Interview: Scriptshadow
My colleague Tom Benedek interviews Scriptshadow. Some excerpts:
How did the Script Shadow blog evolve?
It evolved when I realized how much there was to learn through reading screenplays. I was sitting there thinking, “I wish there was somebody out there when I first started out to tell me how important this was because if there had been, I could’ve saved myself a lot bad scripts and a lot of heartache.” At some point, I realized that I could become that person to other young screenwriters, and that’s how Scriptshadow was born.
— —
What is your process for writing notes on scripts you read?
I have a very specific way I approach critiquing a screenplay. When I open a script, the last thing I’m thinking about is all the rules of screenwriting. I’m not sitting there going, “Nuh nuh nuh, it’s already page 15 and you haven’t gotten to your inciting incident yet. You lose.” All I care about is being swept away, being entertained. It’s only after I’m finished with the script that I go back and try to figure out why a script did or did not work. For instance, I might say, “Man, that second act was really slow. Let’s go back and try to figure out why.” And I might find out that the hero wasn’t active enough. He may have been sitting around and waiting for things to happen too much. That’s how I analyze screenplays.
— —
What are the most important criteria in your evaluation process?
Character and structure. Those are the two things that are butchered time and time again and that’s because it takes a really long time to learn how to create great characters and plot your movie in such a way that it doesn’t drag. There are plenty of other super important things of course, but those two are the biggest in my eyes.
— —
Should every writer have a two sentence logline in their head before they start writing a script?
I think it’s helpful and I’ll tell you why. When you write out a logline, you give yourself a focused synopsis that helps you control your story. One of the biggest mistakes I see in a lot of amateur screenplays is stories that wander all over the place. If you come up with a very specific logline that has a clear direction for your main character with clear stakes and clear conflict, then you’ll never be at a loss as to what to write next. When people don’t know what to write next or get lost in their story, it’s almost always because their central idea is muddled and unclear.
Are some reads more alive, spontaneous though flawed in certain ways?
Yes. I actually run into a lot of these types of screenplays where there’s definitely an energy and uniqueness to the story that makes you want to keep reading, but the structure might be all over the place, the plot might be muddled, a few of the characters might be lame. I usually see this with really talented writers who are just starting out. They obviously have an interesting imagination and a unique way they see the world, but they haven’t yet learned how to write a screenplay. What new screenwriters have to realize is that writing in different mediums is like speaking in different languages. And out of every storytelling medium out there (novels, plays, video games, short stories, poems), screenwriting is the hardest. It’s the Chinese language of storytelling. So it just takes a really long time to learn how to speak that language, no matter how talented you are. It took me a long time to realize that but boy is it true.
— —
What do you want screenwriters to do better, to work on, in general? What is missing in the scripts you are reading?
Just a clear commitment to your script. One of the biggest problems I see with young writers is that they’re okay with 60 or 65 percent. They don’t push themselves to make every single scene as good as it can possibly be, every single character as good as they can possibly be. They have this mentality of, “well this is good enough”. So I read a lot of average scripts and it’s because the writer isn’t pushing themselves or trying something unique or adding a new spin or trying to make every scene pop. Now some of that has to do with the writer not yet understanding how to do that stuff yet. But no matter what stage you’re at, you should be giving 100 percent effort.
Any other advice?
Write as much as you can, read as many screenplays as you can, and learn as much as you can about screenwriting. The more time you put into those three facets the better you’re going to get.
To read more, go here.