Film Courage: At what point should a writer have earned the audience’s trust and if
it’s not there by that point it’s going to be hard to get it later? Brooks Elms, Screenwriter/Writing
Mentor: Page one. I’ll look at a screenplay and literally line one I’m already going
Does this person have the chops? Film Courage: Really? Brooks: I can’t look at one line
and definitively say but I’ll tell you what, you show me the first sentence or maybe not…it
can be just the slug line and one sentence. If I saw the slug line and one sentence of
10 screenplays, I bet you I could tell you how much I’m going to like that screenplay
within probably 80 percent likelihood. I can see a professionally crafted line in just
two sentences. I don’t do it that harshly but I’ll at least give them a page or two
if I’m going to evaluate something. There’s just so many choices and it’s sort of like
poetry in a sense where every word counts and you can often when you’ve done it for
so long realize I don’t need that word i don't need that word i could subtract to subtract
you get that white space flowing on the page so you can um just very efficiently and then
muscular word choices and specific words there's so much to be seen again so i'll even say
this if you take a if you take even the way the slug line is formatted and the way they're
talking about the time of day and those things those are choices and um and amateurs tend
to make one pool of choices and professionals tend to make other ones getting tendencies
but like yeah i would think 80 of the time i could look at two lines and i could feel
like this is probably a professional or somebody at least writing at the professional level
and so if that page one is not is not up to par it's going to be very difficult almost
impossible maybe to gain that trust for the reader or audience later on so yes but it's
not binary right so what will happen is um you know all anybody who's spending the hours
and hours of time writing a screenplay has some sort of talent you know i mean they have
something going on right so you know i don't think i've ever read a screenplay that had
like zero like nothing right there's something you know so um but what will happen is i'll
get to page one if i was just picking up a random script from random amateur writer and
i look at page one again i look at line two or three and i'm already knowing yeah this
person's probably you know from the scale of totally professional to total beginner
within two sentences i know that okay this is probably where this person is and i'll
get to the end of the first page and i'm now i have a 90 chance or 95 chance of knowing
where they are now that being said if i'm a production company and i'm looking for a
thriller and my friend said he read he read this thriller and it was amazing and i read
page one and i'm going okay my friends i trust my friend he's saying it's amazing i'm looking
at this thing it's not a really a professional level written thing it's kind of amateurish
i might not toss in the trash at that point i might go um okay but you're it's it's you're
leaning against it you're sort of you're you're minimizing it so it's important not to see
it in a binary way where it's this or that but at certain point in hollywood it will
be binded they'll give you first of all they're not going to read the script unless in one
sentence you can pitch the story um and then they'll go oh yeah that's worth my time and
they'll give it a couple pages and then toss it when it's not any good it's more than just
formatting issues though you said it's also like word choices and you know it's not just
how much white's on the page or even it's all those things right because it's the screenplay
format is so um it's kind of clunky it's a clunky format right um you know uh the way
the slug line works and it just it's sort of yeah i mean whereas prose it's just like
a waterfall of words you know i don't even write prose but like um but the screenplay
format is just it's blocky um and so because there's those limitations um when you get
really familiar with the format you can see people very quickly making choices within
this sort of format that are you know different good or different bad or different and experienced
you know there was a script a spectre that came out a couple years ago that was doing
all sorts of crazy things with fonts and craziness and um i love a little of that when it's organic
and it feels inspired but this script i i you know i wanted to ring somebody's neck
after about 30 pages i was like you know oh wow cool idea and i like it because they were
really stretching the bounds of the format and then it felt like to me it was a it was
at least to me for my sensibility was it felt like a trick or a gimmick it wasn't that they
um to my mind i wasn't able to find my way in emotionally to what their vision was you
know so um so uh but i don't know i mean um but they you know certainly made a splash
doing that and um and who knows maybe other people really liked it then that's that's
great that's the thing is it's a subjective business so um you know i have very refined
and and strongly held beliefs but i'm just one opinion you know i mean we you know we
might disagree about what won the oscar in any given year you love it i hate it or vice
versa and that's a movie that's produced and heralded as the best that we've got and stark
disagreements so um certainly any spec script by any writer you know it just needs to be
i mean if i'm working with somebody i'm what's interesting about that is if i'm working with
somebody my opinion doesn't even really come up because it doesn't matter my what i do
is or even when i write my own stuff it's i'm an advocate for their audience and i gently
and inspired way just ask questions what i think that their audience is going to be wondering
you know why you know i think your audience is going to want a more cohesive idea here
you know what if like you're all i know your audience is craves to have a sense of irony
