250 Things You Should Know About Writing (13 page)

Don't tell anybody else. I'm sharing this just with you. Take off your pants and I'll tell you. Are they off? Sweet. HA HA HA HA JUST KIDDING NOW YOU'RE PARTLY NAKED AND VULNERABLE AND NOW I WILL ATTACK YOUR PRIVATE PARTS WITH BEES. ... okay, that was weird. I’m so sorry. Anyway. Here's the secret: the second act can really be
two acts
with the act turn smack dab at the midpoint of the whole script. Treat these like any act: escalation leads to an act turn which means some kind of pivot or change, both external and internal. Ta-da! That'll help you fight the sagging mushy gushy lardy middle of your screenplay.

Your script should be between 90-110 pages. Especially if it's a spec script. Going to 120 pages is... regrettable, but doable. Going above 120 or below 90 can be death for your script.

You're committing time and energy to writing this thing, so figure out why. Figure out what you're trying to say and what kind of story you want to tell. Know the reason your script must exist. "I want to write a tragic love story set in space." "I want to highlight the horrific industry of dolphin-killing." "I HATE MY DAD AND I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW IT." Whatever, man. Just find your reason. Let it live at the throbbing heart of the script.

A script with too many characters feels hazy and crazy. It's like making a soup with too many spices or having an orgy with too many participants. Then it just becomes a greasy, smelly game of Twister. "Left leg, some guys pubic tangle. Right leg, shellacked with a heady broth of somebody's man-seed. AHHH DICK IN MY EYE." Keep major characters to about five. With maybe another 10 to 15 lesser characters if need be. But remember: they all need to be fully realized, at least in your own head.

If your two lead characters are Gary and Mary, or Bob and Rob, the reader is going to get confused. I know, you're saying, "What kind of asshole can't figure out the difference between Bob and Rob?" The kind that reads hundreds of scripts per day and has suffered irreparable eye and soul damage from reading the unmerciful shit-fuckery submitted to them by subpar screenwriters, that's who.

Some screenplays suffer from a necessary slow build, but a slow build threatens to derail the reader's attention. So go mess with the narrative flow -- change the time-line. Start at the ending. Or in the middle. Somewhere dramatic. Break the narrative up into a switchback flow, ala
21 Grams
or
Reservoir Dogs
. You can play with the timeline in order to adjust the revelation of plot. What happens then is revealed now. What happens now is revealed later.

Fuck your big bulky description right in the ear. It makes one a very angry chimp when reading giant blocks of descriptive text. You're not writing a book. You write big fat curtains of description, you get the hose again.

Want to trim up your script? Description goes first. Get in there with a hatchet, start choppity-chopping away. Hack away big portions of muscle and fat. Only way to kill the cancer is to
cut it out
. Go mean or go home. Because here's the thing: the more story you can pack on the page, the more story gets to live on those 90-110 pages. Don't. Waste. Space. Think of it as Manhattan real estate.
Prime value
. You need to build up in layers, not across like a spreading pool of baby diarrhea.

A novel is messy. It's a hail of bullets -- a machine gun chatter. You fire 80,000 words over 350 pages, one of them is bound to hit. A script must be far leaner. It has to fire on all cylinders. Has to hit like a single sniper's bullet. Miss your shot? You’ve missed the reader.

It's worth mentioning that, too often, writers assume a 1:1 ratio where a screenplay's story is equivalent to a novel's story. Not likely. Not unless the novel was a lean mean motherfucker, some 60k power-punch of crime or YA or whatever. A screenplay is more like a short story or novella -- you have only
two hours
to tell a whole story.

Your hook lives on that first page. Has to, or somebody will put it down. Sure, that's a dick move, but nobody said this business is fair. You want
fair
, go drink imaginary tea with the 8-year-old goblin child next door. That first page sells the script -- or sinks it.

Backstory and exposition just clog the plumbing.
You
should know all the backstory. But it needs to exist off the page and only come bleeding in -- drops and dribs, spits and spatters – when absolutely necessary. The one way around that is utilizing flashbacks, but if you go that way, it better count -- flashbacks run the risk of reeking of amateur hour flopsweat.

Every scene must justify its own existence. Scenes of redundancy don't belong. THIS IS CINEMADOME. Two scenes enter. One scene leaves. How a scene creates a place for itself in your script is by having a purpose -- no, not a porpoise,
put that dolphin down
. Dolphins are for closers only. Purpose, I said. A reason. And that purpose must be many-tiered: it must move the plot forward
and
develop character in equal measure.
And
that plot and those characters must be going through and challenged by external conflict, internal conflict, or some combo-pack of both.

