A professional scriptreader read 300 screenplays for five different studios, all the while tracking the many recurring problems. The infographic he made with the collected data offers a glimpse at where screenwriting goes wrong.
If selling a screenplay were easy, all those people crowding coffee shops with their laptops would be millionaires, or at least optioned. It's not easy, though. So many factors that are totally out of the writer's control tend to combine and form a phalanx keeping him or her out of Hollywood. One thing that certainly is up to the writer, however, is whether the screenplay sucks. A new infographic offers some hard-earned insider tips about pitfalls the novice scribe should avoid, in order to refrain from sucking.
An anonymous professional scriptreader read 300 screenplays for five different studios recently, all the while tracking the many recurring problems found along the way. If it's frustrating experience to bang out a screenplay without much experience, just imagine what it's like to read some of these hastily banged-out doozies, one after the other. Eventually, the person doing so organized all the data into a handy infographic that could be read as a diagnostic on where screenwriters go wrong.
As featured on screenwriting forum The Blackboard, the infographic presents all manner of information on the settings, genres, and characters that could use a bit of finesse. If it has ever even crossed your mind to attempt to write a movie someday, you should definitely read the following list of frequent script problems, and peruse the rest of the chart above.
- The story begins too late in the script
- The scenes are void of meaningful conflict
- The script has a by-the-numbers execution
- The story is too thin
- The villains are cartoonish, evil-for-the-sake-of-evil
- The character logic is muddy
- The female part is underwritten
- The narrative falls into a repetitive pattern
- The conflict is inconsequential, flash-in-the-pan
- The protagonist is a standard issue hero
- The script favors style over substance
- The ending is completely anti-climactic
- The characters are all stereotypes
- The script suffers from arbitrary complexity
- The script goes off the rails in the third act
- The script’s questions are left unanswered
- The story is a string of unrelated vignettes
- The plot unravels through convenience/contrivance
- The script is tonally confused
- The protagonist is not as strong as need be
- The premise is a transparent excuse for action
- The character backstories are irrelevant/useless
- Supernatural element is too undefined
- The plot is dragged down by disruptive lulls
- The ending is a case of deus ex machina
- The characters are indistinguishable from each other
- The story is one big shrug
- The dialogue is cheesy, pulpy, action movie cliches
- The script is a potboiler
- The drama/conflict is told but not shown
- The great setting isn’t utilized
- The emotional element is exaggerated
- The dialogue is stilted and unnecessarily verbose
- The emotional element is neglected
- The script is a writer ego trip
- The script makes a reference, but not a joke
- The message overshadows the story
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.