Reel Expression

1. The movie business and your story.
You must make producers, directors and actors fall in love with your work and make it their own. Don’t pick a subject because you feel it’s important. If the audience feels for one minute that they are being taught or preached at you’ve lost them. Tell a great story and we’ll follow you anywhere.

2. The reality fallacy
“But it really happened.” This phrase can be the kiss of death. Real life is not composed of great stories with wonderful characters and great structure. Real life stories can be a solid starting point, but most need a lot of work. It’s the difference between watching the Watergate hearings and watching “All the President’s Men.”

3. Who wants what, why, and why now?
Your characters must want something that the audience can understand. Ask why they want it now. Why not next week/month/year? It must also be clear when their desire is achieved. In most cases, the stated desire will not turn out to be the final goal of the movie. You character will be pursuing a false goal up until act three. Each and every character must have clear desires. They must not be the same. Don’t give all your characters the same script. Opposing desire is the origin of true conflict.

4. Sequence vs. Consequence
Act 1 sets the stage of your story. It’s a sequence of events. At the end of act one your character must commit to their goal. They must pass a point of no return. If your second act is merely a series of events without a cohesive driving reason behind them your story will fall apart. This is not to say that the audience should anticipate each scene, but at the end of the movie they must be able to look back and see each action as a consequence of prior actions.

5. Conflict vs Obstacles.
Your main character can only be as strong as the forces opposing him/her. Every human being will take the easiest path available in all things. Unless your conflict is real and serious, the efforts of your characters to overcome it will not ring true with the audience. Don’t confuse mere obstacles for true conflict, and remember that every single scene must contain true conflict.

6. Character vs Characterization
You can add dozens of interesting and unique facets to your character’s makeup. These things characterize. They do not say anything about the true character of that person. True character only emerges through conflict. And it should emerge in opposition to the stated characterization. Audiences like revelation through conflict.

7. Show don’t tell
The best single rule of all writing. Don’t tell me someone is afraid/angry/happy. Don’t have one character tell another that they are afraid/angry/happy. Show me. Dialogue is the screenwriter’s weakest tool. Talking is lying. Action is truth.

8. Exposition
If any one character tells about character “As you know…” you are using obvious exposition. Know how much information the audience needs and when. Scenes of exposition are really dull and stop the story in its tracks. In every screenplay, in every scene, every character has a desire, a goal, and some work to do. So does the writer. None of these things are the same. It is vital that your goals as a writer are unseen. It is the characters’ story, not yours. Your job is to disappear.

9. Dialogue
The biggest mistake in the dialogue of beginning writers is that it has characters answering each other. The best dialogue is oblique, indirect. And remember that dialogue is an invented language all its own; a simulacrum of speech that must be more interesting than actual language. Remember, dialogue does the character’s business, not the writer’s. This is not your opportunity for exposition.

10. Novelizing
If it can’t be filmed don’t include it. Don’t tell the reader something that wouldn’t be visible up on the screen. Don’t say “she is wringing her hands, thinking about what he said.” Keep the first part; loose the second. You may think you are giving the reader inside information. You are: that you don’t know how to tell a story for the camera. And don’t tell the actors to do the impossible. No “He blushes.” Screenplays are also no place for lovely descriptive passages. There are so few words in a screenplay that every word has to fight for its existence. Diction is critical. Don’t waste space with adjectives and adverbs that don’t add to the story.

11. Directing
You are the writer, not the director. Do not use camera calls unless it is absolutely essential to the story. Don’t say anything about the shot, pans, racking, etc. Do not say CAMERA FOLLOWS, CLOSE ON, etc. Directors resent and ignore it. Just describe what happens on screen. Do not tell the actors how to deliver lines.

12. The better your writing, the less the other rules matter.
There is a misspelling in the first sentence of the first draft of “The Usual Suspects.” The author, Christopher McQuarrie, began the script with a flyleaf quote from the Rolling Stones. Two obvious mistakes. That screenplay went on to earn him the Academy Award.