ScriptShadow interview

 I got this from the Great American Pitchfest newsletter.  This is a really good interview with ScriptShadow.  He gives tips on screenwriting.  Here's his blog:

http://scriptshadow.blogspot.ca/2011/06/scriptshadow-special-how-to-craft-damn.html

 

The Shadow Knows

Q&A With ScriptShadow, Online Script Reviewer

Many reviewers occupy the blogospheres, but ScriptShadow sets himself apart by reviewing spec scripts, not films. With a massive amount of reviews on his blog, ScriptShadow shares his opinions on the scripts bouncing around the executive’s offices in Hollywood.

GAPF: There are lots of formulas and techniques out there for how to get a script written. How do you approach structure, character, and theme when reviewing a script?

SS: It starts with structure. You want to make sure that at every point in your story, there's a central character with a strong goal, driving the action.  Normally that would be your hero (Frodo has to destroy the ring), but sometimes it can be your villain (Darth Vader chasing Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back). And other times still, it can be both (Hans is trying to rob the vault, and John McClane is trying to get his wife back in Die Hard). If you ever hit a spot in your screenplay where there isn't at least one main character with a strong goal driving the story, your story is dead.

On the character side, it's a lot more complicated. Writing interesting characters is the hardest thing to do in a screenplay, so there's no way I can answer that question in a single paragraph. The easiest way to create depth in a character is to give them some sort of character flaw that’s always held them back.  Maybe he doesn't believe in himself (Rocky) or maybe he’s too dependent on lying (Liar Liar).  A character who’s battling something inside of himself is the first step to creating a three-dimensional character. 

Theme is the connective tissue in a screenplay. It's the glue that connects your characters to your structure to your dialogue to all the other little things that make up your script. If somebody hasn't decided on a clear, well-thought-out theme, his or her script will feel disjointed and confused (a very basic breakdown of Avatar’s theme might be – “Everything is connected”).  So whenever a script is tonally all over the place, I usually know that’s a thematic problem.

GAPF: What is your advice for the writer sitting down to write for the first time?

SS: Go become a doctor instead! Your wife will be a lot happier. No, seriously, my advice would be to make sure this is something you really want to do. It's one of the hardest professions out there, and it's going to take a lot more work than you initially think it's going to take. If the only reason you got into screenwriting was because you saw Transformers and thought you could do better than that, you're going to hate screenwriting. It's a lot harder than you think, and it takes a lot of hours to master. Most screenwriters don't break out until they've been at this for seven years. To give you some context, Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country For Old Men), one of the great novelists of our time, just wrote his first screenplay (which he sold due to his name), and it’s practically unreadable (this coming from 11 out of 12 hardcore McCarthy fans I know). That’s how difficult this medium is, that even Cormac McCarthy has trouble with it. But if you're getting into this because you truly love writing and the idea of telling stories in visual form, then this is definitely the career choice for you.

GAPF: What is something your favorite scripts have in common? 

SS: My favorite scripts have a very strong narrative drive. You're never confused about what's going on.  There aren't 18,000 subplots confusing you or 14,000 characters, 13,995 of which have nothing to do with the story. The goals are clear. The motivations are clear. And the writer always does a really good job keeping you in the loop of what's going on. The perfect example is Back To The Future. You always know what's going on in that story. You always know what Marty’s next goal or task is. You'd be surprised at how little of this I see in amateur scripts.

GAPF: Why do you think that is?

SS: I know the writer knows what's going on in his story - but he hasn't yet learned how to convey that to the reader. Now the funny thing is, I don't necessarily need this from the movies I see. I can enjoy a movie like Babel or The Thin Red Line, but you just can't do that kind of stuff in screenplays.

GAPF: What qualities do most of your least favorite scripts have?

SS: Sloppiness. You'd be surprised at how sloppy the screenplays I read are, not only from amateurs, but also from professionals. There's a pervading thought because it’s a screenplay (as opposed to a novel), it's okay if you cut corners or don’t put any effort into your subplots or secondary characters. This is a horrible way to approach screenwriting. You have to treat your screenplay as a Bible.

GAPF: What feedback do you wish you could give those writers?

