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.

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.

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.