Today I\u2019ve read a couple of stories about Hollywood aspirings \u2013 aspiring writers, directors, actors, etc. In this reading season I\u2019ve probably read a number of these kinds of scripts. Please, people, no. Don\u2019t do it. Ninety nine times out of one hundred, your life as an aspiring writer isn\u2019t interesting enough to warrant a feature movie script. <\/p>\n

Beyond that, get creative. The average movie-goer (myself included, and I am a writer) doesn\u2019t want to go to a movie to see a movie about an aspiring writer. We go to the movies to see heroes \u2013 the characters we writers imagine. We want to learn about something we don’t see everyday, experience something new. So, imagine.<\/p>\n

There is an adage that Hollywood doesn\u2019t make movies about Hollywood. I know it actually does, but personally I don\u2019t like reading scripts that are about Hollywood \u2013 being actors, directors, writers, agents, etc. <\/p>\n

To my mind, if your protagonist is an aspiring writer, the dramatic stakes aren\u2019t high enough in most cases to justify a screenplay. A writer sits at a computer all day! How is this in any way dramatic? And the reality is that most aspirings don\u2019t have the intimate working knowledge of the details and underbelly of that kind of reality to make it compelling. Especially if it\u2019s not a comedy or satire. <\/p>\n

Most stories that are written about aspiring writers and talent just don\u2019t have either the fundamental dramatic stakes or the character to drive a great story. I also have another theory about this \u2013 we see a lot of train wreck stories about celebrities every day. We all know they\u2019re off their rockers. Remember that TMZ video just recently about Britney Spears screaming her head off into her fake mic while the fan climbed up on the stage to dance with her? He wasn\u2019t trying to chop her head off or hack her into pieces, although in those few seconds she gave an Oscar-worthy horror performance. Because why? Her real life is a horror movie. She is so obviously mentally disturbed that she almost wet herself on stage when confronted with one of her very \u201cscary\u201d fans (who, to me, just looked like a very cute gay guy, and in the real world she should be grateful she has any fans at all because she’s a complete wackadoo). To dramatize something that is already probably more dramatic than we can imagine from the comfort of our office chair would be very hard. The stakes would have to be upped considerably for this kind of subject matter to offer anything fresh, new or interesting. <\/p>\n

So, write something dramatic. Write about real-feeling but heroic people who undergo life transformation. Don\u2019t write drama about drama. Don’t force artifice onto something that is already artificial. There is a huge disconnect there. If I feel like seeing celebrity horror, I\u2019ll just click onto TMZ in the evening. You don’t need to take me there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I\u2019ve read a couple of stories about Hollywood aspirings \u2013 aspiring writers, directors, actors, etc. In this reading season I\u2019ve probably read a number of these kinds of scripts. Please, people, no. Don\u2019t do it. Ninety nine times out of one hundred, your life as an aspiring writer isn\u2019t interesting enough to warrant a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7,10,11,6,50,42,1],"tags":[37,18,40,5,36,23,25,33,41,3,4,32,13,26,17,31,19,20,15,16,123,121],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-genre","category-logical-world","category-process","category-story","category-subject-matter","category-theme","category-uncategorized","tag-breaking-story","tag-how-to-give-story-notes","tag-how-to-write-a-screenplay","tag-how-to-write-a-script","tag-outlining","tag-screenplay","tag-screenplay-genre","tag-screenplay-outline","tag-screenplay-structure","tag-screenwriter","tag-screenwriting","tag-screenwriting-beats","tag-screenwriting-competitions","tag-screenwriting-genre","tag-screenwriting-notes","tag-script","tag-script-comments","tag-script-notes","tag-script-reader","tag-story-notes","tag-subject-matter","tag-theme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}