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Overkill: My First Bit of Coverage

In honor of that reader job, I’m going to share something with you that I didn’t even think still existed. Here’s the backstory:

In 2001 or 2002 (or maybe earlier, but I didn’t pay much attention until 2002), Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Studios launched an interactive component of their website. A social networking site in pre-social networking days, it allowed writers — and later all manner of other film-industry wannabe-creative-types — share their work in an honest, encouraging, semi-anonymous forum. It surged in popularity because of a (most likely bullshit) carrot dangled at the end: legend started to spread that Coppola himself was known, on occasion, to download the most popular scripts on the site and take a look at them. I believe Pumpkin was a Zoetrope.com find, and how you feel about that movie might gauge how you feel about the whole project.

It shared the same problem as a lot of screenwriting contests; I would say it was worse because it didn’t cost anything to submit a script, but at the same time you didn’t “win” anything for writing a good script, so maybe it broke even. Point is, people will pick up Story or Screenplay or just write a script on a whim and send it to a contest. I don’t want to denigrate those people, because I’ve long been of the opinion that the only formal training needed to write a good script (or make a good film, for that matter) is to watch a shitload of movies. But watching a shitload of movies and/or reading a book on screenwriting doesn’t guarantee the screenplay won’t be a piece of shit.

I can’t tell you how many “amateur” screenplays have loglines like this: “A waitress/single mother struggles against adversity in the small town where she grew up. Based on a true story.” This was especially true when I browsed the material available on Zoetrope.com. While it follows a basic “beginning-writer” tenet — “write what you know” — and could make for a good movie (last year’s Waitress was pretty great), it also ignores another basic “beginning-writer” tenet: the things that happen to you in your day-to-day life are not necessarily the stuff of great drama. Never say never, but I know my day-to-day is boring as shit, so when I write I take the emotional truth of what is happening or has happened to me in reality and apply it to something that is 100% fictitious.

There’s also the Hemingway-Cézanne philosophy: if you have something that’s real and true but isn’t quite dramatic, change it until it is. So many beginners fall into a pattern of writing “what they know” while neglecting basic principles of drama because, in their reality, “it didn’t happen that way.” So, to go back to the waitress/Waitress example: the arc of that story is centered around the effects of a pregnancy on an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, your “based on a true story” waitress has crafted a supremely uninteresting story in which she leaves her husband around the time her kid is six. What’s more dramatic — leaving your husband because you don’t want him to destroy the life of your newborn baby, or leaving him because, eh, you just got kinda tired? You try to explain this to the writer, and they come back at you with, “But that’s not how it happened!” Who cares?

So I signed up to Zoetrope.com for the same reason anyone else did: for the chance to have my work glanced at by the man who directed The Godfather and The Conversation. But the way it worked back then — I don’t believe it works that way now — was pretty convoluted. You had to read four or five screenplays before you could submit one of your own, and the rumors floating around misc.writing.screenplays and various messageboards were that the scripts they’d send you to start out scraped the bottom of the barrel. You couldn’t just rush in and have the pick of their litter, choosing only their top-rated scripts; instead, the site provided a “random” selection of scripts with either low or no ratings.

I ended up reading one and thinking, “If everything I read on this site is this bad, I’m wasting my time.” Nowadays, I’d think, “If everything I read on this site is this bad, then my crap is sure to rise to the top in no time!” And yet, I’m still not exactly racing to Zoetrope.com. I just happened to think, after getting this reader job, about that first unproduced script I tore into. I logged in on a lark, fully expecting that my e-mail address or password would be wrong; once I logged in, I also fully expected that such an old, old, old coverage submission would have been deleted on the server.

I’m kinda glad I was wrong on both accounts. I enjoy keeping copies of everything, and it always disappoints when I’ve lost something. Plenty of old blog posts from a past life vanished in a bitter, seething rage — and I have no backups. Not that I’d necessarily restore them, but it’s nice to have the option.

In particular, though, I like having this coverage around because I can look back with amusement on my rookie mistakes. So here it is, my first-ever coverage attempt. For some reason, I can’t find when I submitted it. I seem to remember writing it up over a three-day weekend, most likely Memorial Day, but the response the writer sent me (which I recall he sent rather quickly) is dated 6/30/02. It’s really long:

Your screenplay shows a lot of promise, but it is also has many problems that should be addressed.

