Posts tagged: craft
Unlike a reader who can pass on a script after the first awkwardly constructed page, a competition reader must read on, deeply, in order to provide feedback to the writer. You want this reader on your side immediately.
Dialogue can help. Even how it looks on the page helps.
BALANCED WHITE SPACE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND - The ratio of dialogue to action lines on your pages may seem cosmetic. You may have read the Oscar-winning screenplay of Django Unchained and feel that your voice and vision belong in that category, or you may offer the rebuttal that filmmaking is a visual medium so action lines should be as densely luxurious as a neckbeard. However.
When you submit your script to a competition, you have to get a yes from the first wall of readers, who are under tough deadlines on a next-to-volunteer basis. Crisp and balanced white space on your pages is like good foreplay, it tells the reader you are serious about making this a wonderful experience for them. You want the reader to approach your script with hope in her heart.
So your dialogue and your action lines should look accessible.
Because…
BAD DIALOGUE LOOKS BAD ON THE PAGE - The ways to make your dialogue look bad before it’s even read are legion.
Pages full of long speeches look bad. Speeches in films are often the ONLY speech in that film, which has taken the entire film to set up. They look like tedious reading.
Pages full of very short lines of dialogue unbroken by action lines look bad. They look like they can’t possibly justify the space, and are generally full of greetings and pleasantries, the enemies of getting in to your scene late and exiting early.
Pages full of dialogue in which an action line interpreting the dialogue precedes each line of dialogue look terrible. “He squints, confused.” “She averts her eyes playfully.” They double the read time, and if they are all necessary, the dialogue doesn’t speak for itself.
Talking head scenes that go on for pages look bad. Do some scenework. If you need people to talk to each other at great length, put the scene somewhere with some visual interest, preferably somewhere that tells part of the story for you, or while they are doing something important to the plot.
So now that you have your white space looking inviting, the actual words you write in the dialogue must live up to their promise of professional-level punch-packing.
It basically comes down to one thing.
EXPOSITORY DIALOGUE IS DEATH - Most of what kills your dialogue is an expository style. In short, telling me what’s going on. This reaches far beyond backstory and repetition, it is a style of dialogue that habitually states the obvious.
The greatest joy in dialogue is the unexpected. A reveal, a dropped bomb, a reversal, a threat, a lie. That kind of dialogue sizzles and excites. Expository dialogue is everything else. Explanations, indications, illustrations.
Good dialogue reveals and develops characters with what they don’t say and when they don’t say it more often than not. The last thing you want to waste dialogue on is what we already know, or what we are already looking at, or what we are about to look at. Subtext is more interesting to read.
Then there are pet peeves.
DIALECT SHOULD NOT BE VISIBLE - No extra apostrophes or words spelled to reflect a pronunciation, please. It takes time to solve dialogue like an acrostic.
DON’T INTRODUCE YOUR CHARACTER FIFTEEN TIMES - Special Agent Catherine Clay, FBI. This is Special Agent Catherine Clay, FBI. I’d like you to meet Special Agent Catherine Clay, all the way from the FBI in the big city. Catherine Clay, Special Agent, FBI, she’ll be working with us.
DIALOGUE IS NOT FOR DOGMA - The writer’s position on a given issue can be revealed in a lot of ways, but it falls flat on the page when it’s spoken aloud by a character whose sole function is to educate the reader about it.
PROOFREAD FIFTEEN TIMES - There is a well-known phenomenon that writers are blind to their own typing errors. In dialogue, it’s especially important to proof relentlessly, because that’s where the errors jump out at readers. Missing words, misspelled words, extra words, wrong character names. Readers may skim action lines to get the gist, but the dialogue gets more scrutiny.
Put that entry fee to good use! Get a yes. Move on to the next round.
So, you’re 10,000,000,000% done with those stupid typewritermonkeys who write SPN. You could do better in your sleep, after a severe head injury, with a wild wallaby gnawing your left thumb after sucking on chili peppers. And that ain’t just blowing smoke, either! You’re a writer! An actual, legit writer who is legit familiar with these characters…hell, you wrote THAT fic! You know - of course you know, everyone knows - the novel-length one that has all those reviews and is recced everywhere and everyone and their cousin swoons over because MY GOD, the Destiel is PERFECT and they’re SO in character and WHY CAN’T THE SHOW BE LIKE THAT THOSE HOMOPHOBIC FUCKING HACKS!!
*ahem*
Anyway. Fanfic IS “real writing,“ so I’m seriously giving you the benefit of the doubt here. I’m assuming you ARE a good writer, that you ARE really good at characterization, that you have their voices down flawlessly, that you write with depth and facility and that your novels could easily be published if you filed serial numbers off…and not in the 50 Shades of Reference sense. You’re frustrated with the show’s shallow characters, lack of continuity, disjointed feeling, rushed pacing, tendency towards stereotypes, and brushing aside of issues that could be handled with so much more depth, not to mention wanting to explore a lot more of the potential (not even just sexually!) of Dean and Cas and their parallels and differences…or whoever your favorite characters are (and speaking of, why cant’ we get more Charlie/Garth/Kevin/Benny/etc?). You regularly fix all of these problems in your own work. You know it can be done.
