READER NOTES - 2

This thread on Done Deal sparked one of the sillier debates I've ever read on screenwriting. There was a simple issue: how do you indicate voice over? The simple answer is (V.O.) after the character name.

It's what is called a "character extension."  Very descriptive: something that extends the line of the name. You put (O.S.) there. Or (CONT'D) there. It's what is called a "convention."  That is: it's how it's done in a subculture, like screenwriting.  They have different conventions in other forms.  The overarching position in the thread, and in so many other threads in so many other places is:

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THERE ARE NO RULES IN SCREENWRITING.

Here's a YouTube video of a panel of professional readers speaking to hopeful screenwriters. It's quite long and the sound isn't great in many places, but here are some excerpts:

Re: typos and poor grammar -

It's another red flag that someone doesn't have an element of craft, that someone isn't invested, hasn't spent the time to think "Oh, maybe I should read it before I send it out." Or give it to somebody who is a grammar queen to like, knock it into shape, so, typos lose me right away. Bad, I don't know how it happens at this level, but bad formatting, things that are formatted wrong, I have no idea how it happens but it happens all the time. And my big pet peeve is the mis-use of the wrylie. ...

I know how it happens. It happens because people get crappy advice on forums that says, "You don't have to learn anything or spend any time on form or understand the process.  You're great idea will be enough!"

No. It won't. Here's why:

[screenwriters should]...understand that they're writing for a reader.  If I've got my hands on it, it's bad news, they can't get it to an executive producer, they can't get it to someone else.  It's a big signal that they don't understand the process that they're going through.  

But.  But he's not going to pass up a great story, right?  Well, this is the question posed by another reader on the panel when one said how painful reading a bad script was:

But when you hit a really bad one, you don't read the whole thing, do you? 

He's quite surprised another reader would "read the whole thing."  And he worked for a major. Many readers just won't read to the end of a badly constructed script.  All those typos and grammatical errors and crappy formatting and five lines mid-dialogue in a wrylie, all that over-description of precisely what everyone is wearing, all the long blocks of text - they aren't reading your story.  They don't get there. Remember this, as a reader:

Your job is to say no,

So. If you slept through Composition in highschool, 

• if you are too lazy to buy a copy of The Screenwriter's Bible, or even look online for the numerous guides to formatting, 
• if you are trying to use language you don't employ in daily life because you want to sound smart and instead just sound like a 16-year-old who slept through English Lit as well as Comp, 
• if you think anyone can hit it big with a great story and you'll be the one ... you are probably too lazy to read this post.

BUT - if you are new, even if you did sleep through Comp, but now want to do this job, if you have the discipline and drive to educate yourself and spend years learning a craft, IF you are willing to do the work, then, please:  Don't listen to people who want you to believe you don't have to. 

Aspire to greatness and work your ass off to get there.  Because you really want someone to read to the end of the script. You really want someone to experience your story.