Right off the bat you have some glaring formatting errors. Among the most prevalent:

• You’re capitalizing arbitrarily. Stop that. In proper spec format, you only capitalize the name of a character the first time s/he is introduced. Otherwise, just write everything like standard prose. A few years ago, the rule in spec format was to capitalize sound effects only. It was never a style thing applied randomly to whatever nouns and verbs seemed important; it was so the sound effects pop out in the script so the sound editor or foley artist could just skim. It’s not done anymore. I’m not sure why specifically; it’s just the way things are.
• When you write a sentence in the action, don’t start a new line for the next sentence. Again, standard prose. The action should form a paragraph, not a stanza.

These next few may seem minor, but all formatting stuff is very important. If you submit this to studios or an agent and want it to be sold, nobody’s going to get past page three with the mistakes you’ve made. If it’s properly format on the surface, they’ll at least keep reading. Even if it’s a bad script, they’ll keep going until at least the end of the first act. Anyway, here goes:

• You’re introducing your protagonist, the guy we follow through the whole film and are rooting for. So why do you introduce him as “YOUNG MAN” and then reveal his name in the dialogue? If you’re trying to be clever, you’re not. If he’s an unimportant character, it would be all right, but he’s your main character. Introduce him with dignity in the action. “CHRISTIAN DOYLE, good-looking, about thirty, writes at his computer.”
• Drop the “we see” stuff. All of it. Anything that remotely resembles second person or implying what the shot should be. There are better ways to do it, and “we see” second-person mumbo jumbo absolutely SCREAMS amateur. E.g., your line on page 2, “We see a HEATER VENT exuding SMOKE into his room,” should read something like this, “Smoke drifts into his room through a heating vent.” The reason I tell you to avoid things like that is because the director decides what we see, not the writer, and directors turn into pissy babies when the writer tries to tell the director what to see. There are much more subtle and effective ways of telling the director what to see without flat out saying “we see.” Use your skills as a writer.
• The “[listening]” stuff every time he’s on the phone looks bad. Ignore the fact that they should be parentheses instead of brackets, they’re improperly used. You know he’s on the phone, you know he’ll be listening. Ellipses (“…”) cover that fine and take up much less space. Screenplays are all about maximizing your limited page count, and about 700 “[listening]“‘s on page 3 will turn a script reader off faster than Ted Koppel in lingerie.
• Your left and right margins both appear to be formatted at 1.5” for action. It should be 1”. Again, it looks like you’re tightening things because you don’t have enough written to reach the desired length.
• Unless you’re using pronouns, try to refer to characters by their name. I.e., “Christian studies Marina” instead of “Christian studies the young woman.” That kind of stuff is for novels, not screenplays.
• Page numbers should be justified right, 0.5” from the top, and should read: “#.” without the quotes. There is no page number on the first page.
• There should be one blank line after slugs.
• If you have a line of dialogue that slips on to the next page, there are some rules. If it is one line, just push the whole thing (character name included) down to the next page. If it is more than one line, cut it off at the end of a sentence, insert a new line below, centered, that simply says “(MORE)” and start the next page with the character slug followed by “(CONT’D.)” and then finish the dialogue off. If it a sentence that is more than one line that goes onto the next page, again, drop the whole thing down to the next page.
• This one’s even worse. The proper formatting for cars, believe it or not, is something to the effect of “INT./EXT. CHRISTIAN’S CAR (TRAVELING)” The (TRAVELING) parenthetical changes from person to person it’s a matter of preference. The supposed standard is TRAVELING, but just as acceptable is MOVING or DRIVING. And if it’s not traveling, moving, or driving, it’s PARKED. If it starts out parked and starts traveling (or vice-versa), notate it in the action, but you don’t need to make a whole new slug to indicate that.
• Your first page is your title page, and your screenplay starts on page 2. Not so. Your title page should be a separate entity, and your screenplay should start on page one. It also shouldn’t start halfway down the page with another title. FADE IN should be the very first thing we see on the very first line of page one.
• Typical phone conversation etiquette is confusing until you get the hang of it. Again, don’t be too specific with who’s onscreen and who’s offscreen when you write; that’s the director’s responsibility. The easiest way to do this is to type a slug that goes something like “INTERCUT: MARINA’S UNIT / CHRIS’S UNIT” and lose the offscreen indications. Then any action you write for Chris or Marina, it is assumed that it is in the respective unit.
• You don’t always have to have a time frame in the sluglines. Usually, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Unless it’s a completely new scene, you don’t need them. You don’t need all the “MOMENTS LATER” and “SAME TIME” and “A LITTLE LATER” stuff unless you really think it’s unclear. I personally think it’s less clear with those than without.