Every genre has its tropes, and every trope exists because someone created it and other people aped it. If
ALIEN
had Ripley beat the creature down with a double-headed dong, then you probably would've seen that in at least three other copycat films. Point is, tropes work to signal to the reader what genre you're in, but it's just as important to subvert existing tropes and come up with your own. Screenwriting is all about knowing the pattern and then changing the pattern in a handful of meaningful ways so your story owns the genre – rather than genre owning your story.

Know the joy of the false victory and the false defeat. Up until the end of the script, most victories will be short-lived or illusory, and same goes with defeats. A character reaches his lowest point or his highest -- so he thinks -- but it's all a ruse, a sham, a lie. Because fate has
other plans
. *cue dramatic music*

This is not a joke. Learn to outline. Let me say that again: Learn. To. Motherfucking. Outline. Motherfucker. (One too many "motherfuck?" Dang.
Dang
.) Trust me, I get it. You're a glittery pony, a dancing snowflake caught in a beam of the sun's most precious light, and further, I know that outlining will giving you hemorrhoids. Doesn’t matter. Someone is going to ask for an outline. Or, replace "outline" with
treatment, beat sheet, synopsis, logline.
Know all of those. Practice them until you get your own system and style. Don’t be afraid to put your own voice into each.

Collect a buttload of screenplays. Not just from films you like, but films you hate. From films
you've never even seen
. Read them. Study them. Try to see how they do things differently. Or the same.
Then
watch the films that correspond to them.
Then
listen to the commentary tracks that come from the screenwriters. Then do it all over again. And again and again until the earth tumbles into the sun.

Screenplays exist within the rigors of a specific format. I'm not going to sit here and go over it, I'll only say that proper screenwriting software is a critical investment. I use
Final Draft
, even though it makes me want to sometimes chew my arms off at the elbows so I never have to write another screenplay in that program again.
You
may use
Movie Magic
. I don't care. But these programs will auto-format
the script for you -- you still have to know how each stylistic component works, but you don't have to wrestle with some kludgy crap-stink of a Word template.

The great thing about screenplays is how
fast
you can write them. I say this as a novelist, where you feel like it's a game of inches, where it feels like you're trudging uphill through gloppy coal-silt with bricks tied to your feet. A screenplay flies like a hummingbird. Three pages a day, easy, will get you a script in about a month. The rewrite needs time, of course. The brownies need to finish baking. But when putting fresh words on a page, run fast, run free. Then use your excess time on the rewrite.

Films are a major team effort. A screenwriter isn't the one dictating the story. The screenwriter is the one helping to set the course for the story -- but other hands hold the wheel. Producers. The director. Other writers. Whatever mule-kicked marmot they put in charge of the studio. (I kid, I kid.) The story will shift and twitch and grow new limbs and have new dreams and sometimes it'll be made better, sometimes it'll be made worse, and other times it'll just be made
different
. All of this needs to be okay. Let that stress of egomaniacal autocratic storytellerism leave your body. Expect it all to change. Find comfort -- and, in fact, freedom -- from the fact that it will one day escape your hands.

In case you think this just isn't a viable career choice, remember: spec sales are way up in 2011 over 2011. Film and television isn't going anywhere. This is a viable path for you.

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, a screenwriter, game designer, and all-around freelance penmonkey.

He has contributed over two million words to the roleplaying game industry, and was the developer of the popular
Hunter: The Vigil
game line (White Wolf Game Studios / CCP).

He, along with writing partner Lance Weiler, is a fellow of the Sundance Film Festival Screenwriter's Lab (2010). Their short film, Pandemic, will show at the Sundance Film Festival 2011, and their feature film HiM is in development with producer Ted Hope. They both wrote the digital transmedia drama
Collapsus
, which was nominated for an International Digital Emmy and a Games 4 Change award.

Chuck's novel
Double Dead
will be out in November, 2011 with Abaddon.
Blackbirds
and
Mockingbirds
will both come out in 2012 under Angry Robot Books. Chuck is apparently popular in England.

He is also the writer behind short story collection
Irregular Creatures
and
another
big ol’ book of writing advice.
Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey
.

He's written too much. He should probably stop. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife, a newborn son, and a taco terrier. He is represented by Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

You can find him at his website,
terribleminds
, where he is busy dispensing dubious writing advice and publishing wisdom.