If characters are going to do something bad, Hollywood wants you to build in an excuse note. Yes, of course the audience have to relate to your characters, but they don't need to approve of them. I've had at least one wonderful screenplay of mine maimed by a sympathy-skank. Sympathy is like crack cocaine to industry execs. I'm going to give the Oscar for this to Geoffrey Chaucer for The Pardoner's Tale, where they go looking for Death but find a pile of money instead. The trick is to create an expectation but fulfil it in a completely unexpected way. When Morgan Freeman said he was going to retire in a few days, someone shouted: "Gonna die!" (For once, it wasn't true.) On the other hand, if the setup doesn't signal something, it doesn't generate any suspense.
I remember watching Se7en in a multiplex. If a setup is too obvious, it can announce a payoff.
In A Knight's Tale, you fret all the way through that someone will discover that William is not really Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein.Ī delicate art. Secrets are good at generating tension, too. In American Splendor, the film about comic-book creator Harvey Pekar, you hope till it hurts that his relationship will work out. It connects two points and sends a charge between them. Suspense is the hidden energy that holds a story together. When you're shaping things, it's more useful to think about suspense. All it really means is that your screenplay should have a beginning, middle and end.
#ACTUAL MOVIE SCRIPTS PDF MANUALS#
But it saves weeks of second-guessing.Īll the manuals insist on a three-act structure. Danny Boyle, director of 28 Days Later, makes you read your script out loud to him. The same applies after you've written the script. This also means that if you bump into The Money at a film festival, you can pitch the story right there. Is there a bit where they check their watch? Are there bits you unexpectedly feel you want to skip? Do they guess the ending? Get it worked up into a good anecdote. If Victor Hugo had waited until he'd finished Notre-Dame de Paris, he would have ended up calling it I've Got a Hunch. If you look for it afterwards, you end up thinking like a headline-writer. If you want a good title, you need it before you start, when you're pumped up with hope. Orson Welles said Paper Moon was such a great title they wouldn't need to make the movie, just release the title. The musical Oklahoma, as it was initially called, famously flopped in the provinces, but became a massive hit after they added the exclamation mark. And if it's successful, people will want to make the movie.
#ACTUAL MOVIE SCRIPTS PDF PLUS#
Plus it makes you a playwright, which is way upmarket from a screenwriter. A play costs a few thousand and takes a couple of months. To get a movie into the world, someone needs to love it enough to spend millions of pounds on it - and years of their life. If you've got a great story, it might be worth writing it as a play first, or a book.
#ACTUAL MOVIE SCRIPTS PDF TV#
I've just done a TV film for the BBC that has taken 20 years to go from idea to execution. Are you sure you need to write a screenplay? Almost any movie takes years.