Don't Write this at Home Kids: Sherlock Holmes

Professional screenwriters. I hate them.

Ok, fine. I don't hate them. I don't hate them at all. But there is something I hate about them:

They get to write whatever they want.

They don't have to make sure the script is in perfect format. They don't have to follow any of the rules. They don’t even have to deal with readers for major companies. How unfair is that?

But you know what? Life's not fair. They get to do what ever they want, and if that's how it is, then tough cookies for us.

But there is a problem that can't be swept under the rug here. Novice writers look up to these professionals to figure out how they should write their scripts.

"So if the script written by a pro looks like garbage, then it's fine if mine does too right?"

Wrong.

Here's where I come in.

Kids, don't write this at home.
--
Sherlock Holmes:

First I would like to say that I have not seen this movie yet. So I will not make any judgement on the final product.

Also, I haven't really dove into any of the Arthur Conan Doyle books yet. So when it comes to the history of Sherlock Holmes, I know very little.

I will not be criticizing the structure or story telling aspects of the movie because of those reasons. I will be focusing mostly on format and how the screenplay looks. Because when a reader gets their hands on a script, the way it looks is the first thing they see. And the first reason why they can throw it out.


(If you want to read along:
http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/picture/upload/image/books/Sherlock_Holmes.pdf)

Page 1: Where's "FADE IN:"?

Page 2:
“ANGLE FROM THE RIVER: Watson stands over a GAPING SEWER
ENTRANCE in the Embankment wall.”

- This is the first of many camera directions. I’m willing to slide on this only because this wasn’t a spec script. But no spec writer should ever write camera angles. If it’s a spec, then you’re just the writer, not the director.

Page 4:
“The girl has snapped out of her trance, and is backing
away from them as best she can.”

- A script needs to be written in present tense. This way the reader is right there with the story; playing it out in his head as if it were a movie. This is a major problem throughout this script. This sentence could easily have been:

“The girl snaps out of her trance. Backing away from them as best she can.”

Still not a great line, but it has much better images.

Page 6: The majority of this page is way too long. No reader would ever get through this.

Make sure your script has more white space than this.

Page 9:
“A romantic French restaurant in a fine hotel. Almost
every table is occupied by happy couples, or groups. The
kind of place you take the woman you want to marry to
meet a difficult friend. Unless the difficult friend
doesn’t show up.”

- What does that even mean? I’ve read this six times now and I still have no idea.

Page 19: “(Beat)”

- This is why “beat” is used so often in amateur screenplays. Because it ends up in big tent-pole movies.

This is the first time I say this, but not the last time I say this:

“Beat” does not belong in your screenplay.

Page 22: Check out page 22. There is no reason for those two “CUT TO’s”.

Page 23: This has got to be the worst thing I have ever seen in a professional screenplay:

“CUT TO:
HOLMES
Now they can get this over with.
CUT TO:”

- Are you kidding me? You just cut to a line of dialogue and then cut back? What? You couldn’t get any more pointless. Or wrong.

Page 29:
“Holmes looks at Watson, Watson looks back. This is a big
moment between them, and they know it.”

- That second sentence can’t be filmed so it shouldn’t be on the page. Never write what you can’t film

Page 31:
“Dead bodies are business as usual for Lestrade. What’s
down here isn’t.”

- Ditto.

Page 38:
“WE HEAR A KEY IN THE LOCK.”

- Just because you see it in movies that got made doesn’t mean you get to write “we hear” or “we see”.

This is the ultimate in lazy writing.

Page 39:
“Watson goes to the broken window, looks out carefully
(half-expecting a bullet)”

- Only write what can be filmed!

Page 45:
“Holmes and Watson exchange a long look. This thing just
got a lot more complicated and dangerous.”

- Well I sure hope you let the audience know that.

ONLY WRITE WHAT CAN BE FILMED!

Page 45:
“Watson gets to work searching the man’s pockets.
This is something they’ve done many times before. They
don’t need to talk about it.”

- Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Page 46:

(Describing Holmes in the description) “First generation CSI.”

- “See, Sherlock Holmes is cool guys. He’s just like CSI. Better yet, he was the first CSI!”

Come on. This is not needed.

Page 48:
“(The Irregulars are street urchins ranging from eight to
mid-teens. They live short, dirty, unsupervised lives.)”

- Well that’s good know. I hope they can fit all that on the back of a ticket stub so that the audience can get that information.

Page 48: When it comes to “CUT TO:” it should only be in a script two or three times, if at all. When you start reading the next scene, it’s obvious that we cut to it.

Check out how many times this is used on page 48. It’s staggering.

Page 66:
“SHOCK CUT TO BLACK:”

- Shock cut? Shock cut to black?