Every single detail needs to be poured over. If something isn't good enough, and you know it, change it. Don't just say to yourself, “Well, it’s okay if this scene sucks because there's a good scene coming up.” Every scene needs to be a good scene. Clint Eastwood said it best when asked how he makes such good movies, “Easy. I just try to make every scene the best scene in the movie.” If you take pride in your work and give 100 percent on every single aspect of your screenplay, you'll put yourself above 90 percent of the screenwriters out there.

GAPF: Talk about some of the scripts you’ve reviewed where the movie was markedly worse?

SS: Well, I infamously had Everything Must Go on the top of my "best unproduced screenplays" Top 25 List for a couple of years, and it really was a clever well-written screenplay. It was about a guy who’d been kicked out of his house by his wife and decides to defiantly set up camp on his front lawn. I won't get into all of the reasons I liked it, but when I saw the movie, I was shocked how boring it was. And I realize the reason it was so boring was because the whole thing took place in one yard. Movies are kinetic and visual. So where the location didn't really matter on the page, it became a huge problem on the screen. We just never went anywhere or did much, and that sunk the movie into Boredom Town. 

GAPF: Which script was better onscreen than on the page?

SS: I'd point to Hanna. To me, the script didn't go anywhere. It had long sections where Hanna would live with a family and not do anything. I thought it was pretty horrible. And it didn't make sense either (Her dad sends her out to meet him in Germany? Why didn’t he just go there with her?). But what Joe Wright did with the style and tone of the film made it infinitely more exciting. They made some script changes to put Hannah on the move more, and also all of the delirious imagery and strangeness that made the movie so unique wasn’t on the page.

GAPF: You have a book coming out. What can you tell us about 

it?

SS: I wanted to write a book meeting two sets of criteria. The first was it couldn’t be like any screenwriting book that had come out before. The second was it would be a book I would want to buy myself. So I thought long and hard, and I realized the most popular part of my site is the section at the end of each review, detailing what I learned from the script. Everybody loves that section. So I decided to build an entire book around that concept, except instead of mining those lessons from unproduced screenplays, I’d mine them from great movies. The book is 500 screenwriting lessons I learned from 50 great movies. I have Die Hard in there, Aliens, Rocky, Star Wars, Good Will Hunting, Pretty Woman, etc. I realize I'm a little biased here, but I believe it will be the most informative screenwriting book on the market. It comes out early March and will be available on my site!

GAPF: Do you have any pitching tips for the writers out there?

SS: With pitching it's all about making sure your pitch is practiced and ready and then having a couple of backup pitches ready to go. I once went into a pitch with a partner, and we didn't have a backup. I could tell within 30 seconds the producer we were pitching hated the idea. My partner, however, did not realize this, so he kept talking and talking and talking. At one point the woman looked so mad I thought she was going to punch my partner. I realized if I had a couple of other pitches practiced, I could've jumped in and given her something different.  

GAPF: Do you have advice on longlines?

SS: As for loglines, they’re tricky little beasts, and I admit to being baffled by them sometimes. But I posted an article on loglines, and it became one of the top 5 posts on my site. 

GAPF: Your blog has come under a lot of criticism for reviewing and/or distributing early drafts of scripts. How do you respond to your critics?

SS: A lot of that criticism came early on when I was posting links for the screenplays I reviewed on the site. I don't do that anymore. I know there are still people who don't like what I do and believe I'm hurting professional screenwriters, and I understand their opinions up to a certain point.  But what some of those screenwriters forget is how lonely and difficult and frustrating it is on the outside. They’ve maybe forgotten nobody wants to read your screenplay, nobody wants to help you, and nobody wants to let you in. What Scriptshadow does is it provides a bridge between these two worlds – the amateur and the professional. I can't tell you how many times writers have e-mailed, telling me they were going to quit screenwriting, until my site demystified the process for them. It gave them something real to measure their own screenplays against. The site gives people hope, and it's important to have hope in a career as difficult as this one.  

GAPF: What’s next for ScriptShadow?

SS: Some great things! I'll be switching over to my own domain (no more Blogspot) within the next couple of months, creating more of a community with the site. I'm jumping on what I believe are a couple of things that will get bigger in the screenwriting world within a year or two, and I hope to be offering screenwriters a way to capitalize on that. And then I'm coming out with my book (early March!), which I plan on toppling the Cat with. So there's a lot of great stuff on the horizon.