Screenwriting Advice from a Bitter Man Who Never ‘Made It’

I’m a painfully unsuccessful screenwriter, and I’ll be your professor this semester.

Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash

Hello, and welcome to screenwriting 101. I’m a painfully unsuccessful screenwriter, and I’ll be your professor this semester. Here are my top tips.

• Try writing about what you know. You’re currently a college student that wants to be an artist, so maybe make a short film about that? I’ve definitely never seen a short film about a young troubled artist, so you’d have no competition in that market. If you want, you could even trick your audience into thinking it’s artistic by making it black and white and posting it on VIMEO.
• Make sure you don’t bold your slug lines. Industry standard is to leave them un-bolded with the rest of your manuscript. The industry standard is also to not hire me.
• If you ever want to add a little extra PUNCH to a word, try capitalizing it. Speaking of which, I should have capitalized on that screenwriting competition I won in undergrad and moved to LA. Did I ever mention to you that I won a screenwriting competition in undergrad?
• If you wanted to, you could actually read one of my scripts. You’d probably learn a lot from it. It’s called Cheerleader Cop. I haven’t quite finished it yet though, I’m having 3rd act problems (I can’t figure out what to do after the big reveal that she’s a cop). But the second it’s done, you can read it.
• I noticed on page 5 you introduced a female character and didn’t tell the audience how pretty she is. You either have to change that or find another way to ‘save the cat’ with this character. If I were pretty, I’d be working as a writer in Hollywood right now. I’m positive that’s the only thing holding me back.
• Your action lines are way too informal. I realized this because for a moment I was actually enjoying your screenplay, which obviously means you’re doing something wrong. If you had followed all the rules I laid out in class, no one would be enjoying this script.
• Please read my script. Maybe you could even give some input on what Cheerleader Cop should do next? I’m thinking the case should involve cheerleading in some way… Is that too on the nose?
• You clearly wrote this too quickly. I’ve been outlining the same screenplay every day before class for the last 20 years. That’s the sort of dedication you need if you’re ever going to get anywhere in this business. (And by ‘get anywhere’ I mean become a screenwriting professor at a community college in Milwaukee.)
• It looks like you’re going to need some extra help, so I’ll loan you a copy of my book ‘How to Write Screenplays by Someone who’s Never Actually Finished a Screenplay”. I wrote it after 20-years of experience wishing I could write a screenplay.
• You CANNOT have a SINGLE formatting mistake or else the reader is going to throw your script straight into the trash. I’m not sure what formatting mistake my script, Cheerleader Cop, had but I know it couldn’t have been an issue with the content. It’s possible that my pitch was rejected because all I did was write the words ‘Cheerleader Cop’ on a piece of scrap paper and slipped it under the door at Paramount.
• I’ll email you my script.