Page 78:

“CUT TO:
HOLMES POV: teeming, busy streets.
CUT TO:
ON HOLMES as he tries to think his way through
Blackwood’s maze.”

- I think my brain might explode. POV shots should hardly ever be done. And cutting to a POV shot and then cutting out of it seems unbelievable to me.

Page 85: I dare you to get through this page without skimming.

Page 87: “As they pick up speed the launch rises out of the water,
revealing the vertical measuring lines on the hull, below
the plimsol line. (Lines which help gauge how heavily
loaded the vessel is.)”

- OK, without me joking around, let me explain why this should never be done, with three reasons:

1) How does this help the audience member? Unless subtitles are going to pop up on the screen for this little “factoid”, it does nothing but get in the way.

2) How does this help the reader? Telling us what this thing is, is not going to give us a better image. Being engrossed in a screenplay means reading words that spark instant images. I don’t know what a “plimsol” line is and the factoid didn’t help. A slimily might have.

I’m reading a script, not a dictionary.

3) Pacing. You just made me read an entire line that I didn’t have to read. You just made me read an entire line that I didn’t have to read.

Slows you down don’t doesn’t it?

Page 92:
“SMASH CUT TO:
Holmes and Watson share an urgent look.
BACK TO:”

- It almost makes you cry how pointless that was.

P.S. I will give you a hundred dollars if you can explain the difference between a regular cut and a “smash cut”.

Page 107:
A “CUT TO:” orgy.

Page 110:

“PULL BACK FROM THIS GRUESOME SIGHT --
-- PULL AWAY UP RIVER, faster and faster, until we --
-- ZERO IN ON THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, WHERE --”

If you are a spec writer, please don’t write like this.

And if you are not a spec writer, then try to find a better way to engross the reader.


Page 115:

The ending. I guess it’s not bad, (although it’s FADE TO: not FADE TO BLACK:) but it’s also not great. But hey, like I said, I never really read the books, so maybe this is how they all end.

--

I don’t want to condemn Mike Johnson & Lionel Wigram for writing the script. I’m not in any way saying that these are bad writers. They seem to have great potential as writers, they just need to take that extra step and really get the reader engaged.

Instead we have “factoids”, things you can’t shoot, an endless supply of present tense and what might be the worst injustice of them all:

78 uses of “CUT TO:”!

This is a movie that I do want to see when it comes out on DVD. Everyone keeps saying it’s not bad. I have a feeling that Guy Richie was the one who made the medicine go down. But in the mean time I would like to showcase this script to all my fellow spec writers as something you should not write.

And sadly, this script isn’t even the best example of that. They’re are hundreds of scripts that got made that never engage the reader.

Coming soon, the script for Avatar....

F the System

Every person who has ever dreamed of being a writer has gone through this one phase. And every writer has to go through it at least once in their life.

I call it: "F the system". As in:

"F the system man. I ain't in this to make money, I'm in this to make art!"

Or:

"I'm trying to write the next “Rashomon” not the next “Paul Blart”! F the system!"

I understand this phase. I went through this phase myself. I think everyone has to. But it has to be a phase, not a mantra.

There comes a time in every writers life where you have to give up the idea that you’re going to write Godfather 4. You can’t do that right from the start. You have to work your way up. You might have to settle for Paul Blart 2. So why fight the system now?

You know who I blame for this phase? Independent directors. When it comes to filmmaking, independent directors have it the easiest. They don't have as many people looking over their shoulders. They have the freedom to create whatever idea pops in their heads. And an entire independent movement to support their every whim. They have one undeniable factor that allows them to "F the system".

They're not spec writers.

If you're a spec writer, you have rules to follow. Hollywood doesn't give a crap about you "not wanting to write sympathetic characters" or you wanting to write an ending where "everyone dies and no one is happy". Hollywood doesn't like those things. And you shouldn't either. Because if you don't play by the rules, then you don't get to play.

And if you are one of those Hollywood Haters reading this right now, I know exactly what you're thinking: "F this sellout. Why doesn't he shut up and go watch Twilight?"

First of all, “Twilight” sucks.

Second of all, that’s not a bad idea. In my opinion, if you’re a spec writer, you should be REQUIRED to see “Twilight”. And the rest of the sequels. As a spec writer, you NEED to go see the “Twilight’s”, the “Paul Blart’s”, the “Tooth Fairy’s” and everything else that hits a hundred million. Because that’s what’s selling. Do you think I went to see “Transformers 2” for fun?

You need to study not just the good films but the bad ones. For every “Inglorious Bastards” there has to be a “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”. If you see “The Hangover”, you have to see “It’s Complicated”. The good with the bad. One for you, one for your craft. Watch these movies. Read the scripts. And figure out how the structure worked.

