
The Trouble with a Lot of Screenwriting Advice (and Advice about Writing in General)
If you’re a writer who spends a normal amount of time on-line, you’ve probably encountered one of them: a list telling you what not to do when writing a story/novel/screenplay/essay/blog-post/thank-you-note/haiku/whatever. Some of these lists provide helpful indications of potential pitfalls the inexperienced, or even experienced, writer might want to avoid. But I often find them annoying because in most cases they are smug, pedantic, and demonstrably wrong.
Case in point: An article from the BlueCat Screenplay Competition Blog on 8 Things to Avoid Writing on the First Page of Your Script.
As I was reading the list, I mentally refuted each point with counter-examples from successful films. It wasn’t even difficult. And the ease with which I dispatched the items on the list made me worry about the message the group is sending to aspiring scribes.
Let me show you what I mean.
ITEM 1: Dialogue
In keeping with the old storytelling maxim “Show, don’t tell!”, the folks at BlueCat are fans of visual exposition. They encourage writers to establish information with images rather than dialogue.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Good Will Hunting
The Oscar-winning script by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck launches into a bar-room rap session after setting the scene in only the barest of terms. What’s more, the three-page dialogue doesn’t bear any relevance to the larger narrative; it serves only to establish character and milieu.
And let’s not even get into the opening scene of The Social Network…
ITEM 2: Pictures
Yes, you read that correctly. While the BlueCat team favor visual exposition, they draw the line at shots of photographs, diplomas, etc. in a character’s environment as a shortcut for giving the reader/viewer an impression about the characters.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Rear Window
The long opening shot of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, shot faithfully from the elaborate description given by John Michael Hays, features a succession of photographs taken by the main character, letting the viewer know not only that he is a professional photographer but about the adventurous nature of his work and how he ended up with the injury that keeps him holed up in his apartment. This scene is often held up as a gem of visual exposition, but it seems Hitchcock et al are “lazy” storytellers by BlueCat’s standards.
ITEM 3: Tattoos
Not limiting the proscription to ink specifically, BlueCat has an issue with over-reliance on showing any details of a person’s physical appearance that will prove consequential later on in the narrative, thinking this will over-tax the reader/viewer’s memory as they proceed through the story.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: American History X
After breaking at least two of the other rules on this list (#2 and #6), screenwriter David McKenna introduces the protagonist with a mention of his swastika tattoo. It would be bonkers not to include this information.
Now, okay, this is a bit of a cheat. The way the tattoo is introduced in this screenplay doesn’t quite fit the problem BlueCat is identifying, which is about overly elaborate and specific expositional detail. It requires no effort on the part of the viewer to track Derek’s tattoo in American History X. It is THERE in all its ostentatious awfulness — you can’t get away from it. But a first-time screenwriter might have difficulty parsing the difference between a physical detail like this one and those that are more problematic and confusing. Casting “no tattoos” as a rule may send the wrong signal, putting the writer in their head about a physical description that is not only acceptable but illuminating.
ITEM 4: Morning
BlueCat forbids opening a script with the main character waking up, especially if there’s an alarm clock involved.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Mean Girls
The movie opens with the main character waking up to her alarm clock and then waking up again 45 minutes later. It is as direct a violation of this “rule” as there could possibly be. Tina Fey may have been a newbie to penning features, but the film’s massive success and continued cultural resonance suggest she might have had some idea what she was doing.
ITEM 5: Shoes
This is… an interesting one. BlueCat is very concerned about the problem of introducing a character by showing their shoes before showing their face.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Forrest Gump
The first thing we see of the title character in this multiple Oscar winner is his shoes, followed by his outfit and the contents of his suitcase… and then his face. It’s a masterful set-up that introduces items related not only to the character but to most of the major events in the plot of the film… and it all starts with a muddy pair of shoes.
ITEM 6: Words
BlueCat: “Start with few words on page one. Give your script air. Leave lots of white space…”
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Vertigo
Hitchcock turned down two versions of the script before approving the one he would eventually use. It opens with three big blocks of text, each indicating a different shot within the same location. It is dense, detailed, and fills the page, leaving almost no “white space.”
I could also have cited Rear Window again. Maybe Hitchcock just had really bad taste in screenplays…
ITEM 7: Characters
Don’t introduce too many characters too quickly.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Little Miss Sunshine
The opening sequence of Michael Arndt’s script, which netted him both an Oscar and a job at Pixar, introduces us to each of the film’s six main characters in rapid succession.
