Kick those clichés in the ass…

Clichés… We all write them. Sometimes, there’s even a good reason for it.

Or is there?

Clichés come in all forms…

Characters, dialogue, locations, action, and description. Many of us think in clichés. Clichés are clichés because that’s what we think of most when someone explains something to us…

When I say the word, “Mafia” in connection with film, don’t you almost immediately conjure up pictures of THE GODFATHER, GOODFELLAS, CASINO, THE SOPRANOS, et al?

So, the next time you sit down and bang out a few pages on your screenplay, take a hard look at your characters, dialogue, locations, action, and description… Hell, take this a step further and look at your story itself.

What’s it about?

Is the story cliché in and of itself? Is it something we’ve seen before? Would we, as an audience draw comparisons to other films simply by reading the script? Is that a good thing?

Is cliché bad?

Well, in spec screenwriting, YES, cliché is bad. In fact, you do just about everything you can do to eliminate clichés from your story and script. I would even venture to say that Indie filmmakers writing their own screenplays should strive to avoid clichés whenever possible.

How do you accomplish this?

I’m a huge believer in writing the first draft of your script in whatever way makes it the most easiest for you… If you’re like most of us and think in “clichés” — fine… Write that first draft as cliché as it must be TO GET THAT STORY OUT OF YOU and ON THE PAGE!

Getting the story out of you and on the page is the huge first step in getting rid of cliché EVEN if that first draft is full of ‘em.

Why?

Because now, you can identify them and perform second draft surgery. Just as a doctor cuts out tumors, so should you cut out clichés in your screenplay.

Got a scene in a car? Sure you do… Don’t we all? Is it the same scene we always see in the movies? Two heads talking?

How do you take a standard scene like that… A scene that you absolutely must have and turn it upside down so that it’s no longer a cliché?

You’re a WRITER ARE YOU NOT? You have to get creative! Maybe one of the passengers is playing with the radio. Maybe he or she is going through the glovebox… Maybe he or she is making faces at other drivers…

The sky’s the limit here… Use your imagination to turn that tired old scene into something we’ll enjoy watching…

Just like so many outstanding actors STEAL SCENES, so should you create characters that steal scenes…

Maybe your screenplay is already outstanding but you have a few of those “standard” scenes that we’ve all seen before… Try to come up with ways to make these “standard scenes” become non-standard i.e., avoid the standard clichés and figure out HOW to change certain aspects of the scene.

Characters…

Instead of a tough street-wise homicide detective, figure out ways to make this same character feel authentic to us… Maybe he’s addicted to porn and this addiction often gets in the way of his work… Maybe he’s a vegetarian and he’s always talking about different kinds of veggie dishes… Whatever. Find ways to avoid what we, as an audience, would normally conjure up in our head when a character is described to us.

Dialogue…

Take a look at your first draft and see if the characters have said what we would generally expect a character of this type to say… If so, change it up. Give the character a stutter. Maybe every third word is a cuss word or maybe he never cusses… Maybe he quotes authors all the time… Maybe the gospel… Find something that makes him or her unique and gives the character their own “voice.”

Locations…

See if you’ve got the same old tired locations we’ve seen before and then consider coming up with a new location for that scene… Often, just a simple location switch can make a scene much more exciting and avoid the usual clichés at the same time.

Instead of the bar scene or the strip joint scene, what about the top of a building? What about a theater during a film and the other audience members start getting annoyed at the characters having a conversation? I once took a tired, cliché scene of a friend’s script… A detective talking to his boss in the bosses office… Seen it before… Hundreds of times. I rewrote it so that the detective had to find his boss walking his dog and while the two are in a heated discussion, the dog gets loose and hit by a car. It became everyone’s favorite scene in the script…

Action…

Try to refrain from using tired old verbs like RUN, WALK, TURN, etc. in exchange for a verb that best describes the action.

*Note: SEE THIS BLOG POST

Description…

Same here… Instead of the same old tired stuff like:

EXT. DESERT FREEWAY - DAY

A very hot day.

Change it up to something a little more descriptive…

EXT. MOJAVE DESERT FREEWAY INTERSTATE 10 - DAY

A fiery orange ball of a sun hangs high in the sky. Heat waves pulsate off the blacktop.

Make it just a little more fun to read without going overboard…

Figure out a way to turn the cliché upside down and you’ll go a lot farther toward having people that read your screenplay, really get into it and maybe even a sale…

Unk

Copy a screenplay…

Say what?