So let’s do it.
We start with that gorgeous prose of yours. The stuff that’s practically free verse poetry. Rich, evocative, subtly enhancing character voice, you carry the reader along into fully realized sensory spaces. You’re famous for your detail, while careful never to get purple, and readers still sob about the way you turned one scratch on a banister into such a potent character reveal.
Sorry, that’s got to go. In fact, all that stuff you describe? Clothes, facial expressions, locations, props, fights? It’s not your job any more. There are wholly separate professionals making the creative decisions for all those things. You can sketch out the broadest strokes, but forget the drip drip drip of the very slightly leaky coffee urn that has made a bulls-eye stain on the linoleum of sallow industrial coffee that’s only drinkable by those clinging to awake and sane and not screamingsobbingfetalballing yet by the styrofoam edge of a —
Nope.
You get this
INT. HOSP. WAITING ROOM - LATER
DEAN watches the coffee urn drip as he waits.
Because not only is the rest of it - including all those internal monologues and thoughts that are ALSO getting cut now - Jensen’s job, the set dresser’s job, the location manager’s job, the director’s job, the prop departments’ job, etc…you don’t have room for it any more. You get 42-49 pages. Seem like plenty? It’s not.
And that formatting is IRONCLAD. It’s an industry standard. There is no artistic license there. It doesn’t matter how it reads, because you’re not writing a story; you’re writing a blueprint for the first step of a group project that is going to become a story when it is incorporated with everyone else’s work to create a piece of audio-visual media.
Even then, you might be thinking that screenplay format’s not so bad. You’ve read some amazing, powerful screenplays with downright poetic descriptors by Oscar winning…ah, but this isn’t a film script, either. Nor a student project. Nor an indie groundbreaker. Nor an experimental anything. You’re writing a one-hour network sci-fi/fantasy genre action drama, and that means that no matter how brilliant it might be, it won’t be told backwards, that beautiful ten minute silent opening sequence has to go, and it’s chopped up a very, very specific way.
- Your first 2-4 pages are your teaser. In this, you’re going to have to introduce a character - not one of the main protagonists - in a cold open, put them in peril, and have something awful happen to them that introduces the Monster of the Week and establishes the C plot. Go back and look at that page format again. You’ve got 350-500 words to tell this entire mini-story with a beginning, middle, and end, and that includes things like “INT” or “Cont.“ It should end on a “gotcha” or shocker of some kind that leaves the audience with a feeling of “well, shit.“
- Act 1, 9 pages. Introduce Sam and Dean. Catch us up on what they’re doing. Tie it back to the previous episode. Establish the current level of peril for the A plot. Reveal the existence of the C plot from the teaser to them. Engage the leads with the C plot, and bring in the first complication or plot twist that makes things go wrong for Our Heroes. Establish stakes that make it personal and explain why This Time It Matters and we need to help this person rather than another one. Show how bad it will be if we don’t. The feeling for the audience should be like starting to climb the hill of a roller coaster.
- Act 2, 9 pages. It’s way more of a mess than they thought it was. Things must go wrong, and they must make a first attempt at fixing them. It must fail. It must appear that the bad thing has the upper hand. By the end of this act, we should have at least one major reveal about the villain that will lead to their overall weakness. (if it’s a recurring villain, like Crowley, that only applies to this episode’s tete-a-tete, but must not throw off the big picture plans for him). This act ends with our heroes whupped and regrouping.
- Act 3, 9 pages. Our heroes strike back, and this time they’re on the right track. But there are further complications, at least one HUGE OMG THEY DIDN’T reveal or plot twist is set up (though not paid off yet), and things get really, really worse, though our heroes are fighting back hard and this time, they’ve got a REAL plan that should totally work now that they know ____. This act ends with shit all over the fan.
- Act 4, 9 pages. If Vader is Luke’s father but Luke’s shrink has been dead all along, this is where you do the reveal. This is, actually, where you have to solve the mystery, win the fight, save the cat, resolve the love interest, and defeat the bad guy at least for this week. While opening a new problem that keeps the A arc moving forward
- Act 5, 4-6 pages. Wrap it up, but don’t put a bow on it. This is a serial. They have to feel satisfid that the story had a beginning, middle, and end, and you have to have resolved your mystery and big conflict from the C arc, but you also have to explain how this only furthers the A arc problem and open some new doors or establish some new problems that are going to keep them turning in. But the story still has to end on at least a vaguely uplifting note, and preferably with affirmation of the brothers as heroes.
- This whole time, you have to maintain the forward momentum of the A plot that drives the entire season, including the relevant items that have been group-established by the writers’ room as the master A arc.
- Ditto to all B plots relevant to characters in this episode.