Mechanics:

Page 2: In the opening, you call Sleepy Hollow Manor a “SUBURBAN APARTMENT COMPLEX,” and go on to reveal a sign calling it “SLEEPY HOLLOW MANOR.” Vice-versa. The slug should say “SLEEPY HOLLOW MANOR,” and you should describe what it is in the action and talk about the sign if you’d like.

Page 35: “The magnetism between them is palpable.” This should be revealed through characterization and dialogue, and by this point it should be obvious (and frankly, it is). You don’t need to write it. It insults the intelligence of whomever is reading it. “Even though it is night, he appears to blush in the porch light.” I wasn’t aware people stopped blushing in the night. Sarcasm aside, this is so unnecessarily wordy it makes me want to cry.

Page 35: “Chris blushes.” That’s all you need. Or if you want to get fancy, you can keep the porch light bit…but lose the first clause, because although I know what you mean, it doesn’t make sense as written and it’s not necessary to keep it.

Page 37: “In the background, SCREW, a big nasty guy, appears in his dirty underwear.” I wanted to point this out because it’s kind of tricky, but “in the background” is kind of like “we see” in the sense that it implies what the shot is. It should be worded more like “Behind Deek, a big, nasty guy named SCREW, approaches wearing nothing but stained underwear.” That way there’s no shot implication. If the director wanted to — and I have no idea why he would, but at least he has the choice — he could dolly behind Screw as he walks to the door.

Page 37/38: “Shithead” and “asshole” are usually compound words, and “I dono” is usually “I dunno.” It’s not going to make or break you, and I know it’s slang, but sloppy spelling and grammar is not your friend.

Page 38: “Chris looks to see him.” Awkward! “Chris looks at him.”

Page 40: “Chris looks as if he does not know what to say next.” Again, awkward (and this is the last time I’ll point it out). “Chris does not know what to say.” Much better.

Page 65: “You just keep my rent free, as usual…” I’d take out the “as usual.” It makes the statement redundant.

Overall:

I’m getting nit-picky, and I didn’t include this stuff in the formatting because technically there is no format for it so it’s subject to debate, but here’s how I would handle the computer stuff (example from page 24): “Chris sits down and awakens his computer from sleep mode [much quicker than stopping the action to wait around for a computer’s boot cycle]. He opens his present story in the writing program and begins to type: ‘As if expecting to be attacked by the intruder…’” Etc. Do you see how much more concise it is? You don’t bog down basic stuff that most people — especially script readers — are knowledgeable about, like opening MS Word and typing, in your script. It works for a short story, where you want to be as descriptive as possible, but for a screenplay, it’s all unnecessary fat that can and should be trimmed. You also want to avoid stuff like “the monitor shows” (p. 36), which is the computer equivalent of “we see.”

You use an excessive amount of adverbs, especially introductory adverb clauses. Maybe it’s a stylistic thing, maybe not, but it gets really wordy and much of it can be worded better. It’s your call whether or not to change that, but it doesn’t flow when you read it, which may be a problem in getting readers to take it seriously.

You often imply the attitude or expression of characters, usually Chris, in the action just prior to a line, like “He lights up” (pg. 34) or “A sarcastic grin creeps across Chris’s face” (pg. 37). This is a bad idea unless it’s absolutely necessary, and even if it was you’d put it in a parenthetical under the character name like “(sarcastically)” instead of wasting a whole three lines and a hell of a lot of words for an action that isn’t really necessary. For many of these, the tone of the line is pretty obvious, and actors really, really dislike it — even moreso than directors — when you’re telling them how to interpret things. The same thing goes for putting in beats. Sadly, it’s up to the actor and director to figure that stuff out, not the writer. I recommend you go back through and make changes as you deem it necessary.

