10 Years of Bitter Posts - Cliches I'm tired of seeing and Quick Tips

Another early feature on the blog was "Clichés I'm Tired of Seeing." When you're reading 15 scripts a week for five years, you start becoming nauseous at the signs that always accompany the least satisfying scripts to read. Most of these could be easily evaded, but too many writers fell into the most unimaginative ways of using them.

The first cliché I targeted was a resolution I'd seen in many rom-coms and dramas - where the "surprise" visual reveal of a woman's new baby bump at the climax was used as shorthand for "and they lived happily ever after." I started with that because it's not a BAD way to communicate the strength of the relationship, it's just a technique that's been done so many times that the impact it carries is usually outweighed by the audience feeling it coming.

I also took writers to task who ended their scripts with "To Be Continued." This was less common then and hopefully is non-existent now. I detested this the most when I could feel writers holding back from giving a story proper resolution solely so they could justify a sequel.

Later posts addressed:
- a struggle between two people for a gun that ends with a BANG while the gun itself is off-screen. After a moment of "suspense," one of the two combatants falls, revealing the other to be the winner.

- the old "start with the climax to get the audience hooked and then flashback to reveal how they got there" trick.

- racing to the airport to stop the love of your life from leaving.

- "It was all a dream!"

- The newscaster as an exposition delivery system.

- The use of "Get me a beer" as a universal indicator that a male character is an asshole.

- Using a bet as the catalyst for a premise that would never happen otherwise.

Looking at this list, I can see why I moved away from this series. The clichés it called out were becoming so cliché that even pointing them out was tired. It was a little like a stand-up comedian with a Jack Nicholson impression or a tight five on how white people and black people dance differently.

Somewhat concurrently, I started a series of posts I called "Quick Tips." In all candor, this was so I could get away with putting up shorter posts just to build up content. The practice ended mostly because I'm so goddamn wordy that my attempts to be "quick" soon dragged out too long.

1. First Impressions
2. Brainstorming by imagining your movie's trailer
3. Knowing your title should be catchy
4. Character names
5. Don't try to solve a note about "this character seems thin" with a one-scene dumb of emotion and backstory.

Reading these early posts, I'm very aware that I was still clearly trying to find my voice. While all of these tips come from experience, they seem somewhat generic to me. They don't even come from the affected voice of a weary, bitter reader. I figured out early on that writing every post from the point of view of someone bitching would be exhausting. I mean, I love Lewis Black, but there's a reason The Daily Show didn't need him on every night.

It's all basic, 101 level blogging. Today, I wouldn't write some of these because I don't think I'd have any new way to say them. Part of why my presence has been less and less over the years is that I realized it shouldn't feel like an obligation to have an opinion about a particular facet of writing. I can just blog when I have something to say.

But I know people found these early posts useful, and so I try to remember that I have a lot of readers who might still be contemplating writing their very first script. For them, these early posts will always be there.

Quick tips #5 - Characterization

I'm going to level with you guys. I had a post all set to go for today about Glee's Sue Sylvester and the tricky thing of writing for one-dimensionally evil characters. Then the finale last night actually ended up feeding into some of what I said, so as I was rewriting to acknowledge that, I realized I was dipping a little too far into spoiler territory. Usually I'm of the mind of "Once it's aired on the West Coast, it's fair game" but since this is the finale and since I have a strong feeling that some of you might still be waiting to catch up on the DVR, I'm going to bump that post until Monday.

The problem is that for the first time in a long time I don't have any posts on standby, so today is going to have to be a "quick tip":

If you ever give your script to someone and they come back with the note that the character seems a little thin, odds are that problem isn't going to be fixed by one four-minute dialogue scene that has the character talking to a sounding board about their past and their deepest desires/fears.

Thin characterization isn't solved by a patch job. Nine times out of ten I can spot these scenes because the seams are more than obvious. Nothing in that scene affects anything in any other scene, which is a dead giveaway that the scene was wedged in later. Take pride in your work. Put in the extra effort and rewrite several scenes so that this new information can resonate throughout the film.

Quick tips #4 - Character names

Here's some quick advice that will be appreciated by everyone who reads your script - try not to give female characters names that are typically boys' names. Over the years I've seen many a writer try to be cute by doing this, including female Mickeys, Mikes, Davys, Bennies, Bobbys, and the list goes on.

