Film Courage: What are the biggest mistakes you see new screenwriters make for a screenplay?
Dr. Ken Atchity, producer/author: What do you mean?
Film Courage: Structurally, character, dialogue, length?
Dr. Atchity: Um…because the biggest mistakes are usually their personalities.
Film Courage: Of the actual writer?
Dr. Atchity: Yeah.
Film Courage: Oh, okay…
Dr. Atchity: But that aside I think the biggest mistake is over-explaining and not knowing
how to tunnel the background of the story into the story instead of laying it out.
Like we just developed a brilliant screenplay the last several years in which the opening
conversation just is not convincing because there is no other explanations for the words
in the conversation other than explaining to the audience than what is going on.
And that’s a hard-to-avoid mistake because you know you’ve got to explain what’s
going on.
But if you do it overtly the audience is not going to believe the dialogue.
They are not going to be able to suspend their disbelief.
So you have to sneak these things in the story at times when they’re needed and not too-much-too-soon.
One of the common mistakes, the root mistake beneath that mistake is thinking that the
audience is not as smart as they are.
It’s looking down on your audience.
Because respecting the audience is essential to good storytelling.
You have to believe in the audience.
Imagine sitting on the country porch and telling a story with no audience, right?
I find that very hard to imagine because storytelling is about audiences.
You can immediately start telling the story if even one person shows up.
But sitting there and telling it by yourself?
That isn’t what a story is.
So if one person shows up and it’s Jackie, you are going to tell it differently than
if Sally showed up first.
And if Sally and Jackie are there together you are going to tell it differently then
either one of them by themselves.
That’s just the nature of communication.
So not respecting the audience or not realizing that it’s all about the audience is probably
the biggest mistake.
And it takes awhile to get out of that mistake because the only way you can get out it is
through constant feedback that tells you it’s not necessary.
Because someone once told me an editor is a person who tells an editor when to stop
writing and I thought there was a lot of truth to that.
Because how is the writer going to know unless somebody says “You don’t need that.”
And I think that is often the case with screenwriters is they put a lot of things in that they don’t
need.
We need much less then we think we do.
We don’t need a scene to come to an end, it’s okay to cut out of it.
I mean writers are constantly have a great line at the end of the scene but then they
add a couple more lines (insecurity lines I call them) so we instantly just cross them
out because we already just had a great line, that’s the end of the scene.
And yes, everything hasn’t been quite ramped up and that adds energy and when you cut that
you’re pouring energy into the story.
When you leave it there you are sucking energy out of the story because the audience is like
bored through the last two lines and is like “Oh, I’m out of it.
You had me at hello” kind of thing.
And I think that’s probably the most common mistake is overwriting, just overwriting.
Film Courage: You said earlier about personality?
Dr. Atchity: Well, screenwriters have to be careful with their personalities.
By nature they are very (overtly at least) self-confident, aggressive people.
Mostly that’s a mask for lack of confidence which is a normal thing for a writer to have.
We all have that no matter what stage you reach, you will always have a lack of self-confidence.
But then the world is divided into those who do it anyway.
And those who let them stop that.
You know, every actor has that before he goes on stage.
Some of the greatest actors (Richard Chamberlin) used to throw up before he went on stage.
But he went on stage, I mean it was just part of what he did.
You get nervous before you start and that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing.
You know, if you weren’t nervous then you are not doing something important.
So if you are going into battle on the battlefield, should you be afraid, yes!
If you weren’t afraid, you’d be nuts.
And so what happens in personality is that sometimes people compensate in an over-aggressive
way and it’s an automatic turn off because one of the several things about succeeding
in Hollywood is don’t get on everyone’s life is too short list.
And it’s really true and sometimes you get on it immediately and you’ll never get off
of it.
And you have to realize that you need to act with the people in the business the way you
would act with true friends who will tell you you’re an a**hole if you’re being
an a**hole.
And Hollywood won’t, they’ll just say “Thank you so much for coming.
