Criticism

Useful, informed, honest criticism is absolutely essential to any screenwriter. It's also incredibly difficult to find.

Most of us have an English major somewhere around us: maybe they're making your coffee, or teaching third grade, maybe even writing copy for a marketing firm. These are good, strong readers with serious attention spans and the best of intentions. Their advice can be useful, but they don't often know much about reading a screenplay. They'll frequently feel the lack of a character's internality. They'll turn your script into a novel if you let them.

Then there's the first draft issue. First drafts by definition suck. It's a given. That's why you want criticism, yo. Often you'll get a reader who can't get around that fact, and won't get to the next place: saying something useful.

Let's not forget readers who latch onto a character. You write a misogynist character, for instance. Your reader gets creeped out. On screen, they might delight in a juicy negative character. On the page, it just makes the reader uneasy. Maybe they identify with a character who makes stupid or self-destructive decisions. They'll hate it. It colors everything they say.

There's the careless reader. These are not infrequently producer types. They probably read twenty pages. And they're giving you notes over the phone as they get frisked at the airport.

Guess what: listen to ALL OF THEM. But don't give any of them power over you. You don't have to agree, but you should listen.

I was preparing to market a script once. I gave it out to some colleagues to read through and give notes. One reader told me that the dialogue was very weak, and that I frankly should know better than to consider the work ready. I was more or less crushed. Next day a second reader responded. My dialogue was now "utterly phenomenal". I didn't agree with either reader, but I did realize that people have strong reactions to my dialogue, and it's worth revisiting that issue before I waste many a lonely hour trying to market the thing.

I went back to the script, and realized that I'd learned things since I put it to bed several months previous. I knew more. And part of the issue was the dialogue. But I ended up improving the script in several ways.

Another thing: your "real" reader -- the studios, Coppola, whoever fills that slot for you -- is not above these concerns. Hollywood employs legions of angry, frustrated English majors to weed through scripts. Some know their job. Others don't. Either way, it's their job to read twenty pages and skim the rest. Maybe they've read five shoot-em-up scripts already today, and the last thing they'll be entertained by is a misogynist and his girlfriend. Maybe your characters lack a satisfying emotional core, just like your barista keeps telling you. You don't have to please every reader, but there are always ways to satisfy readers along the way.

Reading a Script

The more time I spend with screenplays and screenwriters, the more I realize how many problems are tied up with a single problem: writers don't know their audience. I'm dealing with a script right now that very generously lets me know when I've come upon the inciting incident and the tragically flawed hero by indicating that directly in the script. He's also included a list of characters, scene breakdowns, and a three-page synopsis. He's got extensive action lines to give me all the backstory and drama, and, just to make sure we're up on all the details, has the characters remind us who they are, why they're here, and what the essential conflict is at the moment in their dialogue. Then there are the flashbacks, the flash forwards, and the montages so we understand the historical context.

The problem is that a movie audience doesn't have access to his copious notes of back-story, character motivation, and survey of the historical period in question.

You can't SEE the movie, because you're too busy reading the story.

A screenplay isn't a novel, of course. And screenplay readers aren't novel readers, either. In fact, they aren't big fans of reading at all. A studio reader may read 6-8 scripts a day, and is responsible for producing detailed notes and making an initial decision on the viability of a script. That's hundreds and hundreds of pages every night. How do they do this?

Basically, they watch the movie. They play out the visuals, the actions, and the set ups in their heads. The last thing they want is someone telling them what's there, or what it's supposed to mean. This just slows them down. They want to see it for themselves. If you need to explain a plot beat, it isn't going to work on screen. A good script reads quickly.

Now, how does a reader keep all the plot beats straight in his or her head? Think back to the discussion of three-act structure. A reader looks for the inciting event, and the second act complication, midpoint, etc. Everyone has their own way of looking at this stuff, and different ways of interpreting the material, of course. But there is a basic way that movie audiences watch a movie. There is a huge set of expectations that we all share. The studio reader simply applies that set of expectations, and measures your script against them.

It's ruthless. It's unfair much of the time. But a good reader doesn't measure how close you are to hitting that perfect formula. She's much more interested in how you exploit those expectations to tell us a good story.

It's stressful giving up action lines and dialogue that tell the reader directly what's going on. But when you start using action lines to SHOW the story -- to bring it to life in front of your audience -- you'll never look back.