And for the love of all that is holy, if you MUST do this, please, please, PLEASE make it abundantly clear in the description - from moment one - that the character is a female. It helps the reader out a lot. I should not get past the first line of a character's introduction and be confused as to if the character is male or female.

Quick tips #3 - Generic titles

Today's tip: catchier titles get read sooner and instill more goodwill.

Your title is the first thing any reader will see. In some cases - who am I kidding? - in EVERY case it will determine which script they pick off the slush pile next. A good title should give a sense of the genre, hint at the premise and be memorable. Bad titles tend to be generic, bland or pretentious.

To give you an idea, I went over to ScriptShadow's site and took a look at the titles of the script's he's recently read. Here's what I'd pull from the reader pile, and here's what I'd leave for the next schmuck to get stuck with (after doing a check on the page counts of course. If any of the "bad" ones were 90-100 pages, I might take them anyway.)

Good titles:
She's Out of My League
Van Damme v. Seagal
The True Memoirs of an International Assassin
You Again
I Want to F___ Your Sister

Bad titles:
Taxonomy of Barnacles
Gone
Villain
Conviction
Dubai
Hearafter

Quick tips #2 - Trailer brainstorming

Today's quick tip is something I admit I've really only tried once. Writing purists may cringe, but if you're in the early stages of brainstorming and need to give some structure to your ideas, it might help to write up a mock trailer for your script. This way, you are forced to succinctly sum up your idea, probably with a minimum of dialogue mixed with some well-chosen visuals. You'll have to establish the hook, figure out how to introduce characters, and even give a tease of some later plot points.

If nothing else it should force you to focus on what the core of your story will be, as well as help you figure out some of the big moments.

Best of all, when someone asks you to describe your story, you'll probably be able to spit out a succinct pitch in a few sentences instead of offering one of those rambling pitches that everyone loves to hear:

"Well there's this guy... and he's in school... and his grades suck 'cuz he's spending all this time doing drugs and chasing girls. Oh, did I mention that his dad left his mom and now she's dating another guy. Anyway, he tries to get his girlfriend to give him the exam answers for the class he's taking that she's TAing, but she turns him down. They break up and he flunks out.... has to leave the campus in shame. So he goes home and finds out his mom has actually hooked up with one of his old high school classmates... it's the guy who bullied him all through high school and he's now the coach of the football team. He's home two nights but can't take it when the bully keeps picking on him, so he hits the road and tries to find his dad, who seems to have completely vanished a year ago. Oh and his estranged brother comes along for the ride... have I mentioned him yet?"

You still awake? Most of the time, you can count on the paragraph above to count for 1/5 the pitch that Mr. Hypothetical Writer will offer. While some of the stuff he mentions will probably make for entertaining viewing, the majority of it is the sort of set-up material that tends to be too much information when pitching the story. We probably only need to know that our hero was thrown out of school and that once he finds he has no place in his mother's home, he goes looking for his dad.

Homework assignment - think of 4 trailers you've seen recently and pretend you had to pitch the movie, with only the material contained in the trailer as your reference point. See if you can do it in three sentences.

Okay, that ended up being less "quick" than I intended. I also hasten to add that I in no way am endorsing this in lieu of a strong outline and a solid beat sheet. This exercise is just to get you thinking about the core of your story.

Quick tips #1 - First impressions

Realizing that my blog posts have been falling behind lately, I've decided to catch up with a series of "Quick tips" - advice so self-explanatory that it needs little elaboration.

Today's tip - "first impressions."

Give significant thought to how you introduce your protagonist (or any other important character). The first moment we see him could define him in our minds for the rest of the script.

A great example from a recent film: the adult James Kirk in Star Trek, first shown in a bar. His first act onscreen - he flirts with Uhura. Second act - mouthing off cockily to Starfleet cadets, egging them into a fight despite being outmatched.

(And if you count the younger James' first scene, we see him at the age of ten stealing a car and driving it into a deep quarry, just barely jumping out in time.)

You tell me - what do these scenes tell us about Kirk? How does this action set the stage for his arc in the script? Most of all - if you had only that scene to go on, how would you describe Kirk to someone?