Let's face it, we all know how difficult it is to pay your bills as a writer of fiction. To those that do it on the scale of JK Rowling or as the unknown author barely making it, my hat goes off to you.
I'm convinced amateur writers all make the same mistakes, it's not even mistakes, it's just not having that sixth sense for story. I can literally say this for everything I've read in the last twelve months (13 scripts, 7 TV pilots). I can also say this for everything I've read prior as well.
Here's the three biggest mistakes you are making and you don't even know it:
1) You are not expanding your concept. You are writing a story about two brothers that rob a bank, or a guy climbing the corporate latter, etc, but stories are about change. You have the beginning of a concept and you write the entire script around the beginning of your concept, you have no middle or end to it. You need to identify those tent pole moments in structure. Those moments that will impact the reader and be defining moments for the story and the character. Traditional storytelling says you need an event like this at the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% marks of your script. There are no rules on how many impactful moments you can have, how many scenes of true metamorphosis and no rules on where they have to be in the telling? But would you want to group them all together? No, they'd lose their impact like that. Would you want to spread them far apart? No, the reader will lose interest before they get to them. When you have a concept, do yourself a huge favor and wrack your brain for those 4 defining moments in the change process of your character. You write the screenplay around those moments, this way you know for sure your story moves and the reader is witness to change.
2) I hate to say this, but most amateurs are clueless when it comes to structure. They are lost puppies wandering in a black wilderness with wild animals in the distance. The question is why. Why are amateurs horrible at structure? I think it's because they can't see that they don't have it. To them it works, and works well. That's what they see. But after reading ten pages of their script, you can tell right away the structure is not tight and they are 100% unaware of the structure conventions of the genre they are writing in. When you make people aware of this notion that they are WAY off base in the structure department, you have two reactions. Some people hate your guts and remain in denial, for others you just made the jigsaw puzzle way more difficult. I think writers find the structure through writing. Either pages or outline or treatment form. They find it by writing about the type of character they are dealing with and the kind of problems that kind of person would face, and they are probably not taking their first thoughts and getting married. They are seeing what works and what doesn't, they are shedding what doesn't and moving on to variation 2.0 of the structure. Everything from variation 2.0 doesn't stick but some does, they shed what doesn't and move on to structure 3.0, and so on. Amateurs come up with structure 1.0 and immediately write a script then they hand that script to peers, managers, agents. They are on Done Deal asking for the William Morris email structure. The screenplay market is like the coolest kid in high school. It doesn't even know you exist and it doesn't have to. Doesn't matter that you know everything about it, it still has no need for you. But do something that grabs that cool kid's attention and then all of sudden 'You da man' as they kids say. You will never be the man with structure 1.0. Think about this, pro writers probably spend 6 - 8 hours a day, 40 - 50 hours per week writing. Before they start the actual writing, they may spend a few weeks in the think tank writing things like an outline, character bios, treatments, practice scenes, story flow charts. So that's 150 hours lets say they spend on coming up with a solid structure, character depth, impactful moments. How many hours did you spend on your structure before writing? Most of us are writing an hour or two here and there when we can and when we are motivated. Think about how much longer that makes the process. Plus, pro writers are hyper aware of #1 - expanding the concept - which is like the keys to the fancy car.
3) After doing steps 1 and 2, which should take you a while, unless you have 50/hrs per week to spend on it. You'll then want to start creating scenes, the building blocks to that structure you put more than a hundred hours into. There's one real principle to scene construction that you really should remember. That is, scenes must be about something. Ok, you say that's a vague statement and you are right. What is something? Something could be two friends in a car talking about how much they love Starbucks coffee. You'd say that scene is about something it's about their love of Starbucks and I will tell you that scene is about nothing. Any scene where you have characters agree from beginning to end that scene is about nothing and it probably there as an exposition dump. A scene is about nothing, unless it contains warring objectives. The reader will not read chit-chat, especially agents or managers. The next time you are channel surfing and you come across a movie, any movie, stop and watch. Listen to how the characters are talking to each other. They speak to each other in rebuttals. Each one has a will, and objective and they are up against someone else's objective and only one can win. Let's go back to the example. Which conversation would you read, two guy agreeing Starbucks is the best, or one Dunkin Donuts guy and 1 Starbucks Guy arguing who has the better coffee? Every scene needs to be like that or else your dialogue will be impossible to read and all exposition lines will stick out. Now that being said, objectives have to tie into plot. Characters need motivation to hold the objective they do, can't be for any old reason. Everything has to connect. This is all the stuff you'd want to figure out in that 150 hours or work you're gonna do before you start writing.
It's not that any one really stinks at being a writer. When I get handed a script that has as many problems as Disney has Dalmatians, I don't think the writer is terrible. They are just unaware of the effort that is need to go into writing a good script. They are writing with 1/10 the effort and want to stand shoulder to shoulder with pros. Some writers wake up to this fact and some don't. They ones that do will be better writers for it, the ones that don't will forever be stuck in a pipe dream that never had a chance of fruition.