in your concept you know i know your audience might you know when you're thinking about
constructing your log line they want a character's goal that is just driven it's powerful and
there's these stakes and then there's a conflict so i just sort of i articulate what i'm in
my experience i believe their audience is going to be thinking and that gives the people
i work with um a really fine sort of goal post for them to shoot at and that's the great
thing is that um whenever you whatever your writing process is or whatever your support
system is you you want to have a really high quality feedback loop so you can stay focused
on the task at hand in an inspired way and move as quickly as possible what slows up
writers is they don't have a quality feedback loop system they kind of figure out their
own they might read a book but they can read a book and they don't know if they're actually
applying the book or not um and then they might have all sorts of hang-ups about getting
feedback because this person yelled at them they take toxic or they or their you know
they take too much feedback and they drown her out their own voices all sorts of nightmares
but like having a world-class um feedback and development system is absolutely one of
the best things i've done for my career i mean and i'm so good at it i can even i can
even take somebody that's like a layperson that doesn't even know the business and i
can ask them for feedback in a certain way and it gives me a high quality echo of what's
going on if you just hand them if i hand my sister the script and my sister is awesome
and uh she used to always watch our high school movies and she always has belting laugh so
we called her like the laugh anchor but anyway but in general if i was to give her my script
and she would basically say oh i liked it or i didn't like it right that's sort of base
level analysis um but what you can do is take even a lay person if you direct them in the
right way with how you ask for feedback so you know uh you know for my sister i could
say was there any um what was your favorite character was um which character do you feel
like you wanted to know more about or needed more sort of development which scenes felt
like you didn't need them right these are questions she absolutely can answer um definitively
from her opinion and she would have almost never thought to tell that to me if i just
gave it to her because she's a lay person right she's just going oh i like this line
of dialogue or this was great or i didn't like it or whatever so um so whatever writers
use for their feedback system whether i have a writer's group or a coach or accountability
partner or whatever works for them i would invite them to have it be a really high quality
echo because we're anticipating we're in the reaction business we're anticipating that
reaction from the audience and the better that feedback loop can be and the quicker
it can be the faster our career will move forward what do you say to screenwriters who
are insulted or feel that it's too rush or you're not respecting the craft when you can
tell by page one or even really halfway down the page whether it's a professional level
screenplay what do you say to those people um it's a great question and i know a lot
of writers feel very strongly about that like how could you even tell my screenplay is any
good if you've only read you know you know one page or even a couple lines that's really
ridiculous um okay no fine you can disagree with me all you want um i believe i am familiar
enough with this stuff and i see patterns and indicators of success and i see a correlation
um you know and i and i believe it and not only in me every experienced right every like
100 percent of the not 100 maybe 95 98 of experienced writers that i know absolutely
feel like again it's not binary they can't read a line or a page and go this is definitively
crap or definitely good but you know you know all my peers i absolutely would put money
on them looking at a particular random script and after reading one page they all for sure
could say this is an amateur level writer or this is a you know probably not even 100
but i think for the most part and it's just because there's what i think the people they
get upset about is they don't they don't know what they don't know they don't realize how
many choices they're making on the page and that's probably why they get pissed off is
because they're going okay the character gets in the car or and such and such happens but
right but like you know i've written 25 30 screenplays so i've and and that's just like
finished ones not to mention some of those drafts were 15 20 30 drafts and probably another
30 treatment so like i've been in the game for a while i've seen a lot of stuff and and
you just get familiar with the same thing over and over and over again so um so what
they so a person writing their first second third screenplay for them they're just focusing
on basic oh there's a guy i see him in the car and they just say guy gets in the car
but like you know i'm seeing that same line and i'm thinking of on 10 levels you know
i'm thinking of it on how many words the how muscular the words are the cadence what's
going on before that and after um you know how um you know symbolically how does it relate
to the theme you know and again i don't do all that on the first draft but by the time
i get to that end draft every line i've thought about dozens and dozens of times with those
different lenses and because i have that much familiarity with every single line in my screenplay
um i can read a line from an amateur who's probably looked at that line two times three
times five times um and when i look at something two times five times it's like that it's not
really it does you know it looks like a rough rock it doesn't look like a gem when i've
seen something a dozen times 20 times especially after all my experience it shines in a different
