Lessons in Screenwriting: U R Doin' it WRONG

The point of prose in a script is to help lay the scene. It should create vivid images, impart new and useful information, keep the story rolling.

It should. In theory.

Let's examine a few common ways people fail in their prose.

I. Redundant redundancy is redundant.

There is HUGE EXPLOSION as the lab explodes.

Similarly, if you read a 4-sentence paragraph and the word 'dazzle' is used five times, you have a problem AND a poorly written book about sparkly vampires.


II. Blatant racism is not okay.

He tops off his tank and walks to pay the INDIAN cashier who’s really an Indian of the American persuasion.

Hollywood likes to pretend it's 'progressive' and 'forward thinking.' We like you to hide your racist, sexist, ageist thinking in the subtle details so we can all claim cluelessness later.

Now dressed as the Chicano gangbangers they are, they're wearing baggy pants, long black coats.

III. Mexico is many things...

Crossing the border, H and C crack open a couple beers and exchange a laugh as they drive their $70,000 automobile into the safe haven called Mexico.

...but it is not a safe haven. For anyone. Haven't you seen Desperado or Kill Bill? Also, it really messes with the flow of your story if you have your main characters driving from LA to Tijuana and back in like, 5 minutes.


IV. NO.

It’s the most spectacular powder sequence ever laid down on film and the most dangerous...

---

Sylvia’s so stunningly beautiful she could give a clam a heart attack.

:| I are Unimpressed

This does not bode well for the human race's continued existence.

Al* finally accepts that a woman can be sexually active and they start to make love again.

It's the again that really gets me.

*For the record, Al is not me.  I fully accept and believe that women can be sexually active.

Cannibalism is Awesome

Paul is eating Rita’s figure with his eyes.

Om nom nom nom!

Quotable Scripts

I want the men to weigh in on this one:

Physical desire--the anti-gravitational aspiration of the male organ--comes to him, with a pang and a flurry.

Bad Lines from Scripts

Introducing a new tag/section for my blog: WTFery, where I share with you the worst lines from some of the scripts I have to read. There are all real. Seriously.

And our inaugural line is...

Suddenly, Bradley relaxes and Rachel's mouth travels across his cheek and finds his mouth, like the celestial snail closing the great gate.

Reporting Matters: Rape Culture

There has been a lot of fail going on when it comes to reporting sexual assault and rape. Newspapers seem to dislike using the word rape. They like to substitute 'had sex with.' As in:

"Police in New Jersey's capital say a 15-year-old sold her 7-year-old sister to have sex with as many as seven men and boys." "Have sex with" implies consent. It implies the ability to consent. Agency. Children cannot consent, they cannot 'have sex with.' Do not try and place me in collusion with a 7-year-old's rapist. And do not try and argue that "they didn't mean that, it was just poorly worded." Media outlets substitute rape with "had sex with" all the time. They also like to put rape in quotations too--this article's headline used to read 11-Year-Old Mexican 'Rape' Victim Wants to Keep Baby. Ignoring the byline, which states Despite pressure from women's groups, the 11-year-old is enthusiastic about her impending motherhood, according to sources, are we doubting that this girl was raped? Or is she a 10-year-old Jezebel who seduced her stepfather with her womanly wiles? What, Dear Major News Media Outlet, were you trying to say here?

A woman who was "vomiting and drifting in and out of consciousness" cannot have sex with anyone. And the boys who raped her never "put on condoms and took turns having sex with" anyone--they raped a woman. Who was dying of alcohol poisoning at the time. You read that correctly: two boys carried a woman with alcohol poisoning down some stairs, raped her, and then ran away when Mom came home. (For a full review of all the ways this particular article failed, I suggest reading This is Not an Analysis of Rape Culture. This is a Rant.)

There are so many examples of this kind of 'reporting' that it was hard to just pick a few. There are no small number of people incensed about this wording. And it's not just limited to Media Outlets trying to place agency for the rape on the victim.

Consider this question, posed by NPR's Frank de Ford:

At a certain point, don't you just stop caring whether our athletes - who for some reason or other are always called "role models" - don't you just stop caring whether they behave? Don't you just want to say, "Let the thugs play"?

