Crafty Screenwriting

An introduction

These days it seems like almost everyone is writing or thinking about writing a screenplay. But many screenwriting books are written by teachers and seminar leaders - people with little direct experience in getting pictures made. Even the few written by professional screenwriters don't give the perspective of the people to whom you're going to send your screenplay. For the past ten years or so, I've worked both as a development executive and as a screenwriter. As a development executive, I found that most of the screenplays I rejected had problems that screenwriting books barely address - such as the lack of a "hook" that makes a project possible to get produced. As a professional screenwriter, I discovered that many of the comments development executives give on screenplays don't really address what's wrong with them.

To me, screenwriting is a craft, not art. A screenplay is not a finished work. It is not intended to be appreciated on its own. If a movie were a building, a screenplay would be the blueprint. Nobody settles down in front of a roaring fire with their beloved, a bottle of wine, and a nice blueprint. Nobody (outside of show business) takes a couple of good screenplays out to the beach.

There is no point writing a screenplay if it isn't going to get produced. In theory everyone knows that, but most of the thousands of screenplays I've read in my years as a development executive were never in any danger of being made into a movie. From the moment the writer conceptualized them, they were doomed.

This column won't be solely about writing "commercial" screenplays. Ninety percent of will be about how to write a great movie. But there is no point writing even a great screenplay if it is not going to get made into a movie sooner or later.

That's because a screenplay is not just writing intended to be turned into film. It's important to understand what else a screenplay is, if you're going to go to all the trouble of writing one - because if you don't, you may well be wasting your time.

A screenplay is the first element in what the movie business calls a package. A package is a combination of a star actor and/or a star director and some material - a book, a screenplay, even just a concept - that movie people are betting a lot of other people will want to go see in movie theaters or on their TVs.

Like it or not, a screenplay is an element in a deal.

Movies get made in various ways, some of them straightforward, some of them sordid, all of them frantic at one point or another. A later chapter will go into more depth about the film business, but for now, let's just note that show business is fundamentally schizoid. It is a business, which means people are not in it for their health. When movies flop, people lose their jobs. Unsuccessful actresses actors have to go back to waiting tables, or marry carpet salesmen. Unsuccessful directors have to go back to shooting commercials. Unsuccessful producers have to go back to selling carpets. (Unsuccessful studio executives receive lucrative "golden parachute" contracts with guaranteed production funding, but that's showbiz, Punky.) It's not surprising how crassly commercial the movies are, it's surprising how crassly commercial they're not, considering it's a business.

On the other hand, few people go into the motion picture industry because they want above all to make a lot of money. The money's great if you're working, but really, if you just want to make money, show business isn't the first business you'd pick. Almost any good producer would make more money as a Ferrari salesman. Almost everyone in the business started out loving movies. Screenwriters want to tell stories. Producers want to put good movies on the screen. Actors want to indulge their most extreme emotions, so think twice about dating one. Practically everyone in the motion picture industry is trying to make good movies. They're not all trying to make great art, but if they have the choice, most of them want to make movies they can be proud of.

So every motion picture project starts with an element of commerce and an element of art.

In theory, a motion picture project begins when someone in the development arm of a motion picture studio or production company reads a wonderful screenplay. This might be a reader, often a recent film school grad who gets paid $40 a pop to write 2-5 pages of synopsis and critique. If the reader likes it, she might alert a story editor, who brings it to the attention of a development executive, who gives it to a production executive.

Then, theoretically, a business affairs executive strikes a deal with the writer's agent. "Physical production" people like line producers or unit production managers figure out how much the screenplay will cost to shoot. The film's producer sends the script out to a director, who sparks to the material and agrees to direct the script. Now the script goes to actors. Once a star agrees that he'd like to do the picture, the studio agrees to fund the picture, and we're off and running.

Everybody along the line has to say "yes" for the picture to get made. If anyone in the development chain says "no," the screenplay is dead at that studio.

So a screenplay is a selling tool. It is a salesman for the movie. It will have to sell your story to people you have never met, whom you will never meet, many of whom are in a permanently bad mood because you can write and they can't. It will have to sell to a reader who's just out of film school and thinks she knows everything about show business. It will have to sell to a story editor up past midnight trying to finish her stack of scripts so she can make love to her boyfriend before he goes to sleep. It will have to sell to a production exec who brought home a different script that the producer swears Brad Pitt wants to do. It will have to sell to an actor who is worried that he is getting old. It has to convince all of these cranky people that it is a movie just dying to be made.

A screenplay is a blueprint, an element in a deal, and a sales tool.

What gets your screenplay through the gauntlet? If you read most screenwriting books, the answer is something like this:

• Structure: A good, fresh, well-told story that makes sense.
• Characters: Interesting, fleshed-out characters with the breath of life in them.
• Dialogue: Good, realistic dialogue that gives voice to the characters.
• Pacing: The story needs to unfold with rising pitch until it reaches a dramatic climax.

None of these things is what get you past the gatekeepers. Surprise! Oh, you need them. It won't be a good screenplay without'em. But you can have all of them and not have a screenplay that has a chance of getting produced.

What gets you through is a great hook.
Next Column: The Hook

-- Alex Epstein.