What Makes a Great Script

Good scripts ... are entertaining. They’re bursting with content, they shine with intent and unity. They have an overriding idea and work to illustrate that idea with genre moments: heartbreaking tragedy, gutbusting comedy, spine-tingling horror. Everything makes sense, every line has a purpose and intelligence, even if its only discernible after the fact.


This is from SCRIPTS EXIST TO ENTERTAIN. CHARACTER AND PLOT ARE A MEANS TO THAT END, NOT THE END ITSELF here.  This the Story Coach site, also linked on the SCRIPT COVERAGE page you'll find on one of the tabs above.

What does "entertain"  mean?  To this writer, in this context, people seek an experience in film.  If they

Parade's End

have that experience, they have been entertained.  Some people want to be educated or made to laugh or have their point of view validated or just get the hell out of their life for a couple hours. But writing is p so personal and often so solitary, how can we make sure we're doing that?

Everything makes sense, every line has a purpose and intelligence, even if its only discernible after the fact.

We could start by checking our scenes and see if they meet at least this criteria. But I thought the most significant thing in the article was this:

Movies can be bad or good, smart or dumb, noble or base, so long as they’re entertaining. It doesn’t matter if a movie is SOPHIE’S CHOICE or DEEP THROAT, so long as it engaged with the audience on some level. A Transformers movie has thin characters and an arbitrary plot – they still make bank because people all over the globe find the spectacle of giant robots fighting engaging. A movie must entertaining, to entertain they must engage with the audience’s emotion. Plot and character are means to this end, not the end itself.

If no one is invested in the story, connected to it, if they just don't give a rat's ass what is happening or will or did, that's failure to entertain. Or just failure.



Can also be found on Reddit, where you can discuss: http://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/2b5n90/authors_note_the_next_six_pages_arent_important_i/

Proper Grammar is Crucial - or Not

GRAMMAR: Proper grammar is crucial. You need perfect grammar, and you also need to break the rules. Certainly tenses should be consistent, words spelled correctly, and nouns and verbs should agree. On the other hand, sentence fragments are a screenwriter's stock in trade. For example, it's perfectly acceptable to write:

Anthony pushes through the jungle, toward the clearing. Suddenly three loud SHOTS are fired. Anthony peers through the leaves. One. Two. Three men lie on the ground. All dead. 

Anthony moves closer. Closer still. Right to the edge of the clearing. He can aaalllmost see what's going on --

Many grammatical rules being broken here. But they're all done on purpose. The clarity of the scene is not lessened due to the grammatical violations.

---

The quote is from Points for Style* by Terry Rossio at the Wordplayer site.

I usually just put things here by other people, mostly so I can find them easily for my own purposes. But this time I'm giving advice because I am qualified by education and experience to give it:

You know what  makes a script painful to read?  A writer with no command of language.  One who is so very obviously trying so very hard to sound erudite, to appear to be experienced.  Someone who looks up synonyms online.

If you don't know the difference between connotation and definition, stop writing until you do.  If you don't use the word in your everyday life, leave it out of your screenplay unless it's technical.

Writing a Scene

Do you ever look at a scene and wonder if it's any good?  Or why you are wondering? Here's a little something that might help.

"The most I'll [Terry Rossio] say is that it might be effective to train yourself to consider, instinctively, these types of questions:"

•  What is the arresting visual image to start this scene, one that will quickly involve the audience? 
• 
  
•  What situation is immediately apparent upon cutting into the scene, or, how quickly does a situation develop? 
• 
  
•  What is the essential story point of the scene, and how clear has it been made? 
• 
  
•  How can the story point be conveyed in the most interesting manner -- using character?

(excerpted from: The Storyteller Cut)