michael Lent

Like Goldman’s books, painful and valuable lessons about the business — not art — of screenwriting. Unlike Goldman, however, Michael Lent didn’t wait to become one of the most prominent screenwriters ever before writing down his experiences and advice, so this advice actually applies directly to the aspiring professional. Goldman’s books are highly enjoyable reads, but Lent’s is immediately useful at the career stage most Indieauteur.com readers are likely at.

Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry, Second Edition — Kenneth Atchity, Chi-Li Wong

This book is considered the only game in town about writing treatments (but a treatment is secretly just a short story). This book is basically a “sellable scripts” type of book, without the screenplay formatting and style aspects. A very legitimate complaint that is often made against this book is that there’s no example treatment. Considering that most people have no idea what a treatment looks like, and don’t know whether or not there’s a standard Hollywood format for them (I’ve been assured there isn’t, but I’d still be keen to actually see one that sold), that’s a pretty big oversight.

In a future post, I’ll do a round-up of where to get copies of actual screenplays beyond the two books mentioned in this post. You’ll ultimately learn a lot more about writing from reading examples than from reading theory.  (You’ll also learn a lot more than you will from theory books by taking UCLA classes or other legitimate courses, online or in-person, and by participating a writing group that has at least one writer at or above your own experience level.)

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj
The Indie Auteur
P.O. Box 5041
Richmond, CA 94805

One point that several Producers made at the conference is that it’s always “a hard time” to be an Indie filmmaker, and that it’s an unusually bad time merely because it’s a hard time for the whole industry, and the whole economy. Their perspective, as working Indie Producers, was that if your passion is for Independent Cinema then you have to make a go of it when the time is right for you as an individual filmmaker — because the time is never “right” for entrepreneurial filmmaking.

A perspective I found especially compelling was that the demise of Warner Independent and similar big studio “Indies” is not a death knell for Independent filmmaking, but rather a resurgence. The speaker’s point was this: your competitors with the deepest pockets just got out of the market, leaving the entire playing field to the real Independents.

Right now the big studios only want to make huge budget tentpole films, and as many of the veterans at the conference pointed out — this sort of thing has happened before. Every ten years or so, the big studios focus on tentpoles and only are dragged back into smaller films when a few Indies are both sufficiently critically and commercially successful to draw the attention of the big studios back to making “cinema rather than flicks.”

However, the prevailing attitude among both speakers and attendees who work as Indie filmmakers was that Independent filmmaking is suffering from overblown expectations stemming from too much money being spent on making small films during the recent Sundance–fed Indie film spec-market bubble.

In other words, they felt too many $1-5million films were having $8-16million (and similarly on up the scale) spent on their production. Furthermore, in a crowded media marketplace an advertising arms race is on, which makes competing for audience attention so expensive that films like $7.5million Juno rose to box office numbers upwards of $100million only atop marketing budgets upwards of $50million.

This has set Indie filmmakers’ expectations very high. “A Sundance Film” has become a trope, an anti-commercial approach as cliché as the Hollywood formula. As John states:

Yet the fact that we can say a script “feels like a Sundance movie” belies this intent. It’s shorthand for challenging, quirky, maddening and (if we’re being honest) non-commercial. We want these movies to exist. But we need to be honest about their prospects.

We do need to be honest about this. The financial expectation a filmmaker sets for his or her self when describing their story as “A Sundance Film” is Juno (approx. $140m off $7.5m) or Little Miss Sunshine (approx. $96m off $8m), not the equally excellent but quite different La Mission or Death In Love (both approx $2m budget, and both still seeking distribution). Only Indie spec market hype has taught us to assume our projects are the next Juno (and budget accordingly), not the next La Mission.

Spending $58million plus on a $4million film (or even one that’s legitimately an $8millon film) hoping to turn it into a $10omillion blockbuster by sheer force of marketing is a luxury only a huge corporation has (well, had).