way you just the magic comes through it in a way that's different so um even if you were
to look at you know my first draft and my last draft you're just seeing a rougher edge
with all those things and that's just part of the process that's another thing is that
a lot of um amateur writers they won't do as many drafts as they need to to really shine
or they'll do the drafts but they're changing the wrong damn things that don't even make
a difference which kind of breaks my heart because they've got enough creativity and
they love it enough but they don't know the way through the forest so they end up spending
years and years wandering around and then some of them quit it's terrible can you give
me an example of of poorly used cadence um so poorly used that's an interesting question
poorly used cadence in dialogue would be something that doesn't sound authentic to that character
right usually it's the writer's own voice they all sound like you know me and you know
what the truth is um i am fine writing my early drafts pretty much with everybody in
my in my in my voice i mean why not i mean if i have an ear for them fine i'll do it
but like even if the thing i'm writing now has this british character and you know i'm
doing kind of a you know whatever loose idea of a british i'll imagine like a guy from
hell's kitchen or like pierce morgan what did he say but like i don't sweat it it's
sort of like it's more like me kind of doing a bad british accent or whatever you know
that's kind of the cadence that i'm hearing and then as i get to draft drafts i'll maybe
bring in a friend who's british and go dude can you take a look at this and he'll go yeah
we would never say this we would never do that you know or like when i was writing astronauts
it was great to um get real astronauts and go um yeah we described this stuff and we're
kind of like pulling it off stuff we got on the internet i don't you know you tell me
and it was really exciting every time they're like no no that's legit that's right i was
like wow it is it's amazing so um cadence for a line of description really where your
voice comes from as a screenwriter um you know hemingway very classically had this very
simple sort of style um there's most of the screenwriters on the that make the blacklist
every year have a pretty visceral sense of their voice so if you look at you pick three
scripts from the blacklist and you look at their first couple lines on their first page
you're going to probably see slight differences in cadence in the way they they talk and it's
just you feel it it's weird because it's it's cadence is different it's a rhythmic thing
um uh and you know word choice plays part of it but it's just sort of a it's a rhythm
i think the first time i thought about i learned about that sort of thing was um spike lee
um one of his books you know his first you know how i made this how i made she's got
to have it whatever that book was but it was um i read the book and i was like oh this
is exactly the way spike talks and like interviews and stuff and i was like oh you can do that
you're not supposed to write this kind of fakey fake format that you learn in school
and it was like and it was so it just felt more personal you know so i think um screenwriters
that have a great voice they describe those action scenes with um not so much like so
strongly there but like there's a sense of their cadence in this genre in service to
this particular story so i haven't read a spike screenplay in a while so i don't know
exactly what he does on the page but i would imagine it's i mean the thing i read of his
was non-fiction so it was very much his voice but voices is great it's probably one of the
things that um again most of the scripts that make the blacklist every year are are mostly
powerful in in voice um and then somewhat in concept although some of the concepts are
not very strong um and then they can execute but i in my ucla extension class we would
often teach a lot of those screenplays from the blacklist and very interestingly the um
the ratings were all over the board it wasn't like you know i wouldn't tell them which ones
were sometimes i would sometimes i wouldn't but like it didn't matter there was literally
um some of the scripts they hated the most in class blacklist scripts wow it's it's there's
so much subjectivity in the business so you just have to know how to getting back to that
feedback system you know how to take subjectivity out of it you need enough data points so that
it's not um one person is never making or breaking you or one contest or one whatever
you need enough data points so that um uh subjectivity is not a significant factor i
think kevin smith too has a very distinct cadence for his writing and in his book and
um that's right when you talk about muscular words yeah can you give me an example of a
weak muscular word versus a strong one um so um muscular is sort of like the opposite
of um pat you know passive to a passive active is more different but you can say passive
or active and active even more muscular so um we are talking right it's a passive way
in a very bland way um um we are enthralled in conversation and maybe that's even a little
too flowery but right but we are um digging into the meat of the craft of screenwriting
you know you can feel the difference between those different word choices and the amateur
will do things like we are talking and and that's why you can see it in one one one sentence
and then you might have somebody who's getting again you know the other thing i said about
enthralled or whatever that might be a little bit too flowery right um but you'll see the
um the writers that have that voice there's there's a poetry to it it's just beautiful
it's just enough sort of flourish on it's not too fancy or sometimes it will be uh there
was a guy that wrote um uh freda's name but he um anyway any great screenwriter has really
distinct cadence and voice
Question For The Viewers: What points do you disagree with?