Uh oh. Did I just say the “S” word?

“Structure?! F’n structure?! This guy wants me to write something formulaic! F this guy, I’m gonna go watch Pulp Fiction for the fifteenth time!”

Look buddy, I hear you. When you’re first starting out, structure is a dirty word. But right now it needs to be your best friend. Better yet, your significant other.

Next time you go to the movies, bring structure along as your date. Hold hands with structure as you talk to each other about where you think act two begins or what you think the inciting incident was. You and structure will have a fantastic evening.

BECAUSE YOU NEED STRUCTURE.

I don’t know how to make that clearer for you Hollywood Haters. You can’t just have people sitting about talking to each other. Yes it does happen in movies. Yes it does happen in great movies. But if you do a little research on those movies, you’ll notice that most of them were made by independent filmmakers.

You’re a spec writer.

So next time you write a script, try to make sure that something happens. If it’s just a bunch of people talking, it’s going to get boring for the reader. Fast.

It's very true that the best movies of all time, barely follow structure. You're not wrong. But every reader in Hollywood is looking for a writer that understands structure. That's the way it is in the system. So to get your foot in the door, you're going to have to learn it. Once you are in, write what ever you want. More power to you. But in the mean time:

Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b and Act 3. Learn it, live it and stop complaining about it.

Learn the rules of spec writing. Hold on to these rules as if your career depends on it.

Because they do.

Remember:
When you try to F the system, you just F yourself.

My First Mistakes

I can not believe that it's already 2010. It's been nine years since I tried to make my first film. And failed miserably.

Looking back on those days and reading those old scripts make me want to cringe. Did I really write that crap?

My goal with this blog is to help fellow writers. Help guide them though the hell that is screenwriting. What better way to do that than to tell you about the hell my own scripts went though?


Here are the five bigges mistakes that I made back in 2001. Five things I would never do today. Learn from me.

5) Only write what can be filmed - It seems so obvious to me now. But back in 2001, I had no idea. I had people "realizing" all over the place. Backstory in the descriptions instead of the dialogue. And worst of all, chatty asides that I put in there to make the reader smile. Really get a connection between me and the reader you know?

Turns out, not good.

It was the rule everyone knew except me at the time. Only write what you can see or hear on the screen. A screenplay is a blueprint for a movie. Not a novel. If it can't be filmed, don't write it!

4) I wrote well beyond four lines at a time - It didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Why would it matter how many lines I had? Or how many words I have on the page?

What kind of jerk would not read every little word I type? How else are they going to experience the essence of my art?

We writers are so vain.

So why only four lines? Let's do a little experiment. Let's pretend this blog was all just one big paragraph. Would you read it? I wouldn't and I wrote it.

Spoon-feeding the reader is the single best defense against skimming. If you keep your paragraphs no more than four lines, allot more of it will get read.

You wanna hear something really crazy? Like really, really, really crazy? Dialogue is the same.
I know, insane.

Excluding the occasional speech, most blocks of dialogue should be no more than four lines.

It's all about the white space. The more white on the page the more black will be read.

3) I didn't understand present tense - This one took me forever to figure out. My writing history started out with writing novels where I wrote mostly in past tense.

In screenplays it's always present tense. It's not:

"The man is playing piano."

It's:

"The man plays the piano."

In fact, the word “is” should rarely show up in a screenplay outside of dialogue.

Remember, when writing a screenplay, every line you write is suppose to be a shot in the movie. So making sure that everything is happening in the here and now (present tense), makes the reader think he/she is actually watching the movie.

A very good sign.

2) I didn't buy Final Draft - I can’t even imagine it now, but at one point I was writing all my scripts with Mircosoft’s Word. Word?! I don’t think I could ever do it again.

The day I finally bought Final Draft was the day a creative weight was lifted off my shoulders. No more worrying about my dialogue being too long. No more pointless macros. And most importantly, no more hitting TAB seventeen thousand times!

If you are still writing with Word, please do yourself a favor and get some screen writing software. It makes everything so much easier.

1) I didn't read Save the Cat - This is the book that changed my writing life. The problem is, it took me forever to actually pick it up and read it.

Back in the early 2000's I thought I knew everything about writing. I knew my act one, two and three. What else did I need? It turns out allot. There were midpoints and turning points and other basic structure moments that I had no idea about. That was until "Save the Cat".
If you haven't picked this book up for whatever reason, do yourself a favor and head over to Amazon right now.

It'll change your life.
--
Well, those are the first mistakes I ever made. If you are currently making any of these mistakes, I’m glad I could help you.
And if you have any mistakes of your own that you look back on and couldn’t believe you did, drop me a line and let me know what it was.