We’ll be in touch with you.”
And that will be the end of it.
But they’ll go “A**hole as soon as he’s out of the room.”
And demanding, it’s partly demanding because there is a kind of petulance that sets in
the longer a writer has worked without reward and acclimation and compensation.
And it’s almost like “I deserve this.
You are going to give it to me now.”
You know, I had an actress at dinner one night and in the middle of dinner she said (you
know a lot of other people around) and she said “I demand attention now!”
And it was really funny because the men thought that was cute and the women did not?
She was not re-invited.
Film Courage: On no…
Dr. Atchity: No…the women definitely did not like that petulance because men thought
it was cute because she was se**y and so on.
Film Courage: Sure, sure.
Dr. Atchity: But in today’s world (especially in Hollywood) where the stakes are so high,
everybody wants to get in.
Thousands of people are lined up for everything single position you could ask for and they
want people who are cool and professional.
Not hot-headed and demanding.
And when I see a writer is of the latter category I just kind of run for the hills.
And when I see a writer is not that way (is modest and so on) I will continue talking
to them for years even before I represent him or work with him until I find something
that I can work with because he’s so respectful and not on my too-short-list.
That’s a very rare thing but it’s important when you think about it in any walk of life.
The uncle who you can’t stand to see at Thanksgiving is not the one that you want
to be representing or making a movie with.
Film Courage: Is that when someone is too self-aggrandizing, like “This is the greatest
thing!”
And they won’t take no for an answer and it just becomes “Please…”
Dr. Atchity: Yeah, that’s part of it because don’t tell us how great it is, just tell
us the story, get out of the way of the story.
We don’t want to hear this is your first pitch, we don’t want to hear you haven’t
done this much.
We don’t want to hear that you practiced this and you know exactly what to say, we
want to see if you’ve got the goods and that is the story.
Like Mark Twain said “Don’t tell us the fat lady is going to sing, bring her out and
let her sing.”
You know, that’s what we want to see.
In other words, don’t draw attention to yourself because that is not what we’re
interested in.
We are interested in the story.
And maybe we’ll get interested in you later like after you’ve brought a couple of good
stories in and then we go “By the way, where are you from and what’s your story?”
But we don’t want to deal with it at the beginning.
Because the truth is no matter who you are, if your story is good, we love you because
you told this story and that’s a great kind of equalizer when you think about it, it’s
a real world of ideas.
But if you start telling us about yourself and give us the chance to hate you before
you even started telling the story, then how stupid is that.
And I have to say years ago I stopped taking writers to pitches of their stories because
they most of the time unsold the story after they sold it.
Film Courage: Oh no.
Dr. Atchity: For a very simple reason, they weren’t looking at the buyer.
They were in a coma.
They were telling the story and they weren’t watching the buyers eyes which is all that
matters in a pitch.
Like I can see immediately if you’re bored.
And if I’m anybody at all, I’ll switch to another story to pitch you.
Because the buyer is thinking “Do I like this story, can I do something with it?”
But sometimes he’ll just hear one word, dragon and that will be it “Click” my
eyes go “Let’s see, I’ve got a 3:15 and a 3:30” like my brain is thinking of
other things because I know I can’t acquire a dragon story, so why am I wasting this person’s
time?
Well the person is not even listening and looking at me so he goes on talking.
But the other thing happens, too.
He’s already said enough to sell you, you’re totally…this is what you’re looking for,
I can see it in your eyes, but you keep talking.
So after a while now, the buyer is looking at him, instead of listening to the story
he’s looking at him instead of listening to the story he’s looking to him going “Why
is this guy still talking?
I love this!
I want to ask him questions.”
You know what I mean?
So that’s an example of a writer forgetting about the most important part of his story
which is his audience.
His audience, the reader, his audience is the most important part of the story and when
you forget it, they know (the reader knows) that you’ve forgotten it and then they’re
tuned out, they close the book.