Ah, the Internet. The heck with sliced bread – this is the most incredible invention of our lifetime! I wouldn’t dream of writing an article or blog without Wikipedia and Thesaurus.com open in my browser. Plus Facebook for when I need a bit of distraction.
But it is also the most effective way to spread misinformation known to humankind. Writers aiming to break in are especially susceptible. Hungry for information, the secret formula to gain entry to the insular world that is the film business, they will cling to anything that promises to get them in the door.
In this electronic age, the endless debate over two brads or three has finally, thankfully become irrelevant. It was a massive waste of time and energy. If, by chance you are still pondering this, see my ScriptMag.com article “Does This Script Make Me Look Fat?” under “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, Sweat the Small Stuff.”
But there’s plenty floating out there in cyberspace that is sheer folly. Or worse, harmful.
Busting these screenwriting myths fills me with glee. I hope it saves you time that could be better spent coming up with great ideas or strengthening your script.
Logline Myths
Is crafting a logline making you tear your hair out in frustration? While loglines can be challenging, there’s not need for them to drive you crazy.
Apparently there’s a rumor going around that loglines must be no longer than 25 words. I’ve also heard 27. This happens to be the most current and most insidious myth out there.
Writers are spending time and energy struggling to stick to a rule someone made up that I’d never heard of in 25 years in the business. I’ve since heard rumblings that 25 word bloglines should include one comma. Then I heard two. Seriously? Do you think we have the time to count words? We’re looking for ideas for movies!
This kind of misinformation hurts writers. Perhaps whoever got this ridiculous ball rolling will be offended. Great! Let’s kick up a lot of noise about this one because, even if it was well intentioned, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong and deserves to be dead and buried.
Because of this myth, I’ve received queries with loglines I simply couldn’t figure out. The loglines were so brief and vague they left me with more questions than answers.
In one case, I could see there was a little something intriguing in this itty bitty logline, but it was so thin I couldn’t get the story. In the other, the writer failed on so many counts that I was bewildered as to what the script was about.
One of the baffling 25 word loglines – which despite its brevity managed to include a grammatical error – left me with at least 50 words of questions. I sent them to the writer. To clarify, he added a single word. I still couldn’t figure out who the hero was or what was going on and asked more questions. Finally, he relented and gave me two sentences that more or less made sense. At least I could figure out what the story was about.
Want proof? You be the judge.
Logline Version One – 29 words, two commas:
When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it. (via IMDb)
Logline Version Two – 42 words: one comma:
Horror. When a Great White shark terrorizes a quiet New England beach community, the town’s police chief must overcome his fear of the water and join forces with a grizzled shark hunter and an oceanographer to hunt it down to save the town.
Which version is visceral?
Which includes extraneous information?
Which is the most effective in giving you a sense of the story?
Which communicates the tone of the film? Which has unnecessary adjectives?
Which makes it clear who the hero is?
Which conveys the stakes?
Which logline would make you most likely to ask to read the script out of a stack of hundreds of queries?
There is really only one Logline Law – clearly convey the story in a way that makes it compelling and expresses what the movie feels like. If you don’t do that, you fail.
And no loglines without genres ever!
Look Ma, No Articles!
There was a freaky myth a few years back that in order to make your script a “fast read,” cut out all of the articles – no “a’s,” “and’s,” and “the’s” in the entire script. This destroys the reading experience making it a sentence-by-sentence struggle. Next cut all extraneous words, aiming for the lowest page count possible.
I was in the unique position to have read two different versions of the same script, first pre-tightening and then after following this advice. The story was set in an idiosyncratic small town and filled with charmingly quirky characters and focused on a zany romance. The offbeatness was central to the story and gave the piece its own unique appeal. In the first version I enjoyed the writing and the read.
The second version came to me as a mentor at the awesome CineStory Screenwriting Retreat. As one of this writer’s mentors, I would be spending an hour and a half with him in a constructive conversation about his script. I set out to read it again. This version was much shorter, well under 100 pages. The writing was thin. The story flat. The town and characters, colorless. It wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience. What happened?
The moment I sat down with the writer, this was the first question I asked. He admitted to having read somewhere online (red flag!) that cutting out all the extraneous words would make a script a “fast read.” What was left had virtually no articles – the “a” “an” and “the’s” that are part of normal sentence construction.
And he had cut every adjective possible. Remember what I liked about the first version? Gone thanks to this Internet advice. No adjectives = no unique, quirky charm.
This is not the way to create a fast read. It’s not about words or even page count. A fast read is any script where you simply can’t wait to find out what happens next. When as a reader, you’re so intrigued you fly through the script, burning through the pages.
Can your First Script Sell? Getting Your Foot In the Door
You’ve finished your first script!
Now what?
According to Wikipedia, Foot-In-The-Door isn’t just a moniker applied to pushy salesmen and census canvassers; it’s an actual behavioral phenomenon.
“FITD technique is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request.”
“FITD works by first getting a small ‘yes’ and then getting an even bigger ‘yes.’”
Once a person has agreed to the small request, they’re more likely to go along with even larger requests.
Here’s how:
Aim low.
Hunt for people who are hungry. They need you! They’re looking for you. They’re starving for that great idea or talented new writer. Be the needle in a haystack Grasshopper.
You have the best shot with assistants eager to be promoted to development execs and newly minted development execs, as well as agency assistants hoping to become agents and the brand spanking new Young Turks. They have the most to gain from “discovering” your project.