That’s right… Unless you’re in the middle of a rewrite… Unless you’re in the middle of your screenplay… Unless you’re working on your outline…

GO COPY A SCREENPLAY!

It occurred to me some years back that when I was once a young aspiring artist around 4 years old, I didn’t know how to draw. I couldn’t read too well and nobody in my family was going to teach a 4 year old anything about art… LOL.

So I went ahead and started copying the comics from the Sunday paper.

I copied my ass off and was quite committed until one day, even my Dad who is rarely impressed with ANYTHING actually made a nice comment about the copy.

There began my art school because I sure as HELL was never going to be able to afford to pay tuition. LOL.

As it turned out, I didn’t do that badly… In my twenties, I no longer had to copy anyone else’s work and I even started selling paintings here and there but THAT is another story…

When I started to TRY and write my first screenplay, there was no internet and at my local library, there was only one screenplay book (that I won’t mention here) that SUCKED.

I had a ton of notes… I felt I was a movie aficionado like Quentin Tarantino… Damn, what next?

Nothing.

I basically wrote several pages in longhand on legal pad and that was it… I should also mention that during this time, I was also a micro-budget filmmaker working mainly in Super8 and 16mm but most of the shorts that I had done up until that time were spontaneous i.e., no screenplay.

At some point in time just a little later on, I happened to be attending a Horror Movie convention here in Los Angles and it was there that I walked by a vendor that had two screenplays sitting on his table for $25 apiece.

I bought them both right there and then and $50 was A LOT OF MONEY to me back then.

The screenplays were and which just happened to be two of my favorite movies…

Later that night when I got back home, I took the brads out of BLADERUNNER and sat down at my very old but humming right along IBM Selectric with a courier ball on top and started to copy BLADERUNNER page for page.

I cannot tell you what an accomplishment it was to eventually finish typing all those pages. At first it was, admittedly… A CHORE. But within a few days, miraculous things started to happen to me…

The best way I can describe it TODAY, is that I felt as though I was almost profiling and maybe even channeling the screenwriter(s) AND the characters…

*NOTE: When I say COPY the screenplay, I do not mean sitting there blindly and not paying attention to what you are copying… I’m talking about READING every line and thinking about it… Trying to remember it so you can copy it over without going back to look at the source material.

Within a few days, I felt as if I was the screenwriter and even though I was copying the script page by page, I felt my own consciousness playing around with the story… Trying to move the characters in other directions…

When I was finished with BLADERUNNER, I went on to THE THING and did the same thing and this time around, I was even more into it.

It was as if I had found the LOST KEY on how to write a screenplay… Hell, I even set my margins and tabs so they perfectly matched those in the screenplays.

I eventually picked up little writing nuances that both screenplays had and later tweaked them into my own nuances…

I felt my way along the structure of both screenplays and started to really understand a microcosm of what the screenwriters must have gone through and THROUGH this exercise, I became hyper-aware that screenwriting was as much of a CRAFT as any other kind of writing out there.

I have since continued to copy screenplays… I try to copy at least one screenplay a year when I have some down time and every time I complete the exercise, absolutely wonderful screenwriting secrets, nuances, techniques, structure, etc. are OPENED UP TO ME.

On top of that, I have been to EVERY major screenwriting guru out there; I’ve bought and purchased every screenwriting book there is on the market; I scour eBay for OLD screenwriting books so I can see the progression and evolution that screenwriting has gone through… I read at least one screenplay a week that I’ve never read before… The list goes on.

Yet out of everything listed above, copying over screenplays of movies that I love has probably taught me the most… This single exercise has taken my own screenwriting to the professional level.

So if you’re in a place right now where you can spare a couple of weeks because the writing isn’t going so well, go copy your favorite movie’s screenplay OR go copy a movie’s screenplay that is similar to the movie that you want to write…

Pay attention to the copying… No you can’t sell the copy when you’re done… No, you can’t do a damn thing with it except be PROUD that you finished and absorbed a lot of what the original screenwriters were going through and thinking at the time…

You can’t put a price on that.