Plot/Characters/Theme:

Chris/Bill doesn’t write suspense. He writes his life (or, rather, what he wants his life to be like), and there’s nothing really suspenseful about it. That’s my main problem with this script. A suspenseful screenplay builds from the first shot until you reach the turning point for act III that sets everything in motion and eventually releases the tension. You almost do that, but don’t quite make it. Let’s examine why.

Your characters are flat-out stereotypes. The closest character to three dimensions is Marina, but you ruin her by making her a mechanic of the plot instead of the other way around. Plot is not the most important element in a good script; it’s all about the characters, and when you have good, fleshy characters, they drive the plot. The plot shouldn’t drive the characters. Marina starts out as an intelligent woman with a good job and an equally good head on her shoulders, descends into idiocy with her baffling trust of the very obviously evil (to anyone of her initial intelligence, anyway…) Malcolm Griddle, and then her getting raped and just sort of letting it go like it’s no big deal, not telling anyone, not telling the police. I know that in reality many women don’t talk about it, even to the police, because they are ashamed, but we never get a clear indication that this is why in Marina’s case. She just comes off like an idiot.

Christian is the typical writer who has a hard time with romance because he has a hard time dealing with people. The Grissards are the typical spry elderly couple whose sole purpose is to point out very specifically to the audience what all of Chris’s problems are and why Chris and Marina should be together. The entire dinner scene you wrote bothers me because all they do is sit there and beat the audience over the head with the fact that they should be together, which we all know from page 5 on. You don’t develop characters into flesh-and-blood creations, which I think is why they never leave the stereotype stage; you waste all that time beating us over the head with obvious stuff.

Now that I’m thinking about it, Malcolm Griddle is not a stereotypical character. He starts out as the stereotypically evil landlord, but when the rape happens and then he tries to kill Chris, he crosses a line into unnecessarily psychotic. I really have a big problem with rape and attempted murder when there’s really no clear motive. And, incidentally, evil and/or psychoses do not qualify as clear motives. Why does he rape her? Sure, he was attracted to her and wanted to have sex, but I’m attracted to and want to have sex with a wide variety of people, but I don’t just do it, against their will. Nobody does it just for the hell of it. We need a reason. Same thing with the attempted murder. Nobody in the world is that evil. Some come close, but they’re mostly psychotic. Malcolm seems pretty psychotic to me, but he’s still portrayed as a guy who’s completely of sound mind — he’s just gone beyond the rational realms of evil.

The punks are also stereotypically evil. Just because they play loud music and dress funny doesn’t mean they’re evil. They can be juvenile delinquents who are always trying to mess with Chris, but should they really be homicidal rapists? It’d be much more interesting if you had someone like Lyle, the seemingly pleasant gay neighbor, be the evil guy. It may not be politically correct and you may pick up flak from GLAAD over it, but at least it’d be a little be less stereotypical. As they are, the punks and Lyle are both stereotypes. Lyle is actually a stereotype of an irony, where he’s this effeminate guy, but he kicks ass when he wants to. It’s like, “Oh, I just thought he was a femme, but he’s really strong!” It’s the same way to go against the grain that has been done 1000 other times, and so it’s become a stereotype in and of itself.

Jilly is an interesting character who goes nowhere. Way too young for Chris but still in love with him (or so she thinks, anyway). But then she, like Marina, becomes a plot device used only to show how Chris can kick some ass when he gets fed up enough. Chris is not Billy Jack; none of that is necessary, and Jilly’s character becomes too simplified.

Finally, the plot starts out interesting and rapidly becomes disastrous. This is a romantic comedy that descends into unncessary violence and sexual assault. Why can’t it stay a romantic comedy? Why can’t you spend more time fleshing out the romance and less time bitching about Malcolm Griddle? As it stands, the romance between Chris and Marina doesn’t do a whole lot for me. They have some things in common, they go and have chocolate together in a very cutesy way, and then the plot starts grinding and the characters become mindless and the romance dissolves.