Target your query letters to them. Aim carefully. Know what their boss/company likes – whether from reading about their projects, sales, online interviews or job announcements – and pitch that to them. Do your homework!
“The best way to get an agent is for someone in the business to recommend you to an agent” seems like a vicious conundrum for aspiring writers. If you find the hungry exec at a production company where the company principal, aka 3000 lb. Gorilla, might be interested in your project, they are THE perfect person to get you an agent. Asking the right person to read your script can lead to asking them – or them offering – to get you an agent. FITD!
Young Exec gets points for finding a potential project and a promising writer. Since she has been busily building relationships with new agents who are moving up the ranks side-by-side with her, she knows Eager Agent who needs clients. Young Exec offers him a known quantity, not a script that was just “thrown over the transom.” She’s pitching the agent a writer she thinks is talented, possibly with a project that’s already getting some traction.
It’s the film industry version of matchmaking.
If Eager Agent and Aspiring Writer “hook up,” Young Exec is everyone’s darling. She will likely get a little special consideration: an early look at Aspiring Writer’s next project, and will be “on the list” when Eager Agent goes out with Aspiring Writer’s next spec. It’s a win-win-win. This is how career-long industry relationships are cemented.
I was fortunate enough to work as a development exec for writer-producers Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon (Starman, Stand by Me, Mr. Brooks) early in my career. They landed their first agent when she was a young agency assistant. They stayed with her for decades while she became a mega agent at CAA until she left to run a production company for a 3000 lb. Gorilla.
Hire yourself to be your own agent.
The agency business is all about information. That’s why those folks are going out to breakfast, lunch, drinks and dinner, sometimes all in one day, not to mention “running the lot” – heading to a studio and meeting with everyone they can. They’re building relationships and gathering info on who is looking to buy what so they can sell it to them, as well as open assignments they can fill with the agency’s clients. That’s what agents do, hunt and gather info, then use it to make money.
As your own agent, think of yourself like a relentless shark gathering info on who wants to buy what. Never has information been so readily available as it is now via the Internet. What (and who) did well at the box office last weekend? That’s what the studios are looking for.
Whether you’re reading Variety, The Hollywood Reporter or Deadline Hollywood, take note of the genres that are selling and who is buying. Just like an agent, pay attention to the announcement of new studio deals. The studio is highly motivated to buy for a new company whether it is producer, star or director-driven. The studio made the deal because they felt it would lead to making movies that, based on the producer/director/star’s track record, would make money. If the company and the studio don’t start developing projects together, then there’s zero chance of the studio making money and they’re already spending money to fund the production company. Likewise, at the end of a deal – typically anywhere from 18 months to as long as five years – the studio is less motivated to buy.
The late Tom Jankiewicz was a substitute schoolteacher when he wrote Gross Pointe Blank. He was probably the gentlest and tallest person I have ever met. He described to me how he read the trades religiously, using the information he gathered to send out countless queries. When he read that an actor, Kiefer Sutherland, had a deal and studios were buying things for him, he sent a query to his company. Kiefer was attached for a time and, even though he ultimately wasn’t involved with the movie, it got the ball rolling and Tom got his movie made. FITD at work!
STOP thinking about selling the script; think about the script selling you.
Selling a first script off of a query letter is an extreme long shot. Nearly impossible. What’s NOT impossible is having a terrific script launch your career.
Think of your script as a description in an online dating service. You like long walks on the beach at sunset, your genre is high-concept comedies, and you write distinctive, dimensional characters. Your script introduces you to us.
According to Shane Black, one of the most successful spec script writers of all time, “It’s a difficult spec market. Practically nonexistent. But my advice would still be, if you’re going to get in, get in with a spec script – and this is my experience, said Shane in a recent interview in anticipation of the opening of Iron Man 3 which he co-wrote and directed. “The first script most people write probably isn’t going to sell – mine didn’t! People might be interested in it, they might like the writing, and that encourages them to hire you for something else. They might say, ‘Yeah, he’s pretty good. Let’s get him in to do the next draft of our film that’s in production.’”
If I read your script, even if I don’t want to produce your script, if I think you’re a talented writer with marketable ideas, it’s in my best interest to build a relationship with you. We all need material. You create material. We need to know talented new writers. Hopefully that’s you. It’s in my best interest to get to know you and to find out about what you’re writing next. That might well be something I am excited about producing.
That script doesn’t have to sell to move you forward.
One of the most amazing FITD stories I know is from Glenn Gers, writer of Fracture and Mad Money. Glenn wrote his first script in 1984. It got him an agent right away. “People liked it. No one would make it, but they liked it,” says Glenn. “They offered me jobs writing other scripts.” Five years later, it was optioned by a major producer for a year. Five years after that, it was optioned by a studio for A-list stars. “I was then fired off it,” explains Glenn. “Three years later I got it back. More stars and directors have wanted to do it since; one got a company to finance it but then the company went out of business.” Here’s what blows my mind, according to Glenn, “A producer and director I think are great are currently trying to cast and finance an indie production.”
The Energizer Bunny of FITD scripts! Almost 30 years and still going.
Wikipedia has one more piece of advice for people trying to get a “yes.” The reverse approach – “making a deliberately outlandish opening demand so that a subsequent, milder request will be accepted – is known as the door-in-the-face technique.”
I don’t recommend it as that’s exactly the position you’re likely to find yourself in!