OK, if they violate the statute law, fine, put them in the hoosegow. But really, otherwise, why are we expending so much angst worrying about the character of our well-muscled celebrities?

No, Mr. de Ford. I do not want to call a rapist a thug and just let him play. I want him in jail, behind bars, with a giant red R on his chest that will be with him in the same way his actions will be with the woman he raped. I want you to stop saying he didn't "behave." Rape is not the same thing as throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery story or trashing a hotel room. Also, this isn't about your NFL-star's 'character.' This is about his actions. He raped a woman. That's against the law. It's not a character assassination, and I do very much care whether anyone rapes another person. And I will continue to care--well-muscled or not. Celebrity or next door neighbor.

"Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it keeps getting worse." -George Carlin

The Three Worst Scripts I've Ever Read (In No Particular Order)

These are in chronological order starting with the first one I read to the last. 1 and 2 I read as an intern. The second I read as a gainfully employed person, though that didn't make the experience any less painful.  Not even my "I'm Getting Paid to Read This" mantra helped.

1. The one with the Cow Abortion.
   
   I kid you not. After reading a script fille dwith gratuitous violence, uncertain motivations, and bad writing, I realized it was about these two guys who make moonshine during prohibition and sell it to gangsters. Somewhere between old-timey car chases, pointless standoffs, and caricatures of mobsters, they take the time off to--for no reason that I can tell, and no build up to this moment--abort a cow's fetus by sawing off its legs in utero one by one. All six of them.
   
   Here's the best part about this script. Are you ready?
   
   It's actually being made into a movie. (Though at last check, the director said the movie had 'fallen apart.' 3 guesses why, only one of them counts.)
   
   
2. The one with the guy who works at a fertility clinic and replaces the donor sperm with his own. He's then shocked when women start showing up with red-headed babies because...he didn't expect that to be a consequence of his actions? In addition to his surprise at the facts of life, the mothers want to return their babies. Because they didn't 'order' red heads. I'm not joking, this idiot stoner guy ends up with around 18 red-headed babies that the 'executive business women mothers' didn't approve of--the implication being these women are so career-oriented they couldn't find a man to answer their biological clock so they bought 'designer babies' and then decided to return them like badly-matched drapes once they'd given birth and the children didn't meet their expectations.
   
   BUT WAIT!  THERE IS A TWIST! 
   
   Turns out the guy who ran this fertility clinic was actually inseminating his clients whit HIS sperm so when he catches his erstwhile employee replacing the samples (this stoner kid was apparently trusted with 'vetting' all of the samples), he doesn't really have a leg to stand on.  Oh, and the hot doctor totally falls in love with the stoner and his 18 babies.
   
   The End.
   
3. The one with the father/daughter incest. Chinatown this was not.
   
   This script refused. to. end. None of the scenes were longer than a page. That's like having a book comprised of 100+ 'chapters' that are each about a page long. There's no flow to the story, no cohesion, and NO SENSE. None of the characters had any discernible motivations. The father--who rapes his daughter twice and then attacks her with a broom handle once he finds out she's pregnant--vacillates between creepy systematic predator and sulky depressive woobie who has these uuuuuurges he can't control. HIS DAUGHTER TAUNTS HIM, OKAY?
   
   On top of this, all of the female characters are indiscernible from one another, falling into one of three groups: the daughter (who has no personality to speak of and spends her time doing an impersonation of a mopey Kristen Stewart), aggressively pro-life Catholics, and mildly sympathetic people who hide the daughter from her father. The thing is, I still have no idea who knows about the abuse, who suspects, and who is oblivious. Writer, your word of the day is: Consistency. Please to be having it.
   
   Ugh. I need brain bleach.
   
   Thought the true tragedy of this is that my summation up there makes this sound better written than it actually is.

Truthfully, the most mind boggling part is that these scripts were submitted by people. Someone read each of these and went "This should totally be made into a movie! Let me call up all the people who I've met in the Industry and send it out because they HAVE to see how great it was and want to make it!"

Also, please note that I cannot properly convey how truly badly written all of these scripts were.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

o.O

SO THERE!

13-Year-Old Villain: This is getting childish.
Twenty-something Heroine: Eat my pissy caca poo-poo.