This movie should be about the romance. The way I would do it is this: he meets her, learns that she works for a publishing house, and immediately starts hustling for contacts (it’s what a serious writer would do, and it would immediately turn her off and create some actual conflict). Of course she doesn’t like him, but he becomes very vocal at tenant meetings about how awful Griddle is and how they need to get rid of him, and she becomes attracted to that side of him and agrees to join in the cause. She begins to fall in love with him, but he’s so interested in getting rid of Griddle — and not by killing him, either — that he hardly notices, even though if he was paying any attention he’d realize he felt the same way. Of course, you don’t have to do this — or anything else I suggest — but when I downloaded this screenplay, that’s more along the lines of what I thought I would be reading. This is just food for thought. The only thing I’d strongly recommend paying attention to are the formatting errors.

The other problem I have with your script is that I cannot find a theme in your script. Next to character, your theme is the most important thing in your screenplay. If you don’t have a theme tying your story together, there really is no point. The point of every scene is to punctuate the theme, and the conclusion is essentially a statement — subtly or overtly — of the theme.

In a way, yours is about how art imitates life, or vice-versa, but it’s really more confusing than anything else because it turns out at the end that Chris is not really Chris and that all of this was a novel he has written. The twist itself was not confusing, but to me it seemed like the point of that twist was that he could not work up the courage to ask Marina out until he wrote about his romance in the book, but since there is very little romance, it reinforces my humble opinion that the bulk of the story should be the romance, and the less Griddle and the punks are involved the better. You have to decide if you want this to be a romantic comedy or an action movie and write it accordingly. I personally think the romance is better than the action, but you decide which you would rather do for yourself.

Inconsistencies and Contradictions:

There are a lot of them. I’ve already mentioned a couple — like Malcolm Griddle being evil, but there being no clear motivation for his evil — but there are more.

For starters, Malcolm’s reasons for burning down the apartment in the first place were confusing? Was he trying to collect insurance money? Why? He’s a slumlord who owns buildings all over town.

Here’s what slumlords do: they prey on the ignorance (and sometimes a lingual barrier), charge as much rent as they want, take advantage of tenants, basically do everything Malcolm Griddle. Except they don’t burn down their buildings. They let their buildings get run down, bilk people for years, pay off the local beat cops, and when the city finally condemns the building, they have it torn down (or maybe then they burn it down for the insurance money) and sell the land, usually for far more than it’s worth. Then they use that money to buy a new building, usually a cheaper building, and they keep the profits and let this new building run down.

So what’s the point of having Griddle burn down his building? Is he just doing it to try to throw out the Grissards? If so, why didn’t he have the fire started in or around the general vicinity of the Grissards’ unit? Even if the fire was stopped as quickly as it was, chances are enough of their unit would be damaged, so he’d have just cause to kick them out and arguably could blame them for starting the fire. He’d also have no responsibility in housing them while the damage is repaired, whereas if he needed to throw them out of the unit so he could knock down walls and inspect the inner structure of the building, he would be legally obligated to put them up in a hotel or in one of his other buildings until they are done inspecting and the walls are replaced.

Going along with that, I’m fuzzy on whether or not this place is rent controlled. You say he keeps kicking out the old people so he can raise the rent, but then you say at another point that Griddle arbitrarily raises the rent anyway, so it wouldn’t matter if he kicked them out or not, as clearly the rent control is not effective.

Furthermore, when you rent an apartment, you almost always sign a lease that outlines the rental agreemnt for both tenant and landlord, and nothing can legally contradict the lease unless the tenant breaks the lease or the landlord has just cause for throwing the tenant out. You can’t raise the rent arbitrarily, or even raise the rent in a rent-controlled environment, until the leasing period is over. Otherwise, the tenants have legal recourses to take, and somebody as smart as Christian or the Grissards surely would have taken them already. These tenants are not ignorant; these plot devices would work better if they were.

My final issue involving the rent and the tenancy is that Chris complains about Griddle raising the rent all the time and how he’s charging way too much, but when Marina asks him why he doesn’t move, he explains that he can’t find an equivalent or better apartment for the price. Why the hell not? If Griddle’s rent increases are so unfair, he’d be able to find a better apartment for the price or an equal apartment at a lower price, if not in a town where buildings are owned by Griddle, at least somewhere else. It doesn’t make sense.