ITEM 8: Story
This is actually a response to the commonly given (and itself annoying) advice that a writer must open with action to hook the reader. BlueCat would have the writer exercise a bit more patience, laying the groundwork rather than launching headlong into a confusing blur of events.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: The Matrix
While I’m inclined to agree with this item for the most part (so much contemporary cinema and fiction has a breathless narrative drive, depriving its audience of the opportunity to get situated in the story), it’s manifestly not a good general rule, much less a universal dictum. The first installment in the Matrix series plunges us into an action sequence (and some truly inscrutable lines of script, e.g. “Data now slashes across the screen, information flashing faster then we can read: ‘Call trans opt: received. 2–19–98 13:24:18 REC:Log>.’”) whose narrative significance the reader/viewer won’t fully comprehend until the end of the first act. But it makes sense as a starting point for the nature of the story the Wachowskis are telling — and for their flashy, high-octane aesthetic.
If the takeaway is that these techniques don’t work when done poorly and that they are often done poorly… well, we could make the same claim about pretty much every writing technique there is.
Now, we might say that each of these counter-examples, rather than refuting the underlying principle, is the exception that proves the rule. The author of the blog post acknowledges in the first item, for instance, that some good movies open with dialogue. But the ease with which I came up with these exceptions makes me question the validity of the rules themselves.
My suspicion is that one or both of the following animates the BlueCat team’s claims:
- They are responding to the prevalence of these techniques in scripts’ opening pages rather than the inherent quality of the techniques themselves. This might attest to a technique having become cliché — i.e. BlueCat’s beef with these techniques is not that they don’t work but that they work so well they have become overused. For instance, opening a story with the character waking up in the morning seems like an apt, if rather obvious, point of entry into the character’s life and habits, which provides a sensible jumping-off point for the character’s journey. Rather than flat-out telling the writer this is a bad idea, it may be more informative and helpful to advise writers that this is a heavily worn trope and might have a reader/viewer rolling their eyes if there isn’t something remarkable about the character’s morning routine (as in the opening of The 40-year-old Virgin). The writer can then make an informed decision about the opening’s suitability and effect, weighing the lack of novelty with whatever insight and narrative grist they think it provides.
- BlueCat is misattributing the problems with a script to these superficial features when the real problem is a more fundamental lack of quality or craft in the writing. Multiple-character openings may not work when attempted by an unskilled writer… but then again, any opening an unskilled writer attempts is likely to fall flat. If the takeaway is that these techniques don’t work when done poorly and that they are often done poorly… well, we could make the same claim about pretty much every writing technique there is. Metaphors and similes are often insufferable when mishandled by amateur writers, as are the cinematic conceits of voiceover, flashback, and montage. But the same techniques may sing when deployed by a seasoned storyteller. This whole list may be a case of addressing the symptoms rather than the disease — or, worse, of thinking that perfectly healthy traits are symptoms simply because they’re found in an ailing patient.
Developing a critical eye that can be turned upon one’s own work is essential for a writer. Not-to-do lists not only provide dubious advice, they also short-circuit the complex process of developing a discerning and subtle critical eye…
The wise writing student knows to take any prescriptive advice (“You MUST do it this way…”) with a grain of salt. Tips from teachers, respondents, and commentators can prove useful, but they must be processed through the writer’s own developing judgment, priorities, values, and taste. Nor should any somewhat general guideline ever be taken as an absolute prohibition of this or that technique. I often find examples of successful, even classic, scripts and novels being riddled with things that aspiring writers are told not to do. (E.g. Check out Stephen King’s screed against adverbs in On Writing, then read literally any of his novels, which make abundant — and perfectly good — use of that part of speech.)
My fear with lists of Thou Shalt Not’s is that they may jack up the writer’s process, and its ultimate outcomes, by placing onerous and sometimes arbitrary constraints on the writer’s creativity — as well as on their own judgment about what best serves their story. There is some good advice embedded in BlueCat’s list, but it is buried in a format that is overly prescriptive and draws attention away from the nuance and complexity of navigating different narrative situations. Can a rule-of-thumb be a helpful shorthand or reminder of a good practice? Sure. But rules and guidelines are no replacements for an understanding of the deeper principles from which they are derived.
Developing a critical eye that can be turned upon one’s own work is essential for a writer. Not-to-do lists not only provide dubious advice, they also short-circuit the complex process of developing a discerning and subtle critical eye by substituting this difficult work with facile, easily remembered rules.