You can’t afford to compete with that. Sure, it’d be nice to get picked-up by Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics, but it’s a lot easier to do so if you’ve understood your audience and convey that fact through your story, your pitch, and your budget. Even if you don’t win the Indie filmmaker lottery and score $8-16million in up-front financing for your first feature and a subsequent negative pick-up by one of the majors’ boutique shops, you can still make a great movie — maybe even one that makes enough money to let you do it a second time. Making a $2million film, or even a $250k film — or even a $50k film — isn’t a failure, it’s a huge success, even if other people are getting to make $10million films. Selling it is even better, and that’s going to much more possible if you’ve chosen your scope and budget based on an understanding of an actual audience.

Which gets to part of what John (and James Stern) are saying that ties into a point about Indie filmmaking that was also made repeatedly at Produced-By. John puts it this way:

Every filmmaker would like her movie to break out of its niche and gain wider exposure and acceptance. But Stern’s point is apt: figure out your base, and develop a marketing plan that succeeds even if it never goes beyond that. If this sounds more like planning a small business than planning a movie, that’s sort of the point.

At the Produced-By conference there was an Indie Distro panel where the panelists recommended, in light of the current attitudes of the corporations that run the big studios and exhibitors, that Producers start thinking about the business of Distribution — even becoming microdistributors themselves. John’s post briefly touches on alternate distribution (V.O.D. in particular) as a potential savior of Indie filmmaking (a topic that was much discussed at Produced-By), but in suggesting that you consider budgets, distribution and marketing during script development, John is basically suggesting that filmmakers (his audience is primarily aspiring Writers and Directors) think more like Producers.

Why should you think about parts of the process that “aren’t your job”? Because Independent filmmaking is entrepreneurship, and in any small business everyone involved needs to think about the bottom line when doing their jobs because there’s no huge corporation providing a cushion in case of failure. Most investors in truly Independent films are not in a position to throw their money away, and they want to see both a tenable budget and realistic expectations of return.

It’s pretty easy to understand the basic principle at play here: you want to spend less money on making your film than you reasonably believe, based on analysis not dreams, that you can make off of it. That’s the surest path to being able to make a second film, and a third, and a three hundred eighty seventh. Should you then get lucky and make $150million domestic gross off your $7.5million dollar film, that’s fantastic. But your $7.5 million dollar budget should be based on an audience analysis that gives good odds for $10million gross, not a reliance on winning a $150million box office lottery (in other words, don’t create unrealistic expectations in your backers).

And while Writers and Directors need to consider these things much more than perhaps they have in the past, Producers should ultimately still be responsible for thinking and acting like Producers. A good producer is responsible to both the creative team they’re a part of, and the financial team that is hoping for a return on their investment so they can work with you again. And if you don’t have the skills and drive necessary to Produce your own films, you really need to find someone to work with who is dedicated to the Producing craft.

Non-Producers still need to do what John and the others are suggesting and “keep their audience in mind from a project’s initial conception — even if that audience isn’t a typical mainstream audience.” Filmmakers need to aspire to making films that are personal, yet universal — not personal through smug inscrutability. And if your vision requires making a film with an extremely narrow appeal — budget accordingly.

And to be a good Producer you not only need to keep that audience in mind when working with the rest of the creative team to develop the voice, style, and scope of your film, but you’re also obligated to determine the realistic size of the target audience, and create budgets and marketing plans based on that.

Thinking about your audience is not anathema to great storytelling and filmmaking — or even art. By choosing to be a filmmaker and/or artist, you’ve chosen to communicate your ideas and stories to others rather than keeping them in your head, so you’ve already decided to care about speaking to an audience in terms of structure, theme, tone, visual style, and so on. It’s all about reaching an audience. And understanding the business dimensions of your audience, or developing a relationship with a Producer you trust who does, will enable you to craft projects that are designed to be successful both artistically and financially.

So to paraphrase several folks at the Produced-By conference: It’s always a hard time to be an Independent filmmaker. Are you going to do something about it, or just sit around complaining waiting for some big studio to give you a handout?