None of this is negotiable. That’s not because they’re soulless beasts and the enemies of True Art, either. That’s because they are, in the end, supported by advertisers, and a huge part of the deal with those advertisers IS that formula. See, by knowing the formula, advertisers know when audiences will be feeling excited, worried, triumphant, shocked, rattled, etc. and can make their cost-as-much-as-your-house-and-then-some ad time buying decisions accordingly. Someone who is selling a sports car might have much better luck, for example, putting that sleek, vroom-vroom racing ad at the Act 3-4 break than the act 4-5 because that’s right in the middle of the OH YEAH fight the good fight pedal to the metal feels.
Oh, and don’t forget…
- No internal monologue/character thoughts!
- Dean is your protagonist and Sam your primary mythic hero!
- Minimal descriptions and don’t step on anyone’s toes!
- Strict adherence to Industry guidelines!
- Strict adherence to the A plot!
- You have to maintain continuity with ALL the aired episodes AND all the episodes in production right now, whether they’re being edited, filmed, or written. No, you can’t always see all of the latter three. Yes, they might be getting changed as you type. No, you might not get to find out until airdate. Yes, yours would have filmed by then.
- Like all good writing, the characters have to change by the end of the story…but this is serial television, so they can’t change TOO much, and you have to keep them in character while knowing that your opinions of “in character” may not be someone else’s.
- You can’t make any major decisions that would alter the show universe (like giving Mary a sister, Destiel going canon, etc) without getting approval from the Showrunner(s). Those kinds of things have to be timed at specific episodes throughout the season arc because of viewership and contract negotiations as well, not just where it would be cool for this episode…or necessarily best for the story.
- Likewise, you can’t do anything particularly controversial. Nazis are bad, slavery is bad, lesbian hackers that kiss pretty fairies are hot, God hates hypocrites. Beyond that, though, you have to be SUPER careful AND clear it with the showrunners. This isn’t because they don’t agree with you or because those issues aren’t important…it’s because the advertisers didn’t sign on for Glee or the Daily Show.
- Other people have the authority to re-write your script, whether they need to or just want to change something major or minor.
- You’ve got like two weeks to do this from scratch.
- You WILL piss a LOT of people off who will be horrible to you about it, whatever you write.
- You have no choice but to use a lot of tropes and cultural shorthand - it’s the only way to get enough storytelling information across that fast and efficiently - but you still have to feel original, and despite those tropes having come from a deeply __ist society, your show portraying a deeply ___ist society, and your target audience thinking SJ stands for that one from Sex in the City who married Marty McFly, you have to try not to be ___ist in your writing.
- SPN is known for its complex mythology and attention to monster detail. You’ll be expected to present a MotW that is new, interesting, and relatively well-researched while still tying into the show’s overal panmythology.
- Did I remind you that you have little to no say in casting, performance, directing, production, or re-writes? So that character you wrote as a strong, independent single mother just became a shitty stereotype when she was cast as a black woman and performed with a “ghetto" accent and dressed in booty shorts.
- Don’t forget the wit and pop culture references! (but be careful not to run into anything that you might have to get permission or pay for)
Did I mention budget yet? Because yeah, budget. SPN films 12 full-length sci-fi fantasy feature films per season for approximately $50,000,000. That may seem like a lot, but that’s about the budget of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. That gives only about 2,080,000 per episode (about the budget of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior) BEFORE you deduct season-long expenses like everyone’s salaries. A writer can do a lot to keep the show on budget, though!
- If you can accomplish the thing without re-using a character, do it! Give your one-shot characters as few lines as possible! Actors are paid a lot more if they have more lines/screen time. Use your recurring characters sparingly, especially if they’re “names". If they’re “back by fan demand", they’re REALLY expensive, unless they’re in a new body.
- Try to minimize anything that needs in-camera or digital special effects.
- Minimize stunts.
- For the love of Chuck, avoid kids, animals, fire, and water if at all possible.
- Minimize new sets or locations.
- Minimize specialty props or costumes.
- If you’re filming outdoors, film at night. It’s easier to hide where you are and match lighting conditions.
- Minimize the need for any people with special skills.
- Minimize filming outdoors. Weather is evil.
- It actually does have to be physically possible.
- Minimize the amount of music used, especially classic hits
- Minimize the amount of time Jared and Misha are expected to film together.
Get it? Got it? Good.
See, wasn’t that easy peasy? Just like writing fic. There’s no reason for any of those things that people complain about to be occurring except sheer ineptitude and malice! Any typewritermonkey could do it (in about two weeks, semi in-public, with a few million armchair co-writers), and it just doesn’t make sense why with all the amazing fic out there, the writers can’t just give us the same levels of intimacy, complexity, artistry, and pacing on the show! And where’s our musical episode, damn it!
Clearly, it must be this way because they suck at their jobs and hate us.
How silly of me.
I am a screenwriter and I approve this message
Like, “crying onto my keyboard because someone actually understands" approve.
So, this is a very specific, based on Supernatural, breakdown of the stuff that goes into writing a tv series. But even if you are not geared towards always loving supernatural, THIS IS STILL A GOOD READ.
It’s great at breaking down all the pressures and intricacies into making a tv show. So next time you’re angry about the stuff that happens on the show, go back and read this.
(aspiring tv writers who follow me, take note. Especially on the speed needed to get the script done. You don’t have a year per script. You don’t really even have a month.)