Chris is a writer. Marina works in publishing. Nobody ever mentions or even implies that Chris has a day job, so he must be at least marginally successful in writing. Why is it, then, that Marina has never heard of him? She is, or at least she starts out as, an intelligent woman working in the world of publishing. She’d probably be well-read. She’d probably have at least heard of Christian Doyle, even if she had never read anything he had written. Why doesn’t she have a clue who he is? If he is a struggling writer with a day job, why doesn’t he cozy up to her initially for contacts? That’s what I’d do if I was in the same position and happened to have a friend/publishing contact living in the same building.

When Lyle and Marina show up to the hospital with Chris, the clerk won’t admit him until he shows proof of insurance. Later, when he leaves, the first thing she asks for his payment. I know all ER’s work differently, but the most common practice I’ve seen is that they treat you first — especially under extreme emergency circumstances like Chris’s — and they don’t worry about payment until later. Ordinarily, they send the proper forms to your insurance company for billing, or if emergency visits are not covered (they aren’t on my insurance), they send a bill to your home address. On my few trips to emergency rooms, I’ve never been required to pay immediately after services were rendered, and especially not before.

Chris is injected with enough heroin to kill two people. So why is he released from the hospital, it seems, three hours later? I mean, isn’t that a big deal? Wouldn’t they at least keep him overnight for observation? There is no real indication of the passage of time, but it all seems to happen very quickly, and Chris seems to get out of the hospital almost immediately after he wakes up. Even if by some strange miracle they did decide to release him, wouldn’t he be suffering fiercely from physical and mental withdrawal symptoms? Even people who shoot up once, with a normal amount of heroin, crave it for weeks, months, until they can get another fix. I don’t see why Chris would be any different.

Raping someone is a big deal. A huge deal. Nobody ever in the history of cinema has treated rape lightly. And yet Griddle rapes Marina, and very little is made of it. There’s an implied internal conflict with Marina, who obviously does not want to tell anybody, but nothing ever comes of it. I know in many cases the woman feels ashamed and doesn’t want to tell anybody, least of all the police. It especially makes sense in Marina’s case after all the warnings about trusting Griddle, and she’s trusting enough to just let him into the apartment just after getting out of the shower. More should be made of this internal conflict, or she should tell somebody right away. Call the police. Tell Chris. Scream bloody murder until somebody else dashes into the apartment and saves her from actual full-fledged rape. She starts out smart and somewhat tough and dissolves into an idiot as soon as she starts trusting Griddle’s words over everybody else’s. A woman like that would realize that all of them can’t be wrong, and she’d notice how evil or at least how suspicious Griddle acts.

That’s about all I have to say. I appreciate the opportunity of reading it, and I really do think you have a good start here. Good luck to you in the future!

Okay, class. In this example, what did I do wrong?

A couple of things I’ll defend. The bit about standard prose and not breaking for every sentence or two — that is something where the norm changed a few years ago, but at the time I wrote this, it was still conventional wisdom to keep action blocks as actual blocks of action, with paragraph separations. Now, there’s this goofy “paragraphs can be no longer than four lines, even if it’s not the true end of the paragraph” rule. I guess it’s easier on the lazy eyes of readers, but I think it’s bullshit.

I’ll also defend the chastisements for “we see” and introducing the main character in a goofy, mysterious (and pointless) way. Now, there are plenty of established writers or writer/directors who use this method. I know, for instance, that the Coens used this in Fargo. Ignoring the fact that only a complete idiot would rip apart the Coens for taking a novelistic approach in their screenplay, it just doesn’t make sense to use this approach very often. The Coens don’t always do this; it works in the Fargo screenplay because they’re establishing in the writing what they expect an audience member to feel: confusion. Who are these characters? What’s the relationship? This guy’s writing what basically amounts to a romantic comedy: why the mystery?

However, looking at my work with the old critical eye — I go into way too much detail on each point. I make the point, then give him an example, which in retrospect makes me feel like I’m dumbing it down. Granted, when I read the screenplay, I remember feeling like it was so stupid and poorly written, maybe the writer wouldn’t understand if I just made the points. Still, it’s excessive.