Unk

10 screenwriting tips without actually writing

1) Read everything you can get your hands on. Everything you read will be somehow absorbed into your screenwriting. Read a woman’s magazine or a men’s sport magazine while you’re at the doctor’s office. Read the newspaper… Especially the headlines. Read “how to” articles. Read the side of your cereal box. Here’s a new one… Read a book! It’s amazing what you can learn by simply reading everything you can get your hands on but at a minimum, try to always have at least one book you’re always reading. Don’t wait for months and months to start a new one, keep that stream of new information feeding into your brain at a steady rate. Everything you read will be absorbed into your screenwriting thus, making you a better screenwriter.

2) Go READ a DVD. That’s right, a DVD. How do you do that? Easy, set the DVD menu so that the English (or whatever language you’re comfortable with) subtitles come up. Then sit there and read all the dialogue. Use the rest of your senses to absorb the rest of the movie and read the dialogue. This will give you a lot of insight to writing outstanding dialogue. It’s all there… Believability, subtext, authenticity. Go read a DVD.

3) Read one screenplay a week. That’s 52 screenplays a year. More than most screenwriters have ever read in their entire LIVES! Free screenplays are readily available for download on the net in .pdf, .html, and .txt formats. Just do a search for free screenplays on Google to get you started. After several GOOD screenplays, you’ll start getting a feel for how the pros do it i.e., dialogue, action, structure, characters, etc. Again, you will absorb everything you read and eventually export it to your screenplays in one way or another.

4) Act. Yeah, go take an acting class. To really learn about subtext, take an acting class and see how actors create subtext within a scene as opposed to how a screenwriter writes in the subtext. This is an amazing revelation and will definitely improve your writing… Especially character action AND dialogue.

5) Spy on people. No, don’t become a stalker but simply observe the people around you instead of being so focused on your own world. You will see amazing things that people do on a day to day basis. This can only expand your writing when it comes to creating characters. Watch how people eat. Watch how they react to good news and bad. See how little things make them happy or sad. Look for the little details i.e., jewelry, clothing, shoes, tattoos, makeup, weight, posture, etc. The more people you watch, the better. Remember, your characters must be authentic. Taking a variety of characteristics from actual people you’ve observed creates authenticity.

6) Play your entire movie in your head. You’d be surprised at how many wannabe screenwriters fail to do this simple (well, maybe not so simple) task. When writing a screenplay, playing the entire movie in your head at least once a day should be at the top of your THINGS TO DO LIST. You’ll discover problems you didn’t know you had, new things to set up, sub plots, etc. Try to go from beginning to end at least once a day EVEN if you don’t have the entire story figured out yet. TIP: Try this right after you go to bed… Fall asleep to the playing of your movie and wake up solving problems. It works!

7) Pitch your screenplay idea to 25 people. Do it in person, over the phone, via email, but do it. None of these people have to be an expert on screenwriting. Use family and friends if you have to but stay away from those people that don’t want to hurt your feelings. You want honest feedback here. Boil your story down to a logline and pitch it to 25 people and then ask, “Would you pay $10 to see this movie?” If they wouldn’t pay the ten bucks, be sure to ask why and make mental notes. If over 85% of the people you pitch your story to say they WOULD PAY their ten bucks to see it, you just “might” have a great idea for a movie.

8) Go to a screenwriting workshop. I know, I know… Money’s always a problem but if this is REALLY what you want to do, then you gotta find a way to do it. This is an investment in yourself and that’s always a good investment! Try to attend at least one screenwriting workshop a year. Consider starting out with the annual in Los Angeles. Not only can you learn a massive amount of screenwriting information in a short period of time, you can network, pitch an idea or a screenplay at the pitching workshops. On top of this, meet other writers who are going through the same thing you’re going through! Trade contact information. Maybe you can read and critique each other’s work. Try to make it part of a vacation… Once a year.

9) Go to the movies! Yeah, I know most of them suck these days but that’s kind of a good thing… Why? You can go and learn what NOT TO DO! Trust me, Hollywood WANTS GOOD STORIES! The problem is that there aren’t too many people writing them these days. Go watch a movie and see how it works. Do you identify with the characters? If so, WHY? Where did the story slow down and lose your attention and why? Count the clichés. Did the ending satisfy you? If so, WHY? If not, WHY? Get a sense of how the film was structured. Get a sense of pacing. Watch the hero’s journey.

10) Read entertainment news. No, you don’t have to subscribe to Variety or the Hollywood Reporter but it might not be a bad idea… LOL. You can read just about all the same news online if you know where to go. These links will get you started.






















Be sure to investigate the NEWS links at all the sites. Lots of great information about the industry.

Unk

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