I'm convinced amateur writers all make the same mistakes, it's not even mistakes, it's just not having that sixth sense for story. I can literally say this for everything I've read in the last twelve months (13 scripts, 7 TV pilots). I can also say this for everything I've read prior as well.
Here's the three biggest mistakes you are making and you don't even know it:
1) You are not expanding your concept. You are writing a story about two brothers that rob a bank, or a guy climbing the corporate latter, etc, but stories are about change. You have the beginning of a concept and you write the entire script around the beginning of your concept, you have no middle or end to it. You need to identify those tent pole moments in structure. Those moments that will impact the reader and be defining moments for the story and the character. Traditional storytelling says you need an event like this at the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% marks of your script. There are no rules on how many impactful moments you can have, how many scenes of true metamorphosis and no rules on where they have to be in the telling? But would you want to group them all together? No, they'd lose their impact like that. Would you want to spread them far apart? No, the reader will lose interest before they get to them. When you have a concept, do yourself a huge favor and wrack your brain for those 4 defining moments in the change process of your character. You write the screenplay around those moments, this way you know for sure your story moves and the reader is witness to change.
2) I hate to say this, but most amateurs are clueless when it comes to structure. They are lost puppies wandering in a black wilderness with wild animals in the distance. The question is why. Why are amateurs horrible at structure? I think it's because they can't see that they don't have it. To them it works, and works well. That's what they see. But after reading ten pages of their script, you can tell right away the structure is not tight and they are 100% unaware of the structure conventions of the genre they are writing in. When you make people aware of this notion that they are WAY off base in the structure department, you have two reactions. Some people hate your guts and remain in denial, for others you just made the jigsaw puzzle way more difficult. I think writers find the structure through writing. Either pages or outline or treatment form. They find it by writing about the type of character they are dealing with and the kind of problems that kind of person would face, and they are probably not taking their first thoughts and getting married. They are seeing what works and what doesn't, they are shedding what doesn't and moving on to variation 2.0 of the structure. Everything from variation 2.0 doesn't stick but some does, they shed what doesn't and move on to structure 3.0, and so on. Amateurs come up with structure 1.0 and immediately write a script then they hand that script to peers, managers, agents. They are on Done Deal asking for the William Morris email structure. The screenplay market is like the coolest kid in high school. It doesn't even know you exist and it doesn't have to. Doesn't matter that you know everything about it, it still has no need for you. But do something that grabs that cool kid's attention and then all of sudden 'You da man' as they kids say. You will never be the man with structure 1.0. Think about this, pro writers probably spend 6 - 8 hours a day, 40 - 50 hours per week writing. Before they start the actual writing, they may spend a few weeks in the think tank writing things like an outline, character bios, treatments, practice scenes, story flow charts. So that's 150 hours lets say they spend on coming up with a solid structure, character depth, impactful moments. How many hours did you spend on your structure before writing? Most of us are writing an hour or two here and there when we can and when we are motivated. Think about how much longer that makes the process. Plus, pro writers are hyper aware of #1 - expanding the concept - which is like the keys to the fancy car.
3) After doing steps 1 and 2, which should take you a while, unless you have 50/hrs per week to spend on it. You'll then want to start creating scenes, the building blocks to that structure you put more than a hundred hours into. There's one real principle to scene construction that you really should remember. That is, scenes must be about something. Ok, you say that's a vague statement and you are right. What is something? Something could be two friends in a car talking about how much they love Starbucks coffee. You'd say that scene is about something it's about their love of Starbucks and I will tell you that scene is about nothing. Any scene where you have characters agree from beginning to end that scene is about nothing and it probably there as an exposition dump. A scene is about nothing, unless it contains warring objectives. The reader will not read chit-chat, especially agents or managers. The next time you are channel surfing and you come across a movie, any movie, stop and watch. Listen to how the characters are talking to each other. They speak to each other in rebuttals. Each one has a will, and objective and they are up against someone else's objective and only one can win. Let's go back to the example. Which conversation would you read, two guy agreeing Starbucks is the best, or one Dunkin Donuts guy and 1 Starbucks Guy arguing who has the better coffee? Every scene needs to be like that or else your dialogue will be impossible to read and all exposition lines will stick out. Now that being said, objectives have to tie into plot. Characters need motivation to hold the objective they do, can't be for any old reason. Everything has to connect. This is all the stuff you'd want to figure out in that 150 hours or work you're gonna do before you start writing.
It's not that any one really stinks at being a writer. When I get handed a script that has as many problems as Disney has Dalmatians, I don't think the writer is terrible. They are just unaware of the effort that is need to go into writing a good script. They are writing with 1/10 the effort and want to stand shoulder to shoulder with pros. Some writers wake up to this fact and some don't. They ones that do will be better writers for it, the ones that don't will forever be stuck in a pipe dream that never had a chance of fruition.
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