Most of the rest of the formatting stuff — including what I’ve already mentioned — I’d never put into “professional” coverage. Even back then I knew better. The point of Zoetrope.com was for fellow newbie writers to band together. I was just trying to help, because conventional wisdom is that if you’re a newbie and it’s clear from your writing that your a newbie (because of glaring formatting issues), they’ll toss your script aside.

I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than pointing out formatting and mechanics problems in professional coverage. Look at every single one of those paragraphs. I’m basically telling this guy, “You don’t know how to write. Here’s how you should write it.” As a writer, it’s sometimes hard enough to hear that from somebody who’s only making big, vague plot and character suggestions — it’s excruciating to have someone send you a list, with page numbers, of every misspelling, grammatical error, or poor slug choice. I mean, Page 65: “You just keep my rent free, as usual…” I’d take out the “as usual.” It makes the statement redundant. Am I kidding? It’s so nitpicky and ridiculous that I can’t even use the “I was just trying to help another newbie” excuse.

Bar none the worst thing about this coverage: I made it way, way, way too personal. Every problem that I have: “here’s how I’d do it,” “here’s my biggest problem.” Every time I mention choices he makes, I refer to “you.” “Your characters are flat-out stereotypes.” Without the emotional distance of third-person and modifiers like “perhaps,” “maybe,” or phrasing statements as questions, to me it comes across as very harsh. Maybe I’m crazy, but I see a world of difference between, “The characters are flat-out stereotypes” and “Your characters are flat-out stereotypes.” Asking questions, on the other hand, tricks the writer into thinking you’re just spitballing ideas rather than attacking his work.

Aside from that, I stand by the meat of most of the commentary. The inconsistencies/contradictions thing goes on way too long — it makes the mountains of Indiana seem nonspecific — and some of the points aren’t as valid as I thought they were at the time.

My favorite part is this, though: If he is a struggling writer with a day job, why doesn’t he cozy up to her initially for contacts? That’s what I’d do if I was in the same position and happened to have a friend/publishing contact living in the same building. I might as well say, “I’m a horrible person. Why isn’t your character?” Though it starts out valid — the relationships between these characters, and their related occupations, are flawed — it ends up not being constructive at all, because I’m projecting my own personality onto this writer’s fictional character and screenplay.

To sum up:

• Keep it brief and to the point (do the opposite of this blog).
• Whenever possible, use question phrasing (“What if Christian was an astronaut instead of a writer?”) instead of declarative statements.
• If questions don’t work, keep it as impersonal as possible — use third-person and back up your point with reasoning that’s as objective as possible.
• Professional or not, don’t waste time chastising the writer for sloppy formatting or mechanical problems unless they specifically ask for this (that has happened to me once or twice — it’s hard to proofread your own work).
• Keep the analysis brief and focused on the big issues. Don’t go on and on (and on and on and on) with nitpicks and inconsistencies; take it as a given that fixing the “big” problems will also fix all the small problems. This may not be true, but it won’t matter until you see a later draft — if you see one.

But, you know, you might have to nitpick sometimes. Take another look at the mountains of Indiana. I didn’t dive into this earlier because the coverage above lacks a synopsis, but the synopsis is an important part of coverage.

Keep it within the specified length (if they ask for a four-page synopsis, don’t give them one page or seven pages), but within that length make sure you hit on details that will become necessary for the analysis. If you have some leeway with the company and need more room for details, take it — my synopsis is about double the length he wanted, but I’d been reading for him for awhile and felt it necessary to bombard him with details because I nitpicked in the analysis. I don’t recommend doing that, but sometimes it’s necessary — sometimes a story makes so little sense, it’s all just little problems building to one huge problem. You can’t attack it any other way.

If you need to go that route, still don’t make it as long as this. The mountains of Indiana, tour de force that it is, still amounted to about three pages using the company’s coverage template, for both synopsis and notes. The monstrosity pasted above, with no synopsis, clocks in at almost 10 full pages using the same template. Yeah. Excessive.

Posted by Stan on July 9, 2008 3:22 PM  | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling, How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It